In case you missed it, the New York Times reported (on Saturday’s front page) that Cheney was interviewed “recently” by federal investigators as part of the Plame Game scandal.
Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, according to people officially informed about the case. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors’ questions.
The interview of the vice president 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.
This strikes me as pretty significant development. In fact, when put in context, this sounds to me like a major story that should be getting far bigger play.
The White House is under a criminal investigation, top vice presidential aides are leading suspects involving a possible felony, the President of the United States has sought outside counsel, and the VP (without telling anyone) sat down with investigators to talk about the crime. I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but isn’t this kind of, you know, huge?
I realize there was a certain other story that dominated the news over the weekend, but the Plame Game has very quietly become a devastating scandal. Where’s the feeding frenzy? The wall-to-wall coverage?
Press reports noted that Cheney’s office didn’t have any comment about the questioning. Of course it didn’t, but that never stopped political reporters before! The Clinton White House didn’t have a lot to say about Lewinsky in 1998, but if memory serves, there was some media interest in that story at the time.
And perhaps most importantly, where’s Ken Starr when we need him? When Starr was leading a grand jury probe, we had tons of information about the confidential process. If Starr were handling the Plame Game, we’d have daily witness lists, testimony excerpts, calendars, and all kinds of illegal leaks. But no, we have Patrick Fitzgerald, who has too much integrity and respect for the law to offer us the tidbits we crave. How irritating.