A jury has convicted I. Lewis Libby [3], the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney [4], of lying to a grand jury and to F.B.I. [5] agents investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson [6] as a CIA [7] operative. Nevertheless, reports Neil A. Lewis, "The defense’s plans to ask for a retrial and then appeal the verdict mean that it would be many months before Mr. Libby would be required to go to jail. It also would provide a window for Mr. Bush to pardon Mr. Libby, an issue about which the White House has been silent, but one that quickly became a topic of speculation in Washington." Libby's conviction adds weight to charges that the White House deliberately leaked information about Plame's CIA job to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson [8], for blowing the whistle on Bush's false claims [9] about alleged Iraqi efforts to build nuclear weapons.