Vice President Lied As White House Sought To Defuse Leak Inquiry

Did Vice President Dick Cheney help cover-up the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson in the months after conservative columnist Robert Novak first disclosed her identity?

That's one of the questions Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely trying to figure out. I'’s unclear what Cheney said to investigators back in 2004 when he was questioned--not under oath--about the leak, particularly what he knew and when he knew it.

The five-count criminal indictment handed up by a grand jury last month against Cheney's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, sheds new light on a pattern of strategic deception by the Vice President and the White House to defuse an inquiry into who leaked the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. Months after Plame's identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak, Cheney continued to hide the fact that he and his aides were intimately involved in disseminating classified information about her to journalists.