“Because if there are indictments, it will not only be people close to
the president, the vice president of the United States, but they will
raise questions about whether criminal acts were perpetrated to help
get the country into war.”
Yes, obviously so. Of course the Novak column came out a year after the war began and the indictments would be for perjury about leaking to the press (or obstruction of that investigation into said leak) which also took place long after the war. So, obviously in Gergen logic, such indictments would directly and immediately raise the possibility that criminal acts were perpetrated to help get the country into war.