Leak Probe Cliffhanger Continues

Washington remains abuzz over possible indictments in the CIA leak investigation led by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, with the term of the grand jury set to expire Friday.

The White House has braced for the possibility that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, could face charges.

CBS News correspondent Bill Plante reports the tension at the White House continues to escalate.

In public, at least, the president is ignoring the investigation and his spokesman says people here are too busy doing their jobs to care.

"We're continuing to focus on what the American people care most about. Those are the things that we can do something about," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday. "We obviously continue to follow developments in the news."

Libby and Rove arrived for work at the White House Thursday as usual. Rove attended the daily meeting of the senior staff, but Libby did not and was said to be in a security briefing. Libby misses senior staff about half the time because of intelligence briefings and other issues on Cheney's schedule, an official said.

Rove's legal team made contingency plans, consulting with former Justice Department official Mark Corallo about what defenses could be mounted in court and in public.

Fitzgerald met with Rove attorney Robert Luskin at a private law firm office Tuesday, heightening White House fears for Rove's future.

On Wednesday, Fitzgerald had a confidential lunchtime meeting with a federal judge after a grand jury listened to three hours of testimony in the case.

The administrative assistant to Thomas Hogan, the chief judge of U.S. District Court in the nation's capital, confirmed Hogan's meeting with Fitzgerald. The assistant, Sheldon Snook, declined to comment on what was discussed.

CBS News chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports that Fitzgerald was not asking for a grand jury extension during his meeting with the federal judge, leaving people to wonder whether he was seeking sealed indictments, or something else.

No witnesses were seen going into the grand jury area, only Fitzgerald and his deputies.

Away from the federal courthouse, FBI agents conducted a handful of last-minute interviews to check facts key to the case.

Fitzgerald could charge one or more administration aides with violating a law prohibiting the intentional unmasking of an undercover CIA officer. The prosecutor has also examined other possible crimes such as mishandling classified information, making false statements or obstruction of justice.

Fitzgerald has been in Washington since Monday and over the past two days dispatched FBI agents to conduct 11th-hour interviews, according to lawyers close to the investigation, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

One set of interviews occurred in the neighborhood of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was revealed as an undercover CIA officer. Roberts reports that investigators talked to Plame's neighbors, including Marc Lefkowitz who was interviewed Monday night.

"They said, 'Did you know Valerie Plame's identity?' and I said, 'No,'" Lefkowitz said.

Two lawyers familiar with the activities said the interviews involved basic fact-checking and did not appear to plow new ground.

Fitzgerald may want to establish that Plame had carefully protected her CIA identity, part of the process of determining whether the disclosure of her name amounted to a crime.

During the investigation, prosecutors forced testimony from journalists about confidential sources. They assembled evidence that Rove talked about Wilson's wife with columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper before both reporters wrote stories outing Plame. And the prosecutors gathered evidence that Libby gave information about Wilson's wife to Cooper and on three occasions to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

When Novak disclosed Plame's name, the columnist said he had two senior administration officials for sources. Rove is said to be one of the sources, but the other isn't publicly known.

As the White House's original denials collapsed, administration defenders said that the source of any information Rove and Libby may have passed on about Plame came from reporters and not from classified sources.

But in the past two weeks, that assertion has been undercut with the revelation that Libby got information from Cheney before the aide met with reporters, and that Rove may have gotten information from Libby.

Prosecutors have zeroed in on inconsistencies. Rove and Cooper differed over the original reason for their contact. Prosecutors have raised concern that Rove at first testified only about his contact with Novak without acknowledging the Cooper discussion.

After Rove's attorney located an e-mail referring to that conversation, Rove volunteered to return to the grand jury and discuss his conversation with Cooper.