WASHINGTON, USA (AP) – The prosecutor in the CIA leak case said more than six months ago that he was not alleging any criminal acts by Vice-President Dick Cheney regarding the leak of agency operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

Today, the prosecutor is leaving the door open to the possibility that the vice-president’s now-indicted former chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, was acting at his boss’ behest when Libby allegedly leaked information about Plame to reporters.

A new court filing presents handwritten notes of Cheney. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is using them to assert that the vice-president and Libby, working together, were focusing much attention on Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush administration critic.

Cheney’s notes ask whether Plame had sent Wilson on a “junket” to Africa. Subsequently, Plame’s supposed role in her husband’s trip to Africa allegedly was leaked to the media by both Libby and by presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Cheney’s notes on the margins of Wilson’s opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, reflect “the contemporaneous reaction of the vice-president”, Fitzgerald said in the court filing late Friday.

Wilson’s column “is relevant to establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant’s immediate superior, including whether Mr Wilson’s wife had ‘sent him on a junket’,” the court papers say.

Cheney’s notes “support 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”, according to the file.

In the column, Wilson recounted how he had been sent by the CIA in 2002 to Niger to assess intelligence that Iraq had an agreement to acquire uranium yellowcake from the African country. His conclusion: It was highly doubtful that such a deal existed.

A year later, the intelligence about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal was still being given credence by the administration as it made the case for invading Iraq.

Scribbled in the days leading up to the leaks of Plame’s identity, Cheney’s notes refer to the CIA and to Wilson’s trip, asking, “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?”

Accused of lying about how he learned of Plame’s identity and what he told reporters about her, Libby says Plame’s CIA identity was a trivial matter. Libby says he was focused instead on Wilson’s accusations that the administration had twisted pre-war intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

In an effort to undercut Libbys defence, Fitzgerald wants to introduce the evidence that refers to Cheney and to Wilson’s wife.