Is Cheney Next? (JUSTIN ROOD)

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Is Cheney Next?
By Justin Rood
ABC News

Thursday 22 February 2007

Could a guilty verdict for a former aide bring further criminal scrutiny of Vice President Dick Cheney?

"Yes," said Sol Weisenberg, a former deputy independent counsel to former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

As a federal jury deliberates the fate of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, several watchers agree. If the jury decides Libby knew he was lying to investigators, it could spur investigators to explore further whether Cheney was involved in conspiring to obstruct justice, they believe.

Libby's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office of the vice president declined to discuss the matter.

At issue is a conversation between the two men in the fall of 2003, soon after the federal probe began to identify who leaked CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity.

Libby recalled the conversation from the stand, "I told the vice - you know, there was - the president said anybody who knows anything should come forward or something like that ... I went to the vice president and said, 'You know, I was not the person who talked to Novak,'" according to the "National Journal," whose reporter Murray Waas attended the trial and was the first to note the possible trouble a guilty verdict could cause for the vice president.

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022207R.shtml