Reply #58: Experts Say Cheney Probably Can't Avoid Testifying [View All]

[OKNancy]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/05/25/national/w140419D53.DTL&type=politics

Experts Say Cheney Probably Can't Avoid Testifying


If a prosecutor calls him as a witness, Vice President Dick Cheney probably can't avoid testifying in his former chief of staff's perjury trial, legal experts said Thursday.


"There may be significant issues of executive privilege and significant issues of classified information. But there are obviously significant factual issues that bear on the charges the prosecutor has brought" in the CIA leak investigation, said former federal prosecutor E. Lawrence Barcella Jr.


"So there is a far better than average chance that you are going to see the vice president sitting in the witness chair" if he is summoned, Barcella said.


In a court filing late Wednesday, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical prosecution witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a copy of a New York Times opinion column by a critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.