Rove Testifies in Probe of Leak of CIA Worker's Name

[shraby]

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, testified yesterday before a federal grand jury investigating whether administration officials last year illegally disclosed the identity of covert CIA employee Valerie Plame.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Rove testified for about two hours and had "made himself available previously" in the investigation. Luskin said special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has assured Rove that he is not a target of the probe.

Fitzgerald has been trying to determine whether a government employee violated the law by disclosing Plame's name to the news media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Bush administration, was sent by the CIA in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in the African nation of Niger, and he reported that he found no proof.

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak reported on July 14, 2003, that two administration officials told him that Plame had suggested Wilson for the Niger trip. Fitzgerald's 10-month investigation has recently focused on reporters. Three sources involved in the probe said yesterday that the prosecutor is struggling with what one called an "echo chamber" effect in seeking the information's origin.

(more)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35713-2004Oct15?language=printer>

Guess what? Nobody told anybody anything unless I read this wrong.
:crazy:

[H2O Man]

1. Rove has implicated

"All the Vice President's Men."

[Mandate My Ass]

2. Steno Sue must be sniffing glue

Fitzgerald has been told by reporters that either the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up in their phone conversations with Libby or it was introduced by the reporters. The reporters are from Time magazine, The Washington Post and NBC.

During a July 12, 2003, conversation, according to a source involved in the investigation, Time reporter Matthew Cooper told Libby that he had been informed by other reporters that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee. Libby, the source said, replied that he had heard the same thing, also from the press corps.

Yeah, because all our CIA covert operatives' identities are common knowledge to the press corps. :eyes:

This article takes all the heat off the leaker and reframes the issue as a freedom of the press issue. This is bad reporting even by Steno Sue's previous low standards.

[H2O Man]

3. Cooper and Miller

have not been telling the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth to the grand jury. That is, of course, the reason the judge has sentenced them to incarceration.

[Mandate My Ass]

4. I hope the other four did spill it to Fitzgerald

That, along with phone records, could seal the deal.

[H2O Man]

5. "..... Matthews was blunt:

'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, "Wilson's wife is fair game. ...I will confirm that if asked." ' " -- Wilson; The Politics of Truth; page 1 description of his conversation with MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

Only the "reporters" who play a non-media role in the conspiracy to expose Valerie Plame & related crimes are refusing to cooperate with the grand jury.

[Mandate My Ass]

6. This just in over in the LBN thread about Rove

Novak’s status continues to be a mystery; neither he nor his lawyer, Jim Hamilton, will talk about their contacts with prosecutors. Lawyers for other witnesses in the case have concluded that Novak is cooperating, since he has not been held in contempt. But even if Novak is cooperating and has revealed his sources, these lawyers say, Fitzgerald would want to talk to other journalists to strengthen any case he might bring. And the prosecutor may be seeking to substantiate a Sept. 2003 Washington Post story, which quoted an administration source saying that two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists in retribution for Wilson's comments. The leak was "meant purely and simply for revenge," the official said. Fitzgerald might want to learn if those two officials were the same ones who talked to Novak. Each instance of disclosure of Plame's identity would be a separate crime.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,724804,0...

[H2O Man]

7. interesting....

I hope that you will consider posting this information on the new Plame thread "Steel & Glass"....