Lewis Libby (photo: Boston Globe)

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury in the CIA leak case.

Libby could face up to 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines if convicted on all five counts.

President Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, escaped indictment but remained under investigation.

Libby, a chief architect of the war with Iraq, has resigned as Cheney's chief of staff. A replacement will be named as early as tomorrow, according to Fox News.

Cheney released a statement saying, "Mr. Libby has informed me that he is resigning to fight the charges brought against him. I have accepted his decision with deep regret. Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and talented individuals I have ever known. He has given many years of his life to public service and has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction."

The indictment can be found on the website of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said in a statement, "The special counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he has made no decision about whether or not to bring charges and that Mr. Rove's status has not changed."

Luskin said Rove "will continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel’s efforts to complete the investigation. We are confident that when the special counsel finishes his work, he will conclude that Mr. Rove has done nothing wrong."

Fitzgerald, a U.S. prosecutor in Chicago, is investigating whether CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was leaked to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson. Wilson had traveled to Niger in a CIA-sponsored trip to check out allegations Iraqi officials sought to purchase nuclear weapons materials there. He wrote up his findings in a New York Times opinion piece titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

Valerie Plame appeared in Vanity Fair magazine with her husband Joseph Wilson in January 2004

Wilson declared in the column that his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Plame's name came up when Bush administration officials told reporters it was Plame who helped her husband get the CIA consulting job. Wilson denied his wife's role initially, but a bipartisan report by the Senate panel documented it.

Fitzgerald told reporters this afternoon that "at the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false.

"It would be a compelling story that will lead the FBI to go away if only it were true. It is not true, according to the indictment," he said.

Libby, 55, discussed Plame with reporters, but the New York Times reported this week of a conversation between Libby and Cheney a month before Plame's name was made public that suggests Libby learned about the CIA officer during a conversation with the vice president.

Questions surround who revealed Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.

Libby previously had said he initially learned Plame's identity during conversations with journalists.

The New York Times report was the first indication the vice president discussed Plame with aides. Since Fitzgerald last interviewed Cheney more than a year ago, the revelations could indicate that discrepancies between Cheney and Libby's testimony have surfaced.

No charges were made in connection to a 1982 act that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover.

The Washington attorney who spearheaded the legislation at the center of the controversy told WND earlier this year that Plame's circumstances don't meet several of the criteria spelled out in the statute, which was designed not only to protect the identity of intelligence agents but to maintain the media's ability to hold government accountable.

Victoria Toensing – who drafted the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – said Plame most likely was not a covert agent when Rove referred to her in a 2003 interview with Time magazine's Matt Cooper.

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame in July 2005 issue of Vanity Fair magazine

The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United States within the previous five years. But Plame gave up her role as a covert agent nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Kristof said the CIA brought Plame back to Washington in 1994 because the agency suspected her undercover security had been compromised by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames.

Moreover, asserted Toensing, for the law to be violated, Rove would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the knowledge that he was disclosing a covert agent.

Those who have testified under oath include White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Time magazine's Matt Cooper, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Libby, former Cheney adviser Mary Matalin, current press secretary Scott McClellan, Judith Miller of the New York Times, Novak, Rove, who has been grilled four times, NBC's Tim Russert, former CIA director George Tenet and Wilson.

Cheney and President Bush both appeared last summer to testify, but not under oath.

Previous stories:

Sealed indictments coming this week

Drafter of intel statute: Rove accusers ignorant