Wilson/Plame Update

Patrick Fitzgerald, People magazine's sexiest special prosecutor alive (the issue came out in the run-up to Thanksgiving, and I meant to write about it then but allowed it to get lost amid the swirl of holiday activity), went back to the grand jury last week, spending three hours dealing with the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame situation on Wednesday morning. The previous grand jury that handed down the indictment of Scooter Libby has adjourned, so this is the first time he met with the new group. It goes without saying that he's not going in to introduce himself and get to know them--he's not going to waste their time or his. He's also not going to bother telling them that his case doesn't seem to be working out. No, in the past few weeks he's talked to Bob Woodward, Robert Luskin (Rove's lawyer), Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak, and various other people, so he's connected some dots and gone in front of the grand jury to tell them about it. We don't know much about what's gone on, but Viveca Novak wrote about her own experience in this week's Time. While having drinks with Luskin, she passed on some magazine scuttlebutt--specifically that Rove talked to reporter Matt Cooper. It is believed (or maybe we actually know this, I'm not sure) that at one point, Rove denied talking to any reporter about Plame, but after discovering an e-mail that indicated differently, he changed his testimony. It appears that Novak's little revelation to Luskin was the ostensible trigger for that change in testimony, but it's not at all clear how the timing of their conversation and of Rove's evolving stories to the special prosecutor works out. Luskin may be throwing up a smokescreen, or it may turn out that this new testimony actually does vindicate Rove (don't hold your breath on that one, though).

It's worth reading Novak's account to get a refresher on the way journalism works in the capital. Following the lead of superstar newsman Bob Woodward, Novak didn't bother to tell her editors that she blabbed the identity of Cooper's source to not just anyone but to that source's lawyer. Don't forget, Cooper was facing jail time over this little secret, and yet it's valuable cocktail banter to the media cognoscenti. You're thinking, perhaps she told her editors after she discovered that the info was affecting Rove's testimony and thus the story itself. You might think so, but you'd be wrong. When Luskin told her the special prosecutor would likely want to talk with her? Not yet. When she hired a lawyer to accompany her on her prosecutorial interview? Don't be in a hurry. When she actually talked to the special prosecutor? You're jumping the gun. No, it was only when Fitzgerald actually told her that he wanted to talk to her under oath--something that could never remain a secret--that she made the leap to let her editors know she was stuck in the middle of the story that she was also covering. It should come as no surprise that she's currently on a mutually agreed-upon leave of absence from Time.