Cheney aide resigns after indictment

Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, has been indicted for perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice for his role in the leaking of a covert CIA agent's identity to the media in 2003.

Immediately after the indictments were handed down Friday, Libby handed in his resignation.

"I am confident that at the end of this process I will be completely and totally exonerated," Libby said in a statement issued by his lawyer, Joseph Tate.

U.S. President George W. Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove, escaped indictment Friday.

However, Rove is not in the clear yet, as investigators for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald have not completed their investigation into Rove's role in the case.

The indictment against Libby charged him with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. He was not charged with outing a spy.

Libby, 55, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine if convicted, prosecutors said.

Libby is accused of lying about how and when he learned about agent Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 and told reporters about it. The information on Plame was classified.

He is also accused of lying when he told Fitzgerald's investigators that he learned about Plame's CIA status from Tim Russert of NBC.

Fitzgerald and a grand jury have been investigating the leak of Plame's name for 22 months.

Their probe has zeroed in on Rove and Libby.

They have been accused of telling reporters about Plame's identity in June or July of 2003. The conversations are alleged to have occurred just before conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote a piece speculating that Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, had received a government consulting contract because his wife worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Wilson had just written a New York Times op-ed piece challenging the Bush administration's evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction leading up to the 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Both Libby and Rove initially denied ever mentioning Plame's identity to reporters for Time magazine and the New York Times, before later admitting that conversations on the topic did take place.

Case against Libby

On Friday afternoon, Fitzgerald laid out his case against Libby.

He said on October 2003, the FBI interviewed Libby, asking him what he knew about Plame. Fitzgerald said Libby told a "compelling story."

Fitzgerald said Libby told the FBI that he first learned from Russert on July 10, 2003 that all the reporters know that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

"He told the FBI that he learned that information as if it were new and it struck him."

Libby then passed that information along to other reporters, but he admitted to the FBI that he did not know if the information about Wilson was true.

Fitzgerald said Libby told the same story to the grand jury on two occasions. He also said he had heard about Plame from Cheney in 2003 but had forgotten that information by the time he had the conversation with Russert.

"It would be a compelling story that would lead the FBI to go away if only it were true," Fitzgerald said about Libby's story. "It is not true, according to the indictment."

Fitzgerald claims Libby discussed this information about Plame at least seven times with government officials before his conversation with Russert. In fact, Libby never discussed Plame with Russert, the indictment alleges.

The indictment alleges Libby heard that Plame worked for the CIA at least three times in June 2003 from government officials, including a senior CIA officer, an undersecretary of state and Cheney himself.

The indictment also alleges that sometime before July 8, Libby learned information about Plame by someone working in the vice-president's office.

In addition to hearing it from government officials, it is also alleged that Libby discussed the information with other government officials.

It is alleged that on June 14, 2003, a month before Novak's column, Libby discussed Plame and her husband with a CIA briefer. The indictment alleges he discussed it with former White House press secretary Ari Fleisher over lunch on July 7, 2003. The indictment also alleges that on July 8, Libby asked Cheney's counsel a question regarding what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee's spouse undertook an overseas trip.

In a brief statement, Bush said Friday he was saddened by the indictment and resignation of Libby, adding that "in our system each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial."