(CBS/AP)
But Fitzgerald made clear his investigation is not over.
CBS News chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports that Fitzgerald wants to know why Karl Rove didn't tell the grand jury about a telephone conversation with Time reporter Matt Cooper in which he identified CIA agent, Valerie Plame. Rove's legal team hopes to convince the prosecutor it was an honest omission.
Wayne Slater, the co-author of "Rove Exposed," told the
CBS Evening News that Rove has been a trusted adviser to Mr. Bush since the beginning of his presidency, and an indictment would be "devastating."
"Without Rove, the president has a real problem," Slater said.
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen reports that Libby's indictment "makes it very likely, almost a certainty" that Cheney will have to testify in the criminal trial against Libby.
If so, Cheney, who prizes secrecy, will be called upon as a witness to explain why the administration launched a campaign against Plame's husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson, a critic of the war who questioned Mr. Bush's assertion that Iraq had sought nuclear material.
Wilson, who spoke to
60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley in his
first interview since Libby's indictment, said that his wife has been threatened.
"There have been specific threats [against Plame]. Beyond that, I just cant go," Wilson tells Bradley.
Libby is learning one Washington lesson the hard way: Don't do battle with people who run covert operations for a living.
The bad blood between the White House and CIA has been known for some time. But the 22-page indictment of Libby displays just how nasty relations had become between senior White House officials and the nation's spy chiefs.
Differences between the CIA and the White House over Iraq date back to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Officials working for then-President George H.W. Bush faulted the intelligence community for failing to recognize how far Saddam Hussein had gotten in his nuclear weapons program.
When many of the same personalities returned to the White House under President Bush, they may have questioned whether this time the CIA could get it right as it investigated Saddam's arsenal and his possible connections to terrorists.
The tensions continued through the summer of 2004, when the CIA permitted the former head of its Osama bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, to publish a book entitled "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror." The book included criticism of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
It's unclear if Friday's indictment of Libby will help conclude a rocky chapter of White House-CIA relations or further enflame the situation. However, many senior CIA officials who were directly involved with the White House left the agency after George Tenet stepped down as director in July 2004.
The CIA responded to questions about its current relationship with the White House in a written statement.
"CIA's mission is to provide the president and other leaders of our government with the best possible foreign intelligence to help keep our nation safe and strong," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.
"That's what gets the people of this agency fired up to come to work every day. They know that the president appreciates the job that they do."
In contrast, former CIA official Lee Strickland, who was responsible for all disclosure activities at the CIA as chief of its information review group, said he can't recall a time in his 30 years at the agency when there was so much tension with the White House.
He said the situation highlights problems with the politicization of intelligence. "You want to keep the politics separate from the intelligence," he said.
But, Strickland added, the resulting disclosure of a covert operative's identity is not "an insignificant political matter, the tit-for-tat in politics." Rather, he said, blowing an operative's identity can jeopardize any number of intelligence contacts and recruits.
"In essence, you endanger any operation that this officer has touched, any person that this officer has touched," he said.
House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said his panel is looking into leaks and whether changes in the law are needed, including adjustments in the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Libby was not charged under that law.