Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

Rove offered to testify after Cooper testified in July. Fitzgerald must not have seen a need until after Miller testified. Interesting.

Rove, under the advice of Luskin, offered to testify in July. Fitzgerald is now taking him up on it, but offers no guarantees Rove won't get indicted.

Two questions:

A) Can Rove withdraw his offer to testify? If so, what happens?

B) Assuming Rove could withdraw the offer, would most lawyers tell him to do so?

If the normal thing to do would be to withdraw the offer, then indeed Luskin's strategy of having Rove testify would be essentially equivalent to requesting Rove testify. In the same sense that if the normal thing is to stop something, and you knowingly let it go on when you can easily stop it, it is very close to the equivalent of initiating the thing itself.

I hope you didn't hurt yourself trying to come up with that one, KW.

Let's assume Luskin believes his client will perform reasonably well in front of the grand jury again, is well prepared, and under the circumstances he believes it to be in his client's best interests to appear again and testify. Assuming all that is true, the request to testify still came from Fitzgerald. The fact that Luskin has not attempted to prevent his client from testifying, even if he had that ability, does not make that the equivalent of Luskin requesting that Rove testify.


O'Donnell remains an idiot.

What-you never heard of the concept of "depraved indifference"?

I would still like the answer to these two questions, if possible:


A) Can Rove withdraw his offer to testify? If so, what happens?

B) Assuming Rove could withdraw the offer, would most lawyers tell him to do so?

According to an article in the NY Times, rove was summoned. His option is show up or jail.

I've not seen it reported that Rove was subpoenaed. All I've read was he'd offered to provide additional testimony, and Fitzgerald accepted. You have a link to the NYT article?

Here's the article.

Thanks. That seems to conflict somewhat with a more recent article in the NYT by the same reporter that quotes Luskin as saying Rove has not been subpoenaed.

The notion that Rove helpfully and selflessly invited himself back for further testimony (rather than having been called back or ordered back) was advanced several days ago by Rove's lawyer, Luskin. Easy enough to craft one's sentences and public defense such that that isn't an outright lie even if it is an outwrong lie...one just needs to have voiced earlier to the GJ something like, "We are happy to have been here, helping you get to the bottom of this mystery, and be assured that my client will be available as you need him and that he will not rest until the real murderer of Nicole has been found."

BBB
I doubt Rove has noble reasons for another testimony session. Rather, I think it will give him an opportunity to correct some of his earlier statements under oath to the Grand Jury to avoid charges of perjury. For example, "I meant to say", "I now recall", "I've referred to my records and find I", etc.

That's the only logical reason Rove would agree to voluntarily appear.

BBB

Prosecutor Will Chat with Judith Miller Again
Prosecutor Will Chat with Judith Miller Again on Tuesday--and She Has Turned Over More Notes
By E&P Staff
Published: October 08, 2005 updated Friday

NEW YORKAfter news emerged that Karl Rove would be appearing again before the grand jury probing Plamegate, The New York Times confirmed late Thursday that a Reuters account that the prosecutor wasn't done with its reporter Judith Miller either.

It also appears that the Times' promised full accounting of the Miller role in this drama may be delayed due to the new development.

Then, on Friday afternoon, Reuters carried news that Miller had "discovered notes from an earlier conversation she had with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and turned them over the prosecutor investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity, legal sources said on Friday.

"Miller's notes about a June 2003 conversation with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, could be important to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's case by establishing exactly when Libby and other administration officials first started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson."

A New York Times article much later Friday confirmed this report. Not for the first time recently, the newspaper had been scooped on what could be called its own story. It also provided no explanation of how or why Miller happened to discover notes of this sure-to-be-of-interest June conversation.

Earlier Friday, in the Times, David Johnston wrote that federal prosecutor Fitzgerald "has indicated that he is not entirely finished with Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who recently testified before the grand jury after serving 85 days in jail. According to a lawyer familiar with the case, Mr. Fitzgerald has asked Ms. Miller to meet him next Tuesday to further discuss her conversations" with Libby.

But Fitzgerald apparently has not indicated whether he plans to summon Miller for further testimony before the grand jury.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, told Johnston that Miller had been cautioned by her lawyers not to discuss the substance of her grand jury testimony until the prosecutor finished questioning her.

"We have launched a vigorous reporting effort that I hope will answer outstanding questions about Judy's part in this drama," Keller said. "This development may slow things down a little, but we owe our readers as full a story as we can tell, as soon as we can tell it."

A Times spokeswoman told E&P on Friday, "The timing is still yet to be determined."

A Washington Post report on Friday hinted that there's a chance that Miller's testimony last week may have added to Rove's vulnerability. It suggested that only three people have testified since Rove's last appearance: Matthew Cooper, Miller, and Rove's secretary.

Johnston of the Times, meanwhile, observed that in recent days, "Rove has been less visible than usual at the White House, fueling speculation that he is distancing himself from Mr. Bush or has been sidelined. But according to a senior administration official, Mr. Rove and his wife are on a long-planned college visiting trip with their teenage son. Several lawyers who have been involved in the case expressed surprise and concern over the recent turn of events and are increasingly convinced that Mr. Fitzgerald could be poised to charge someone with a crime for discussing with journalists the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer."

And Johnston observed, "Recently lawyers said that they believed the prosecutor may be applying new legal theories to bring charges in the case.

"One new approach appears to involve the possible use of Chapter 37 of the federal espionage and censorship law, which makes it a crime for anyone who 'willfully communicates, delivers, transfers or causes to be communicated' to someone 'not entitled to receive it' classified information relating the national defense matters."

NOTE: Go to current column by E&P's Greg Mitchell on Miller, Libby, Jon Stewart, and the infamous "aspens turning" letter, found on our main page, right side, under Columns.
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'National Journal': Rove Told Bush He Did Not Leak to Reporters in Plame Case
By E&P Staff
Published: October 07, 2005 5:00 PM ET
NEW YORK

The plot continued to thicken this afternoon in the Plamegate scandal, as veteran investigative reporter Murray Waas wrote in the National Journal online that Karl Rove had "personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors."

Waas, who has been researching and writing about the Plame case for months, continued: "During the same conversation in the White House two years ago--occurring just days after the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the unmasking of Plame as a covert agency operative--Rove also assured the president that he had not leaked any information to the media in an effort to discredit Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. Rove also did not tell the president about his July 2003 a phone call with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, a conversation that touched on the issue of Wilson and Plame."

According to Waas, Rove also did not disclose the Cooper chat to FBI agents in his first interview with. He subsequently changed his account.

"Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails--in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper--that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation," Waas writes.
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Re: BBB


The words "nothing to hide" come to mind.

Re: BBB


Well, perhaps to certain sorts of minds where Santa and wishing-wells and 'my mommy and daddy never did it' also find a happy home.

Re: BBB


The words "nothing to lose" also come to mind, quite readily. As do the words "hubris", "bravado", "chutzpah" and "cheeky"

Ah, yes, he is certainly "cheeky."

Re: BBB


If he had "nothing to hide" then everything would have come out in the first interview and there would have been no need for a second, third and now the fourth.

BBB
It's been reported that Rove lied to Bush, saying he was not involved in the Plame expose. I wonder if Bush is pissed enough at Rove for his lie to kick his ass out of the White House?

Nah! Rove is Bush's brain. Can't get by without him.

BBB

Rove Told Bush He Did Not Leak to Reporters in Plame Case
By E&P Staff
Published: October 07, 2005 5:00 PM ET

The plot continued to thicken this afternoon in the Plamegate scandal, as veteran investigative reporter Murray Waas wrote in the National Journal online that Karl Rove had "personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors."

Waas, who has been researching and writing about the Plame case for months, continued: "During the same conversation in the White House two years ago--occurring just days after the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the unmasking of Plame as a covert agency operative--Rove also assured the president that he had not leaked any information to the media in an effort to discredit Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. Rove also did not tell the president about his July 2003 a phone call with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, a conversation that touched on the issue of Wilson and Plame."

According to Waas, Rove also did not disclose the Cooper chat to FBI agents in his first interview with. He subsequently changed his account.

"Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails--in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper--that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation," Waas writes.
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Plamegate: The Next Step
Plamegate: The Next Step
By Lawrence O'Donnell
10.06.2005

If Karl Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, is still as easy to read as he has been since I broke the story that his client was Matt Cooper's source, then we now know that Rove has received a target letter from Patrick Fitzgerald. How do we know it? Luskin refuses to deny it.

Fitzgerald does not have to send Rove or anyone else a target letter before indicting him. The only reason to send target letters now is that Fitzgerald believes one or more of his targets will flip and become a prosecution witness at the pre-indictment stage. A veteran prosecutor told me, "If Fitzgerald is sending target letters at the end of his investigation, those are just invitations to come in and work out a deal."

Prosecutors prefer pre-indictment plea bargaining to post-indictment because they have more to offer you, like not being indicted at all or downgrading your status to unindicted co-conspirator. And pre-indictment plea bargaining can greatly enrich the indictments that the prosecutor then obtains. If, for example, Fitzgerald has a weak case against, say, Scooter Libby, imagine how much Rove's cooperation might strengthen that case.

If no one RSVPs to Fitzgerald's invitations, look for indictments as early as next week. If anyone does sit down with Fitzgerald, he will probably have to move to extend the grand jury, which now has only thirteen working days left in its term.

Prediction: at least three high level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators.