Now, focus narrows in on Cheney’s role

US Vice-President Dick Cheney makes only three brief appearances in the 22-page federal indictment that charges his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, with lying to investigators and misleading a grand jury in the CIA leak case. But in its clear, cold language, the document lifts a veil on how aggressively Cheney’s office drove the rationale against Saddam Hussein and then fought to discredit the Iraq war’s critics.

The indictment now raises a central question: how much collateral damage has Cheney himself sustained? Many Republicans say that the vice president, politically weakened because of his role in preparing the case for war, could be further damaged if he is forced to testify at Libby’s trial about the infighting over intelligence that turned out to be false. At the minimum, they say, his office will be temporarily off balance with the resignation of Libby, who controlled both foreign and domestic affairs in a vice presidential office that has served as a major policy arm for the West Wing.

Cheney allies noted that there was no suggestion in the indictment that he had done anything wrong. The larger question, Republicans said, was Cheney’s standing with the public, and what his staff has often called the vice president’s constituency of one, Bush. —NYT