Rove Team Cites Warning From Reporter (shows Rove didn't lie?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201816.html

Rove Team Cites Warning From Reporter
Talk With Time's Novak Figures in Effort to Show Bush Adviser Did Not Lie

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 3, 2005; Page A11

A reporter for Time magazine told Karl Rove's attorney in early 2004 that the White House deputy chief of staff might be in more legal trouble than he originally thought, according to sources familiar with the conversation. Now, Rove is relying on that casual exchange as part of a broad effort to convince a prosecutor he did not lie about his role in the CIA leak case, the sources said.

A conversation between longtime friends -- Viveca Novak, who has helped cover the case for Time, and Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney -- is at the heart of the latest legal maneuvering in the two-year-old case.

Over drinks, Novak told Luskin that Time employees were buzzing that Rove had talked to her colleague Matthew Cooper about CIA operative Valerie Plame in July 2003, sources familiar with the conversation said.

...

One person familiar with the case said the Novak-Luskin conversation is not what prompted Rove to change his testimony in the case. In fact, this person said, Novak told Luskin about the Rove-Cooper connection before Rove's first appearance before the grand jury in February 2004. In that appearance, Rove testified that he did not recall talking to Cooper about Plame. It was not until October 2004 that Rove told the grand jury he recalled the Cooper chat.

Novak specifically has been asked to testify under oath about conversations she had with Rove attorney Robert Luskin starting in May 2004, the magazine reported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051127/ap_on_re_us/cia_leak_time