Washington ? Top White House aide Karl Rove made his fifth grand jury appearance in the Valerie Plame affair Wednesday, undergoing several hours of questioning about a new issue that has come to light since the last time he testified.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment at the conclusion of the grand jury session.

A week ago, Rove, the architect of Bush’s election victories, gave up his policy duties at the White House. He is returning to a full-time focus on politics with Republicans facing major problems in the upcoming midterm elections.

Wednesday’s session is believed to be only the second time Fitzgerald has met with a new grand jury examining questions left unanswered in the leaking of Plame’s CIA identity. The only other time Fitzgerald was seen going before the new panel was Dec. 7.

The previous grand jury looking into the CIA leak expired Oct. 28, the day it indicted Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.

The only new issue in the CIA leak probe known to involve Rove is a contact his attorney, Robert Luskin, had with Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak.

The contact is important because during it, the Time reporter told Luskin that Rove might have disclosed Plame’s CIA status in 2003 to another Time reporter, Matt Cooper.

The Luskin-Novak conversation occurred many months before Rove belatedly revealed to the prosecutor that he had spoken with Cooper. Rove says he’d forgotten about his conversation with Cooper.

Rove’s legal problems stem from the fact that it was more than a year into the CIA leak investigation before he revealed the Cooper conversation.

Rove “testified voluntarily and unconditionally at the request of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to explore a matter raised since Mr. Rove’s last appearance,” Luskin said in a statement. “Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.”

According to Luskin, Fitzgerald has advised that Rove is not a target of the investigation. A target is someone likely to be indicted.

One legal expert, Washington lawyer Stanley Brand, says Rove’s latest grand jury appearance is an ominous sign for the White House aide rather than an indication the probe is coming to an end.

“I don’t think you need to drag a guy before a grand jury to wrap up,” Brand said. “Rove is testifying in an investigation in which a White House aide has already been indicted for lying.”

Several days after Rove’s conversations with conservative columnist Robert Novak and Cooper in July 2003, both the columnist and Cooper wrote stories identifying Plame as a CIA officer.

The exposure of her CIA employment came little more than a week after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate an Iraqi nuclear threat.

Robert Novak is not related to Viveca Novak.