I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, was found guilty on Tuesday in the leak case concerning the identity of former Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame.

Libby was charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of false statement during a federal probe into how the identity of Plame, then a covert CIA agent, was given to reporters in the summer of 2003.

But he was found guilty of only four counts of charges, including obstruction of justice, perjury and one counts of false statement.

Libby, 56, served as Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser between 2001 and October 2005, when he resigned after being indicted in the leak case.

The verdict was reached by the jury after 10 days of deliberation, and Libby could face up to 30 years in jail in convicted of all the charges.

The leak case started in the summer of 2003, when Plame's name was disclosed in a newspaper column by Robert D. Nova, days after her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat, criticized the Bush administration for "twisting" intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Wilson was sent by the CIA in 2002 Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking nuclear material there, and he subsequently accused the White House of distorting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson had said administration officials leaked Plame's identity to retaliate for his public criticism of the president's rationale for war.

Novak's column set off a chain of events that culminated in the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald and a grand jury's indictment of Libby for lying to investigators about his own conversations with reporters regarding Plame.

Source: Xinhua