Cheney Says He Can't Discuss CIA Leak Case - Yahoo! News

Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday he would not discuss whether he had told a top aide to give secret information to reporters to help justify the invasion of Iraq.

"It's nothing I can talk about," Cheney said in an interview with Fox News Channel. "I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case."

Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified to a grand jury that he was authorized to disclose in July 2003 the contents of a classified national intelligence estimate "by his superiors," according to court documents, which did not identify the superiors. Democrats have demanded to know whether Cheney was one of those superiors, noting that there was no higher ranking aide to the vice president than Libby, who reported directly to Cheney.

Cheney said there is an executive order that gives the vice president, along with the president, the authority to declassify information. But he said, "I don't want to get into" whether he has ever done it on his own.

"I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions," Cheney said.

Libby was indicted last year on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he told reporters. He is not charged with leaking classified information.

Plame's identity was published in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence about whether Iraq sought to buy uranium in Niger.

Cheney says he may be witness in CIA leak case - Yahoo! News

Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday he may be called as a witness in the case of his former aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who faces perjury and other charges in the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Cheney refused to comment on reports that he directed Libby to use classified material to discredit a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq war effort, saying: "It's nothing I can talk about."

"I've cooperated fully, including being interviewed, as well, by a special prosecutor," Cheney said in an interview on the Fox News Channel. "I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case."

Court papers released last week show that Libby was authorized to disclose classified information to news reporters by "his superiors," in an effort to counteract diplomat Joe Wilson's charge that the Bush administration twisted intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons to justify the 2003 invasion.

The National Journal, a U.S. weekly magazine, citing attorneys familiar with the matter, reported that Cheney was among those superiors referred to in a letter from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to Libby's lawyers.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice in the leak of the identity of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame, which effectively ended her career at the

CIA.

Cheney's name has surfaced in other court documents as well. According to an appeals court decision made public this month, "the vice president informed Libby 'in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion"' that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA one month before her identity was made public.