Washington – President Bush said Wednesday that he would withhold judgment on whether Karl Rove, his senior adviser and political strategist, had identified an undercover CIA agent in a conversation with a reporter from Time magazine.
Bush’s comment came nearly two years after he said he would fire anyone in his administration who had knowingly leaked the identity of the agent, Valerie Plame. Her naming spawned a federal grand jury investigation.
On Wednesday, in his first remarks on the matter since the disclosure that Rove had alluded to the Central Intelligence Agency officer in a background interview in July 2003 with Matthew Cooper, a White House correspondent for Time, Bush held that it would be wrong to discuss the case while the investigation is underway.
“I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation,” Bush told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. “I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports.”
Bush neither criticized nor defended Rove, but Rove sat directly behind him as he spoke, sending a visual signal that he remained on the job and at the president’s elbow, where he has been throughout Bush’s political career.
As Bush was speaking, Cooper was testifying to the federal grand jury. Afterward, Cooper said he had answered all questions during his 2 1/2 hours of testimony. He did not say what the questions were but said he intended to write an account of his experience for Time.
“I testified openly and honestly,” said Cooper, who had initially resisted naming his source but agreed to do so after Time turned his notes over to the special prosecutor under court order and after Rove released him from his pledge of confidentiality. “I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That is something the special counsel is going to have to determine.”
Late Wednesday, Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, suggested that Rove already had told the grand jury about his conversation with Cooper.
Luskin said “truthful testimony” by Cooper “will not call into question the accuracy or completeness of anything Rove has previously said to the prosecutor or the grand jury.”
“Rove has cooperated completely with the special prosecutor, and he has been repeatedly assured he is not a target of the investigation,” Luskin said. “Rove has done nothing wrong. We’re confident that he will not become a target after the special prosecutor has reviewed all evidence.”
The disclosure of the identity of Plame raised questions about whether the White House was trying to retaliate against her husband, Joseph Wilson, after he criticized the president’s Iraq policy in an opinion article in The New York Times.
Rove’s allies have stressed that, according to an e-mail message Cooper sent to his bureau chief, Rove did not use Plame’s name in the conversation or mention her undercover status, but only referred to her as Joseph Wilson’s wife, who worked at the CIA.
Democrats tried to keep up the pressure on Rove.
At a press conference, two Democratic senators, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York, said that whether Rove broke the law governing disclosure of the identity of covert agents was not the sole issue.
“We just don’t hold those working at the closest and highest levels to the president to a criminal standard and say, ‘If you have not committed a crime, show up for work tomorrow morning,’ ” Durbin said.