Cheney to FBI: No idea who leaked Plame's identity

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 the former spy'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" regarding the leaking of Plame's identity.

A summary of the FBI's interview with the then-vice president reflects that he had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In the FBI's interview, Cheney's memory of key events appeared hazy.

The 28-page interview summary was released Friday to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued to get the material under the Freedom of Information Act.

Cheney told FBI agents that he did not recall discussing Wilson's wife with Libby before her CIA employment was publicly revealed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Libby's own notes produced at his trial reflect that Cheney told him about the CIA employment of Wilson's wife in mid-June 2003, a month before Plame's CIA job became public knowledge.

Following Libby's conviction, President George W. Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence but rejected Cheney's appeals to pardon Libby.

In the interview, whose participants included Fitzgerald, the vice president said the identity of Valerie Wilson and her employment were not high on his radar screen and that her employment with the CIA and relationship to Wilson did not figure prominently in his thinking. Cheney also told agents that he did not recall having a conversation about either Plame or her husband with Bush.

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.

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