A Second TIME Reporter Cooperates

W hen a grand jury indicted vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby in late October for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said no one should assume the leak inquiry was now completed. He was not kidding. Washington is still abuzz over who told Bob Woodward that Plame, the wife of Administration critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA. As Woodward revealed for the first time two weeks ago, a source passed along that information in a "casual" way in mid-June 2003, at least several days before Libby told New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Wilson's wife.

Fitzgerald is still trying to tie up the loose ends on Karl Rove's involvement in the case. Rove spoke to Matthew Cooper of TIME about Mrs. Wilson in July 2003, and this past July, Rove gave Cooper a specific waiver of confidentiality to testify about what was discussed. Fitzgerald has now asked a second reporter in TIME's Washington bureau, Viveca Novak, to testify under oath about conversations she had with Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, starting in May 2004, while she was covering the Plame inquiry for TIME. Novak, who is not related to columnist Robert Novak, who originally published Plame's name, is cooperating with the investigation.