Cheney's office at centre of CIA leak indictment

The indictment of former top White House aide Lewis Libby in the CIA leak investigation will put Vice President Dick Cheney's office at the centre of court proceedings, with the potential of a politically damaging trial for the beleaguered Bush administration.

Libby, who resigned on Friday as Cheney's chief of staff after being indicted for obstructing justice, perjury and lying, is expected to make his first court appearance in the next week or so for an arraignment.

The indictment means the next stage of the case will play out in open court, in contrast to the secret two-year grand jury investigation directed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity.

Libby's indictment represented the first criminal charges arising from the investigation, and Fitzgerald said the probe would continue. One key figure still under scrutiny is President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, lawyers involved in the case said.

At the arraignment, Libby, 55, who faces up to 30 years in prison, is expected to plead not guilty, and the judge in the case could set a trial date.

Lawyers involved in the case said Cheney himself and other top White House officials named in the indictment could be called as witnesses. A trial could expose the role played by Cheney's secretive office in seeking to discredit a leading critic of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

"It's a horrible situation for the vice president. Libby has been so close to Cheney," one of the lawyers involved in the case said. "If there's one thing that's got to be open, it is a criminal trial and the vice president is a key witness."

Another lawyer said it is clear from the indictment that any trial would have to delve into the private conversations between Cheney and Libby about the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson. Wilson had challenged the administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The prosecutors will seek to prove that Libby's statements are lies by going through a very detailed chronology of the events that occurred in the vice president's office, including conversations with Cheney, one of the lawyers said.