US Vice President Richard Cheney has been interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover CIA officer, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Citing unnamed people involved in the case, the newspaper said Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
Cheney was also asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer, according to the report. The interview was part of a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a federal law that makes it a crime to divulge the name of an undercover officer intentionally.
The Times said Cheney is not thought to be a focus of the inquiry, which is headed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the US district attorney from Chicago.
The controversy goes back to July 2003, when conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak disclosed the name of CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Wilson had been sent by the Central Intelligence Agency to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from the country. He dismissed the allegations used by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address earlier that year as unfounded.
The Times said it was not clear when or where Cheney was interviewed, but he was not questioned under oath and he has not been asked to appear before the grand jury.
Bush acknowledged earlier this past week that he had met with a Washington criminal lawyer, Jim Sharp, about the possibility that prosecutors might want to interview him about the case.
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