Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry

NY TIMES

Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry

Fri Oct 21, 2005 02:16

64.140.158.20

October 21, 2005
Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21leak.html?pagewanted=print

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.

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CIA Leak Scandal: Proof Bush Lied? A Final Report To Come?
David Corn Wed Oct 19,12:41 PM ET
The Nation -- In a story posted on Tuesday night,

BUSH KNEW OF THE COVER-UP? In Wednesday's New York Daily News, Washington bureau chief Thomas DeFrank has an important story--but much of it is between the lines. He writes:

An angry
President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove....

Waitaminute! Two years ago, the White House--via McClellan--definitively declared that Rove was not "involved" in the CIA leak. But if Bush at some point upbraided his guru about the leak that means (a) Bush knew that Rove was involved and (b) Bush countenanced McClellan's dissemination of a false cover story. This is evidence that Bush was a party to the attempted White House cover-up and that Bush might have directly lied about the issue. On September 30, 2003, he was questioned by reporters about the leak investigation. Here's an excerpt:

Q: Yesterday we were told that Rove had no role in it--

The President: Yes.

Q: Have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him?

The President: Listen, I know of nobody-- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody leaked classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

Was Bush in this exchange reaffirming McClellan's claim that Rove was not involved? That seems to be the case. Did Bush know at this time that Rove was involved in the leak? The Daily News story does not say when Rove spoke to Bush. Has Bush taken "appropriate action" against Rove? (The information that Rove shared with reporters--Valerie Wilson's employment status at the CIA--was classified.) There is no public indication "appropriate action" occurred.

Is it possible that one White House aide is now leaking a false story of Bush chastising Rove in order to distance Bush from the under-fire Rove? DeFrank reports:

Other sources confirmed...that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

If DeFrank got this right, he has a bigger scoop than the paper seems to have realized. His article does not note that these accounts from White House aides indicate that Bush knew the White House had lied in its public statements about the leak scandal.

Ever since evidence emerged this summer that showed Rove had discussed Valerie Wilson's CIA position with reporters, one question has been whether Rove had acknowledged his role in the leak to Bush. The Daily News reports:

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President."

But if Rove did not deceive Bush, then Bush was a party to the Rove-was-not-involved lie promoted by his White House. And this raises the question of what Bush did after Rove told him of his involvement. Bush certainly didn't do anything to correct the public record. I wonder if McClellan wants to see a chapter in a final report on Bush and Rove's conversations about the leak and how Bush responded.

UPDATE: The White House, according to CNN, is claiming the Daily News story is inaccurate.