December 8, 2005: Time Reporter Testifies under Oath to Plame Wilson Prosecutor

Time reporter Viveca Novak testifies under oath in the Plame Wilson leak investigation, in an interview at her lawyer Hank Schuelke’s office. Novak has already spoken with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see November 10, 2005) about her conversations with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House aide Karl Rove (see March 1, 2004), but did not inform her editors of either her conversations with Luskin or her discussion with Fitzgerald until after Fitzgerald asked her to testify under oath. In late November, she informed Time bureau chief Jim Carney, who informed managing editor Jim Kelly. As Novak will later write, “Nobody was happy about it, least of all me.” Before her testimony, various leaks about her involvement in the investigation began appearing in the press, making her “feel physically ill.” Novak also rechecked her notes and found that she had misinformed Fitzgerald about the date of her conversation with Luskin concerning Rove: it was most likely March 1, 2004 and not May 2004. Novak will later write that the second interview is “more focused” than the first one, and her responses are, if anything, even more confused and vague than during her first interview. “I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when,” she will later write. Fitzgerald again focuses on her exchanges with Luskin, sticking to their previous agreement “not to wander with his questions.” [Associated Press, 12/8/2005; Time, 12/11/2005] The leaks about Novak apparently began with Luskin, who told Fitzgerald that Novak inadvertently alerted him last year that her colleague, Matthew Cooper, would have to testify that Rove was his source for an article about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Investigative reporter Jason Leopold writes that it seems Luskin is trying to derail a potential criminal indictment of Rove (see December 7, 2005). [CounterPunch, 12/9/2005]