More Plame - Speculation on Cheney

Here's the Bloomberg piece rumored several days ago on Rawstory.com.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A special counsel is focusing on whether Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in leaking a covert CIA agent's name, according to people familiar with the probe that already threatens top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby.

The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former officials of President George W. Bush's administration about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the agent's husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the people.

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney's communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president's knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation.

[Redacted] (Got some help from someone who was willing to the the leg work, and Cheney was indeed interviewed by prosecutors. Thanks to sans-culotte for the link. )

Also, to rebut the growing attempts to make this appear a minor rules infraction, I want to use an example from Americablog. And remember that Plame's portfolio was that she was the head of the CIA's investigation into WMD transfers in the Middle East. And by outing her, you put at risk of exposure and potentially death, all her contacts who were cooperating with the US on WMD issues, as well as burning and exposing the front company she was working for, burning and exposing the covers of all the other CIA operatives who were using that front.

We're at war, George Bush keeps reminding us. We cannot continue with business as usual. A pre-9/11 mentality is deadly. Putting the lives of our troops at risk is treason. ......

If a senior aide to the president had intentionally outed an American undercover agent during World War II, an agent whose work was central to our mission of defeating the Germans, that aide would very likely be put to death. While no one is yet arguing that Karl Rove be executed, it is the height of hypocrisy and hubris for the Republican party to attempt to minimize a crime that not only puts our troops at risk, but risks the lives of every American man, woman and child.