Cheney could testify against former chief of staff

COULD US Vice-President Dick Cheney be a star prosecution witness in the perjury trial of his former chief of staff?

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested in a court filing on Wednesday that Cheney would be a logical witness for the prosecution because the vice president could authenticate notes he jotted on a copy of a New York Times opinion column by a critic of the US-led war in Iraq.

Fitzgerald said Cheney’s “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, the vice president’s former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how Libby learned CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity and what he later told reporters.

“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,” the filing said.

Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said, “Since the inquiry relates to a case in the courts, I refer you to the Office of the Special Counsel.”

In the Times opinion-editorial on July 6, 2003, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson — Plame’s husband — accused the 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 a version of the allegation, attributed to British intelligence, wound up in President Bush’s State of the Union address in 2003.

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 was married to Wilson and that he had forgotten that Cheney had told him.

In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson’s allegations that they discussed them daily. “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 evidence that he says shows Libby lied about outing Plame.

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 at Libby’s trial, which is scheduled for January.