Dick Cheney,  Politics

Dick Cheney Watch: Did Lewis “Scooter” Libby Lie to Protect Boss?

October 25, 2005 /

Vice President Cheney speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, June 13, 2005. Cheney’s chief of staff first learned about the CIA officer at the center of a leak investigation in a conversation with Cheney weeks before her identity became public in July 2003, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The New York Times has Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report.

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

These are interesting facts but does it make a case against Scooter Libby or the Vice President?

Does the discrepancy between Mr. Libby’s notes and his testimony to a federal grand jury rise to a crime?

This investigation has been going on for over two years and the taxpayers have picked up the tab.

Flap handicaps Fitzgerald files NO charges against Scooter Libby or Karl Rove. And the Grand Jury simply expires on Friday.

There is simply NO criminal conduct here.

The White House reaction to this revelation by the N.Y Times is White House Sidesteps Cheney Questions

Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, arrives, Monday, Oct. 24, 2004, at the side door at the White House to attend a cabinet meeting. Prosecutors have gathered evidence that top White House aides Karl Rove and Libby exchanged information about their contacts with reporters regarding Valerie Plame in the days just before the CIA officer’s cover was blown.

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