Posted on 12/11/2005 1:28:30 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Reporter Didn't Tell Editors About Probe
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago
Without telling her editors, Time reporter Viveca Novak underwent a lengthy interview by the prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation a month ago, the magazine disclosed Sunday.
Writing a first-person account of her experience as a witness in the criminal investigation, Novak becomes the latest reporter to be swept up in the probe of President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.
The magazine said Novak is now on a leave of absence by mutual agreement with her employer.
The investigation and Novak's role in it are "pretty serious stuff and the whole incident led Viveca and me to conclude that a leave of absence was wise," said Time's managing editor, Jim Kelly. "She and I will have a fuller discussion of this."
Novak's account in Time shows that many months before Rove corrected his grand jury testimony in October 2004, Novak told Rove's lawyer that she had heard that Rove revealed the CIA status of undercover officer Valerie Plame to Time reporter Matt Cooper.
"I wish I had told my bureau chief about the exchange," Novak wrote of her conversation with the lawyer, Robert Luskin, in the first half of 2004.
In October, in a last-minute effort to persuade Fitzgerald not to indict Rove, Luskin informed the prosecutor of the conversation with Novak. Fitzgerald interviewed Novak for two hours on Nov. 10.
"I hired a lawyer ... but I didn't tell anyone at Time," Novak wrote of the days leading up that interview. "Unrealistically, I hoped this would turn out to be an insignificant twist in the investigation and also figured that if people at Time knew about it, it would be difficult to contain the information, and reporters would pounce on it."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Flypaper.
After reading HER account, one does not come away with the impression that the lawyer was "fishing" for info...quite the opposite really. We know that Cooper had called through the switchboard which is WHY his call was not caught by Rove's office when they did a search for contacts with Cooper, etc. Her statement to the lawyer prompted him to do another search... There is no smoking gun here. The only way it WOULD be a problem is if Rove had done a search and withheld this OR if he purposely did not search for the call's record KNOWING that the call was through the switchboard...since COOPER originated the call, Rove would not have known this info in order to hide it.
Of course..this is nonsensical when you realize that NO ONE has been charged with leaking classified info OR outing Plame...
I would take some pleasure in watching these internecine squabbles between editors and reporters on such liberal rags and Time and The Times, if I didn't suspect that Judith Miller and Viveca Novak were probably fired precisely because they were decent enough not to lie about Libby and Rove leaking to them.
In other words, the lying reporters are thriving, and the honest ones are getting fired. That's my suspicion, anyway.
And Fitzgerald is frustrated because he has zero interest in getting at the truth. He just wants to nail Libby and Rove, and these reporters aren't helping him do it.
Why should Rove have been indicted?
Remember, the Big, Bigassed Media demanded a special prosecutor.
Oh yes, I remember. But Rove's not going to be indicted because he's done nothing wrong. The media just can't stop selling the idea that he will be, or ought to be though. Nope, no bias there.
I still believe that Fitz should be indicted for perpetrating a fraud on the American taxpayers.
Is she related to that other MSM clown, Bob Novak?
"Remember, the Big, Bigassed Media demanded a special prosecutor."
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Indeed.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007658
Legal Advocacy Journalism
The Plame raccoon hunt may bag the media.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, December 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
The Valerie Plame affair has become a neurosis for the Beltway press. Running back over the history of the Plame affair and Scooter Libby, Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, Tim Russert and now Bob Woodward got me thinking about a drug for obsessive-compulsive disorder called Anafranil. I think of Anafranil each time I see some arm of the Beltway press go to the well for the umpteenth time to uncover who violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982 by "outing" Ms. Plame.
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The press requires the protections of the First Amendment because it could never survive legal challenge without it. But the reporting on the Plame case more resembles the Singapore press model, with its penchant for placing absurdist legal fastidiousness above knowing anything useful. In the Plame affair ideological animosity overwhelmed clear-sighted journalistic aggression.
Reporting the news is an informal, imperfect exercise. Journalism was never meant to have the unforgiving, precise exactitude of the law's needs imposed upon it. But because of Plame, it's about to be. Last month an appeals court in a civil suit ruled for nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee that reporters for the Washington Post, AP, New York Times, L.A. Times and CNN had to testify about confidential government sources who leaked information about Mr. Lee.
Someone in authority should have called off the Plame dogs. But it's too late for that. Now everyone's blood is in the water.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
I'll forgive him if he indicts Wilson...
She's not related to Bob Novak. I wonder if she's African-American with a name like Viveca.
That's the case. She hadn't been for 8 years prior to Wilson creating Plamegate in order to get on TV and write articles....and write a book and he wants Tom Cruise to play him in the movie, IIRC.
I'll back that big time.
Has anyone come up with a time line for all of this chit-chat? As far as I can tell, there is no crime committed; what Fitzgerald is trying to do is trace gossip to its original source. That's a monstrous task.
If the "word was around Time" sometime before March, why is Libby still facing charges for mentioning Plame after that? Is Fitzgerald just going to indict everyone in the WH who appears in the chain of gossip?
This investigation would be funny if it wasn't ruining so many lives.
If the switchboard transferred a call to Roves phone, the call records would show it.
Really? The probe of Karl Rove? I thought the probe was about finding out who leaked a supposed covert agent's name to Robert Novak. I must've missed it where it was about getting Rove in the first place.
Libby isn't facing charges for mentioning Plame, he's facing a charge of lying to investigators and a possible obstruction charge.
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