US President George Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, on Friday made his fourth appearance before a grand jury in what was billed as a final attempt to convince federal prosecutors he did nothing illegal in the CIA leak case that is gripping Washington.
Before he gave evidence prosecutors had warned Bush's most trusted aide that there was no guarantee he would not be indicted over the leak of the name of a covert CIA operative. Charges could come as early as next week, with the White House said to be racked by uncertainty and foreboding.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is also said to be firmly in the firing line of special council Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation.
For the Bush administration the possibility of indictments could not come at a worse time, faced by plummeting ratings over its handling of the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina and now allegations of cronyism over the nomination of Harriet Miers, the president's former personal lawyer, for the vacant spot on the supreme court.
Rove made no comment yesterday as he arrived at the federal courthouse in Washington to begin his testimony after failing to enter unnoticed through a side door.
The two-year leak investigation was launched after the disclosure in July 2003 of the name of a CIA undercover official, Valerie Plume.
Her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, claimed that her identity had been intentionally leaked by the administration in retribution against him for accusing the president of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Matt Cooper, a journalist for Time magazine, told the grand jury in July that Rove had told him on condition of anonymity that Mr Wilson's wife was a CIA agent and she had been instrumental in sending her husband to Africa in 2002 to check claims that Iraq had been buying uranium.
Meanwhile Judith Miller, the New York Times journalist sentenced for refusing to cooperate with the investigation, finally testified two weeks ago that she had spoken to Libby about Wilson's wife.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS