(from UPI) Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe

[papau]

UPI Reports Cheney's AidesTargets of CIA/Plame Probe -criminal misconduct


http://www.buzzflash.com /

UPI Reports Cheney's Aides, Including Scooter Libby, are Targets of CIA/Plame Probe. "Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office."

http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/02/17/National/Cheneys.Staff.Focus...

Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe
Posted Feb. 5, 2004 By Richard Sale
Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.


According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

The case centers on Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working for the weapons of mass destruction division, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who served as ambassador to Gabon and as a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad in the early 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, he was head of African affairs until he retired in 1998, according to press accounts.

<snip>On Oct. 7, Bush said that unauthorized disclosure of an undercover CIA officer's identity was "a criminal matter" (violated a 1982 law that prohibits revealing the identity of U.S. intelligence agents) and the Justice Department had begun its investigation into the source of the leak.

Richard Sale is an intelligence correspondent for UPI, a sister wire service of Insight magazine.

[papau]

1. Dupe

sorry