Filing suggests Cheney knew Plame

WASHINGTON – After former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV publicly criticized a key rationale for the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney wrote a note on a newspaper clipping raising the possibility that the critique resulted from a CIA-sponsored “junket” arranged by Wilson’s wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, according to court documents filed late Friday.

The filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is the second that names Cheney as a key White House official who questioned the legitimacy of Wilson’s examination of Iraqi nuclear ambitions.

It further suggests that Cheney helped originate the idea in his office that Wilson’s credibility was undermined by his link to Plame.

Fitzgerald’s filing states that Cheney passed the annotated article by Wilson to his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who Fitzgerald says subsequently discussed Wilson’s marriage to Plame in conversations with two reporters, despite the fact that Plame was a covert CIA officer and her name was not supposed to be revealed.

Fitzgerald does not allege in his filing that Cheney ordered Libby to disclose Plame’s identity. But he states that Cheney’s note to Libby helps “explain the context of, and provide a motive for” many of the later statements and actions by Libby. Libby was indicted last year for making false statements to FBI agents, obstruction of justice and perjury, mostly based on Libby’s testimony that he did not confirm Plame’s involvement in conversations with the two journalists.

Wilson’s credibility became a key issue for the White House because the results of his probe into Iraq’s nuclear program surfaced when the administration had already been hit by charges it had distorted intelligence before invading Iraq. Wilson had concluded after taking a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger two years earlier that evidence of Iraqi attempts to acquire nuclear weapons materials there was dubious.

A court filing last month by Fitzgerald – who has been gradually spelling out what he plans to say during Libby’s trial next year – stated that Cheney had expressed concern about whether Wilson’s trip was a junket set up by his wife. The new filing includes the precise annotations Cheney wrote on a copy of Wilson’s July 2003 article in the New York Times, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”

“Have they done this sort of thing before?” Cheney wrote. “Send an amb(assador) to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Fitzgerald’s filing states that Libby learned of Plame’s name from Cheney, in the course of discussions by the vice president’s office about how to respond to a June 2003 inquiry from Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson’s trip to Niger. Fitzgerald asserts those conversations – and earlier ones sparked by a May 2003 column about the trip in the Times – help demonstrate that Libby’s “disclosures to the press concerning Mr. Wilson’s wife were not casual disclosures.”

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment and referred questions to Fitzgerald’s office.