Libby And Cheney Discussed Leaking Identity Of Plame For Wilson's Criticism Of Iraq
Libby and Cheney discussed CIA spy, according to evidence
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/16632487.htm
By James Gordon Meek
New York Daily News
2/7/2007
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney discussed CIA spy Valerie Plame with Lewis (Scooter) Libby and may have even once considered leaking her identity to discredit her husband's criticism of the Iraq war, evidence in Libby's trial suggested Monday.
Libby, Cheney's former right-hand man, told the FBI in the fall of 2003 that he and his boss "may have" discussed leaking information to the media about Plame to hit back at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, FBI agent Deborah Bond testified.
Bond said Libby initially admitted that he recalled asking Cheney to decide what to do with the "curiosity" that Plame allegedly dispatched her husband to Niger to see if Iraq had bought weapons-grade uranium there. Wilson said publicly that Iraq had not done so - contradicting a key Bush administration justification for the war.
"Libby had conversations with the VP about the wife," Bond scribbled in her notes from a fall 2003 FBI interview of Libby.
One key conversation took place on a flight aboard Air Force Two several months earlier, when Cheney and Libby huddled over the crisis caused by Wilson's statements.
"Libby thinks he may have mentioned to the VP, `Do you want me to get anything out on Wilson wife?'" Bond wrote in her interview notes.
It's not clear whether Cheney or Libby knew Plame's job was classified, but no one has been charged with outing a covert agent.
Libby is on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI and a grand jury about how he found out that Plame was in the CIA. His lawyers Monday challenged Bond's notes, saying they were incomplete.
Prosecutors on Monday also played for the jury hours of Libby's audiotaped grand jury testimony, in which he said that Cheney informed him "in an offhand manner, as a curiosity," that Wilson was married to a CIA operative.
"Not everybody's wife worked there - it was a new fact," Libby testified in March 2004.
