WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff learned about the CIA officer at the heart of a leak investigation in a conversation with Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes taken by Lewis Libby of his previously undisclosed June 12, 2003, conversation with Cheney appear to differ from Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about Valerie Plame from journalists, the lawyers said. They place Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson.
Wilson 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 Cheney knew that Plame worked at the CIA more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.
Libby's notes indicate that Cheney got his information about Plame from then-CIA Director George Tenet, in response to questions from Cheney about Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Cheney or Libby knew of her undercover status or that her identity was classified.
Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime -- if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
It would not be illegal for Cheney or Libby, both of whom presumably are cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a CIA officer or her link to an administration critic. But any effort by Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Cheney could be considered by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to be an effort to impede his inquiry.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Libby's legal status.
Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the grand jury term expires. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not known whether other officials also face indictment.
Lawyers said Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Plame may have had a role in dispatching Wilson on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program. But the notes, now in Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Libby first heard about Plame from Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Libby to protect Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.
The notes do not show that Cheney knew the name of Wilson's wife. But they show that Cheney did know and told Libby that she was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.
Some lawyers in the case have said Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false statement charge against Libby. They said it could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury.
No indication Cheney's a target
Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Fitzgerald was considering charging Cheney with wrongdoing. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what he said about the conversation with Libby or when Fitzgerald first learned of it.
Tenet was not available for comment Monday. Another former senior intelligence official said Tenet had been interviewed by Fitzgerald and his staff in early 2004 but never appeared before the grand jury. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the official said.
The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Valerie Plame from Tenet.
On Monday, Rove and Libby both attended a Cabinet meeting with President Bush as the White House continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is indicted will step aside.
On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Cheney and Libby, the Washington Post published a front page story reporting that the CIA had sent a retired American diplomat to the Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there.
The story did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in the New York Times.
