FBI ordered to release Cheney records in Valerie Plame probe

Valerie Plame

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US federal judge has ordered the FBI to release the transcript of an interview with former US vice-president Dick Cheney, conducted during an investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame sought compensation after she was publicly named as a secret CIA operative. Along with her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, she has fought a legal campaign, arguing that several Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President George W. Bush himself, were behind the leak of her CIA role. Cheney had a lengthy interview with prosecutors pursuing the leak case, but the transcripts of the exchange have so far remained secret on national security grounds. But US district Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said yesterday that there is no justification to withhold the entire interview since the FBI investigation has now concluded. The judge’s decision appears to go against the wishes of the Obama Administration, which last July argued that the interview transcript should remain secret for at least another five to ten years, in order to assure other government officials that the privacy of their testimony will be respected if they decide to participate in future investigations. Critics allege that the Administration’s real aim is to prevent the publication of information in Cheney’s interview that points to George W. Bush as the source of the incriminating leak. IntelNews hears that the government is preparing to appeal the ruling.