WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has summoned Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, to return next week to testify to a federal grand jury in a step that could mean charges will be filed in the case, lawyers in the case said Thursday.
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.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fitzgerald has indicated that he is not entirely finished with Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who recently testified before the grand jury after serving 85 days in jail. According to a lawyer familiar with the case, Mr. Fitzgerald has asked Ms. Miller to meet him next Tuesday to further discuss her conversations with I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.
Ms. Miller went to jail rather than divulge the identity of her source, but agreed to testify after Mr. Libby released her from a pledge of confidentiality.
Mr. Fitzgerald has not indicated whether he plans to summon Ms. Miller for further testimony before the grand jury.
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.
In coming days, the lawyers said, Mr. Fitzgerald is likely to request that several other White House officials return to the grand jury to testify about their actions in the case - appearances that are believed to be pivotal as the prosecutor proceeds toward a charging decision.
Mr. Fitzgerald is also re-examining grand jury testimony by Mr. Libby, the lawyers said, but it is unknown whether he has been asked to appear again before the grand jury. Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph A. Tate, did not respond to telephone messages left on Thursday at his office.
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.
But at the end of that conversation, Mr. Rove told Mr. Novak that he had already heard the outlines of the columnist's account.
The conversation with Mr. Novak took place several days before Mr. Rove spoke with a second reporter, Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper said later in an e-mail message to his editors that Mr. Rove had talked about the operative, although not by name.
In recent days, Mr. Rove has been less visible than usual at the White House, fueling speculation that he is distancing himself from Mr. Bush or has been sidelined. But according to a senior administration official, Mr. Rove and his wife are on a long-planned trip visiting colleges with their teenage son. Several lawyers who have been involved in the case expressed surprise and concern over the recent turn of events and are increasingly convinced that Mr. Fitzgerald could be poised to charge someone with a crime for discussing with journalists the identity of a C.I.A. officer.
The C.I.A operative was Valerie Wilson, also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Her identity was first publicly disclosed in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column by Mr. Novak, which suggested that she had a role in arranging a 2002 trip to Africa by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador. The purpose of the trip was to look into intelligence reports that Iraq had sought nuclear fuel from Niger.
Mr. Novak's column was published a week after Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times on July 6, 2003, discussing his trip. Mr. Wilson wrote that he traveled to Africa at the request of the C.I.A. after the office of Vice President Dick Cheney had raised questions about the possible uranium sales. Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Niger.
Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on whether there was a deliberate effort to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for his column and its criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Recently lawyers said that they believed the prosecutor may be applying new legal theories to bring charges in the case.
One new approach appears to involve the possible use of Chapter 37 of the federal espionage and censorship law, which makes it a crime for anyone who "willfully communicates, delivers, transfers or causes to be communicated" to someone "not entitled to receive it" classified information relating the national defense matters.
Under this broad statute, a government official or a private citizen who passed classified information to anyone else in or outside the government could potentially be charged with a felony, if they transferred the information to someone without a security clearance to receive it.
The lawyers who discussed the investigation declined to be identified by name citing the ongoing nature of the inquiry and Mr. Fitzgerald's requests not to talk about it.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said Ms. Miller had been cautioned by her lawyers not to discuss the substance of her grand jury testimony until Mr. Fitzgerald finished questioning her.
"We have launched a vigorous reporting effort that I hope will answer outstanding questions about Judy's part in this drama," Mr. Keller said. "This development may slow things down a little, but we owe our readers as full a story as we can tell, as soon as we can tell it."
