Don't battle the CIA-

[Neil D]

[:"blue"] Bad blood exist between the White House and the CIA

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is learning one Washington lesson the hard way: Don't do battle with people who run covert operations for a living.

The bad blood between the White House and CIA has been known for some time. But the 22-page indictment Friday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby displays — in black and white — just how nasty relations had become between senior White House officials and the nation's spy chiefs.

When Libby complained to the CIA in June 2003 that agency officials were making comments to reporters "critical of the vice president's office," he specifically mentioned former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear materials. He also spoke of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame.

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