FBI asked to probe Plame e-mail controversy

updated 12:11 p.m. ET March 12, 2008

WASHINGTON - An ethics advocacy group has asked the FBI to investigate the White House e-mail controversy, saying electronic messages about the Valerie Plame affair may have been destroyed.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is basing its request on a White House document describing an effort to recover a week's worth of missing e-mail in 2003 from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

White House technicians eventually retrieved e-mail from the missing week, but it is unclear whether other e-mail from the vice president's office that week has not been found. Federal prosecutors sought the e-mail in the probe of who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's CIA identity.

Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the Plame investigation.

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