President George W. Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, testified on Friday to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name, the White House said. "He's doing his part to cooperate," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with Bush on campaign visits to Iowa and Wisconsin. Rove was questioned by the grand jury investigating the leak to the news media of the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Her identity was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in the summer of 2003 after Wilson wrote a newspaper column that questioned Bush's assertion in his State of the Union address that year that Iraq sought to get uranium from Africa. That assertion was part of Bush's justification for why Iraq needed to be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media. McClellan would not comment on the timing of Rove's summons to the grand jury, coming little more than two weeks before the Nov. 2, election. --More 0119 Local Time 2219 GMT
