Investigators of the CIA leak case are now checking some handwritten notes of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, which might lead to a probe of his role in the case, CNN Television reported Sunday.

By presenting the notes, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor of the case, leaves open the possibility that Cheney's now-indicted former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was acting at his boss' behalf when allegedly leaked the identity of former CIA agent Valerie Plame to reporters.

Fitzgerald is apparently asserting that the vice president and Libby, were working together to focus on Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who wrote anti-war articles in the New York Times in 2003 based on a prewar trip to Africa.

Cheney's notes, written on the margins of Wilson's opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, asked whether Plame had sent Wilson on a "junket" to Africa.

Soon after that date, Plame's supposed role in her husband's trip to Africa was allegedly leaked to the media by both Libby and by presidential adviser Karl Rove.

In that article, Wilson recounted how he had been sent by the CIA in 2002 to Niger to assess intelligence that Iraq had an agreement to acquire uranium yellowcake from the African country and concluded that "it was highly doubtful that such a deal existed."

A year later, the intelligence about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal was still being used by the Bush administration to made its case for invading Iraq.

After the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into the leak case, Libby was indicted in October last year with five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.

The language in the indictment provided the first indication that the Libby case might also be a case focusing closely on Cheney.

According to the indictment, Libby acknowledged to investigators that Cheney had told him in June 2003 about Wilson's wife working at the CIA.

However, he told investigators in the next month that he had " forgotten" that the vice president had told him about Plame.

Source: Xinhua