Leak investigators interview reporter
WASHINGTON -- A
State Department reporter Glenn Kessler submitted to a tape-recorded interview that will be provided to a grand jury investigating the disclosure last summer of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak.
Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed about conversations he had with I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, at Libby's urging. At the prosecutor's request, Libby and other White House aides have signed waivers saying they agree to release reporters they have talked to from keeping confidential any disclosures about Plame.
Kessler said he told prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that, during conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
In October, The Post reported that ''on July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction."
Novak had reported a similar account on July 14 that he said was provided him by two administration officials.
Fitzgerald has also subpoenaed reporters from NBC and Time magazine.
