Reply #20: WP: Time Reporter Testifies in Leak Case(Rove Lawyer also Deposed on Issue

[sabra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/08/AR2005120802136.html

Time Reporter Testifies in Leak Case
Rove Lawyer Was Deposed Last Week by Special Prosecutor

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 9, 2005; Page A08

A special prosecutor questioned Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak under oath yesterday about a conversation she had with the attorney for presidential adviser Karl Rove that has become part of the CIA leak investigation, according to a top editor at the magazine.

In another twist, the lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, was deposed on the same issue last Friday, a source close to the case said.

....

According to sources familiar with Rove's status, Luskin persuaded Fitzgerald in late October to postpone indicting Rove by alerting Fitzgerald to Luskin's previous conversation with Novak, among other things. Luskin argued that these private discussions helped show Rove did not intentionally conceal his conversation with Cooper from investigators. Rove has argued he forgot about the chat he had with Cooper on the phone in the summer of 2003.

Sources familiar with their conversations say Novak's and Luskin's accounts to Fitzgerald appear to conflict on when they spoke.

....

Time's managing editor, Jim Kelly, said yesterday that the magazine will publish Novak's account of her testimony in its Monday edition, and it will be available in an online edition Sunday. Kelly said he did not yet know and could not comment on the full details of Novak's testimony or Fitzgerald's questions because he had not spoken with the reporter.