The Rove Problem

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Wilson's charge that top officials had deliberately distorted his findings set off a furor in Washington. Fitzgerald has set out to learn how it was that a week after the column appeared, Wilson's wife's cover was blown. How did people in the White House learn of her status and connection to Wilson in the first place, who shared it, and how did it come to be discussed with reporters? Fitzgerald has shown particular interest, legal sources told TIME, in a classified State Department memo that was forwarded to the White House the day after Wilson's article appeared. It was marked for delivery to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was traveling with the President to Africa that day. The memo, originally dated June 10, 2003, identified Plame and discussed her role in recommending her husband for the mission to Niger. It had been written by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research at the request of former Under Secretary Marc Grossman after the New York Times and Washington Post began reporting on an intelligence-gathering trip to Niger by a former U.S. diplomat, without naming Wilson. Sending it to Powell "was directly in response to Wilson going public," says a senior Republican Hill aide familiar with the document. "[It was] ... one of those what-the-hell-is-this-guy-saying-and-what-is-he-talking-about? memos."

Fitzgerald has shown at least a part of the memo to some of the subjects of the investigation with the appropriate security clearance, asking if they had ever seen it before. The prosecutor believes that the memo circulated among officials aboard Air Force One, according to sources familiar with Fitzgerald's line of questioning. Some traveling reporters to Africa were told on background that Wilson was sent to Niger by a low-level staff member at the CIA. At one point, White House officials on the trip were saying, "Look who sent him," as if to spur reporters to dig deeper.

According to sources close to the investigation, Fitzgerald seemed most interested in whether officials who stayed at the White House while the President was in Africa also had the memo that week, when the first known calls to reporters took place. Details of the memo, if not the memo itself, may have been shared with one or more White House officials well before Wilson's article appeared. Rove and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have told prosecutors they had never seen the document, according to sources familiar with their statements. But Rove had learned Plame's identity from someone: a source who has been briefed on Rove's account to Fitzgerald, says Novak called Rove the next day, July 8, and mentioned to him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. According to the source, Rove replied, "I've heard that too," and told Fitzgerald that he had heard it from a reporter--or perhaps from someone else in the Administration who said he got it from a reporter--Rove just couldn't be certain or remember which one.