US: Vice-president Dick Cheney's role in the leak of a CIA undercover agent's identity is under fresh scrutiny after the special prosecutor investigating the leak said he would introduce Mr Cheney's handwritten notes in court.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in a court filing at the weekend that the notes suggest that Mr Cheney and his former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were concerned about allegations made by the CIA agent's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Mr Wilson wrote in a New York Times opinion column on July 6th, 2003 that he had gone to Niger at the CIA's request but without pay to investigate claims that the African country had sold uranium "yellowcake" to Saddam Hussein. He concluded that no such deal existed, but the Bush administration continued to repeat the claim in public.
Mr Cheney scribbled notes in the margins of Mr Wilson's article, asking questions about the CIA and about the Niger mission.
"Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb to assess a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" the vice-president wrote.
A few days later, conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed that Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Mr Libby faces perjury and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly lying to investigators about how he learned about Ms Plame's identity and what he told reporters about her.
In the court filing, Mr Fitzgerald says that Mr Cheney's annotated copy of Mr Wilson's article supports "the proposition that publication of the Wilson op-ed acutely focused the attention of the vice-president and the defendant - his chief of staff - on Mr Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions".