'Plamegate' Reporters Discuss Blogs, Anonymous Sources

By Dave Astor

Published: October 21, 2005 9:13 AM ET

NEW YORK"Plamegate" interests newspapers on several levels: the scandal itself, the irony of using anonymous sourcing to write about a scandal that involved anonymous sourcing, and the fact that newspapers are covering "Plamegate" while blogs -- which didn't exist during scandals past -- post all kinds of content on the same subject.

E&P asked reporters who are doing "Plamegate" stories to comment on all of the above.

"Blogs are useful for tips and leads, but I wouldn't run something off a blog without confirming it," said Tom DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News.

DeFrank wrote a much-mentioned Wednesday story saying President Bush was initially mad at Karl Rove two years ago for his "Plamegate" role but nonetheless remained loyal to his top advisor. The article was picked up by the blogosphere, including a major liberal blog, which gave DeFrank an uneasy feeling. He said he would have been just as uncomfortable if a story of his was trumpeted by a conservative blog.

"I don't approach stories from an ideological point of view," explained DeFrank. "I do stories because they're good stories." He did note that he appreciates the exposure a blog mention can bring the Daily News.

Walter Pincus, who covers national security affairs for The Washington Post, said of blogs: "I Iook at them every once in a while. Some do enormous damage, and some are thoughtful."

Mark Silva, White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, added: "I don't pay much attention to blogs. Many are misleading and agenda-driven. You're going to have to do the work yourself anyway, so you might as well go straight to your sources."

What about anonymous sources? They've been used quite often in "Plamegate" stories, but Silva has kept them to a minimum in his own articles. "I'm not terribly comfortable with having the news driven by people who steer a story in a certain direction and can't be held accountable," he told E&P.

But DeFrank said journalists, in some cases, have to unfortunately omit names from their stories. "This White House is so secretive and, for the most part, so well disciplined that reporters frequently have no choice but to rely on anonymous sources," he noted. "That ups the ante on making sure you're not being used."

DeFrank, speaking of his Wednesday article, said: "There's no way to produce a story on a private conversation between a president and his chief political confidante without using anonymous sources."

The bureau chief -- who said Daily News reporters James Gordon Meek and Kenneth R. Bazinet have actually done a lot more "Plamegate" stories than he has -- added that his sourcing for the Wednesday article was "unimpeachable."

Silva said covering "Plamegate" has been "frustrating" because more information has come from defense attorneys and people who testify -- who obviously put their own spin on things -- than from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Silva noted that Fitzgerald runs an "incredibly disciplined" ship when it comes to keeping things from being made public. The Tribune reporter added that working for a Chicago newspaper hasn't helped him get more information from Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney from Chicago.

Given that reporters have been "sent down some rabbit trails," Silva said it would be interesting when Fitzgerald finishes his work to see how much newspapers got right and how much they got wrong.

Pincus said of "Plamegate that he had the "odd" experience of "both writing about it and being in it." The Post reporter was subpoenaed to give grand-jury testimony in the leak inquiry and ended up giving a deposition instead. He did not identify his source.

And Pincus -- who was a journalist during Watergate and Iran/Contra -- said there are similarities between various scandals. He recalled the late Sen. J. William Fulbright observing that in Washington, it's not what you did that counts, but what you do after you're caught.

DeFrank described "Plamegate" as the "latest hot story, but we won't know how hot until Mr. Fitzgerald does what he does."

United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Plame plans to sue White House officials

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame are preparing to file a civil suit against Bush administration officials.

Plame was the covert CIA agent allegedly unmasked by the White House. Now she is preparing to file a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration officials who may have disclosed her identity and scuttled her career, Salon.com reported Thursday.

"There is no question that her privacy has been invaded. She was almost by definition the ultimate private person," said the couple's attorney, Christopher Wolf.

Wolf said the couple would make a final decision on filing a lawsuit after special prosecutor Patick Fitzgerald has completed his investigation, Salon said.

If they do sue, Wilson and Plame could be the first litigants to depose senior White House officials since Paula Jones, an employee of the state of Arkansas, sued President Bill Clinton.

Fitzgerald must decide whether or not to return indictments by Oct. 28, the day the grand jury investigating the leak of Plame's name to the press is scheduled to be dismissed. Democrats in Congress have requested a report from Fitzgerald on his findings but legal observers say he is under no obligation to provide one if he decides that no crimes were committed.

Possible cover-up a focus in Plame case - Yahoo! News

By Adam Entous

Prosecutors investigating the outing of a covert CIA operative are focusing on whether top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby tried to conceal their involvement from investigators, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.

Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, and Libby, who is chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, are at the center of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Fitzgerald appears likely to bring charges next week in the nearly two-year leak investigation.

The grand jury, which expires on October 28, convened on Friday, but it was unclear what issues they were working on since the panel appears to have completed hearing from witnesses. Fitzgerald is expected to meet with the grand jury early next week for a possible vote on indictments.

One of the lawyers said prosecutors were likely starting to present their final case to jurors, either for bringing indictments or to explain why there was insufficient evidence to do so.

"I would be hesitant to say it's a sign one way or the other," the lawyer said.

Fitzgerald's spokesman declined to comment.

While Fitzgerald could still charge administration officials with knowingly revealing Plame's identity, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements, obstruction of justice and disclosing classified information. He also may bring a broad conspiracy charge, the lawyers said.

Legal sources said Rove may be in legal jeopardy for initially not telling the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame. Rove only recalled the conversation after the discovery of an e-mail message he sent to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, had no immediate comment.

Luskin said earlier this week that Rove "has at all times strived to be as truthful as possible and voluntarily brought the Cooper conversation to Fitzgerald's attention."

Libby could be open to false statement and obstruction charges because of contradictions between his testimony and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other journalists. Miller has testified she discussed Wilson's wife with Libby as many as three times before columnist Robert Novak publicly identified her.

Libby has said he learned of Wilson's wife from reporters but journalists have disputed that.

Wilson says White House officials outed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, to discredit him for accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.

After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

Fitzgerald Launches Web Site

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, October 21, 2005; 1:00 PM

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has just launched his own brand-new Web site.

Could it be that he's getting ready to release some new legal documents? Like, maybe, some indictments? It's certainly not the action of an office about to fold up its tents and go home.


Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn minimized the significance of the Web launch in an interview this morning.

"I would strongly caution, Dan, against reading anything into it substantive, one way or the other," he said. "It's really a long overdue effort to get something on the Internet to answer a lot of questions that we get . . . and to put up some of the documents that we have had ongoing and continued interest in having the public be able to access."

OK, OK. But will the Web site be used for future documents as well?

"The possibility exists," Samborn said.

Among the documents currently available on the site:

* The December 30, 2003, memo from then-acting attorney general James B. Comey establishing Fitzgerald as an independent special counsel with "all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity."

* A Feb. 6, 2004, follow-up confirming that his mandate "includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation."

The Web site is "bare bones" and is "still a work in progress," Samborn said. "We have some document formatting issues that we're still resolving." As a result, the site has not yet been officially announced -- although there is a link from Fitzgerald's home page as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Up until now, the only official repository for documents related to the special counsel's investigation had been a page on the U.S. District Court's Web site. But it only included court motions and rulings.

Incidentally, if you call the number the new Web site lists for Fitzgerald's D.C. office, the phone is somewhat mysteriously answered "counterespionage section."

But as Samborn explained to me, that's because the special prosecutor is borrowing space in the Justice Department's Bond Building from the counterespionage section. "The office of special counsel doesn't really have its own dedicated space," he said.

Report: Rove may face 'serious' jeopardy

Report: Rove may face 'serious' jeopardy

NEW YORK, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is focusing on whether two White House officials tried to conceal their actions in the leak of a CIA agent's identity.

Fitzgerald is focusing on whether President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby Jr. tried to mislead prosecutors, The New York Times reported.

Citing lawyers involved in the case, the newspaper said Fitzgerald is considering perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement charges -- suggesting he may believe evidence gathered by a federal grand jury shows the two White House aides tried to cover up their actions.

Rove and Libby have been advised they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers told the newspaper.

Fitzgerald reportedly will not decide until next week whether to file any charges in connection with the 2003 leak of the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Columnist Robert Novak identified her after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly challenged the Bush administration's claim that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has tried to buy nuclear materials from an African nation.

Bush Critic Became Target of Libby, Former Aides Say - Los Angeles Times

Cheney's chief of staff reportedly sought an aggressive campaign against Wilson.

By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.


While other administration officials were maintaining a careful distance from Wilson in 2004, Libby ordered up a compendium of information that could be used to rebut Wilson's claims that the administration had "twisted" intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

Libby pressed the administration to publicly counter Wilson, sparking a debate with other White House officials who thought the tactic would call more attention to the former diplomat and his criticisms. That debate ended after an April 2004 meeting in the office of White House Communications Director Daniel Bartlett, when staffers were told "don't engage" Wilson, according to notes taken during the meeting by one person present.

"Scooter had a plan to counter Wilson and a passionate desire to do so," said a second person, a former White House official familiar with the internal deliberations. Like other former White House staff, this person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation.

Libby's actions and those of top White House political advisor Karl Rove are being scrutinized as special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald concludes his 22-month investigation into the exposure of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Fitzgerald is examining whether Plame's name was leaked to the media by administration officials in violation of a federal law that prohibits knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert agent.

Libby's anger over Wilson's 2003 charges has been known. But new interviews and documents obtained by The Times provide a more detailed view of the depth and duration of Libby's interest in Wilson. They also show that the vice president's office closely monitored news coverage.

On one occasion, the office prohibited a reporter from traveling with Cheney aboard Air Force Two, because the vice president's daughter said Cheney was unhappy with that newspaper's coverage.

Libby "would see something had appeared in the newspaper or on television and wanted to use the White House operation to counter it," one former official said.

After Wilson published a book criticizing the administration in April 2004, during the closely fought presidential campaign, Libby became consumed by passages that he believed were inaccurate or unfair to Cheney, former aides said. He ordered up a meticulous catalog of Wilson's claims and public statements going back to early 2003.

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."

The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.

Though the White House did not respond to Wilson's claims, the Republican National Committee did strike back with a series of press releases attacking his credibility.

One prominent former Cheney aide defended Libby on Thursday, saying he was zealous and passionate about everything he worked on — not just the Wilson episode.

"Scooter is the most methodical, detail-oriented and comprehensive worker of anybody I've ever worked with in my life," said Mary Matalin, a former Cheney advisor who worked as a consultant on the 2004 campaign.

"He leaves no stone unturned, and it doesn't matter what the topic is," she said. "That's the nature of Scooter, and that's why he's such a superior intellect and why Cheney and the president and everybody over there respects him."

Wilson, reached by telephone while on a speaking tour in California, said Thursday that he was outraged by the extent of the White House effort to track and counter his statements.

"What an abuse of power," Wilson said. "What the hell are they doing using taxpayer funded employees to root around and find information on me?"

Libby's intense interest in Wilson may help explain why he has become a focus in the federal investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's name.

The case had its origins in early 2002, when Cheney asked the CIA for information on reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from the African nation of Niger.

In response to Cheney's queries, the CIA decided to send Wilson, who had served in the region and was familiar with the uranium trade, to investigate. Wilson's wife was working undercover for the CIA on weapons issues at the time.

On his trip to Niger, Wilson found little reason to believe the Iraqis had sought the uranium, and on his return reported his findings to CIA officials.

In January 2003, President Bush in his State of the Union address cited Iraq's interest in African uranium as a sign of President Saddam Hussein's interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. In July, Wilson penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times describing his findings and suggesting that the president had distorted intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Within days, administration officials were telling reporters that Wilson had been sent to Niger as a boondoggle arranged by his wife, who worked at the CIA. Syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14.

It can be a felony to knowingly leak the identity of a covert agent, and in late 2003 the Justice Department appointed Fitzgerald to investigate. Fitzgerald is nearing the end of his inquiry into the leak and has focused on Rove and Libby, among others.

Rove and Libby have both reportedly testified that they learned about Plame from others, did not know she had covert status and did not reveal her name to reporters. The White House and a lawyer for Libby declined to comment Thursday.

The documents and interviews portray Libby as highly attuned to detail. He dictated the format for internal memos, including that paragraphs be indented.

The documents and interviews show that, when it came to monitoring media coverage of Wilson and other issues affecting the vice president's reputation, Libby was meticulous. Staffers were instructed to use Nexis and Google to watch even the most obscure publications.

The sensitivity extended in at least one case to the vice president's daughter, Liz Cheney, who worked as a campaign advisor.

During a time of tension between the New York Times and the campaign over coverage, aides recommended that a reporter from the paper be allowed to fly aboard Cheney's plane with others in the press corps. Liz Cheney had a different idea.

Writing from her Blackberry, a mobile e-mail device, she noted that her father was upset with a story that appeared in that morning's newspaper, saying: "vp has totally had it with nytimes. This is really not the right time to ask him to charm a reporter from that paper."

The reporter was excluded from the vice president's plane.

Possible cover-up a focus in CIA leak case: lawyers - Yahoo! News

By Adam Entous


Prosecutors investigating the outing of a covert CIA operative are focusing on whether top White House aides tried to conceal their involvement from investigators, lawyers involved the case said on Thursday.

Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, are at the center of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Fitzgerald appears likely to bring charges next week in the nearly two-year leak investigation. The grand jury expires on October 28.

Fitzgerald's spokesman declined to comment.

While Fitzgerald could still charge administration officials with knowingly revealing Plame's identity, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements, obstruction of justice and disclosing classified information. He may also bring a broad conspiracy charge, the lawyers said.

Legal sources said Rove may be in legal jeopardy for initially not telling the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame. Rove only recalled the conversation after the discovery of an e-mail message he sent to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, had no immediate comment.

Luskin said earlier this week that Rove "has at all times strived to be as truthful as possible and voluntarily brought the Cooper conversation to Fitzgerald's attention."

Libby could be open to false statement and obstruction charges because of contradictions between his testimony and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other journalists. Miller has testified she discussed Wilson's wife with Libby as many as three times before columnist Robert Novak publicly identified her.

Libby has said he learned of Wilson's wife from reporters, but journalists have disputed that.

Wilson says White House officials outed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, to discredit him for accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.

After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

A Palpable Silence at White House

Few Ready to Face Effects of Leak Case

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 21, 2005; A01



At 7:30 each morning, President Bush's senior staff gathers to discuss the important issues of the day -- Middle East peace, the Harriet Miers nomination, the latest hurricane bearing down on the coast. Everything, that is, except the issue on everyone's mind.

With special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald driving his CIA leak investigation toward an apparent conclusion, the White House now confronts the looming prospect that no one in the building is eager to address: a Bush presidency without Karl Rove. In a capital consumed by scandal speculation, most White House senior officials are no more privy than outsiders to the prosecutor's intentions. But the surreal silence in the Roosevelt Room each morning belies the nervous discussions racing elsewhere around the West Wing.

Out of the hushed hallway encounters and one-on-one conversations, several scenarios have begun to emerge if Rove or vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby is indicted and forced out. Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans. And to help steady a shaken White House, they say, the president might bring in trusted advisers such as budget director Joshua B. Bolten, lobbyist Ed Gillespie or party chairman Ken Mehlman.

These tentative discussions come at a time when White House senior officials are exploring staff changes to address broader structural problems that have bedeviled Bush's second term, according to Republicans who said they could speak candidly about internal deliberations only if they are not named. But it remains unclear whether Bush agrees that changes are needed and the uncertainty has unsettled his team.

"People are very demoralized and unhappy," a former administration official said. "The leak investigation is [part of it], but things were not happy before this took preeminence. It's just been a rough year. A lot has gotten done, but nothing is easy."

Bush implicitly acknowledged the distractions in answer to a reporter's question during a Rose Garden appearance with visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, while reassuring the public that he remained focused on the pressing matters of state facing his White House.

"There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining," Bush said. "But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

For a president and a White House accustomed to controlling their political circumstances in a one-party town, the culmination of the leak investigation represents another in a string of events beyond their grasp. Like Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war and rising gasoline prices, there is little at the moment that Bush strategists can do to alter the political equation.

But the road that led them to this moment is paved with potholes that Bush aides privately concede they could have avoided, and many Republicans are examining the situation for deeper issues to address. From the failed effort to restructure Social Security to the uproar over the Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, Bush's second-term operation has been far more prone to mistakes than his first.

In the view of many Republicans, fatigue may be one factor affecting the once smooth-running White House. Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. gets up each day at 4:20 a.m., arrives at his office a little over an hour later, gets home between 8:30 and 9 p.m. and often still takes calls after that; he has been in his pressure-cooker job since Bush was inaugurated, longer than any chief of staff in decades. "He looks totally burned out," a Republican strategist said.

Others, including Rove, Bolten, counselor Dan Bartlett, senior adviser Michael J. Gerson and press secretary Scott McClellan, have been running at full tilt since 1999, when the Bush team began gearing up in Austin for the first campaign.

At the same time, the innermost circle has shrunk in the second term, mainly to Vice President Cheney, Card, Rove, Bartlett, Libby and, on foreign policy issues, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. Aides who joined the White House staff after last year's reelection, such as communications director Nicolle Devenish (who now goes by her married name, Nicolle Wallace), domestic policy adviser Claude Allen and political director Sara Taylor, have brought fresh perspectives and earned Bush's trust but do not share the long history with him that he values.

Many allies blame the insularity of his team for recent missteps, such as the Miers nomination. Even some sympathetic to her believe the vetting process broke down because as White House counsel she was so well known to the president that skeptical questions were not asked.

Some GOP officials outside the White House say they believe the president rejects the idea that there is anything fundamentally wrong with his presidency; others express concern that Bush has strayed so far from where he intended to be that it may require drastic action.

At the heart of all those discussions is Rove. With the deceptive title of deputy chief of staff, Rove runs much of the White House, including its guiding political strategy and many of its central policy initiatives. "Karl is the central nervous system right now, and that's obviously a big thing -- not only politically, but now he's in that big policy job," a former White House official said.

At the White House and among its close allies, discussion about Rove's fate is verboten -- in part out of fear and in part out of ignorance about what his legal vulnerability actually is. "No one in the White House wants to talk about an indictment," another former official said. "No one wants to believe anything's going to happen." Nor do people easily discuss other staff changes. "Anyone who talks about that kind of stuff should be shot," said a third Republican with close ties to the White House.

But, this Republican noted, "I am sure Karl and the president talk about it." And the assumption is Rove could not stay if indicted.

Without Rove, Bush likely would need more than one person to take his place, according to people close to the White House. Bolten, who served as deputy chief of staff in the first term and now heads the Office of Management and Budget, is widely deemed a savvy policy master who could assume a broader role. Gillespie, who shepherded the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and advises Miers, had hoped to extricate himself even from this assignment, but colleagues said he would be a logical person to bring in for political strategy.

Mehlman, who was White House political director before becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee, has been a key adviser, although some colleagues worry that bringing in the party chief might send too political a message. Some close to the White House suggest Clay Johnson III, the deputy budget director who was Bush's chief of staff in the Texas governor's office, could be part of a reconstituted team. Attention has also focused on former White House counselor Karen P. Hughes, but she was just confirmed by the Senate as undersecretary of state and seems unlikely to leave.

Some strategists said Bush could accommodate the loss if he had to. "When Karen Hughes left, a lot of people said she's indispensable and impossible to replace and it might hurt the president in an election year," said Charles R. Black, a GOP lobbyist who advises the White House. "But Dan Bartlett and others stepped up, and no one missed a beat."

Mehlman said the president's problems would eventually be overshadowed by his broader agenda. "It's a mistake to allow the political headline of the moment to obscure the overall progress being made on a lot of important fronts," he said. "We're about to have a big debate about taxing and spending. Those are debates where we historically have done well and will this time."

Another former administration official said the key to the future for the White House will be restoring unity within the party. "Everyone in the Republican Party needs to figure out how to stick together and get things done in a constructive manner," he said. "That hides all sorts of fault lines."

Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry - New York Times

By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement - counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say.

With the term of the grand jury expiring in one week, though, some lawyers in the case said they were persuaded that Mr. Fitzgerald had all but made up his mind to seek indictments. None of the lawyers would speak on the record, citing the prosecutor's requests not to talk about the case.

Associates of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby continued to express hope that the prosecutor would conclude that the evidence was too fragmentary and that it would be difficult to prove Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby had a clear-cut intention to misinform the grand jury. Lawyers for the two men declined to comment on their legal status.

The case has cast a cloud over the White House, as has the Congressional criticism over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers. On Thursday, responding to a reporter's question, Mr. Bush said: "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

The possible violations under consideration by Mr. Fitzgerald are peripheral to the issue he was appointed in December 2003 to investigate: whether anyone in the administration broke a federal law that makes it a crime, under certain circumstances, to reveal the identity of a covert intelligence officer.

But Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby may not be the only people at risk. There may be others in the government who could be charged for violations of the disclosure law or of other statutes, like the espionage act, which makes it a crime to transmit classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said.

The accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby about their conversations with reporters have been under investigation almost from the start. According to lawyers in the case, the prosecutor has examined how each man learned of Ms. Wilson, and questioned them in grand jury appearances about their conversations with reporters, how they learned Ms. Wilson's name and her C.I.A. employment and whether the discussions were part of an effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Mr. Wilson had become an irritant to the administration in the late spring and early summer of 2003 even before he went public as a critic of the war in Iraq by writing a July 6, 2003 Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

In that article he wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2002 to explore the accuracy of intelligence reports that suggested Iraq might have tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. Mr. Wilson said that he had been sent on the trip by the C.I.A. after Mr. Cheney's office raised questions about one such report, but that he found it unlikely that any sale had taken place.

In Mr. Rove's case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations with reporters. The first was a July 9, 2003, discussion with Mr. Novak in which, Mr. Rove has said, he first heard Ms. Wilson's name. The second conversation took place on July 11, 2003 with a Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, who later wrote that Mr. Rove had not named Ms. Wilson but had told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and that she had been responsible for her husband being sent to Africa.

Mr. Rove did not tell the grand jury about his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper until months into the leak investigation, long after he had testified about his conversation with Mr. Novak, the lawyers said. Later, Mr. Rove said he had not recalled the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail message about it that he sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has remained skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.