Judge to review Cheney-FBI files

June 19, 2009|Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A federal judge said yesterday that he wants to look at notes from the FBI’s interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to review the documents followed arguments by Obama administration lawyers that sounded much like the reasons the Bush administration provided for keeping Cheney’s interview from the public.

Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.

Sullivan said the Justice Department must give him more precise reasons for keeping the information confidential than they had in previous court filings.

Cheney agreed to talk to FBI agents in June 2004 as they were investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters the year before. Her name was revealed after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The leak touched off a lengthy inquiry that led to Cheney’s former top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter’’ Libby, being convicted on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. During his trial, jurors found that Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence.

Libby was the only person charged in the case. No one was charged with leaking Wilson’s name.

In July 2008, the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department seeking records related to Cheney’s interview in the investigation. The Justice Department declined to turn over the records, and CREW filed a lawsuit in August.

The group argued that the public has a right to know the role that Cheney played in the leak and why he was not prosecuted.