Mr. X would be Robert Novak's source. The one he said would be revealed when all this hoopla is over. Will it ever be over? Will we ever know the identity of Mr. X?
WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity returned their attention to White House adviser Karl Rove on Tuesday, questioning a former West Wing colleague about contacts Rove had with reporters in the days leading to the outing of a covert CIA officer.
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald also dispatched FBI agents this week to comb the CIA officer's residential neighborhood in Washington, asking neighbors again whether they were aware -- before her name appeared in a syndicated column -- that the agent, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.
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The questioning, described by lawyers familiar with the case and by the neighbors, occurred as Fitzgerald was thought to be readying indictments in the long-running inquiry into the leak of Plame's identity.
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"It appeared to me the prosecutor was trying to button up any holes that were remaining," a lawyer familiar with the case said. The lawyer asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing inquiry.
Specifically, investigators asked about Rove's July 2003 conversations with Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, the lawyer said.
Cooper had contacted Rove and asked about Wilson, who angered the White House in mid-2003 when he publicly accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence information to justify going to war in Iraq.
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Cooper has told investigators that he called Rove to ask about Wilson's claims. Cooper, in an account of his testimony, later wrote that Rove had warned him, "Don't get too far out on Wilson." Rove also had told Cooper that the ambassador's wife worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction, though he did not mention her name.
Spokesmen for Fitzgerald and Rove declined Tuesday to comment.
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The flurry of last-minute questioning struck some observers as a way for the prosecutor to test arguments that defense lawyers in the case may have raised in the waning hours of the investigation to fend off charges.
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The flurry of last-minute questioning struck some observers as a way for the prosecutor to test arguments that defense lawyers in the case may have raised in the waning hours of the investigation to fend off charges.
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they told the FBI agents that they had no idea of her agency life, and that they knew her only as a mother of twins who worked as an energy consultant.
Some people familiar with national-security investigations said they found this week's questioning to be curious at a time when Fitzgerald appears to be wrapping up his investigation. They said establishing her covert status should have been a priority at the outset of the case; if her employer were already well-known, the prosecutor would not have a case to bring under the agent-protection law.
But others said they suspected that Fitzgerald was just being meticulous, and that he previously had made a judgment about her status and was, in an abundance of caution, looking to further corroborate that belief. The questioning seemed "confirmatory," said one person who was interviewed but who declined to be identified. Some neighbors said they had been interviewed previously by the FBI.
"They basically asked me if I knew what she did prior to the leak," said Marc Lefkowitz, another neighbor. The answer, he said, was an unambiguous "no."
"I knew he was a former ambassador. We had dinner at their house," Lefkowitz said. "She was just a normal mother of twins."
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Italian parliamentary officials announced that the head of Italy's military secret service, the SISMI intelligence agency, would be questioned next month about allegations that his agency gave the disputed documents to the United States and Britain, according to an Associated Press report. A spokeswoman said Nicolo Pollari, the agency director, asked to be questioned after reports this week in Italy's La Republica newspaper claiming that SISMI sent the CIA and U.S. and British officials information that it knew to be forged.
The newspaper reported that Pollari met at the White House on Sept. 9, 2002, with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. The Niger claims surfaced shortly thereafter. A spokesman for Hadley, now the national security adviser, confirmed that the meeting took place but declined to say what was discussed.
Hadley had played a prominent role in the controversy over Bush's claims in his State of the Union address -- taking responsibility for the insertion of the famous 16 words that laid out the allegations.