Suspense Builds Over CIA Leak Investigation - Los Angeles Times

By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

3:15 PM PDT, October 26, 2005

WASHINGTON — The CIA leak case continued to build today toward a climactic finish as a grand jury investigating possible wrongdoing by top White House figures met behind closed doors for three hours and the special counsel met privately with the chief judge overseeing the case.

Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald made no announcements about whether he had decided to seek indictments, though speculation was rampant that charges were imminent.

Sources close to the case said they doubted that Fitzgerald would seek to extend the term of the jury, which expires Friday, raising the likelihood of a dramatic denouement soon.

Some lawyers close to the case suggested that Fitzgerald may have already secured at least one indictment but was keeping it under seal until he was ready to announce the results of his 22-month investigation.

One grand juror was overheard telling another juror, "See you Friday," suggesting the possibility that the grand jury would continue to meet up to the last minute.

After the grand jury adjourned for the day, Fitzgerald met for 45 minutes with Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court, a court official said. The official declined to comment on what the men discussed.

A federal judge would have to approve the sealing of any indictment. The chief judge of the district would also likely be given advance notice of any planned public announcements affecting the court, such as the arraignments of high-profile defendants.

Fitzgerald has focused attention on powerful White House advisor Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

A third possibility was that Fitzgerald was seeking the judge's permission to extend the term of the grand jury. But people close to the case said they considered that unlikely.

Among other factors, they noted that the grand jury that Fitzgerald has been using has already been extended once, and that federal court rules do not provide for further extensions.

At the same time, it was possible that he was discussing with the judge using another grand jury to present his case, these sources said.

New York Daily News - World & National Report - Leakers' boat cut adrift by White House

BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - For the first time, the White House yesterday injected a little distance between President Bush and top subordinates at the center of the CIA leak probe.
With an announcement of possible indictments coming as early as today from the special prosecutor amid reports "target letters" have been issued, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan used carefully parsed language to hint that Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby could have misled him when they said they were not involved in outing CIA spy Valerie Plame.

Asked specifically whether Rove and Libby left him "hung out to dry" when he vouched for them, McClellan said, "There are facts the President doesn't know. There are facts I don't know."

He was later queried again on the topic and told reporters, "You pointed back to some past comments that I gave, and I've talked to you about the assurances that I've received on that."

But McClellan didn't mince words in defending Vice President Cheney, who reportedly told his chief of staff Libby about Plame well before she was outed - contradicting Libby's claim that reporters gave him her name. He described Cheney as someone who tells the truth, "a straightforward, plain-spoken person."

A story about the Cheney link in yesterday's New York Times was a new bombshell for the White House because it dramatically elevated the focus of the leak probe from powerful staffers - Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff, and Libby - to the vice president.

"Cheney can't like this story," a former Bush White House staffer said. "Even if he has no legal exposure, this is more political exposure for him."

A former Cheney aide was more blunt: "For the first time, this puts him right in the middle of it."

Associates of both men scoffed at suggestions that a rift was developing between Cheney and Libby.

"Any suggestion they are trying to distance themselves from one another is outrageously preposterous," said a former colleague of both. "They have always been joined at the hip."

With the grand jury expiring Friday, FBI agents questioned Plame's neighbors, apparently establishing even they did not know she was a CIA operative. White House colleagues of staffers implicated in the probe anxiously awaited word of their fates.

"In this case, I presume no news is bad news," one friend said.

CBS News | Anxious D.C. Awaits Leak Charges | October 26, 2005�16:00:06

(CBS/AP) The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity met for three hours Wednesday with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his deputies, adjourning for the day without announcing any action.

But CBS News chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports the prosecutor has informed targets of the investigation of his intentions – and that can only mean indictments are coming.

Fitzgerald is known to be putting the finishing touches on a two-year criminal probe that has ensnared President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby.

Away from the federal courthouse, FBI agents conducted a handful of last-minute interviews to check facts key to the case.

After the jurors left for the day, federal prosecutors conferred for about an hour in the grand jury area of the federal courthouse.

There was no word on whether Fitzgerald planned to make any announcement or when the grand jury planned to meet again.

Fitzgerald and the grand jurors entered the courthouse around 9 a.m. EDT, with just three days left before the jury's term is set to expire. The timing on any decision is uncertain, however. It is possible for Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to extend the life of the grand jury at Fitzgerald's request. Such a step would be taken in secret.

Lawyers representing key White House officials expected Fitzgerald to decide this week whether to charge Libby and Rove.

Both Rove and Libby, who is hobbling around on crutches because of a broken bone in his foot, joined other officials at the daily White House senior staff meeting, as usual.

Fitzgerald could charge one or more administration aides with violating a law prohibiting the intentional unmasking of an undercover CIA officer.

In recent weeks the prosecutor has also examined other charges such as mishandling classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice.

The White House insisted Wednesday it was going about its business despite the threat of indictments hanging over senior officials.

"Everybody's focused on the priorities of the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We're focused on the work at hand. We're certainly following developments in the news but everybody's got a lot of work to do."

Former presidential adviser David Gergen told CBS News that "Washington is on a knife-edge today over the possibility of indictments." He said the possible charges raise major issues for the administration.

"It's not that the abuse of power here is anything like Watergate or Iran-Contra even," said Gergen, now the director of Harvard's Center For Public Leadership. "Rather it is, if indictments come, they may be of the people closest to the president and vice president of the United States. And they will re-open the wounds of Iraq, and people will ask the question, if indictments come, were we led into Iraq by criminal means?"

Fitzgerald has been in Washington since Monday and over the last two days dispatched FBI agents to conduct some 11th-hour interviews, according to lawyers close to the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.
One set of interviews occurred in the neighborhood of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Agents asked neighbors whether they had any inkling that Plame works for the CIA.

"They wanted to know how well we knew her, which is very well," said neighbor David Tillotson. "Did we know anything about her position before the story broke? Absolutely not."

Agents also interviewed a former unidentified associate of Rove's about his activities around the time the leaks occurred.

Two lawyers familiar with the activities said the interviews involved basic fact-checking and did not appear to plow new ground.

Fitzgerald may want to establish Plame had carefully protected her CIA identity as part of the process of determining whether the disclosure of her name to the news media hurt national interests.

Adding to the administration's discomfort, Vice President Dick Cheney is now alleged to be a player in this case, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.

According to some who have testified, Libby told the grand jury that he first learned Plame's name from reporters. But it was the vice president, according to a New York Times report, who mentioned Plame's CIA connection to Libby on June 12, 2003, a month before her name became public.

The name of Rove, the president's most powerful adviser, is also in the mix of top officials who may be slapped by the grand jury. The Los Angeles Times reports that prosecutors questioned a former West Wing colleague of Rove's about contacts he had with reporters leading up to the leak.

If such officials as Rove or Libby are named by the grand jury, President Bush will need to get replacements quickly, GOP strategist Ed Rollins (video) said on The Early Show.

"Historically there have been a lot of turnovers in the White House. This one hasn't had many," Rollins said.

Columnist Robert Novak disclosed Plame's name on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson said publicly that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The timing of Wilson's criticism was devastating for the Bush White House, which was struggling to come to grips with the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

President Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the administration's main argument for going to war.

Prosecutor Meets With Chief Judge - October 26, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 26, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/22112

WASHINGTON—The federal prosecutor investigating the alleged involvement of White House officials in the leak of a CIA operative's identity spent most of the lunch hour today meeting with the chief judge of the federal district court in the nation's capital, Judge Thomas Hogan.

As reporters massed outside an elevator lobby leading to the grand jury rooms, the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, apparently slipped out a back exit to conduct the noontime meeting with Judge Hogan.

Mr. Fitzgerald declined to comment as he and a colleague emerged from the judge's chambers just before 1 p.m.

The prosecutor's visit to the chief judge could signal that Mr. Fitzgerald is seeking to extend the term of the grand jury that has been investigating the leak. Judge Hogan would need to approve any extension to the grand jury's term, which was set to expire on Friday.

Prosecutors involved in the politically-sensitive probe met with grand jurors for about three hours this morning, before wrapping up business at the courthouse for the day.

There were also other reasons to expect that the investigation, once believed to be concluding this week, may continue.

On Monday, FBI agents conducted interviews with people who live near the home of the CIA operative whose identity was disclosed, Valerie Plame. The questioning, which concerned the key issue of whether Ms. Plame's employment at the CIA was known outside the agency, struck some observers as unusual at such a late stage in the 22-month-long investigation.

There were also reports that investigators were conducting new interviews with associates of President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Mr. Rove and the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, are thought to be in serious legal jeopardy in the inquiry.

It was not clear why Mr. Fitzgerald chose to use a back stairway or elevator to reach his session with the chief judge, but if he took the usual route he would likely have been followed by a parade of journalists who gathered at the courthouse to await predicted indictments in the case.

Reporters expressed bewilderment as Mr. Fitzgerald returned to the grand jury area without ever having appeared to have left.

In addition to the grand juries, Judge Hogan also oversees most of the practical aspects of running the courthouse. It is possible that Mr. Fitzgerald's visit was to discuss how court personnel would cope with the indictment and arraignment of high-profile White House officials.

A former prosecutor who worked with Mr. Fitzgerald in New York said it was impossible to say for certain what the meeting was about.

"If he wanted to extend the grand jury, he'd have to ask the chief judge," the ex-prosecutor, Joshua Berman, said. "It's obviously a process that Pat is familiar with."

Mr. Berman said it was also possible that the session was to discuss the logistics of dealing with imminent indictments. "He could just be meeting with the chief judge to discuss the various parameters of what will happen tomorrow," the former prosecutor said.

CNN.com - CIA leak probe has Washington waiting - Oct 26, 2005

Grand jury could act as soon as today

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity could hand up charges as early as today.

The grand jury is meeting this morning and is scheduled to expire on Friday, but special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could extend it.

On Tuesday, FBI agents interviewed a Washington neighbor of Valerie Plame for a second time. (Watch Washington wait for possible indictments -- 2:59)

The agents asked Marc Lefkowitz on Monday night whether he knew about Plame's CIA work before her identity was leaked in the media, and Lefkowitz told agents he did not, according to his wife, Elise Lefkowitz.

Lefkowitz said agents first questioned whether the couple was aware of Plame's CIA work in an interview several months ago.

Plame and her husband, retired State Department diplomat Joseph Wilson, have accused Bush administration officials of deliberately leaking her identity to the media to retaliate against Wilson after he published an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Federal law makes it a crime to deliberately reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative.(Fitzgerald profile)

The July 2003 article cast doubt on a key assertion in the Bush administration's arguments for war with Iraq -- that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium for a suspected nuclear weapons program in Africa.

Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said the CIA sent him to Niger, in central Africa, to investigate the uranium claim in February 2002 and that he found no evidence such a transaction occurred and it was unlikely it could have. (Full story)

Days after Wilson's article was published, Plame's identity was exposed in a piece by syndicated columnist and longtime CNN contributor Robert Novak.

Rove has testified before the Fitzgerald grand jury that he believes it was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who first told him that Plame worked for the CIA and had a role in sending her husband to Africa, according to a source familiar with Rove's testimony.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for contempt before finally agreeing last month to tell grand jurors that Libby told her Wilson's wife may have worked at the CIA, although she said Libby did not identify Plame by name or describe her as a covert agent or operative.

Libby has also testified before the grand jury.

Poll: Most suspect wrongdoings
Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leak, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Thirty-nine percent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter.

The same percentage of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said administration officials acted unethically, but did nothing illegal.

The poll was split nearly evenly on what respondents thought of Bush officials' ethical standards -- 51 percent saying they were excellent or good and 48 percent saying they were not good or poor.

The figures represent a marked shift from a 2002 survey in which nearly three-quarters said the standards were excellent or good and only 23 percent said they were fair or poor.

The latest poll questioned 1,008 adults October 21-23 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Report links Cheney to case
The New York Times reported Tuesday that notes in Fitzgerald's possession suggest that Libby first heard of the CIA officer from Cheney himself. (Full story)

But the newspaper reported that the notes do not indicate that Cheney or Libby knew Plame was an undercover operative.

The Times said its sources in the story were lawyers involved in the case.

The notes show that George Tenet, then the CIA director, gave the information to Cheney in response to questions the vice president posed about Wilson, the Times reported.

Cheney said in September 2003 he had seen no report from Wilson after his assignment in Africa.

"I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson. I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back," he told NBC.

Cheney's office had no comment, and the White House would neither confirm or deny the Times report.

"The policy of this White House has been to carry out the direction of the president, which is to cooperate fully with the special prosecutor," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who was peppered with questions about the report at his daily briefing.

"There's a lot of speculation that is going on right now. There are many facts that are not known. The work of the special prosecutor continues, and we look forward to him successfully concluding his investigation," he said.

McClellan said he had not sought any clarification about Cheney's involvement from the vice president or his office and bristled when a reporter asked if Cheney always tells the truth to the American people, dismissing the query as "ridiculous."

In 2003, McClellan used the same word to deny that either Rove or Libby had been involved in the leak.

The Justice Department opened a criminal probe in September 2003 at the request of the CIA.

Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Illinois, was named special prosecutor at the end of 2003 after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the probe.

As the grand jury term expires, Fitzgerald could ask for an extension of the grand jury's service, request indictments or end the probe without bringing charges.

CNN's Kelli Arena, Dana Bash and Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report.

Prosecutor Winding Up CIA Leak Probe - Yahoo! News

By PETE YOST and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers



Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald met Wednesday with the grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity, putting the finishing touches on a two-year criminal probe that has ensnared two senior White House aides.

Fitzgerald and the grand jurors entered the courthouse around 9 a.m. EDT, with just three days left before the jury's term is set to expire. Away from the jury, FBI agents conducted a handful of last-minute interviews to check facts key to the case.

Lawyers representing key White House officials expected Fitzgerald to decide as early as Wednesday whether to charge I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and top presidential political adviser Karl Rove.

Both Rove and Libby joined other officials Wednesday at the daily White House senior staff meeting, as usual.

The grand jury Fitzgerald has used in the investigation is set to expire Friday. Fitzgerald could charge one or more presidential aides with violating a law prohibiting the intentional unmasking of an undercover CIA officer.

In recent weeks the prosecutor has also examined other charges such as mishandling classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice.

Fitzgerald has been in Washington since Monday and over the last two days dispatched FBI agents to conduct some 11th-hour interviews, according to lawyers close to the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.

One set of interviews occurred in the neighborhood of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Agents asked neighbors whether they had any inkling that Plame works for the CIA.

"They wanted to know how well we knew her, which is very well," said neighbor David Tillotson. "Did we know anything about her position before the story broke? Absolutely not."

Agents also interviewed a former unidentified associate of Rove's about his activities around the time the leaks occurred.

Two lawyers familiar with the activities said the interviews involved basic fact-checking and did not appear to plow new ground.

Fitzgerald may want to establish Plame had carefully protected her CIA identity as part of the process of determining whether the disclosure of her name to the news media hurt national interests.

On Tuesday, the White House sidestepped questions about whether Cheney passed Plame's identity on to Libby.

Libby's notes suggest that he first heard from Cheney that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, The New York Times reported this week.

Columnist Robert Novak disclosed Plame's name on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson said publicly that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The timing of Wilson's criticism was devastating for the Bush White House, which was struggling to come to grips with the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

President Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the administration's main argument for going to war.

Scotsman.com News - International - Cheney drawn into row on exposure of CIA agent

RHIANNON EDWARD


DICK Cheney, the United States vice-president, yesterday found himself drawn uncomfortably deeper into a web of allegations over how a covert CIA operative came to be unmasked.

Previously undisclosed notes of a conversation between Mr Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on 12 June, 2003, have put the spotlight on the vice-president's possible role in the unmasking of Valerie Plame and appear to run counter to Mr Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he first learned about her from newspaper reporters.


A federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is investigating whether Ms Plame's identity was improperly disclosed, and the latest development came as he appeared close to indicting top White House officials in the two-year investigation, lawyers involved in the case said.

Mr Fitzgerald's investigation has focused largely on Mr Libby and Karl Rove, George Bush's closest political adviser, and their conversations with reporters about Ms Plame in June and July 2003. Her identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence on Iraq, especially concerning the purchase of uranium.

Ms Plame had been working as an analyst for a Boston-based energy company - "a working soccer mom", in the view of one of her neighbours. In reality, however, she was a clandestine CIA agent and an expert on weapons of mass destruction.

Any indictments against top White House officials would be a severe blow to an administration already at a low point in public opinion, and would put a spotlight on aggressive tactics it has used to counter critics of its Iraq policy.

The New York Times reported yesterday that notes of the 2003 conversation between Mr Libby and Mr Cheney appear to differ from the former's testimony that he first heard of Ms Plame from journalists. The paper said its sources were lawyers involved in the case.

Yesterday, the White House was evasive on the matter, which Mr Bush has described as "very serious". The president's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said. "We're not having any further comment on the investigation while it's ongoing."

Mr McClellan said Mr Cheney was doing a "great job" as vice-president and that his public comments had always been truthful.

Mr Libby has been at the centre of Mr Fitzgerald's criminal investigation in recent weeks because of his conversations about Ms Plame with a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller. She said Mr Libby spoke to her about Ms Plame and her husband on three occasions - although not necessarily by name and without indicating that he knew she was undercover.

Ms Miller was imprisoned for 85 days for contempt for refusing to reveal who gave her information about Ms Plame until Mr Fitzgerald apparently interceded with her source, Mr Libby, to give her a personal waiver and allow her to testify about their conversations.

Mr Libby's notes show that the vice-president knew Ms Plame worked at the CIA more than a month before her identity was publicly exposed by Robert Novak, a newspaper columnist.

At the time of the Cheney-Libby conversation, Ms Plame had been referred to - but not by name - in the New York Times and on 12 June, 2003, on the front page of the Washington Post.

According to yesterday's New York Times, Mr Libby's notes indicate Mr Cheney got his information about Ms Plame from George Tenet, then director of the CIA, but said there was no indication he knew her name. The notes contain no suggestion that the vice-president or his chief of staff knew at the time about Ms Plame's undercover status or that her identity was classified.

Disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent is classified as working undercover. Lawyers involved in the case are reported as saying they had no indication Mr Fitzgerald was considering charging the vice-president with a crime.

But the New York Times said any efforts by Mr Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr Cheney might be viewed by a prosecutor as an attempt to impede the inquiry, which could be a crime.

A former intelligence official close to Mr Tenet says the former CIA chief has not been in touch with Mr Fitzgerald's staff for more than 15 months and was not asked to testify before the grand jury, even though he was interviewed by Mr Fitzgerald and his staff. Mr Tenet has declined to comment publicly on the investigation.

Mr Fitzgerald is expected to decide this week whether to seek criminal indictments in the case. Mr Fitzgerald quizzed Mr Cheney under oath more than a year ago, but it is not known what the vice-president told him.

Mr Cheney has said little in public about what he knew. In September 2003, he told NBC television he did not know Joseph Wilson or who sent him on a trip to Niger in 2002 to check into intelligence that Iraq may have been seeking to buy uranium there. "I don't know Mr Wilson ... I have no idea who hired him," he said.

The Cheney-Libby conversation occurred on the same day the Washington Post published a front-page story about the CIA sending a retired diplomat to Africa, where he was unable to corroborate intelligence that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. That diplomat was Mr Wilson.

A year after his trip, Mr Bush cited British intelligence in his State of the Union address as suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium in Africa.

Bush Aides Brace for Charges

Grand Jury May Hear Counts in Leak Case Today

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; A01



The prosecutor in the CIA leak case was preparing to outline possible charges before a federal grand jury as early as today, even as the FBI conducted last-minute interviews in the high-profile investigation, according to people familiar with the case.

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald was seen in Washington yesterday with lawyers in the case, and some White House officials braced for at least one indictment when the grand jury meets today. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is said by several people in the case to be a main focus, but not the only one.

In a possible sign that Fitzgerald may charge one or more officials with illegally disclosing Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation, FBI agents as recently as Monday night interviewed at least two people in her D.C. neighborhood to determine whether they knew she worked for the CIA before she was unmasked with the help of senior Bush administration officials. Two neighbors told the FBI they were shocked to learn she was a CIA operative.

The FBI interviews suggested the prosecutor wanted to show that Plame's status was covert, and that there was damage from the revelation that she worked at the CIA.

The news of the eleventh-hour moves came on the same day that Cheney himself was implicated in the chain of events that led to Plame's being revealed. In a report in the New York Times that the White House pointedly did not dispute, Fitzgerald was said to have notes taken by Libby showing that he learned about Plame from the vice president a month before she was identified by columnist Robert D. Novak.

There is no indication Cheney did anything illegal or improper, but this is the first evidence to surface that shows he knew of Plame well before she became a household name.

Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on whether senior administration officials knowingly revealed Plame's identity in an effort to discredit a Bush administration critic -- her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. On July 6, 2003, Wilson accused the administration in The Washington Post and the Times of using flawed intelligence to justify the war with Iraq. Eight days later, Novak revealed Plame's name and her identity as a CIA operative.

The grand jury, whose term expires Friday, is scheduled for a session today. Before a vote on an indictment, prosecutors typically leave the room so jurors can deliberate in private and ask that the jury alert them when it has reached a decision.

Unlike the jury in a criminal trial, grand jurors are not weighing proof of guilt or innocence. They decide whether there is probable cause to charge someone with a crime, and they must agree unanimously to indict. The prosecutor could seek to seal any indictments until he announces the charges.

Officials described a White House on edge. "Everybody just wants this week over," said one official.

The key figures in the probe, including Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Libby, attended staff meetings and planned President Bush's next political and policy moves. Others sat nervously at their desks, fielding calls from reporters and insisting they were in the dark about what the next 24 hours would bring.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted this storm will soon pass. But officials are bracing for the kind of political tsunami that swamped Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan in their second terms and could change the course of this presidency.

It is not clear what charges Fitzgerald will seek, if any. After setting out on his original investigation, he won explicit authority to also consider perjury and other crimes government officials might have committed during the nearly two-year-long investigation. Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.

Fitzgerald and his investigative team have questioned more than two dozen officials from the White House, the vice president's office, the CIA and the State Department as well as residents of Wilson's neighborhood.

Fitzgerald has looked closely not only at the possible crimes, but also the context in which they would have been committed. This search, say lawyers in the case, has provided him a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, glimpse into the White House effort to justify the Iraq war -- and rebut its critics.

The trail has often led to Cheney's office, which officials describe as ground zero in the effort in promote, execute and defend the Iraq war and the campaign to convince the American people and the world that Saddam Hussein had amassed a stockpile of the most dangerous kinds of weapons. According to the report in yesterday's Times, the investigation also led to Cheney himself.

Cheney has the security clearance to review and discuss classified material, and no evidence has been made public to suggest he did anything illegal. But this is the first time the vice president has been directly linked to the chain of events that eventually led to Plame's identity being disclosed.

McClellan said Cheney has always been honest with the American people. He dismissed as "ridiculous" a question about whether Bush stood by Cheney's account of his role in the matter. In an interview in September 2003, Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert he did not know Wilson or who sent him to Africa. Officials said Cheney was careful to distance himself from Wilson in the interview without telling a lie about what he knew about the diplomat and his wife.

Two lawyers involved in the case said that, based on Fitzgerald's questions, the prosecutor has been aware of Libby's June 12 conversation with Cheney since the early days of his investigation. The lawyers said Libby did record in his notes that Cheney relayed to him that Wilson's wife may have had a role in Wilson's taking the CIA-sponsored mission to Niger. According to a source familiar with Libby's testimony, he previously told the grand jury he believed he heard of Wilson's wife first from reporters.

The Times reported that Libby said Cheney learned information about Plame from former CIA director George J. Tenet.

Tenet said yesterday he has not discussed Fitzgerald's investigation in the past and does not want to talk about it before the prosecutor reaches his conclusions.

A retired senior CIA official close to Tenet, said the former director and his deputy, John McLaughlin, were questioned by investigators more than 15 months ago and have not been contacted by them since.

In a sign that Fitzgerald continues to gather evidence, FBI agents interviewed at least two of Wilson's neighbors in the Palisades neighborhood Monday night. Marc Lefkowitz and David Tillotson said yesterday that they told the FBI they had no clue that Plame, who they knew by her married name, Valerie Wilson, worked for the agency until Novak's column appeared.

Senator Calls for Inquiry Into Journalists' Access - New York Times

By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A Senate Democrat said Tuesday that he would ask the Pentagon inspector general to investigate why journalists are allowed to have temporary access to classified information while they are assigned to military units in overseas operations.

The senator, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said his request was prompted by an assertion by Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify a confidential source, that she had "security clearance" during her assignment with a military unit in Iraq in 2003.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Mr. Dorgan said, "What kind of clearance would that reporter have to see classified or secret information?"

In an interview last week, Ms. Miller said that in her account in The Times of her role in the C.I.A. leak case, she imprecisely described the rules covering her assignment in Iraq. Ms. Miller said that she did what dozens of other journalists covering the war did: sign a written agreement called a "nondisclosure form" that allows reporters to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record.

That explanation did not suit Mr. Dorgan, who said, "The classification of material that is secret or top-secret dealing with intelligence or military operations is not a classification that is done lightly, and it's not a classification that can be overcome by someone in the Pentagon that says, 'O.K., you put on a military shirt or a pair of military trousers, go embed yourself with that unit, and by the way, you sign a little form that says nondisclosure.' "

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the procedure was a practical way to permit reporters to travel with military units and be exposed to sensitive information, and not compromise the operation..

Prosecutor's Progress Is Rare for Leak Inquiries - New York Times

By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - Until now, the federal government has rarely proved more impotent than in trying to plug leaks. Most inquiries go nowhere, because the officials and journalists who are the only witnesses to any crime refuse to discuss it.

But in the case of Valerie Wilson, the outed C.I.A. officer, a prosecutor has succeeded in penetrating that sanctum. Unlike any of his predecessors, the special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has delved deeply into conversations that government officials and reporters had every reason to believe would remain confidential.

It is not yet clear if Mr. Fitzgerald intends to bring charges that will cast the conversations themselves as criminal, as settings for the exchange of classified information. But even indictments containing less serious accusations against White House officials would bring with them the possibility that reporters would be called as witnesses.

Exchanges between reporters and government officials have always been a central part of how Washington really works. They have served as shortcuts, ways to trade information beyond the glare of television lights and outside of bureaucratic barriers. But Mr. Fitzgerald, who obtained federal subpoenas to compel reporters to testify in the case, is not the only one in Washington who is trying to train a new kind of spotlight on the transactions.

Both the Silberman-Robb commission, in its report this year on intelligence failures related to weapons proliferation, and the House Intelligence Committee, under Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman, have called for redoubled efforts against leakers.

"The time has come for a comprehensive law that will make it easier for the government to prosecute wrongdoers and increase the penalties, which will hopefully act as a deterrent for people thinking about disclosing information," Mr. Hoekstra said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in July.

In its report in March, the Silberman-Robb commission described as "understandable but unwarranted" what it called "the long-standing defeatism that has paralyzed action in trying to combat leaks." Notably, the commission suggested that greater pressure on reporters might have been the missing ingredient in past investigations.

"Many people with whom we spoke," the commission said in its report, "said that the best (if not only) way to identify leakers was through the reporters to whom classified information was leaked."

That approach appears to have been the one followed by Mr. Fitzgerald in trying to unravel the mystery of how the identity of Ms. Wilson, an undercover C.I.A. officer, became public in July 2003, initially in a column by Robert D. Novak that identified her by her unmarried name, Valerie Plame. Ms. Wilson is the wife of Joseph Wilson IV, the retired ambassador who emerged in 2003 as a critic of the Bush administration after traveling to Africa in 2002 at the request of the C.I.A. to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Niger.

It is not known whether Mr. Novak provided testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald or to the grand jury in the case. But over an 18-month period in 2004 and 2005, Mr. Fitzgerald has succeeded in obtaining testimony from five reporters about their conversations with senior White House officials, gleaning details about discussions over breakfast, on the telephone and in government offices. The reporters included Tim Russert of NBC News, Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, and, ultimately, Judith Miller of The New York Times, who testified earlier this month after spending 85 days in jail for refusing a court order that compelled her to answer questions from the grand jury.

The reporters' testimony, focusing on discussions with I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, appears to have provided Mr. Fitzgerald with a means to corroborate or challenge the accounts provided by the White House officials about the conversations. In the case of Mr. Libby, the journalists' accounts are likely to be central to any case brought by Mr. Fitzgerald, because they have failed to substantiate Mr. Libby's initial assertion that he learned about Ms. Wilson from reporters.

The approach differs from the one pursued by prosecutors in most previous leak investigations, including three prominent cases in recent years, in which inquiries have proceeded without cooperation from journalists involved.

One, a two-year investigation concluded in 2004, found that Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was almost certainly a source for news accounts that described classified Arabic-language messages intercepted by the National Security Agency just before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the messages was one that said, "Tomorrow is zero hour," but the Justice Department decided not to bring charges, instead turning the matter over to the Senate ethics committee.

A second case, against Charles G. Bakaly III, a spokesman for Kenneth W. Starr during his investigation of President Bill Clinton, ended in acquittal in 2000. Mr. Bakaly was accused of being a source for an article in The New York Times that discussed whether President Clinton could be indicted while in office. Mr. Bakaly was charged with lying to investigators in their leak inquiry. At his trial, Mr. Bakaly said he had provided some information to The Times, but said that it had been public and that his responses during that leak investigation had been truthful.

In only one of the three cases, a 2003 episode involving the Drug Enforcement Agency, was anyone convicted of a crime. In that case, Jonathan Randel, a D.E.A. analyst, was sentenced to a year in prison for providing what the agency called sensitive information to The Times of London.

In the past, prosecutors appeared to have operated on the presumption that journalists would not testify in leak cases, and would invoke the First Amendment to try to protect their sources. But those protections apply only in states that provide journalists with specific legal protections to shield their sources, a protection that does not exist under federal law.

In ruling in favor of Mr. Fitzgerald this year, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that ordered Ms. Miller to testify in the case. The court cited the only previous ruling on the subject by the Supreme Court, a 1972 decision known as Branzburg, which has been interpreted by lower courts as meaning that reporters have almost no protection from grand jury subpoenas seeking their sources.

Leak Counsel Is Said to Press on Rove's Role - New York Times

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - With the clock running out on his investigation, the special counsel in the leak case continued to seek information on Tuesday about Karl Rove's discussions with reporters in the days before a C.I.A. officer's identity was made public, lawyers and others involved in the investigation said.

Three days before the grand jury in the case expires and with the White House in a state of high anxiety, the special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, appeared still to be trying to determine whether Mr. Rove had been fully forthcoming about his contacts with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, in July 2003, they said.

Mr. Fitzgerald, who is the United States attorney in Chicago, spent the day in Washington and summoned his team, including his chief F.B.I. investigator, Jack Eckenrode, for what appeared to be a final round of discussions about how to proceed.

Lawyers involved in the case have said that Mr. Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, face the possibility of indictment on perjury or other charges related to covering up their actions.

The flurry of last minute activity had White House officials anticipating an announcement as soon as Wednesday about whether the prosecutor would seek indictments. Indictments of Mr. Libby or Mr. Rove or both would leave Mr. Bush a political crisis with the potential to reshape the remainder of his second term. It is not clear whether anyone else might be charged in the case, which centers on what role administration officials played in the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity, first in Mr. Novak's column on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

White House officials did not respond to questions about a report on Tuesday in The New York Times that Mr. Libby had first learned of the C.I.A. officer from Mr. Cheney several weeks before Mr. Novak's column. On a day when the mood at the White House was described by one friend of the president as grim, Mr. Bush used his public appearances on Tuesday to show himself as focused on the nation's business, most notably Iraq, and undeterred by what he has characterized as "background noise."

Twenty-two months after beginning his investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has assembled testimony from dozens of witnesses, secured the cooperation of journalists in helping to piece together what happened and delved deep into the workings of an administration that has always sought to keep its internal deliberations and its political tactics out of public view.

His investigation was set off by questions about whether administration officials had leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, in response to criticism by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, said in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence it used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Wilson had traveled to Africa on a mission sponsored by the C.I.A. mission in 2002 to look into reports that Iraq had acquired nuclear material in Niger.

In a sign that the prosecutor is continuing to build a case that Ms. Wilson's covert status was ended when she was named in Mr. Novak's column, F.B.I. agents questioned neighbors of the Wilsons in Northwest Washington in the last few days, seeking to determine whether it was commonly known that she was a C.I.A. officer, a person involved in the case said. Ms. Wilson was identified in Mr. Novak's column by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

While not commenting on the report about Mr. Libby's conversation with Mr. Cheney, the White House took issue with suggestions that Mr. Cheney had not been truthful several months later in a television interview when he said he did not know Mr. Wilson and did not know who had sent him on his mission.

Asked whether Mr. Cheney always told the truth to the American people, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, answered, "Yes."

At issue were remarks by Mr. Cheney in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, 2003. In response to a question about Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cheney said: "I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when I came back."

Mr. Cheney later added, "I don't know Joe Wilson," and said he had "no idea who hired him."

The Times report said Mr. Libby had taken notes of a conversation he had with Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, after Mr. Cheney had spoken to George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, about newspaper articles quoting an anonymous former diplomat taking issue with the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's effort to acquire nuclear material in Niger.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney had learned the name of Mr. Wilson's wife or her covert status, lawyers involved in the case said. But they do show that Mr. Cheney knew and told Mr. Libby that Mr. Wilson's wife was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and may have helped arrange her husband's trip, they said.

Republicans sympathetic to Mr. Cheney said there was no inconsistency between what the vice president is reported to have told Mr. Libby and what Mr. Cheney said on "Meet the Press." They said there was nothing in the reported conversation to suggest that the vice president knew Mr. Wilson or knew who had sent him to Africa.

But Democrats in Congress and liberal advocacy groups sought to turn up the pressure on the White House. The Center for American Progress, a liberal group, sought to focus attention on what Mr. Bush knew, saying in an e-mail message to supporters and journalists that the "question that must now be answered is whether Vice President Cheney had any discussions about Valerie Plame with President Bush prior to her outing."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called on Mr. Bush to assure that any administration officials who were indicted would resign. Mr. Schumer also called on Mr. Bush not to engage in any criticism of Mr. Fitzgerald should he bring indictments.

Congressional Republicans were bracing for indictments and the potential disruption it could mean for their legislative agenda while Democrats prepared to take advantage of any charges to drive home their theme that Republican rule had fostered an atmosphere of corruption.

David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington for this article.