In attempting to determine Libby's motives for allegedly lying to the FBI
and a federal grand jury about his leaking of Plame's CIA identity to
journalists, federal investigators theorized from the very earliest stages of
the case that Libby may have been trying to hide Cheney's own role in
encouraging Libby to discredit Wilson, according to attorneys involved in the
case....

Both Cheney and Libby have repeatedly denied -- both publicly and to
federal investigators -- that Cheney ever encouraged Libby specifically to leak
information to the press about Plame. But since the early days of the leak probe
in fall 2003, even before it was taken over by Special Prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald, investigators have maintained that Libby devised an elaborate cover
story even though he must have known that contemporaneous records and the
testimony of others was very likely to show that he was lying. Other than the
motive to protect himself, the only other driving force behind Libby's actions,
federal investigators have theorized, was to protect Cheney or other superiors,
according to attorneys who have been involved in the CIA leak probe....

But the same official confirmed in an interview what has also been said in
federal grand jury testimony and public court filings: that Cheney and Libby
often acted without the knowledge or approval and of other senior White House
staff when it came to their efforts to discredit Wilson -- including leaking
classified information to the press.

Aboard Air Force Two, Cheney, Libby, and Martin discussed a then-still
highly classified CIA document that they believed had information in it that
would undercut Wilson's credibility. The document was a March 8, 2002 debriefing
of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after his trip to Niger. The
report did not name Wilson or even describe him as a former U.S. ambassador who
had served time in the region, but rather as a "contact with excellent access
who does not have an established reporting record." The report made no mention
of the fact that his wife was Valerie Plame, or that she may have played a role
in having her husband sent to Niger.

Cheney told Libby that he wanted him to leak the report to the press,
according to people with first-hand knowledge of federal grand jury testimony in
the CIA leak case, and federal court records....

But other senior White House aides -- including Hadley and Bartlett --
later told federal investigators that they were unaware that Cheney had
authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger
mission...

What Miller herself did not know during her grand jury testimony was that a
key issue for federal investigators was whether she would testify as to whether
Libby had attempted to leak her anything about the CIA debriefing report of
Wilson after his Niger trip. Prosecutors believed that Miller was perhaps
attempting to protect Libby in her testimony....

Prosecutors did not want to tip Miller as to why it was so
crucial to them to learn whether Libby had ever mentioned the March 2002 Wilson
debriefing report to her or Cooper shortly after he disembarked Air Force Two.

The reason was that Libby's failure to mention the March 2002 debriefing
was one more piece of an ever increasing body of circumstantial evidence that
led prosecutors to believe that Libby had devised a cover story to protect
himself, and perhaps even the Vice President, to conceal the fact that his
agenda was to leak information about Plame from the very start.

In his interviews by the FBI and testimony before the federal grand jury,
Libby testified that it was the reporters who told him, and not the other way
around, that Plame was a CIA officer. Prosecutors are expected to argue during
the trial next week that Libby lied because to tell the truth Libby would have
to admit that he leaked classified information and might politically embarrass
the White House. But the prosecution may very well subtly make the case that
another motive was for Libby to protect his then-boss, Cheney. In private, some
federal investigators have asserted that Libby might have lied from the
beginning to protect Cheney

In a further possible attempt to protect Cheney, Libby also testified to
the grand jury that he did not believe he had discussed that Plame worked for
the CIA with Cheney during the critical period that Libby was leaking such
information to the press -- and didn't discuss it with the vice president until
after syndicated columnist Robert Novak first disclosed on July 14 that Plame
was a CIA "operative."

It would be significant that Cheney and Libby only discussed Plame's CIA
employment after the July 14 Novak column because instead of discussing a highly
classified secret, the information would then have been considered public
information, and not illegal, because Novak had disclosed it in his column.

While questioning Libby during grand jury testimony, prosecutors were
incredulous regarding Libby's claims that he and Cheney had not discussed
Plame's CIA employment during the critical July 6 to July 14 period. They also
expressed skepticism that Libby had supposedly forgotten -- even though Libby's
own written notes indicated otherwise -- that Cheney had told him that Plame
worked for the CIA much earlier, on either June 11 or June 12. They were also
disbelieving of Libby's claims that even though Libby and Cheney met several
times every day after Wilson's July 6 column appeared, the two men did not
discuss Plame during the subsequent eight days, not until Novak's column
appeared. And finally, prosecutors were disbelieving when Libby claimed that he
was simply passing on a rumor to Cheney that he had purportedly learned from Tim
Russert that Plame was a CIA officer.

In a subsequent grand jury appearance, a skeptical prosecutor indicated
that he found it hard to believe that Cheney would have written the notations he
did in the margins of former Ambassador Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times
op-ed only after Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column appeared saying that
Valerie Plame was a CIA "operative."

"OK," the prosecutor said, before asking, "And can you tell us why it
would be that the Vice President read the Novak column and had questions, some
of which apparently seem to be answered by the Novak column, would go back and
pull out an original July 6th op-ed piece and write on that?"

"I'm not sure...," Libby answered, "He often kept these columns
for awhile and keeps columns and will think on them. And I think what may have
happened here is what he may have -- I don't know if he wrote, he wrote the
points down. He might have pulled out the column to think about the problem and
written on it, but I don't know."

Libby then added: "You'll have to ask him."