Obama Blocks Cheney Docs

The Obama administration will protect a court filing that reveals conversations Dick Cheney had with top officials over the Bush administration's response to "Plamegate." The information, derived from interviews between Cheney and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, was kept private during the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration has agreed that it should not be disclosed out of fears that it will discourage future public officials from holding similar interviews. But the document could shed more light on Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame case, in which the CIA spy was outed in the press, setting off a scandal. The document is said to reveal conversations between Cheney and top officials about Bush's mention of uranium in a speech on Iraq and conversations between Cheney and Scooter Libby, who was convicted of obstruction of justice over the Plame case only to have his sentence commuted by the president. As for Plame, Assistant Attorney General David Barron said Cheney discussed "the appropriate response to media inquiries about the source of the disclosure."