US Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I.Lewis "Scooter" Libby, resigned on Friday, minutes after he was indicted in the CIA leak case.

Libby was charged of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the case.

Libby was charged in a five-count indictment that included one obstruction of justice, two charges of making a false statement and two charges of perjury, according to court documents.

The indictment came following a two-year inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top adviser, Libby or any other White House officials intentionally revealed in 2003 the identity of CIA's covert agent Valerie Plame or lied about their involvement to investigators.

Libby, 55, was considered one of the key officials in the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Rove was not indicted Friday, but remained under investigation.

Plame's name was first published in a syndicated column, days after her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, wrote an article in The New York Times in the summer of 2003 criticizing the Bush administration for twisting intelligence to justify its invasion of Iraq before the war.

Wilson has said that her identity as a CIA agent was deliberately leaked by the White House because of his criticism of the Iraq war.

Source: Xinhua