Focus shifts in CIA leak investigation
Special prosecutor looking for possible signs of perjury
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ and SONNI EFRON
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — The special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation has shifted his focus.
According to people briefed in recent days on the inquiry’s status, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who had been looking at whether White House officials violated a law against exposing undercover agents, is now trying to determining whether evidence exists to bring perjury or obstruction of justice charges.
The special prosecutor has made no decision on whether to seek indictments, and there could be benign explanations for differences that have arisen in witnesses statements to federal agents and a grand jury about how the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent who had worked undercover, was leaked to the media two years ago.
The investigation focused initially on whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of Plame, the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, in a campaign to discredit Wilson after he wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times criticizing the Bush administration’s grounds for going to war in Iraq.
According to lawyers familiar with the case, investigators are comparing statements to federal authorities by two top White House aides, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby, with testimony from reporters who have acknowledged talking to the officials.
Libby has testified that he learned about Plame from NBC correspondent Tim Russert, according to a source who spoke with The Washington Post some months ago. Russert said in a statement last year that he told the prosecutor that “he did not know Ms. Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative” and that he did not provide such information to Libby in July 2003.
Prosecutors have also probed Rove’s testimony about his telephone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in the days before Plame’s name was revealed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak.
Rove has testified that he and Cooper talked about welfare reform foremost and turned to the topic of Plame only near the end, lawyers involved in the case said. But Cooper, writing about his testimony in the most recent issue of Time, said he “can’t find any record of talking about” welfare reform.
The sources also said prosecutors are comparing the various statements to the FBI by Rove, who is a White House deputy chief of staff and President Bush’s chief political strategist.
Rove was told by prosecutors in October that he was not a target of the investigation, according to his lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove, through his lawyer, has denied that he was the source of Plame’s name.
Fitzgerald has long been interested in an article co-written by Cooper shortly after Novak disclosed Plame’s identity. In the Time article, Cooper and two colleagues wrote about the administration’s efforts to discredit Wilson and noted that some government sources had revealed that Plame worked for the CIA.
Lawyers involved in the case said there are now indications that Fitzgerald either did not initially know or suspect that Rove was Cooper’s primary source for the reporter’s information about Plame. That raises questions about how much Rove disclosed when first questioned in the inquiry or how closely he was initially queried about his contacts with reporters.
A senior U.S. official said that several State Department officials, including then Secretary of State Colin Powell, were questioned several months ago about the creation and distribution of a classified memo that mentioned Plame. Prosecutors are interested in the memo because it might have been a vehicle for spreading Plame’s name.
Disclosing the name of a CIA undercover agent is a crime in some circumstances, but legal experts have said that the specific elements of the law make it difficult to prove a violation. Prosecutors might have an easier time winning a conviction through a separate law that makes it a crime for officials with security clearances to disseminate information.
