CIA Agent in Leak Furore Sues Cheney and White House Aides

The CIA leak scandal took a damaging new turn for the Bush administration last night when the intelligence operative at the centre of the affair filed a civil lawsuit against vice-president Dick Cheney and other senior White House figures.

Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, are seeking damages against Mr Cheney, his former chief of staff Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, George Bush's most trusted aide, arguing they conspired to discredit and punish the couple after Mr Wilson publicly questioned the president's rationale for war in Iraq.

Documents filed in court in Washington accuse the three men - along with 10 other unnamed government personnel - of an "anonymous 'whispering campaign' designed to discredit and injure the plaintiffs and to deter other critics from publicly speaking out". The conspiracy put the lives of the couple and their children at risk, the lawsuit claims.

Ms Wilson's name was leaked after an article by Mr Wilson, a former US ambassador, appeared in the New York Times in 2003. He described how he had been sent to Africa by the CIA to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Mr Wilson said he found no evidence for the allegations, but Mr Bush still included them in his 2003 state of the union speech. Eight days after the article appeared, the journalist Robert Novak revealed the identity of Mr Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative.

Mr Libby already faces criminal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but last month it emerged the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, would not be seeking charges against Mr Rove. None the less, the Wilsons face an uphill battle, not least because government officials enjoy widespread immunities from civil suits.