WORLD / America

Former CIA agent sues Cheney
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-07-14 10:58

WASHINGTON, July 13 -- A former CIA officer on Thursday sued U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and a presidential adviser for leaking her identity as a undercover agent.

The lawsuit was filed to the U.S. District Court in Washington DC by former agent Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, according to CNN Television.

They accused Cheney, Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, presidential advisor Karl Rove, as well as 10 unnamed Bush administration officials of deliberately exposing Plame's CIA identity to the press, in order to revenge Wilson for criticizing the administration's Iraq policy.

Plame's CIA status was publicly disclosed soon after her husband accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction in an opinion article published in The New York Times in July 2003.

Since Plame's CIA identity was leaked, Wilson has been alleging that the Bush administration leaked his wife's identity in retaliation for his article.

Two and a half years ago, the U.S. Justice Department assigned Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to launch an investigation of the leak case and a number of White House aides and reporters were questioned after that.

Last October, Libby, the former chief of staff to Cheney, was charged for lying to investigators and a grand jury about his knowledge of Plame.

He faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges.

Last month, Fitzgerald told Rove's lawyer that he had decided not to seek criminal charges against Rove.

According to legal documents in Libby's case, Cheney played a key role in a White House effort to counter Wilson's charges against the administration's Iraq policy.