Cheney denied knowing of Plame leak

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA.

An FBI summary of Cheney's interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had concerns about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who wrote in a 2003 New York Times opinion piece that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on 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, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" regarding the leaking of Plame's identity.

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

Cheney said 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.

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

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

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 occasional denials that he talked about Plame to various people at the White House are among the few things in the interview with the FBI that Cheney appeared certain about.

Cheney said he was not aware 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.

In his FBI interview, Cheney said his initial reaction to the Wilson article was that it was "amateur hour" out at the CIA.

Plame was outed in Novak's column as a CIA employee eight days after Wilson attacked the administration in the New York Times piece.

Cheney said it was then-CIA Director George Tenet who told him sometime before the July 6, 2003, publication of Wilson's opinion piece in The New York Times that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

Cheney said he could not recall if he mentioned the content of his conversation with Tenet to Libby, but the vice president said that if he had shared it with anyone, it would have been Libby.