WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney might be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing yesterday.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war.
Fitzgerald said Cheney's “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president's former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters.
Libby “shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,” the prosecutor wrote. “Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Plame's) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.”
In the Times article, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to Niger to determine whether Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.
Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation wound up in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
Cheney wrote on the article, “Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador 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?”
Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson's article was published.
In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson's allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. “He was very keen to get the truth out,” Libby testified, quoting Cheney as saying, “Let's get everything out.”
The prosecutor wants to use Cheney's notes on the Wilson article to corroborate other evidence he has that Libby lied about outing Plame to reporters.
In a filing last week, Libby's lawyers said Fitzgerald would not call Cheney as a witness and would have a hard time getting the vice president's notes admitted into evidence.
