WASHINGTON - Columnist Robert Novak said publicly for the first time Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove was a source for his story outing the identity of
CIA officer
Valerie Plame.
In a column, Novak also says his recollection of his conversation with Rove differs from what the Rove camp has said.
"I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection," Novak wrote. Novak did not elaborate.
A spokesman for Rove's legal team, Mark Corallo, said that Rove did not even know Plame's name at the time he spoke with Novak, that the columnist called Rove, not the other way around, and that Rove simply said he had heard the same information that Novak passed along to him regarding Plame.
"There was not much of a difference" between the recollections of Rove and Novak, said Corallo.
Novak said he is talking now because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told the columnist's lawyer that after 2 1/2 years his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to Novak has been concluded.
Triggering the criminal investigation, Novak revealed Plame's CIA employment on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, White House critic and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060712/...cia_leak_novak