Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald ended a 22-month investigation of a leak that unmasked a covert CIA agent with only one White House aide indicted -- I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

"Scooter" Libby, as he is known, was charged with five counts, including perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. At his arraignment Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Though the prosecutor said that Karl Rove -- deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush and his top political adviser -- was still under investigation, there were sighs of relief at the White House.

Nevertheless, with some Republican veterans saying that Bush should clean house, there is speculation that Rove's tenure in the White House may be in question.

One can wonder whether Libby was the designated fall guy to take the heat.

Any reporter covering the Bush White House knows that there are no freelancers on the president's staff. Bush prizes loyalty and teamwork above all else from his staffers.

So it is inconceivable that Libby struck out on his own to discredit Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson by leaking to a group of Washington correspondents the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

Members of the small inner clique in the White House work in tandem. At the heart of that cohort is the vice president, who has often figured on the darker side on the administration's run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

After Italian news accounts in 2002 described documents indicating that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium ore from Niger, Cheney asked the CIA to check that out. The agency sent Wilson -- a diplomat familiar with Africa -- to determine whether Iraq had in fact approached Niger for the bomb-making material.

Wilson blew the rumor out of the water on his return that same year and reported his negative findings privately to the CIA. That didn't stop Bush from mentioning in his Jan. 28, 2003, state of the union speech that Saddam was shopping for uranium in Niger.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson went public and wrote a New York Times op-ed column knocking down the theory.

Keep in mind that U.S. forces had invaded Iraq just three months earlier and had found no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration's stated reason for going to war in the first place. Wilson's published report upset the White House because it seemed to further undermine that claim. Thus, White House aides sought to pooh-pooh the Wilson report by leaking the identify of Wilson's wife and claiming that she -- not the CIA leadership -- had sent her husband to Niger.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press quoted Italian officials earlier this week as saying that Italian intelligence agencies had warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that the documents about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa were fake. The AP quoted Italian Sen. Massimo Brutti -- after he had been briefed by his government's intelligence officials -- as saying that the warning came in January 2003, but he did not know whether it was made before or after President Bush's Jan. 28 speech.

I think the Fitzgerald probe has hit the end of the road and will not inquire any deeper into the White House scandal, leaving Libby to take the rap and everyone else off the hook.

Fitzgerald could have expanded his inquiry, as many had speculated before the indictment was handed up. But he stuck to the letter of his assignment.

"This indictment is not about the war, this indictment is not about the propriety of war," he said.

Asked about Cheney's role, Fitzgerald said: "We make no allegations that the vice president committed a criminal act."

Libby has expressed confidence that he will be "completely and totally" exonerated at the end of the legal process.

If Libby goes to trial, we can expect to see a lineup of White House staffers called to testify -- something the Bush administration would dread. Reporters on the receiving end of the Plame leak may also have to testify.

There is speculation that Libby's defense lawyers may seek a plea bargain or that the president may give Libby a pardon.

No matter the outcome, Bush can no longer claim -- as he did on the campaign trail -- that he and his cohorts would change the tone in Washington. It all has a too-familiar ring.

(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).

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