Another Time Reporter
Is Asked
to Testify in Leak
Case
By DAVID JOHNSTON,
NYTimes on the Web. November 28, 2005
Washington, Nov. 27 -- A
second reporter for Time magazine has been asked to testify under oath in the
C.I.A. leak case, about conversations she had in 2004 with a lawyer for Karl
Rove, the senior White House adviser, the magazine reported on Sunday.
The reporter, Viveca Novak, who has written about the leak investigation, has
been asked to testify by the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald,
about her conversations with Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Mr. Rove, the
magazine said.
The request for Ms. Novak's testimony is the first tangible sign in weeks that
Mr. Fitzgerald has not completed his inquiry into Mr. Rove's actions and may
still be considering charges against him. Mr. Rove has long been under
scrutiny in the case but has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
So far, Mr. Fitzgerald has brought one indictment, on perjury and obstruction of
justice charges, against I. Lewis Libby Jr., the chief of staff to Vice
President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby resigned after the indictment was
announced and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Mr. Fitzgerald's request for Ms. Novak's testimony follows a disclosure by The
Washington Post on Nov. 16 that its best-known reporter, Bob Woodward, had
testified under oath to Mr. Fitzgerald about matters that lawyers in the case
said were unrelated to Mr. Rove.
In an article and a first-person account by Mr. Woodward, the paper reported
that an unidentified administration official told Mr. Woodward about the C.I.A.
officer at the heart of the case in June 2003, making him the first reporter to
learn of the intelligence officer.
Time magazine did not make clear what information the prosecutor hoped to obtain
from Ms. Novak, whose name has not previously surfaced in the case. She
has contributed to articles in which Mr. Luskin was quoted.
Another Time reporter, Matthew Cooper, testified this summer about a July 2003
conversation he had with Mr. Rove, but only after the magazine waged a lengthy
legal battle.
Time disclosed the prosecutor's request in a two-paragraph article published on
Sunday, reporting that Ms. Novak had been asked to discuss conversations she had
with Mr. Luskin, starting in May 2004, when she was covering the investigation.
The article said Ms. Novak was cooperating with the inquiry. It is not
known when she will testify; she has not been asked to appear before the grand
jury but will instead give a deposition, said Ty Trippet, a Time spokesman.
On Sunday, Mr. Luskin declined to comment, but he has previously said he expects
that Mr. Fitzgerald will decide not to prosecute Mr. Rove. Ms. Novak
declined to comment, as did Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald.
The lawyers who discussed the case would do so only if they were not identified
by name, citing Mr. Fitzgerald's requests to them not to publicly discuss
matters that remain under investigation.
Ms. Novak is not known to have had discussions with Mr. Rove or other White
House officials about the C.I.A. officer during the summer of 2003, the time
that has been the focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry.
Nevertheless, the summer and fall of 2004 was a significant time for Mr. Rove,
according to lawyers in the case. It was then that Mr. Rove searched for
and found an e-mail message he had written that led him to recall the July 2003
conversation with Mr. Cooper, the lawyers said.
Mr. Rove's e-mail message was sent on July 11, 2003, to Stephen J. Hadley, who
was then the deputy national security adviser. The message said Mr. Rove
had spoken to Mr. Cooper about issues in the leak case.
After its discovery, Mr. Rove provided the message to Mr. Fitzgerald, who had
not been aware of it. Mr. Rove testified about the conversation with Mr.
Cooper in a grand jury appearance in October 2004.
Even so, Mr. Fitzgerald has investigated Mr. Rove's assertions that he had
forgotten the conversation with Mr. Cooper, and why he made no mention of it in
his earlier testimony and in meetings with investigators, the lawyers said.
In Ms. Novak's case, the magazine's apparently swift compliance contrasted with
the legal battle waged by Time and Mr. Cooper, who for months resisted a
subpoena from Mr. Fitzgerald for his testimony.
With his appeals exhausted, Mr. Cooper testified in July that he had spoken with
Mr. Rove about Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who traveled to Africa
in early 2002 at the C.I.A.'s request to investigate claims of Iraqi efforts to
acquire uranium ore. Mr. Wilson later became an ardent critic of the Bush
administration's Iraq policy.
After his grand jury appearance, Mr. Cooper wrote that Mr. Rove did not identify
Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, by name, but told him that she worked at the
Central Intelligence Agency on issues related to illicit weapons and might have
played a role in sending her husband on the Africa trip.
Ms. Novak is not related to the columnist Robert D. Novak, who first disclosed
Ms. Wilson's identity in a column on July 14, 2003.
John Files contributed reporting for this article.
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