Viveka Novak, a journalist for Time who last week testified in the Plamegate case, spills her beans about the questions Fitzgerald put to her.
Turns out she had a calender problem similar to Judy Miller’s.
Luskin, Rove’s attorney, is a longtime source and friend of V. Novak. They came together for some wine several times a year.
Rove in his first testimonies did not disclose that he had mentioned Valerie Plame to Time reporter Cooper Miller. He later changed that testimony. That could be the base of a perjury charge.
Luskin says this change came because he, Luskin, was tipped off by V. Novak that Rove might have talked to Cooper Miller and only after this tip off a Rove email was found by Luskin that reflected the phone call between Rove and Miller. That email then, Luskin says, was the base for Rove to change his story.
Fitzgerald of course did want to check Luskin’s tell and had a first talk with V. Novak on Nov 10. This was not under oath and Novak did not disclose that talk to Time. Novak does confirm Luskin’s story:
Toward the end of one of our meetings, I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of "Karl doesn’t have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt." I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, "Are you sure about that? That’s not what I hear around TIME." He looked surprised and very serious. "There’s nothing in the phone logs," he said.
But she was unsure when that conversation happened.
Fitzgerald wanted to know when this conversation occurred. At that point I had found calendar entries showing that Luskin and I had met in January and in May. Since I couldn’t remember exactly how the conversation had developed, I wasn’t sure. I guessed it was more likely May.
Fitzgerald must have smelled something fishy here, because he later came back and asked V. Novak to repeat her testimony under oath. Now mysteriously a new date is found in her calender.
Fitzgerald had asked that I check a couple of dates in my calendar for meetings with Luskin. One of them, March 1, 2004, checked out. I hadn’t found that one in my first search because I had erroneously entered it as occurring at 5 a.m., not 5 p.m.
When Fitzgerald and I met last Thursday, along with another lawyer from his team, my attorney, a lawyer from Time Inc. and the court reporter, he was more focused. The problem with the new March date was that now I was even more confused–previously I had to try to remember if the key conversation had occurred in January or May, and I thought it was more likely May. But March was close enough to May that I really didn’t know. "I don’t remember" is an answer that prosecutors are used to hearing, but I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when.
The timing is of course all important. Rove first testified to the Grand Jury in February 2004. So the big question here, if the V.Novak story is believable at all, is
whether Luskin did get her tip on Cooper before or after that Rove interview.
Please notice that March is just as close to January as it is to May, Indeed, March 1 is obviously closer to January than to May.
We may never get the answers, but Fitzgerald’s step to take a second testimony from her under oath and that curious calender problem open a new set of questions.