Reporter: Cheney’s Chief of Staff Was Another Source for Time Story
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WASHINGTON – The vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was a source along with the president’s chief political adviser for a Time story that identified a CIA officer, the magazine reporter said yesterday, further countering White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak.
In an effort to quell a chorus of calls to fire the deputy White House chief of staff, Karl Rove, Republicans said that Mr. Rove originally learned about Valerie Plame’s identity from the press. That exonerates Mr. Rove, and Democrats should apologize, said the Republican Party chairman, Ken Mehlman.
But it is not clear that it was a journalist who first revealed the information to Mr. Rove. A lawyer familiar with Mr. Rove’s grand jury testimony said yesterday that Mr. Rove learned about the CIA officer either from the press or from someone in government who said the information came from a journalist. The lawyer spoke on condition of anonymity because the federal investigation is continuing.
In a first-person account in the latest issue of Time magazine, reporter Matt Cooper wrote that during his grand jury appearance last Wednesday, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald “asked me several different ways if Rove had indicated how he had heard that Plame worked at the CIA.” Mr. Cooper said Mr. Rove did not indicate how he had heard.
“This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson’s wife,” Mr. Cooper wrote of his phone call with Mr. Rove.
Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that Messrs. Libby and Rove had no connection to the leak. Ms. Plame’s husband is Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.
The White House refused last week to repeat its denials about Mr. Rove’s involvement. The refusal came amid the disclosure that Mr. Rove told Mr. Cooper on July 11, 2003, that Wilson’s wife apparently worked at the CIA and that she had authorized a trip he took to Africa in 2002. The White House yesterday declined to comment about Mr. Libby, saying the investigation was ongoing.
The CIA sent Mr. Wilson to check out intelligence that the government of Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq for nuclear weapons. The chief rationale for the American-led invasion in March 2003 was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
