Rove's Testimony

Karl Rove will testify in front of special prosecutor Fitzpatrick's Plame Affair investigation for the fourth time.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has held discussions in recent days with lawyers for several administration officials suggesting that he is considering whether to charge them with a crime over the disclosure of an intelligence operative's identity in a 2003 newspaper column.

Mr. Fitzgerald is said by some of the lawyers to have indicated that he has not made up his mind about whether to accuse anyone of wrongdoing and will use the remaining days before the grand jury's term expires on Oct. 28 to decide.

Mr. Rove has appeared before the grand jury on three previous occasions.

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Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Mr. Rove, said that Mr. Rove has not received a target letter, which are sometimes used by prosecutors to advise people that they are likely to be charged with a crime. Mr. Luskin said Thursday that "the special counsel has said that he has made no charging decision."

Mr. Fitzgerald's conversations with lawyers in recent days have cast a cloud over the inquiry, sweeping away the confidence once expressed by a number of officials and their lawyers who have said that he was unlikely to find any illegality.

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Mr. Luskin said that he had offered to have Mr. Rove return to the grand jury if needed to clarify any questions that were raised by the testimony in July by Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine who was questioned about a conversation that he had with Mr. Rove in July 2003.

"Karl's consistent position is that he will cooperate any time, any place," Mr. Luskin said.

Mr. Rove has been caught up in the inquiry since the F.B.I. began investigating the matter in 2003. He has told investigators that he spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak a few days after the operative's husband wrote an Op-Ed article for The Times, a lawyer in the case has said. In that conversation, Mr. Rove said that he learned the operative's name from the columnist and the circumstances in which her husband traveled to Africa.