Sources close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent
Valerie Plame Wilson have revealed this week that Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales has not turned over emails to the special prosecutor's office that may
incriminate Vice President Dick Cheney, his aides, and other White House
officials who allegedly played an active role in unmasking Plame Wilson's
identity to reporters.

Moreover, these sources said that, in early 2004, Cheney was
interviewed by federal prosecutors investigating the Plame Wilson leak and
testified that neither he nor any of his senior aides were involved in unmasking
her undercover CIA status to reporters and that no one in the vice president's
office had attempted to discredit her husband, a vocal critic of the
administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. Cheney did not testify under
oath or under penalty of perjury when he was interviewed by federal
prosecutors.

The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to
Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the
inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Moreover, according to
sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on how the White
House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments
Wilson’s husband had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq
intelligence...

Cheney testified for a little more than an hour about his role in the leak in
early 2004. What he told prosecutors appears to be identical to
testimony his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, gave before a grand jury during the same year. Libby was indicted on five-counts of
obstruction of justice, perjury, and lying to investigators related to his role
in the Plame Wilson leak....

News reports citing people familiar with Libby's testimony said Cheney had
authorized Libby to do so. Additionally, an extensive investigation during the
past month has shown that Cheney, Libby and former Deputy National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley spearhead an effort beginning in March 2003 to discredit
Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the
administration's intelligence related to Iraq, who had publicly criticized the
administration for relying on forged documents to build public support for the
war.

Cheney did not disclose this information when he was questioned by
investigators.

Cheney responded to questions about how the White House came to rely on
Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium
from the African country. Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing
on the allegations in late December 2003 or early January 2004 and had asked the
CIA for more information about the issue.

Cheney said he was unaware that Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to
look into the uranium claims and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a
CIA analyst upon his return, which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He
said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

However, these attorneys said that witnesses in the case have
testified before a grand jury that Cheney, Libby, Hadley, the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department, the FBI, and other senior aides in the Office of the Vice President, the President, and the National Security Council had received and read a March 9, 2002, cable sent to his office by the CIA that debunked the Niger claims.

The cable, which was prepared by a CIA analyst and based on Wilson's
fact-finding mission, did not mention Wilson by name, but quoted a CIA source
and Niger officials Wilson had questioned during his eight-day mission, who said
there was no truth to the claims that Iraq had tried to purchase 500 tons of
yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.

Several current and former State Department and CIA officials familiar with
the March 9, 2002, cable said they had testified before the grand jury
investigating the Plame Wilson leak that they had spoken to Libby and Hadley
about the cable, and that they were told Cheney had also read
it.

Cheney told investigators that when Wilson began speaking to reporters on
background about his secret mission to Niger to investigate Iraq's alleged
attempts to purchase uranium, he asked Libby to contact the CIA to "get more
information" about the trip and to find out if it was true, the attorneys added.

Furthermore, Cheney told prosecutors that before he learned of Wilson's
trip, his office simply sought to rebut statements made by Wilson to reporters
and the various newspaper reports that said the Bush administration knowingly
relied on flawed intelligence to build a case for war.
Moreover, Cheney said that he and his aide were concerned that reporters had been under the impression that Cheney chose Wilson for the Niger trip, the attorneys said. Cheney testified that he instructed Libby and other aides to coordinate a response to those queries and rebut those allegations with the White House press office.

"In his testimony the vice president said that his staff
referred media calls about Wilson to the White House press office," one
attorney close to the case said. "He said that was the appropriate venue for
responding to statements by Mr. Wilson that he believed were wrong."

Cheney told investigators that he first learned about Valerie Plame Wilson
and her employment with the CIA from Libby. Cheney testified that Libby told him
that several reporters had contacted him in July to say that Plame Wilson had
been responsible for arranging her husband's trip to Niger to investigate the
Niger uranium claims.

Cheney also testified that the next time he recalled hearing about
Plame Wilson and her connection to Joseph Wilson was when he read about her in a
July 14, 2003, column written by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

9. On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of
the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency
in the Counterproliferation Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice
President had learned this information from the CIA.