Prosecutor: Cheney deeply involved in CIA leak case

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Vice President
Dick Cheney was deeply involved in the leak of a former CIA agent's
identity in the summer of 2003, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
said Tuesday.

    In his opening statement in the CIA
leak trial, Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby in 2003 that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson,
worked for the CIA and Libby spread that information to reporters.

    Fitzgerald said Libby "he made up a story" when the FBI and grand jury asked about what he had done in the leak case.

    Libby, who was charged with perjury
and obstruction and resigned in October 2005, told investigators
probing who had leaked Wilson's identity that he learned her identity
from NBC News reporter Tim Russert, not from the vice president. But
Fitzgerald told jurors on Tuesday that was a lie because Libby had
already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White
House.

    "You can't learn something on Thursday that you're giving out on Monday," he said.

    The disclosure of Wilson's identity
in July 2003 set off a chain of events, which included the appointment
of Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor to investigate the leak case
and a grand jury's indictment of Libby for lying to investigators about
his own conversations with reporters regarding Wilson.

    Wilson's identity was made public
in a newspaper column, days after her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former
diplomat, criticized the Bush administration for "twisting"
intelligence to justify the Iraq war.