U.S. President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, appeared on Wednesday before a grand jury that investigates the disclosure of a covert Central Intelligence Agency agent's identity.

This was the fifth time that Rove appeared before a federal grand jury in the leak case, which began in July 2003 when Valerie Plame's identity was published, eight days after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to make its case for war in Iraq.

Wilson had said administration officials leaked Plame's identity to retaliate for his public criticism of the president's rationale for war.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, met briefly Wednesday morning with the grand jury hearing the case at a courthouse in Washington.

It was not immediately known what questions Rove would face from the persecutor and the grand jury.

News reports said Rove's legal problems stemmed from the fact that it was not until more than a year into Fitzgerald's criminal investigation that the White House adviser told the prosecutor about his contact with a Time magazine reporter regarding Plame.

In his initial testimony to the grand jury in February 2004, Rove failed to disclose that he had ever discussed the issue of Plame with any reporters, but he came forward months later to change his story, acknowledging that he had talked with Matt Cooper of Time magazine in the summer of 2003 about Plame's CIA status.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis " Scooter" Libby, also implicated in the case, was charged last October in a five-count federal indictment, including obstruction, lying and making false statements to prosecutors and the grand jury.

Source: Xinhua