Plamegate Resumes

Posted on December 12, 2005

The Associated Press reports on the latest twist in Plamegate. This weekend, Time reporter Viveca Novak wrote a piece describing how she had to testify in Plamegate. According to Ms. Novak, for almost a year Rove's lawyer knew quite well that Rove disclosed Plame's name to a reporter because she told him so.

It wasn't until Time's Matt Cooper was under intense pressure from investigators to reveal his source that Rove, Bush's top political adviser, corrected his grand jury testimony, telling Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of the conversation he said he'd forgotten. The timeline of the Rove camp's early knowledge emerged Sunday in a first-person account by Time reporter Viveca Novak.
Novak said she passed along the information to Rove attorney Robert Luskin when he said, in effect, that "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt," Novak wrote. "I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me." Novak said she told Luskin "something like, 'Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around Time.' He looked surprised and very serious" and at the end of their discussion that day said, "Thank you. This is important."
Novak said the conversation with Luskin occurred anywhere from January 2004 to May 2004; she thinks it was perhaps in March. It was not until October 2004 � sometime between five and nine months after Novak's conversation with Luskin � that Rove disclosed his conversation with Cooper to the prosecutor.

The upshot of all this is that Karl Rove changed his story to the grand jury when he suddenly "remembered" that after all, he did discuss Joe Wilson's wife Valerie Plame with Time reporter Matthew Clark. And his attorney knew during most of 2004, while he was spinning away to the press saying something totally different. Patrick Fitzgerald is a methodical guy. He appears to be talking to everyone and anyone remotely involved in the case. And every time he turns up a new witness, it looks a bit bleaker for Mr. Rove. Bottom line: Rove's story is coming unraveled, and he is far from being safe from being indicted.