US News
Trial for Cheney's former chief of staff to being January 2007
By DPA
Feb 3, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - A former top White House official, accused of obstructing an investigation into the Bush administration's leak of a CIA operative's name, will go on trial next January, a federal judge said Friday.

I. Lewis Libby resigned in October as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. The late trial date - January 7 - is seen as a boost to President George W. Bush's Republican Party because it comes after US congressional elections in November.

District Judge Reggie Walton said he wanted the trial to begin in September, but one of Libby's lawyers had a scheduling conflict, The New York Times reported.

Libby was indicted in October on five charges of obstructing the probe and lying to prosecutors and investigators. He has pleaded not guilty.

The former Cheney aide is at the centre over the investigation into who at the White House leaked to the press that the wife of a Bush critic worked as a CIA operative.

Valerie Plame's husband, former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, claims that his wife's cover was blown in retaliation for his criticism of the Bush administration's arguments for invading Iraq.