Cheney runs the White House, Libby v. Plame case suggests.

Testimony in the perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, goes far toward confirming the position of political analysts who've held that Mr. Cheney is the real power behind the throne in the Bush White House.

The evidence points to Cheney as the mastermind who ordered the "outing" of Valerie Plame's classified identity as a CIA officer (a felony) in order to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was challenging the administration's false intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Not only that, but Cheney micromanaged much of the detail of the operation, apparently without the knowledge of President Bush.

Associated Press writer Tom Raum noted on February 11: "Cheney told Libby to speak with selected reporters to counter bad news. He developed talking points on the matter for the White House press office. He helped draft a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet. He moved to declassify some intelligence material to bolster the case against Wilson." Cheney also released parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified assessment of Iraq's weapons capabilities, to rebut Wilson.

New York University professor Paul Light, an expert in the bureaucracy of the executive branch, says, "The details suggest Cheney was almost a deputy president with a shadow operation. He had his own source of advice. He had his own source of access. He was making his own decisions."