Web Exclusive By Michael Isikoff Newsweek
May 13, 2006 - The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.
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Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. In the column, which created a firestorm after its publication, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched by the CIA without pay to Niger in February 2002 to investigate an intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African country for a nuclear bomb. Wilson said he was told Cheney had asked about the intelligence, but the White House subsequently ignored his findings debunking the Niger claims.
RELATED DOCUMENT Read the Fitzgerald Filing on Cheney Notes
In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA-sponsored trip to Africa: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes—apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena—would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe. Fitzgerald's prosecution has created continued problems for the White House. Karl Rove, the President Bush's chief political adviser, recently made his fifth grand jury appearance in the case and remains under scrutiny while Fitzgerald weighs whether to file criminal charges against him. For now, Libby is the only figure charged in the case.
Lea Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, declined to comment on the newly disclosed notes. "We continue to cooperate in the investigation as we have since its inception," she said.
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Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced on Friday that he would introduce new evidence in the perjury and obstruction of justice case against former Vice Presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

One of the new pieces of evidence consists of handwritten notes that Vice President Dick Cheney left on the margins of ambassador Joseph Wilson's OpEd column questioning the administration's handling of evidence regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the Iraq war. Fitzgerald charged that "those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant - his chief of staff - on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions." Fitzgerald describes the notes as reflecting "the contemporaneous reaction of the Vice President to Mr. Wilson's Op Ed article" and views the relevance of these notes as "establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant's immediate superior." 

In the margins of Wilson's article Cheney wrote a series of questions about the legitimacy of Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. sic to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

Lea Ann McBride, spokesperson for the Vice President, declined to comment on the publishing of the notes, but stressed that the Office of the Vice President continues to cooperate with the investigation.