Bush aide Rove was Time reporter's source-Newsweek
Reuters
Sunday, July 10, 2005; 6:35 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top White House advisor Karl Rove was one of the secret sources that spoke to reporters about a covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the media, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest edition.
The magazine said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.
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Luskin said Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003, according to Newsweek.
A U.S. federal judge ordered Cooper, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to testify and reveal their confidential sources.
Last week Cooper avoided a jail sentence for contempt of court by agreeing to testify in the case. Miller refused to testify and was jailed.
The case has become an important test involving freedom of the press and has pitting the media's traditional use of anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.
It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.
Although Rove has made statements about the Plame leak, he has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about the CIA agent.
Rove has carefully chosen his words when questioned about the leak. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," he told CNN last year when asked if he had had anything to do with it.
