Cheney Said to Have Told Aide of Plame

Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff learned about the CIA officer at the center of a leak investigation during conversations with Cheney, a news report suggests -- rather than through conversations with reporters, as the aide had previously testified.

The account in today’s editions of the New York Times, which cited unidentified lawyers connected with the case as sources, says that Cheney talked with his aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on June 12, 2003, nearly a month before the identity of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame, was leaked to reporters. The leak occurred after Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly criticized the Bush administration for “twisting” intelligence in making the case for war with Iraq.

A spokeswoman for Cheney declined Monday night to comment on the report, citing White House policy to refrain from discussing the investigation. Calls and e-mails to Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, were not returned.

But a senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said that such a meeting between the vice president and his top advisor was not surprising, particularly because it occurred the same day that the Washington Post, in a front-page article, reported that the CIA had dispatched a former diplomat to investigate whether Iraq had sought to obtain nuclear materials from the African nation of Niger. The report added that the diplomat -- subsequently identified as Wilson but not named in that article -- had been sent after questions were raised by Cheney’s office.

“Nobody should fall out of their chair if they hear that the vice president discussed classified information trying to determine facts with his national security advisor and chief of staff,” the strategist said.

It is a felony to knowingly leak the identity of a covert operative, and special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has been investigating the possibility of a crime for nearly two years. He is expected to announce indictments this week.

Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, have been the White House officials most prominently mentioned in the case. Both have appeared before a grand jury.

Although prosecutors have focused on Cheney’s office, interviewing at least half a dozen members of his staff, this is the first report that places the vice president in the chain of events that may have led up to the release of the operative’s identity.

Libby’s notes, obtained by prosecutors, indicated that Cheney got his information about Plame from George J. Tenet, then the director of the CIA, in response to questions asked by Cheney, the New York Times reported. It would not be a crime for Cheney and Tenet to have discussed a covert CIA operative’s role.

A former CIA official said that Tenet declined to comment on the Times report, but the official noted that Tenet “has not been in touch” with investigators for more than 15 months, suggesting that this chain of events may not be of keen interest to Fitzgerald. As of last week, Cheney had not been interviewed by prosecutors since last year.

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Times staff writer Richard B. Schmitt contributed to this report.