Jason Leopold | For Rove, New Testimony, New Problems

There are unanswered questions about whether Karl Rove was truthful when he was first interviewed by FBI and Justice Department investigators in early October 2003 regarding whether he played a role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. According to sources close to the probe, he was not.

In that very first interview, which took place just three months after Plame Wilson's name was published in a July 14, 2003, story by conservative columnist Robert Novak in an attempt to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, Rove testified that he did speak with a handful of journalists and told them about Plame Wilson and that she worked at the CIA - but only after her identity had already been made public. In fact, Rove had been one of the two "senior administration officials" cited in Novak's column confirming Plame Wilson's identity. Additionally, Rove had also been a source for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who also published Plame Wilson's name in a story three days after Novak's column - another fact President Bush's deputy chief of staff allegedly withheld from prosecutors.

Moreover, the five-count indictment handed up by a grand jury in late October against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, shows that Rove had learned of Plame Wilson's identity a month or so before Novak's column was published. Neither Rove nor his attorney, Robert Luskin, has so far clarified Rove's alleged misstatements to investigators two years ago. Those falsities, which Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is homing in on, will likely end Rove's political future, sources close to the investigation said Thursday.

Fitzgerald prepped a second grand jury hearing evidence in the case Wednesday, spending more than three hours bringing them up to speed on the latest developments in the case, sources said. They added that Fitzgerald would not have convened another grand jury if he were not seeking additional indictments against senior officials in the Bush administration.

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