Wash. Post - Rove Team Cites Warning From Reporter.

[Quixote1818]

It sounds like as the final pharagraph states that Fitzgerald is just covering his ass and this defense by Rove will fall short in the end.


Rove Team Cites Warning From Reporter
Talk With Time's Novak Figures in Effort to Show Bush Adviser Did Not Lie

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 3, 2005; Page A11

A reporter for Time magazine told Karl Rove's attorney in early 2004 that the White House deputy chief of staff might be in more legal trouble than he originally thought, according to sources familiar with the conversation. Now, Rove is relying on that casual exchange as part of a broad effort to convince a prosecutor he did not lie about his role in the CIA leak case, the sources said.

A conversation between longtime friends -- Viveca Novak, who has helped cover the case for Time, and Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney -- is at the heart of the latest legal maneuvering in the two-year-old case.



Over drinks, Novak told Luskin that Time employees were buzzing that Rove had talked to her colleague Matthew Cooper about CIA operative Valerie Plame in July 2003, sources familiar with the conversation said.

Snip>

"If you're going to bring charges against the White House deputy chief of staff, you want to be absolutely convinced it was an intentional lie," Schertler said. "I think Fitzgerald is looking at this so at the end of the day he can say, 'I explored everything.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201816.html?nav=rss_nation

[janx]

1. Yikes!

Fitzgerald sure seems to be thorough.

[MADem]

2. It also looks like Viveca was telling tales out of school

Here she passes on a bit of work gossip to the guy DEFENDING Rove, and it concerns a SOURCE. That's a bit "iffy" from a journalistic standpoint, at best. And seeing as so few people knew who Cooper's source was, you have to wonder how SHE got hold of the info in the first place:

Novak did not definitively know that Rove had spoken to Cooper about Plame, the source said, but may have heard gossip from colleagues who had reason to know. Kelly said it is unfair and premature to judge Novak's decision to discuss a colleague's possible confidential source with someone outside the news organization.

"I think to be fair to everyone involved here, we're going to wait until after Viveca testifies under oath to address all the issues presented by this new development," he said. "After that happens, we're going to fully review exactly what transpired here. We want to know exactly how this came to be."

...Media ethics experts said Novak's decision to discuss Cooper's source with someone outside her news organization raises new questions about reporters' willingness to casually trade information with sources. Cooper had promised anonymity to Rove in their telephone call, and Time fought a year-long legal battle to keep him from being forced to break that promise, before ultimately giving in.
...

This is just one more nail in the Lame Stream media's coffin...they all really ARE looking rather, well...LAME.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Lame is not strong enough a word. Lapdogs, maybe. And in some...

...cases, traitors. What a disgrace to journalism they all are!

And I'm still burning about election night, when the whole lot of them--all the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--DOCTORED their exit polls to hide evidence that Kerry won!

The worst journalistic crime I have ever witnessed, bar none--because it prevented CHANGE.

And all of them colluded in it, and all of their reporters have remained silent about it. They stole the election as surely as Diebold, ES&S and Kenneth Blackwell did.

[MADem]

4. And this goes WAAAY back--Adam Clymer indicated that Judith

Miller was working hand in glove with Lee Atwater during the DUKAKIS-BUSH campaign. Judy tried to get the NYT to spike a story that had been written--she said she showed it to Atwater who complained it was too soft on Dukakis. Clymer was appalled that she showed it to him, and felt she was too close to her "source" even way back then...

We haven't had a free press in decades, I fear.

[applegrove]

5. Did Rove lie to convince Fitz he was innocent of having changed

testimony? Will Fitz get Rove on the "meetings in November"?