Will Rove Testify?

The president's political guru—and counselor Dan Bartlett—have been subpoenaed by Scooter Libby's lawyers. What it means for the most-watched trial in Washington—and who's next on the witness stand.

A WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Michael Isikoff

Newsweek

Updated: 5:05 p.m. PT Jan 26, 2007

Jan. 26, 2007 - White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials—including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

Both Rove and Bartlett have already received trial subpoenas from Libby’s defense lawyers, according to lawyers close to the case who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. While that is no guarantee they will be called, the odds increased this week after Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, laid out a defense resting on the idea that his client, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, had been made a “scapegoat” to protect Rove. Cheney is expected to provide the most crucial testimony to back up Wells’s assertion, one of the lawyers close to the case said. The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson. “Wow, for all the talk about this being a White House that prides itself on loyalty and discipline, you’re not seeing much of it,” the lawyer said...

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But the Rove account could cut in other ways. Fitzgerald would likely argue that Libby’s comment to Rove merely shows that the vice president’s top aide “was even lying inside the White House,” according to the legal source. Moreover, Rove is likely not eager to recount the story either. The reason? He would have to acknowledge that shortly after he had the chat with Libby, he went back to his office and had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in which he also disclosed the fact that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. The disclosure was potentially illegal since, at the time, Plame was employed in the Directorate of Operations, the agency’s covert arm. (There is no evidence that Rove or anybody else knew Plame’s status at the time—and Rove has never been charged with any crime—but the possibility that White House officials were leaking classified information in an effort to discredit Wilson is what triggered the probe in the first place.)

An equally embarrassing conflict could emerge next week when former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer takes the stand. Fleischer has been one of the most mysterious figures in the case, making virtually no public comments about it since he left the White House in July 2003. In the past he has insisted he wasn’t even represented by a lawyer. But it emerged during court arguments this week that Fleischer originally invoked his Fifth Amendment privileges to avoid testifying and then only agreed to do so after he was given an immunity deal by Fitzgerald—an arrangement that normally requires extensive bargaining among attorneys. Fleischer’s testimony is critical to Fitzgerald’s case: as the prosecutor laid out this week in his opening statement, Fleischer has said that Libby told him over a White House lunch on July 7, 2003, that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and made a point of describing this information as “hush and hush.” Fitzgerald used that account to undercut Libby’s grand-jury assertion that he was surprised and “taken aback” just three or four days later when, he claims, Russert told him about Wilson’s wife. “You can’t learn something startling on Thursday that you’re giving out Monday and Tuesday of the same week,” Fitzgerald said. Fleischer has also testified that Bartlett also later told him about Wilson’s wife and, after hearing it from both Libby and Bartlett, the then-White House press secretary disclosed the information to NBC reporter David Gregory...http://tinyurl.com/yu99wv [Open in new window]

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