Jason Leopold: The Case Against Karl Rove19 December 2005
The Case Against Karl Rove
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
From:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121705X.shtml
Saturday 17 December 2005
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the second
grand jury investigating the leak of covert CIA agent
Valerie Plame Wilson for several hours Friday. Unless Rove's
attorney intervenes at the 11th hour yet again, Fitzgerald
is expected to ask the grand jury to indict Rove - at the
very least - for making false statements to the FBI and
Justice Department investigators in October 2003, lawyers
close to the case say.
People close to Fitzgerald say the
special prosecutor has long believed that Rove's story
concerning his role in the Plame case, as well as what he
knew and when he knew it, is filled with holes. One thing
Fitzgerald has been struggling with for months now, these
people say, is whether to believe Rove hid or destroyed
evidence that would have incriminated him and proven that he
was a source for at least two reporters who unmasked Plame
Wilson's identity and covert status, lawyers close to the
case said.
Fitzgerald's suspicions about the possibility
of evidence destruction arose just a few weeks after he took
over the probe in early 2004. By then, he had already
believed Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's then-chief of
staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - who was indicted on five
counts of perjury and obstruction of justice as a result of
his failure to disclose to the first grand jury his true
role in the Plame Wilson leak - were hindering his
investigation, lawyers close to the case said.
His
suspicions may have been right: An email Rove sent to
then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in
early July 2003 later proved Rove had spoken to Time
magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame - a fact that
Rove omitted when he was first interviewed by the FBI and
during his first grand jury testimony in February 2004.
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So, in late January 2004, Fitzgerald sent a letter to his
boss, then-acting-Attorney General James Comey, seeking
confirmation that he had the authority to investigate and
prosecute individuals for additional crimes, including
obstruction of justice, perjury and destroying evidence. The
leak investigation had been centered up to that point on an
obscure law making it a felony for any government official
to knowingly disclose the identity of an undercover CIA
officer.
Comey responded to Fitzgerald in writing on February 6, 2004,
confirming that Fitzgerald had the authority to prosecute
those crimes, including "perjury, obstruction of justice,
destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses."
The same day Fitzgerald received the response letter from
Comey, the White House faced a deadline of turning over
administration contacts with 25 journalists to the grand
jury investigating the leak. One of the journalists cited in
the subpoena was Cooper, who had been called to the White
House on January 22, 2004. Three months earlier, in late
2003, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales enjoined all
White House staff to turn over any communication about
Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador,
Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Iraq war who accused
the Bush administration of twisting pre-war Iraq
intelligence. Gonzales's directive came 12 hours after
senior White House officials had been told of the pending
investigation. The email Rove sent to Hadley, which
specifically cited "Matt Cooper from Time," never turned up
in that initial request either, people close to the
investigation said.
It's unknown whether Hadley, who was
also required to comply with the subpoena and the Gonzales
order, turned over the email to Fitzgerald or to Justice
Department and FBI investigators some three months earlier.
If he did, Fitzgerald knew of its existence all along even
while Rove, for nearly a year, was not being forthcoming
with Fitzgerald or the grand jury. If, in addition to Rove,
Hadley also failed to locate and turn over the email, it
raises more questions about his own role in the matter.
Hadley was interviewed by investigators to determine if he
was involved in the leak, but has so far not entertained
questions about his role, if any.
Besides Cooper, other
journalists cited in the January 22, 2004 subpoena include:
Robert Novak, who was first to publish Plame Wilson's name
and undercover CIA status in his column, and who counted
Rove as one of his two anonymous sources regarding Plame
Wilson; Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps from Newsday;
Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and
Glenn Kessler from The Washington Post; John Dickerson,
Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney from Time
magazine; Evan Thomas from Newsweek; Andrea Mitchell from
NBC’s "Meet the Press;" Chris Matthews from MSNBC’s
"Hardball;" Tim Russert and Campbell Brown from NBC;
Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller from
The New York Times; Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot from The Wall
Street Journal; John Solomon from The Associated Press; and
Jeff Gannon from Talon News.
Neither Hadley nor Rove's
attorney, Robert Luskin, responded to repeated requests for
comment.
The weeks leading up to Rove's February 2004
grand jury testimony - the time frame when Fitzgerald became
increasingly concerned about officials possibly trying to
obstruct his probe - has turned out to be crucial for Rove,
and may be the deciding factor in whether or not he is
indicted, lawyers close to the case said.
When Rove
testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury that month he did
not reveal that he had been a source for Cooper and Robert
Novak, both of whom wrote stories on Plame Wilson on July
14, and July 17, 2003, respectively. Instead, Rove said he
had shared information about Plame Wilson with other
journalists - including Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's
“Hardball” - but only after her name had appeared in Novak's
column, people familiar with his grand jury testimony said.
In a bid to keep Rove out of Fitzgerald's crosshairs,
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, stepped up recently and told
Fitzgerald that Rove had truly forgotten about his
conversation with Cooper, but Luskin jogged his memory
thanks to a tip he says he received from Cooper's Time
colleague, Viveca Novak (no relation to the conservative
columnist Robert Novak). Hours before Libby's indictment in
October, Luskin told Fitzgerald that he had gone for drinks
with Novak in February 2004 - to be exact - and she had
inadvertently revealed that the buzz inside Time magazine
was that Rove had been a source for Matt Cooper's story on
Plame Wilson.
Luskin told Fitzgerald that Novak's tip
prompted him and Rove to conduct an exhaustive search for
documentary evidence to determine if Rove had spoken with
Cooper. That's when the Hadley email was found, which Luskin
said he promptly turned over to Fitzgerald, and which led
Rove to change his testimony and disclose that he did speak
with Cooper. Luskin won't say exactly when he turned that
email over, or why it took Rove until October 15, 2004 to testify about his
conversation with Cooper.
Luskin's story forced
Fitzgerald to depose him on December 2, 2004. He testified
under oath that he had gone for drinks with Novak in late
January or early February 2004, the very month in which
Fitzgerald had sought the authority to prosecute officials
if they were found to have hindered his investigation into
the leak.
Novak, however, who testified a week later, has
a different story. She testified that she met Luskin in
either March or May 2004, lawyers close to the case said.
This discrepancy is at the crux of what Fitzgerald is
investigating.
According to those familiar with the case,
in February 2004 Fitzgerald had already obtained the
cooperation of a key witness, former-Deputy National
Security Adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney, John
Hannah. Hannah agreed to cooperate with Fitzgerald when the
special prosecutor uncovered evidence tying him to the leak,
and subsequently threatened to indict him, the sources said.
Hannah gave Fitzgerald the names of some White House
officials who knew about Plame Wilson and disseminated her
CIA status to reporters and other White House officials, the
lawyers said. One of the officials Hannah appears to have
implicated was Rove, they added. Cheney promoted Hannah to be his assistant
national security adviser following Libby's indictment.
Rove failed to tell investigators at the time that he had
spoken about Plame to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper
and conservative columnist Robert Novak, both of whom later
cooperated in the case. Novak outed Plame in a July 14, 2003
column.
The Chicago prosecutor briefed the second grand
jury investigating the outing last week for more than three
hours. During that time, he brought them up to speed on the
latest developments involving Rove and at least one other
White House official, the sources said. The attorneys
refused to identify the second person.
As of Friday,
neither Rove nor Luskin had explained Rove's misstatements
to Fitzgerald's satisfaction, those familiar with the case
said. The 11th-hour testimony from Viveca Novak - who Luskin
pointed to as a crucial witness in keeping his client out of
court - does not appear to have been helpful to Rove in
dodging an indictment, they added.
Rove's alleged failure
to disclose his conversations with Cooper and Novak, and the
fact that he did not produce the email he sent to Hadley on
two separate occasions, are the reasons he's been in
Fitzgerald's crosshairs, lawyers close to the investigation
said.
It may also explain why Luskin has insisted that
the conversation he had with Novak took place in February,
as opposed to March or May, the timeframe Novak claims is
more likely. It's much more difficult to make the case that
the Hadley email surfaced after Luskin and Rove did a search
in March or May if Luskin happened to agree with Novak's
timeframe of the meeting but Rove failed to produce the same
email under the grand jury subpoena three months earlier.
Luskin has said that he found the email at the same time
the White House was complying with the subpoena, but held
onto it rather than turning it over to the grand jury with
the batch of other similar emails, phone logs and other
documents as required by the subpoena, lawyers close to the
case said.
"What Luskin is doing is trying to say that he
found the email after his conversation with Ms. Novak but
before the White House turned over evidence of
administration contacts with journalists," by the February
6, 2004 deadline, one attorney close to the case said. "He
understands that it would be quite difficult to explain to
the prosecutor how this email miraculously turned up in
either March or May, but not in February. That's why it
appears he is stating that he spoke with Ms. Novak in
February."
Before Luskin brought Novak into the picture,
Rove had faced the prospect of being indicted on numerous
counts, including obstruction of justice, perjury and making
false statements for failing to disclose his conversations
with reporters about Plame Wilson, sources close to the case
said. Several reporters close to Novak said they believe
Luskin's decision to draw her into the case was made to keep
Rove's indictment from being handed up the day Libby was
charged.
Rove could be indicted on those counts if
Fitzgerald determines that Novak's testimony did not go far
enough in clearing up questions about why Rove did not tell
investigators about his conversations with other reporters.
Her testimony could still end up shielding Rove from more
serious charges, attorneys close to the case said, if
Fitzgerald believes it clears up the murky questions about
the reasons as to why Rove could not produce the Hadley
email under the October 2003 Gonzales order or by the
February 6, 2004 deadline, as stated in the grand jury
subpoena delivered to the White House two weeks earlier.
*************
Jason Leopold spent two years covering
California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief
of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year
cultivating sources close to the CIA leak invesigation, and
will be a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.
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