WASHINGTON — A Time magazine correspondent acknowledged Sunday that she may have unwittingly aided the defense of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation when she told the White House aide's lawyer about a conversation one of her colleagues had held with Rove concerning CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The tip, offered over drinks at a Washington restaurant sometime during the first half of 2004, apparently led Rove to correct testimony he had given to a federal grand jury in the case, Time reporter Viveca Novak said in a first-person account that was posted Sunday on the magazine's website.
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether Rove, the president's top political advisor, lied to investigators about a conversation he had two years ago about Plame with Matthew Cooper, then Time's White House correspondent.
Fitzgerald already has obtained an indictment of former vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on perjury and other charges. People close to Rove contend that he simply forgot about the conversation with Cooper until Novak's remark jogged his memory.
The Time report is the latest entanglement for journalists in the two-year investigation into whether Bush administration officials broke any laws by disclosing Plame's identity to reporters in the summer of 2003.
Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an outspoken critic of the way the administration used intelligence before invading Iraq. Some of Plame's jobs at the CIA had required her to work undercover, and it can -- under certain circumstances -- be a federal crime to disclose the identity of a covert operative.
In her online account, Novak, a Time legal affairs reporter since 1996, said she had been interviewed twice by Fitzgerald, most recently for 90 minutes on Thursday.
She revealed that her editors were not told about her discussions with Rove's lawyer until last month, a week after her first interview with Fitzgerald -- a decision that she said she now regretted.
The magazine said that "by mutual agreement," she had taken a paid leave of absence, effective immediately.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who is not related to the Time reporter, was the first journalist to publicly disclose Plame's identity. He did so in his column of July 14, 2003, eight days after an op-ed article by Wilson, criticizing the administration, appeared in the New York Times. Several days after Robert Novak's column was published, Plame was also identified in an article Cooper wrote for the Time website.
