In a Bloomberg news piece that's entertainingly titled Cheney May Be Entangled in CIA Leak Investigation, People Say (I love that "People Say" part...talk about your reportorial specificity), we're told that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is looking into the role that Vice President Dick Cheney played in the outting of a CIA agent as political retaliation by the White House. As I mentioned yesterday, Fitz seems to be focused on WHIG -- the White House working group put together to "sell" the Iraq war. Cheney is clearly the executive at the top of that group's org chart, so, while charges are unlikely to be brought against him, he's the buck-stops-here guy in this scenario, assuming there's no way to tie it directly to Bush.
In fact, that might be why Judy was in jail for so long:
New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has now testified twice before a federal grand jury probing the case after spending 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald, wrote in yesterday's New York Times that Fitzgerald asked her whether the vice president "had known what his chief aide,'' Libby, "was doing and saying'' regarding Wilson, a critic of the war in Iraq.
Fitzgerald has told lawyers involved in the case that he hopes to conclude soon -- the grand jury's term expires Oct. 28, although it could be extended -- and there is a growing sense among knowledgeable observers that the outcome will involve serious criminal charges. "Fitzgerald is putting together a big case,'' Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who represents Miller, said on the ABC-TV program "This Week'' yesterday.
The Bloomberg piece is also an excellent wrap-up of pretty much *everything* having to do with Plamegate, just in case you aren't totally caught up on it yet. (I guess Bloomberg doesn't have the same word-count issues as its dead-tree counterparts. :-)
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