WASHINGTON — In the first such account from Vice President Dick Cheney's inner circle, a former aide testified Thursday that Cheney personally directed the effort to discredit an administration critic by having calls made to reporters in 2003.
Cheney dictated detailed "talking points" for his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others on how they could impugn the critic's credibility, said Catherine J. Martin, who was the vice president's top press aide at the time.
Libby is on trial on charges of obstructing an investigation into how the name of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, became public. The government says her identity emerged in conversations Libby had with several reporters. It is illegal to knowingly divulge the name of a CIA employee.
Plame's name came up in the conversations because she is the wife of former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, the critic whom the administration was trying to attack after he publicly raised questions about the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Martin, who is now deputy White House director of communications for policy and planning, testified as a prosecution witness on the third day of Libby's trial. She became the third witness to testify that they had told Libby of Plame's identity well before Libby spoke with the reporters.
That contradicts Libby's statement that he learned of Plame's identity from one of the reporters, Tim Russert of NBC News. Libby is charged with lying to federal agents looking into the leak of Plame's name.
The events unfolded after a New York Times columnist reported in May 2003 that an unnamed diplomat had been sent to Niger the previous year to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Africa, and found that the reports were wrong. President Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2003 contained the uranium assertion.
Libby learned that the unnamed diplomat was Wilson, a former ambassador.
Cheney's active role in the campaign to undermine Wilson has been known, but Martin's testimony was the first inside account of the administration's attempts to manage the affair.
Martin said she learned that Plame worked for the CIA after Libby directed her to call the agency to get more information about Wilson's trip to Niger. Martin said she quickly reported the information about Plame to Libby and Cheney.
