Rove's defense may also have been aided by another Time reporter, Viveca Novak, who is not related to the columnist.
Novak said in a sworn statement that she met with Rove's lawyer, Luskin, in late 2003 or early 2004. She said she told him that Cooper considered Rove a source for his story about Plame. She said Luskin reacted with surprise.
That conversation prompted Luskin to order Rove's staff to review documents that might show a link between Cooper and Rove. Luskin later turned up the e-mail that Rove said had jogged his memory of the conversation.
Some lawyers said those efforts did not square with the contention that Rove was trying to deceive federal investigators or the grand jury.
"I think the case got very difficult to prove the minute you injected Viveca Novak into the debate," said Daniel French, a New York lawyer and former federal prosecutor who represented a witness interviewed by Fitzgerald.
"Given the tapestry of contacts that someone like Karl Rove has on a daily basis, what might be memorable to a layman may not be so memorable to a Karl Rove," French said. "In the end, the explanations were plausible enough for this prosecutor to take a pass."
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Back story
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is investigating White House leaks that disclosed the identity of a covert CIA agent. The agent's name, Valerie Plame, first appeared in a Robert Novak column on July 14, 2003. A report on Time magazine's website later also named Plame. Intentionally revealing the name of an undercover agent can be a crime. No one has been charged with violating that 1982 law, but Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was charged with lying and obstruction of justice. He is accused of misleading the FBI and a federal grand jury about conversations he had with journalists about Plame.
