Was Cheney Source Of CIA Leak?

White House Won't Comment On NY Times Report Linking VP To Leak

(CBS/AP)  According to a former intelligence official close to Tenet, the former CIA chief has not been in touch with Fitzgerald's staff for more than 15 months and was not asked to testify before the grand jury even though he was interviewed by Fitzgerald and his staff.

The official told the Times that Tenet declined to comment on the investigation.

Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return phone calls and e-mail to his office. The White House also did not return calls.

Fitzgerald is expected to decide this week whether to seek criminal indictments in the case. Lawyers involved in the case have said Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment.

Fitzgerald questioned Cheney under oath more than a year ago, but it is not known what the vice president told the prosecutor.

On NBC's "Meet the Press" in September 2003, Cheney said "I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."

If the vice president made an untruthful statement in public, it may look bad, but it doesn't amount to a crime, Roberts reports.

The Cheney-Libby conversation occurred the same day that The Washington Post published a front-page story about the CIA sending a retired diplomat to Africa, where he was unable to corroborate intelligence that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. The diplomat was Wilson.

A year after Wilson's trip, President Bush cited British intelligence in his State of the Union address as suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium in Africa.

On Monday, Mr. Bush would not comment on reports that his allies have begun laying the groundwork to discredit the prosecutor as overzealous if he does hand down indictments, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.

"This is a very serious investigation," Mr. Bush said. "I haven't changed my mind about whether or not I'm going to comment on it publicly."

If indictments are handed down against either Libby or Rove, former presidential adviser David Gergen says "it's going to be a real blow to the administration and comes at a terrible time.

"We've got this confluence now; people are calling it the imperfect storm," Gergen told CBS News' The Early Show. "You've got potential indictments this week, you've got pressure building up among conservatives for Harriet Miers to withdraw and the death toll in Iraq, again, sadly, ready to go over the 2,000 mark. Those coming together I think put the White House in the darkest place it's been since the president took office. It's going to be a long climb out of the hole."