WASHINGTON — If Karl Rove was source No. 2, who was source No. 1?
Rove, President Bush's top political advisor, has survived a bruising week of controversy over his role in the unmasking of a CIA officer. But White House officials and their Republican allies acknowledge that they may face more revelations in the weeks and months to come.
For two years, the White House had insisted that Rove and other aides were not involved in the leaks of information that led to the identification of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer, in a newspaper column.
But last week, evidence surfaced that Rove had, in fact, spoken to reporters about Plame before her name turned up in print. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who had asserted that he and the president knew that Rove was not involved, said he could no longer speak about the case.
Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has defended his client doggedly, acknowledging that Rove talked with journalists about the case, but insisting that he never knowingly revealed classified information. In fact, Luskin has noted, Rove has suggested that he learned Plame's name from one of the reporters who called him -- indicating that Rove was not the initial source of the leak.
Those details, lawyers said, add up to a defense for Rove against the federal law that makes it a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a clandestine CIA officer. Luskin said Rove had been told that he was not a target of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation.
But Rove's reported assertion that the reporters he talked with already knew about Valerie Plame has focused attention on another question: Who was the original source of the leak?
The answer is not publicly known. Fitzgerald's investigators have questioned members of the White House press staff, including McClellan; aides to Vice President Dick Cheney, including his powerful chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and current and former State Department officials -- but none has stepped forward publicly to acknowledge a role in the leak.
The question has some Republicans worried, though.
"There are other shoes to drop here," warned an advisor to the GOP leadership in Congress, who insisted on anonymity in order to speak freely. "There are people who haven't come out yet. There could be indictments. And that would cast an entirely different shadow on the matter."
