Rove was correcting ‘false’ charges

When senior Bush adviser Karl Rove uttered the now-famous words “Wilson’s wife” to a Time magazine reporter, the intent was to correct errors being spread by former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, not to unmask his CIA employee wife, Mr. Rove’s attorney told The Washington Times yesterday.

“Karl’s purpose in speaking with Time about this was to discourage them from circulating statements or allegations that were false and soon to be proven false,” Robert Luskin said.

“Wilson had been saying publicly that the vice president was responsible for sending him” to Niger, Mr. Luskin said. “That was false.”

Meanwhile, President Bush yesterday refused to comment on the reports that Mr. Rove mentioned “Wilson’s wife,” CIA employee Valerie Plame, to a reporter.

“We’re in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and this is a serious investigation,” Mr. Bush told reporters in a brief question-and-answer session in the White House Cabinet Room.

“I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports,” Mr. Bush said. “I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed.”

Also yesterday, Time reporter Matthew Cooper, whom Mr. Rove cleared 18 months ago of the promise of confidentiality, appeared before the Washington grand jury for 21/2 hours.

“I testified openly and honestly,” he said outside the courthouse, without divulging details. “I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That’s something the special counsel’s going to have to determine.”

Mr. Rove’s attorney said his client talked to Mr. Cooper on July 11, 2003, to correct errors by Mr. Wilson.

The former diplomat, who later joined the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, wrote in a July 6, 2003, op-ed piece that he was dispatched to Niger the previous February on the advice of “Vice President Dick Cheney’s office” to investigate a report that the African country had sold uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s.

“The [CIA] officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office,” he wrote.

Mr. Cheney said he never met nor knew of Mr. Wilson and never saw such a report.

A July 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger on the suggestion of his wife. The report included testimony and documentation that she proposed his name for the trip.

Five days after Mr. Wilson wrote that he was unable to substantiate the report about Niger, Mr. Cooper sent an e-mail to his boss saying Mr. Rove had told him it was “Wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues, who authorized the trip.”

Mr. Cooper, who had called Mr. Rove to discuss welfare reform but also asked about Mr. Wilson, wrote in that e-mail that “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an• suspect but so is the report [Mr. Wilson wrote after the trip]. [Rove] implied strongly that there’s still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger.”

Republicans went on the offensive yesterday. Mr. Wilson “lied to the country about who got him the job,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show. “The Senate intelligence committee is scathing about that.”

But Democrats kept up their drumbeat, calling for Mr. Bush to fire his senior aide.

“The president has said that anyone who leaked the identity of Ms. Plame should no longer be part of his administration,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said. “The American people and Congress expect the president to keep his word. That means firing Karl Rove and anyone else in the White House if they identified her as a CIA clandestine service officer.”