Cheney May Give Evidence in Libby Trial

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, could face a court grilling before a criminal inquiry into the leaking of a CIA agent's name in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Mr Cheney may be called to give evidence at the criminal trial of his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who has been accused of revealing the identity of Valerie Plame.

Mr Libby was charged last October with five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements about the affair, after he insisted to the FBI and to a Washington inquiry that he had not leaked her name.

Critics of the US government claim that Ms Plame's identity was deliberately leaked to journalists to discredit the views of her husband, Joseph Wilson, a retired ambassador and high-ranking critic of the Iraq war.

In the lead-up to the war, the US government had cited intelligence claiming that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium ore from Niger as evidence of Iraq's nuclear programme.

But Mr Wilson concluded the claims were bogus, following a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in 2002. Critics allege that Ms Plame's name was leaked to the media eight days after Mr Wilson went public with his doubts, in an attempt to discredit his views by suggesting that the trip was a "junket" arranged by his wife.

Mr Libby is believed to have originally told prosecutors that he had heard about Ms Plame's CIA activity as a rumour from journalists.

But administration critics claim he was told to leak her identity by his superiors, possibly including Mr Cheney and President George Bush's then-chief of staff, Karl Rove. The latter could still face criminal charges over the affair.

No direct evidence of a leak has emerged, but if Mr Libby is found guilty in his trial next January it could indicate that his original statements were part of a cover-up.

In a court filing delivered in Washington late last night, the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that knowledge of Mr Cheney's "state of mind" would be important to the criminal investigation into Mr Libby's conduct.

Mr Libby "shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction", he wrote.

"The state of mind of the vice-president as communicated to defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether 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 stated.

Mr Cheney's response to Mr Wilson's initial claims is indicated by notes he wrote on a copy of the New York Times article in which Mr Wilson first raised his doubts.

"Have they done this sort of thing before?" he wrote. "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?"

Mr Libby has insisted that he only discussed Ms Plame with Mr Cheney months after her husband's article was published, but Mr Fitzgerald wrote that it was "more likely than not" that the subject was raised within days of the article, since Mr Cheney referred to her in his notes to the article.

Mr Libby has told the inquiry that Mr Cheney was "keen to get the truth out" after the article appeared. But he says he did not read the notes the vice-president attached to the article, although it was possible that his "eye went across it".