Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters
By Richard Keil
July 22 (Bloomberg) Two top White House aides have given accounts to
the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a
CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according
to persons familiar with the case.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim
Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former
ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has
testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of
Plame's identity.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove
told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent
from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame's
name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar
with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special
prosecutor.
These discrepancies
may be important because one issue Fitzgerald is investigating is
whether Libby, Rove, or other administration officials made false
statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has
its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law
making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a CIA agent.
The
CIA requested the inquiry after Novak's July 14, 2003, article that
said Plame recommended her husband for a 2002 mission to check into
reports Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson, in a July 6
column in the New York Times, said the Bush administration "twisted"
some of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war.
Robert
Luskin, Rove's attorney, said today that Rove did tell the grand jury
"he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak." He
declined in an interview to comment on whether Novak's account of their
conversation differed from Rove's.
There also is a discrepancy
between accounts given by Rove and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.
The White House aide mentioned Wilson's wife " though not by name" in
a July 11, 2003 conversation with Cooper. Rove says that Cooper called
him to talk about welfare reform and the Wilson connection was
mentioned later in passing.
Cooper wrote in Time magazine last
week that he told the grand jury that he never discussed welfare reform
with Rove in that call.
The leak case shows that
administration officials have in effect been using reporters as shields
by claiming that the information on Plame first came from them.
One
reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, has been jailed on
contempt of court charges for refusing to testify before the grand jury
about her reporting on the Plame case.
Cooper testified only
after Time Inc. said it would comply with Fitzgerald's demands for
Cooper's notes and reporting on the Plame matter, particularly
regarding his dealings with Rove.
Libby didn't return a phone call seeking comment.
The
various accounts of conversations between Rove, Libby and reporters
come as new details emerge about a classified State Department
memorandum that's also at the center of Fitzgerald's probe.
A
memo by the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)
included Plame's name in a paragraph marked "(S)" for "Secret," a
designation that should have indicated to anyone who read it that the
information was classified, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The
memo, prepared July 7, 2003, for Secretary of State Colin Powell, is a
focus of Fitzgerald's interest, according to individuals who have
testified before the grand jury and attorneys familiar with the case.
The
three-page document said that Wilson had been recommended for a
CIA-sponsored trip to Africa by his wife, Valerie Wilson, who worked on
the CIA's counter-proliferations desk.
In his New York Times
article, Wilson said there was no basis to conclude that Iraq was
trying to buy nuclear material in Africa and that the administration
had exaggerated the evidence.
Bush had said in his State of the Union message in January, 2003 that Iraq was trying to purchase nuclear materials in Africa.
The
memo summarizing the Plame-Wilson connection was provided to Powell as
he left with President George W. Bush on a five-day trip to Africa.
Fitzgerald is exploring whether other White House officials who
accompanied Bush may have gained access to the memo and shared its
contents with officials back in Washington. Rove and Libby didn't
accompany Bush to Africa.
One key to the inquiry is when White
House aides knew of Wilson's connection to Plame and whether they
learned about it through this memo or other classified information.
Some
Bush allies were hopeful that the Fitzgerald investigation, which
dominated the news in Washington for the first part of July, would
subside as the focus now is on Bush's nomination of Judge John Roberts
to fill the first vacancy on the Supreme Court in 11 years.
Yet special prosecutor Fitzgerald, not media coverage, will determine the outcome of this investigation.
It appears to me the more spin we hear from the White house, the more
stories come out totally refuting the spin doctoring, this
administration has been coasting too long with their veils of secrecy
and villifying anyone who questions their policies so it is about time
that they have finally got caught hopefully it will steamroll as watergate did, because this country is
becoming dangerously divided and our president and his band of
merrymakers is to blame!
Below is a Bloomberg article which is reporting that Karl Rove,
senior adviser to the President and deputy chief of staff, and Lewis
Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, are being investigated
for having lied to a federal grand jury about how they learned the
identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame (Murray Waas at the
American Prospect wrote a 
