Jim VandeHei did the Rove breakdown at the Washington Post. Anne Kornblut got the duty at the New York Times. Predictably, Rove has attempted to take advantage of Fitzgerald’s reticence to spin, in order to place his version of his testimony in the papers of record. Kornblut’s article largely brushes aside Rove’s spin. But she provides only one significant new fact, and it has nothing to do with Rove’s testimony.
Mr. Novak has testified to the grand jury since Mr. Rove’s last appearance in October 2005.
VandeHei sticks rather closely to Rove’s narrative, but he winds up with more juicy news. The following tidbit shows Rove at work, spinning to make it look like his recent demotion was not related to yesterday’s Grand Jury appearance.
His grand jury appearance, which was kept secret even from Rove’s closest White House colleagues until shortly before he went to court yesterday, suggests that prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald remains keenly interested in Rove’s role in the case.
This next piece is interesting, and all sourced to an unidentified good-buddy of Rove.
Rove for the first time partly waived his attorney-client privilege to detail conversations he had with his attorney, Robert Luskin, about the leak and his knowledge of it, the source said.
Rove’s testimony focused almost exclusively on his conversation about Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2003 and whether the top aide later tried to conceal it, the source said. Rove testified, in essence, that “it would have been a suicide mission” to “deliberately lie” about his conversation with Cooper because he knew beforehand that it eventually would be revealed, the source said.
I can talk for three and half hours about a lot of things: baseball, history, music. But I can’t talk for three and half hours about a conversation I claim not to remember. Rove wants this story to be about Matt Cooper, Viveca Novak, and his lawyer but it appears he got grilled on a variety of subjects. It is interesting, however, that Rove felt compelled to waive his attorney-client privilege and discuss conversations about his legal defense. Of course, Rove’s lawyer appeared before the Grand Jury in December, so this case is far from normal.
Looking at the substance of what Rove is saying, he still appears to be screwed.
He says he forgot about talking to Cooper (even though he sent an email to Hadley about it) and that even after his lawyer related his conversation with Ms. Novak to him, he still didn’t remember the conversation. I am piecing this together from different pieces in VandeHei’s article. I’ll bold the important parts. It all comes down to when the Luskin-Novak meeting took place and how soon after it took place that Luskin turned over the Hadley email to Fitz.
Luskin found the e-mail as part of a document search he conducted before Rove testified a second time in October 2004, telling the grand jury that the conversation must have taken place.
How much before the October testimony?
Luskin told the prosecutor that Viveca Novak had informed him that she had heard from other Time reporters that Rove was Cooper’s source for a July 2003 story on Plame. Luskin shared this information with Rove — before Rove testified that he did not recall his conversation with Cooper.
Yesterday, Rove told the grand jury that it would make no sense for him to lie in February, knowing that all of this would soon be public, the source said.
But the timing of that Luskin-Novak conversation is in dispute. Novak has said she testified that the conversation took place between January and May of 2004 — which could place it either before or after Rove’s initial grand jury testimony. Moreover, Rove did not know at that point that Cooper would later be forced to testify and reveal him as a source, according to lawyers who follow the case.
Now, this is all very confusing, but the whole case against Rove may hinge on it. Scooter Libby was indicted on October 25, 2005 and it appeared likely that Rove would be indicted then too because the Grand Jury was expiring. But, Rove was not indicted because his lawyer revealed information about a meeting he had with Viveca Novak. On December 1, 2005, the New York Times reported “Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, spoke in the summer or early fall of 2004 with Viveca Novak, a reporter for Time.” That would have placed the meeting well after Rove’s original testimony and not too far prior to his October testimony. But Ms. Novak testified that the meeting happened “anywhere from January 2004 to May 2004, although she believed
that the conversation more likely took place in May.”
In the past, it was assumed that Rove’s defense relied on his not having heard of the Novak-Luskin meeting prior to his February 2004 testimony. But now it appears that his defense is that he did hear of the meeting and would therefore have had to be ‘suicidal’ to lie to the Grand Jury. If this is hard to follow, it is because it doesn’t make any sense.
This is what it appears Rove is saying. Prior to his February 2004 testimony, his lawyer informed him that everyone in the Time newsroom was under the impression that Matt Cooper had used Rove as a source for his Plame article. But Rove dismissed that chatter as a mere rumor because he didn’t remember talking to Cooper about Plame. He says it would have been suicidal to lie about it if it were true because of all the chatter and the fact that Cooper would certainly have to talk about it at some point. But Cooper (as well as Judith Miller) were defying subpoenas and the matter was tied up in the courts. Soon after Cooper agreed to testify, Rove and Luskin discovered an email to Hadley that confirmed Rove had spoken to Cooper about Niger. Rove now knew that a conversation must have taken place and after he realized that Cooper had sent a contemperaneous email to his editor mentioning Plame, he realized his recollection must be wrong. At that point, he turned over the email and voluntarily returned to the Grand Jury to correct the record.
If you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you. If anything, this testimony is even more damning than the testimony of Viveca Novak. She isn’t sure when the meeting happened, but she leans toward May. And if the meeting took place in May, then it was after Rove’s February testimony. If that is the true series of events, Rove could at least argue that he was not aware of rumors that he was a source for Cooper when he testified.
Instead, he argues that he knew but didn’t believe the rumors to be true. And then there is the delay between being told of the rumors and the discovery of the Hadley email. We need the timeline filled in on this. I can’t see anyway that Rove can escape perjury charges. Maybe he can avoid obstruction charges and maybe there is some way that his testimony makes sense as a legal defense. But I’m not seeing it.
