Jane's on fire today with questions for Viveca Novak about her relationship with Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

...what exactly was your relationship with Robert Luskin? We will do you the courtesy of presuming you were not buttering each other's toast at the St. Regis like Scooter and Judy, but where does it fall along the continuum, say, from narc/snitch to "let's load up on Manhattans and hit the handbag sale at Barney's?"

Jane has 15 detailed questions for Viveca. I'll add one more:

Why did Bob Woodward choose you and Time Magazine over his own paper and every other reporter in town for his exclusive story on why his source came clean to Fitzgerald?

The Washington Post Saturday has an article on Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin that reveals Luskin told Novak Rove was not in any trouble in PlameGate over drinks in early 2004. Viveca reportedly replied that wasn't what she had heard and disclosed, almost as water-cooler talk, that she heard Rove had been a source for Cooper.

David Corn thinks he has solved the mystery. He presents Viveca Novak's side of the story. Corn also discloses he regularly used to play basketball with Viveca Novak's lawyer-husband.

The more I read about Viveca Novak and Luskin, the more I think it's a loose end and largely irrelevant. It's a last ditch, but probably irrelevant effort by Luskin and Rove to avoid a perjury charge. The real issues as I see them are:

• Robert Novak told Karl Rove on July 8, 2003, two days after Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times, that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson to Africa to check on whether Iraq might be acquiring uranium from Niger. Rove responded, "I heard that too."

In responding (pdf) to a media motion to unseal 8 pages of the Court of Appeals decision (pdf) upholding Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's PlameGate supboenas, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald advises the court that he has no objection to unsealing the portions about Libby, but objects to releasing portions about others who have not been indicted and who have not disclosed the substance of their grand jury testimony or cooperation to the public.

The New York Times has this report on Fitz's filing. Armando at Daily Kos provides his perspective.

My take on who Fitzgerald is protecting with this filing:

• Reporter Bob Novak and his source
• Walter Pincus' source
• Bob Woodward's source
• Those who have flipped in exchange for immunity (Ari Fleischer may be one of these) or for lesser charges or a lesser sentence (e.g., perhaps David Wurmser and/or John Hannah.)
• Stephen Hadley, Richard Armitage and Colin Powell (Assuming they are not already included as a source for Novak, Pincus or Woodward.)

Here are the most salient portions of Fitz' filing:

The New York Times details Time reporter Viveca Novak's conversation with Robert Luskin, lawyer for Karl Rove, that supposedly led to the discovery of the Rove-Hadley e-mail and Karl Rove's return to the grand jury in October, 2004, during which appearance he acknowledged his conversation with Matt Cooper.

As far as I can see, there is only one thing in the article that Jane of Firedoglake and I have not previously reported: While the subpoena for Novak-Luskin's conversations dates to May, 2004, sources tell the Times that the conversation at issue (when Novak told Luskin that Rove had talked to Cooper about Valerie Plame Wilson) didn't take place until late summer or early fall, 2004. This puts the conversation much closer to Rove's October 15, 2004 recantation to the grand jury. It also puts the conversation after Cooper was ordered jailed on August 6, 2004 for not complying with his subpoena about Libby and perhaps after his August 26, 2004 deposition about his conversation with Libby, which he provided to avoid going to jail.

Jane at Firedoglake reports an "unsubstantiated rumor" from a source that desires to remain anonymous that Viveca Novak told Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin that his client was a source of Cooper's back in May, 2004 when Cooper was subpoenaed about Libby. [Background here.]

Jane's source reports that it was Luskin's conversation with Novak that jogged his memory about Rove's e-mail to Stephen Hadley.

Does it help Rove? Back to the dates again. The New York Times reported on November 4, 2005:

I started a post earlier that I didn't get to finish because of an intervening radio interview on Tookie William's clemency petition, that began,

Since Viveca Novak is cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe regarding her conversations with Luskin, for all we know, she is corroborating something Luskin told her or she told Luskin -- or something Rove told Fitz or the grand jury -- rather than attacking it. Unlikely, I know, but still it's one possible explanation.

When I came back to it a few minutes ago, I had all but decided to delete it as being too far-fetched when I got an e-mail from Raw Story asking me if I had seen tomorrow's Washington Post article by Jim VanderHei. I hadn't seen it and now that I've read it, my abandoned post may not be far fetched after all. Vanderhei reports Luskin and Viveca Novak are friends and Luskin asked Fitz to talk to her about something he told her:

Raw Story has an article up about Rove's aide Susan Ralston being recalled to the grand jury to testify again about why she didn't log a telephone call between Matthew Cooper and Karl Rove in July, 2003. Raw Story reports Ralston intitially said that the call came in to the White House switchboard rather than Rove's office, but Fitzgerald later obtained documentary evidence that wasn't the case. According to Raw Story, during her second grand jury session, she testified Karl Rove told her not to log that call and others.

However, the bigger news in the article, if true, is this:

Two things are clear, the sources said: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak.

Fitzgerald is interested in Luskin and Novak's conversations from May, 2004 forward. What happened in May, 2004? On May 21, 2004 Matt Cooper was subpoenaed . The next day Time said it would fight the subpoena. This is the subpoena that was directed to a certain official who later was revealed to be Scooter Libby.

...prosecutors asked Time a week ago to cooperate but the magazine declined to do so....Fitzgerald wants to question Cooper about a story that appeared in Time on July 21, 2003, and another that ran on Time's Web site on July 17.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals decison (pdf) upholding the subpoena contains these dates:

On May 21, 2004, a grand jury subpoena was issued to appellant Matthew Cooper, seeking testimony and documents related to two specific articles dated July 17, 2003, and July 21, 2003, to which Cooper had contributed. Cooper refused to comply with the subpoena, even after the Special Counsel offered to narrow its scope to cover only conversations between Cooper and a specific individual identified by the Special Counsel. Instead, Cooper moved to quash the subpoena on June 3, 2004. On July 6, 2004, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied Cooper’s motion in open court, and confirmed the denial with reasoning set forth in a written order issued on July 20, 2004.

Jane and Reddhed at FiredogLake provide some intriguing theories on why Patrick Fitzgerald has subpoenaed Time correspondent Viveca Novak.

Reddhed writes that Fitzgerald may be trying to pierce Rove's attorney-client relationship with Luskin through statements Luskin made to Novak with Rove's consent.

Jane recaps some theories provided by their readers: Luskin may have been using Novak to pass information to Cooper in an attempt to influence his testimony; and this one:

Bump and Update: The Time Magazine article reporting Viveca Novak has been subpoenaed is here. She is not, by the way, related to Robert Novak.

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Original Post

Time Reporter Viveca Novak has been subpoenaed to the grand jury investigating the leak of the indentity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald is interested in her testimony about conversations she had with Rove lawyer Robert Luskin beginning in May, 2004.

Novak, part of a team tracking the CIA case for Time, has written or contributed to articles quoting Luskin that characterized the nature of what was said between Rove and Matthew Cooper, the first Time reporter who testified in the case in July.

The article takes this as a sign that Fitzgerald is still considering charges against Rove. Looking through some past Time articles written by Novak, I found some interesting tidbits in the July 25 Time article, co-authored by Ms. Novak:

Michael Isikoff has a new piece on Karl Rove. He writes that Karl Rove recently took out a $100,000 line of credit and speculates it is for legal fees, even though Rove insists the credit line is for other purposes. Jane thinks Isikoff is trying to make Rove look sympathethic.

I have no doubt that Karl Rove's legal fees are huge. They probably topped a million some time ago. But does anyone really think he is paying them himself? I don't know anything about campaign finance laws but I suspect Rove's lawyers have found a legal way for huge corporations to pay the fees, either directly or by funneling the money to radical right organizations who pay the fees. Karl Rove is not Scooter Libby. Karl Rove wins elections for the Republicans, Scooter Libby is a policy guy for Cheney. Scooter's legal team is on its own having to raise legal fees. I suspect when Karl Rove puts out the call, a line forms as long as the one at Wal-Mart this Tuesday for the X-box 360.

David Fiderer has a play by play of NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell's various comments about the Valerie Plame leak and when she first learned from a White House official that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Tom Maguire of Just One Minute responds to Fiderer.

Jane at Firedog Lake continues to dig into Dick Cheney's role. Crooks and Liars shares his views on Woodward and LKL here.