Trouble Brewing for Cheney?

Could be. I heard this on WTIC on the way back to school for Open House tonight (and welcome to any parents who might be logging on to the blog).

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief assistant, was indicted last fall in the Valerie Plame case. (Valerie Plame, or Valerie Wilson, is married to Joseph Wilson, a nuclear weapons inspector who authored an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times casting doubt on George W. Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to acquire "yellowcake uranium" to make nuclear weapons. Somebody in the White House -- it looks like Scooter -- leaked to a columnist the fact the Mrs. Wilson was a CIA operative who got her husband the inspection job. This was a way of undercutting Mr. WIlson's public credibility. Unfortunately for Mr. Libby, it's also against the law, and he's been indicted (by Patrick Fitzgerald). [By the way -- consider the source -- I have a feeling that this weblog is not by the real Patrick Fitzgerald. (It does have some interesting stuff, though).]

It looked like Libby's defense was to say that he'd need all sorts of White House records to defend himself -- records that the White House will refuse to give out, on the grounds of executive privilege. If Fitzgerald tried to subpoena the records, the case would likely go to the Supreme Court, who has already ruled in Bush's favor regarding Cheney's secret oil task force -- and this was before Roberts and Alito joined the Court.

Now comes word, though, that Scooter, in testimony before the Grand Jury, has implicated his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Read the whole article, if you're interested. (I'm not familiar with the National Journal, but it certainly looks reputable. If you go to the site, you'll see James Carville in an ad on the side of the page. Carville helped Bill Clinton get elected, so you would guess that this is a more Democrat-oriented site, if anything.) If Cheney is implicated in breaking the law, could this mean resignation or impeachment. Don't get your hopes up, liberal swine. Chances are it's another defense strategy. I don't think Scooter would betray his Master.

Another top Bush aide, the man who got him elected, is Karl Rove. Rove may be involved in this whole thing, too. But after a few months of lieing low, Rove has begun to go back on the offensive . This indicates to observers that Rove may be feeling that the pressure of indictment by Fitzgerald has lessened.