Former vice president Dick Cheney told the FBI that he had no idea who leaked information to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA.
The FBI summary of Cheney’s interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had deep misgivings about Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence about Iraq.
Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame’s identity to the news media. At the end of Libby’s trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said “there is a cloud over the vice president” in the leaking of Plame’s identity.
After Libby’s conviction, former president George W. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, but rejected Cheney’s vehement appeals to pardon Libby, which would have canceled his conviction.
The FBI interview summary was released on Friday to a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued to get the material under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
In the interview, whose participants included Fitzgerald, Cheney told agents that he did not recall having a conversation with Bush about either Plame or her husband.
The vice president said he probably discussed Wilson with Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, but told the FBI he would not have talked to Rove about Wilson’s wife.
Cheney’s denials that he talked about Plame are among the few things in the lengthy interview with the FBI that Cheney appeared certain about. He repeatedly said he could not recall key events.
Among them, he said he did not recall discussing Wilson’s wife with Libby before her CIA employment was revealed by conservative columnist Robert Novak in mid-July 2003.
Evidence at Libby’s criminal trial showed that Cheney had told Libby about Wilson’s wife in mid-June 2003.
According to courtroom testimony, Rove was one of Novak’s sources for his column disclosing Plame’s CIA identity and Rove and Libby were sources for Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper, who also wrote a story identifying Plame.
Cheney said he was unaware of any discussions Libby may have had with Rove about Wilson or Wilson’s wife, and Cheney said Libby did not tell him about any such discussions.
The vice president advised the agents that he had no idea what Libby knew on the days before Plame’s CIA identity was publicly revealed.
Cheney said he did not recall whether he told Libby about Wilson’s wife and her employment at the CIA or if Libby revealed to the vice president his independent knowledge about that fact.
In a New York Times piece in July 2003, Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq’s efforts to buy a uranium “yellowcake” in the African nation of Niger. Bush referred to the yellowcake during his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union speech to Congress as he was trying to rally support for the war with Iraq. Yellowcake is a powdered form of uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon.
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