Plame sues Cheney, Rove in leak case
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband sued Vice President Dick Cheney, top White House aide Karl Rove and others on Thursday for their role in the disclosure of her classified CIA status.
The lawsuit alleged "a conspiracy among current and former high-level officials in the White House" to "discredit, punish and seek revenge" against Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for publicly disputing statements made by Bush justifying the war in Iraq.
The suit was the latest twist in a long-running saga over the public exposure of Plame that put President Bush on the defensive over his campaign to justify the war and reached into the highest levels of the White House.
Plame and Wilson's suit said the couple suffered violations of their constitutional and legal rights, including an invasion of their privacy, and that the disclosure of her name destroyed her CIA career.
The CIA-leak case flared after Wilson accused the administration of leaking his wife's name to punish him for writing in the New York Times that the Bush administration twisted intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war launched by Washington in 2003.
An investigation led to the indictment of a top Cheney aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, last year on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. He is the only person charged in the case.
The 23-page lawsuit said the defendants "embarked on an anonymous 'whispering campaign' designed to discredit and injure the plaintiffs and to deter other critics from publicly speaking out."
"This lawsuit concerns the intentional and malicious exposure by senior officials of the federal government of one such human source at the CIA, Valerie Plame Wilson, whose job it was to gather intelligence to make the nation safer and who risked her life for her country," the suit said.
