Cheney's Role in CIA Leak Exposed: NYT Says Cheney Gave Valerie Plame's Name to Libby

Lawyers involved in the case say the two discussed the CIA operative – Valerie Plame – on June 12, 2003 – weeks before her undercover status was outed in the press. Plame is the wife of former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has accused the White House outing his wife because he had publicly criticized the Iraq war.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Libby and Cheney also appears to run counter to Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he first learned about Plame from reporters. According to the Times, the notes do not show that Cheney knew the name of Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Cheney did know, and told Libby she was employed by the CIA and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip to Niger. The notes also indicate Cheney had gotten his information about Plame from George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Wilson.

The grand jury is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when their term expires. Reports have indicated both Libby and President Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove face the possibility of indictment.

At a cabinet meeting at the White House Monday, President Bush said, "This is a very serious investigation." While the case is focused on the outing of an undercover operative, it centers on the administration’s justification for the invasion of Iraq. The mainstream media is now focusing again on the faulty claims of weapons of mass destruction. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department for three years writes "Some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld."

* Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center’s National Security Project. He is the author of the book: "Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives Are Putting the World at Risk."

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Several dozen government officials have vacated their posts since the Bush administration took office. We speak with Nick Turse about some of the more well-known figures who compile the list of “the fallen,” who have left either resigned as protest, quit or have been forced out.

As the possibility that officials high up in the Bush administration face indictments this week, we take a look at other officials who were forced out or resigned because of the stances they took against policies of the administration. In an article posted on TomDispatch.com, titled the "Fallen Legion," writer Nick Turse compiled a list of these people and their reasons for leaving. Nick writes about “a seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President’s policies -- from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental standards -- which these women and men found to be beyond the pale.”

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