Time: Rove's Lawyer Told of Conversation

By PETE YOST, Associated Press WriterMon Dec 12, 3:53 AM ET

During much of 2004, Karl Rove's lawyer was on notice that his client, a senior aide to President Bush, might have disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA status to a Time magazine reporter.

It wasn't until Time's Matt Cooper was under intense pressure from investigators to reveal his source that Rove, Bush's top political adviser, corrected his grand jury testimony, telling Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of the conversation he said he'd forgotten.

The timeline of the Rove camp's early knowledge emerged Sunday in a first-person account by Time reporter Viveca Novak.

Novak said she passed along the information to Rove attorney Robert Luskin when he said, in effect, that "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt," Novak wrote. "I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me."