Rove's whole "I didn't know she was covert" defense has a rather large and gaping hole in it -- one I have no doubt Fitzgerald is fully aware of.
Think about it -- imagine you're a reporter. Rove calls up with a hot tip: "Wilson's wife recommended him for the Niger trip, she's CIA". He points you to two other Administration sources who can confirm.
You ask a few questions or Rove and the contacts he directs you to, getting the story they're pushing -- like "Why does it matter" and "So?" and "So you're saying it's all a set up?".
But what else do you do? You do basic fact checking -- just as a matter of course. One of the FEW facts you can independently verify is where Valerie Plame works -- everything else you're relying on Rove and the people he sends you too.
It doesn't take much digging to find out Valerie Plame works for Brewster Jennings. It's who pays her salary, it's the name on her FEC filings, it's on her tax returns -- it's her legal employer. NOT the CIA.
Even Robert Novak checked -- after all, he admitted he called the CIA and not only did they refuse to discuss whether she worked there, but asked him not to publish those speculations.
Of course, Novak published anyways -- Douchebag of Liberty and all. I think that the other reporters stayed silent -- not because they thought it was a BS story (it would be worth reporting, in their minds, just to see the WH defense) but because they quickly came to see that either Rove was out-and-out lying about Plame -- or she worked for the CIA in a covert capacity.
Now -- do you honestly believe NONE of the reporters bothered to call Rove back and demand to know why he said Plame was CIA when she worked for an energy company? I have no doubt several did, and I have no doubt Fitzgerald asked about it.
Remember, Walter Pincus claimed Rove was pushing the story BEFORE Wilson published his Op-Ed -- and obviously he was talking to Novak and others prior to Novak writing his own story. Even if Rove was originally ignorant of Plame's status (unlikely), reporters would have informed him he was wrong on Plame's place of emplyoment -- which is enough to change "unknowingly" to "knowingly". I suspect Fitzgerald is VERY interested in what reporters told Rove -- specifically, when the first reporter mentioned that his or her fact-checking showed Plame as working for Brewster Jennings.