Viveca Novak Leaves [em]Time[/em]

Time correspondent Viveca Novak, on leave since December after her embroilment in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case, left the magazine last week. Novak was one of three staffers in Time‘s Washington bureau to take a buyout in Time Inc.’s most recent round of staff reductions.

“She voluntarily resigned,” managing editor Jim Kelly said.

Novak was brought in to talk to special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in November, after the prosecutor learned that she had discussed the Plame leak with Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. In those discussions, Novak had told Luskin that Rove was a source for Time‘s Matt Cooper–a connection that the lawyer had previously not known.

Novak did not alert Time editors to her involvement in the investigation for 10 days, until Fitzgerald called her back to testify under oath. “Nobody was happy about it, least of all me,” Novak wrote for Time in December. That was her last Time byline.

Novak could not be reached for comment.

–Gabriel Sherman