Substantive details are a little hard to come by, but I feel compelled to offer a round-up of the latest Plame-related news before someone comes and takes away my “Liberal Bloggers ‘R Us” card.<\/p>\n
* The WaPo reported<\/a> today, “The CIA leak investigation returned to a more active stage yesterday as a special prosecutor presented information to a grand jury for the first time in six weeks.”<\/p>\n * Yesterday, Patrick Fitzgerald hosted a three-hour grand jury session<\/a> where he was accompanied by three deputies and an FBI agent, but he didn’t call any witnesses, instead bringing the new grand jury up to date. It prompted some speculation<\/a> about upcoming indictments, with one former U.S. attorney noting<\/a> that Fitzgerald wouldn’t bother to summarize matters for a new grand jury unless he were planning to pursue additional criminal charges.<\/p>\n * Today, Fitzgerald spent more than an hour at a law firm representing Viveca Novak, the Time magazine reporter who’s a friend of Karl Rove’s lawyer, and whose testimony is expected to be important in the case. As Salon’s Tim Grieve noted<\/a>, Novak reportedly “alerted Rove’s lawyer to the fact that Rove had leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to Matthew Cooper at a time when Rove wasn’t “remembering” any such conversation and Cooper and Time were fighting to keep it secret.”<\/p>\n * For her part, Novak (who is not related to Robert Novak) hired a heavy-hitter defense attorney<\/a> to represent her in this case.<\/p>\n