Sunday May 14 2006 . All times are London time.
New twist in CIA ‘outing’ inquiry puts focus on Cheney
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
US vice-president Dick Cheney’s alleged role in the outing of Valerie Plame, a former covert Central Intelligence Agency agent, has come under greater scrutiny following the release of questions he wrote on a newspaper article penned by her husband.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a special prosecutor, is investigating whether administration officials deliberately leaked the identity of Ms Plame to the media as part of a campaign to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson.
Mr Wilson, a former ambassador, wrote a July 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times claiming the White House had twisted intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.
In it, he wrote that he went to Niger in 2002 at the CIA’s request to check out reports that the African nation had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq in the late 1990s and to determine whether there was any evidence to back up claims that Saddam Hussein, then Iraq’s president, had attempted to buy nuclear materials from Niger.
Shortly after Mr Wilson’s article appeared, the identity of Ms Plame as a covert CIA operative was leaked to journalists. The copy of the article where Mr Fitzgerald said Mr Cheney made his notes asks if it is usual for former ambassadors to travel for the government to check out reports. “Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?” asks one notation.
Mr Fitzgerald has already indicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Mr Cheney, on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying during interviews with Federal Bureau of Investigation officials investigating the case.
Mr Libby and senior Bush adviser Karl Rove spoke to reporters about Ms Plame before her identity was made public by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003.
Originally Posted by Kristy
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