U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will be called to testify in a trial related to the identity leak of a secret CIA operative, CNN reported Tuesday.

Cheney will act as a witness to defend his former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who will stand trial for charges of perjury and obstruction of justice starting Jan. 16, according to the report.

Libby's defense lawyers told a judge that they plan to call the vice president to help rebut charges that his most trusted aide had a criminal motive to mislead agents and a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Cheney's role in the case is a pivotal one, for both the defense and the prosecution.

He is a witness to much of how the Bush administration reacted in the key days in the spring and summer of 2003 before Plame's name and job were published in a column article of The New York Times.

In December, 2003, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald began investigating whether senior administration officials illegally provided information about Plame to the press.

Fitzgerald has said Cheney is the person who first told Libby about Plame's identity and that the vice president was very concerned at that time about claims that Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson, was making in the media the administration twisted intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to go to war with Iraq.

Libby was indicted in October, 2005, on charges of committing perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice during the investigation into whether administration officials knowingly disclosed Plame's identity to reporters.

He is accused of lying when he said he first learned about Plame's CIA role from NBC reporter Tim Russert in July 2003, and lying to conceal that he told at least two reporters about Plame's job.

Libby argued that he was so busy with pressing national security crises that he forgot details of those conversations and misspoke about them.

If Cheney agrees to appear in the trial, he could help the defense establish that Libby was indeed at the center of a maelstrom of pressing security matters.

Libby was a loyal aide to Cheney, stemming from a long working relationship.

The vice president's friends have donated generously to a special defense fund that two Cheney allies created last year to pay Libby's legal bills.

Source: Xinhua