| Fitzgerald calls new grand jury after woodward testimony { November 19 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/11/19/a3.nat.cialeak.1119.p1.php?section=nation_worldhttp://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/11/19/a3.nat.cialeak.1119.p1.php?section=nation_world
Fitzgerald calls new grand jury in Plame case By Eric Lichtblau The New York Times Published: Saturday, November 19, 2005
WASHINGTON - The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case said Friday that he would use a new grand jury in his continuing investigation, a development that seems certain to extend the political cloud hanging over the Bush administration and could draw new players into the investigation.
The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, told a federal judge in a court filing that he would begin additional proceedings before a grand jury different from the one that brought an indictment last month against I. Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The 18-month term of the previous grand jury expired last month. In his previous statements, Fitzgerald had left the door open to using a new grand jury in the case.
The prosecutor also made clear in the new court filing that ``the investigation is ongoing,'' after saying last month that ``the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded.''
Fitzgerald would not comment after the hearing on his decision to go before a new grand jury, but legal analysts and law enforcement officials said the development suggested that he might be considering calling new witnesses to look at fresh evidence.
The case generated even greater scrutiny and speculation this week after the disclosure by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that a confidential source told him in June 2003 that the wife of the former diplomat Joseph Wilson, who became a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi intelligence, worked at the CIA.
Woodward said he gave sworn testimony to Fitzgerald on Monday after his source went to the prosecutor, for reasons still unexplained, to disclose their two-year-old conversation.
Legal experts said it was possible that Fitzgerald might want to take Woodward and his source before a grand jury to explore the episode, which alters the timeline of events that the prosecutor laid out last month against Libby.
The identity of Woodward's source remains a mystery. More than a dozen top Bush administration officials, including the president and vice president, have directly or indirectly denied telling Woodward of Wilson's wife's role at the CIA. On Friday, Anna Perez, who served in 2003 as the top communications strategist on the staff of the National Security Council, joined those who have issued denials.
But a handful of officials have declined to comment, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in Asia with President Bush. Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, has not replied to messages.
On Friday, Time magazine reported new details about dealings between Woodward and the current or former administration official who first told him about the role of Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, at the CIA. Time reported on its Web site that Woodward sought on three occasions to persuade his source to release him from his pledge of confidentiality, once in 2004 and twice this year.
The final effort, Woodward told the magazine, occurred after Fitzgerald's Oct. 28 news conference announcing the indictment of Libby, when the prosecutor said Libby was the first administration official known to have discussed Wilson's identity to a reporter when he spoke with Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, on June 23, 2003.
According to the magazine, Woodward recognized then that his source had told him about Wilson earlier, sometime in mid-June.
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