Bush braces for a stormy week

WASHINGTON - It could be a rough week for President Bush, with two key White House aides facing the possibility of being indicted in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s name and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers bracing for more tough questions from senators.

Even Vice President Dick Cheney has come under scrutiny, sources familiar with the investigation told the Bloomberg News Service.

The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former Bush administration officials about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the CIA agent’s husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the Bloomberg report.

Fitzgerald could decide within days whether to bring charges over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, were among the possible targets, legal sources said.

Citing legal and Bush administration sources familiar with the thinking, Time magazine reported Sunday that Libby and Rove have made plans to step aside or resign if they are indicted.

After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, President Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: “If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration.”

Some potential charges
While Fitzgerald could try to charge administration officials with knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover operative, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for conspiracy and easier-to-prove crimes such as disclosing classified information, making false statements, obstruction and perjury.

Fitzgerald could also decide no crime was committed.

Wilson alleges that White House officials outed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, in order to discredit him for accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.

Legal sources said Rove could be vulnerable to a perjury charge for not initially telling the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, brushed aside speculation about Fitzgerald’s intentions, saying, “Rove has at all times strived to be as truthful as possible and voluntarily brought the Cooper conversation to Fitzgerald’s attention.”

Libby could be open to false statement and obstruction charges if his testimony contradicts that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and if the prosecutor concludes a private letter Libby sent to Miller was intended to influence her grand jury testimony, lawyers and other sources involved in the case said.

Miller’s lawyer sees ‘big case’
“Fitzgerald is putting together a big case, and he’s looking for little pieces of a puzzle,” Robert Bennett, Miller’s attorney, said on ABC’s “This Week.” Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify, published an account of her grand jury testimony in Sunday’s New York Times.

“Much would depend upon what Mr. Libby said to the grand jury. If he said that he had not talked to Judy about these things or didn’t talk about the wife, then he’s got a problem,” Bennett said.

Libby discussed Wilson’s wife with Miller as many as three times before columnist Robert Novak publicly identified her as Valerie Plame, a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction, Miller wrote in her account in the Times.

Miller disclosed Saturday that the notebook she used for an interview with Libby in July 2003 contained the name ”Valerie Flame,” a clear reference to Plame. But Miller told Fitzgerald she did not think Libby was the source of the name and that she could not recall who gave her that information, according to her account in the Times.

Bennett said it was not clear from Miller’s testimony whether or not Libby shared with her classified information.

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