Cheney aide Libby resigns after indictment
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. resigned today as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff after being indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement, and perjury in the CIA leak case.
Karl Rove, President Bush's closest adviser, apparently escaped indictment but remains under investigation, his legal status a looming political problem for the White House.
The indictments stem from a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Rove, Libby, or any other administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame or lied about their involvement to investigators.
The five-count indictment accuses Libby of lying about how and when he learned CIA official Valerie Plane's identity in 2003 and then told reporters about it. The information was classified.
Any trial would shine a spotlight on the secret deliberations of Bush and his team as they built the case for war against Iraq.
Bush ordered U.S. troops to war in March 2003, saying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program posed a grave and immediate threat to the United States. No such weapons were found. The U.S. military death toll climbed past 2,000 this week.
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