US: A grand jury investigating the leaking of a CIA agent's identity met in Washington yesterday amid mounting expectation that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will announce charges against senior White House figures within the next two days.
As Mr Fitzgerald's two-year inquiry nears its end, he has sent FBI agents to interview Valerie Plame's neighbours, asking if they knew she worked for the CIA before the information was published in newspapers.
Ms Plame, whose husband, Joseph Wilson, was a prominent critic of the Bush administration's policies in the run-up to the Iraq war, was known to most of her friends and neighbours as a consultant rather than an intelligence officer.
Mr Fitzgerald said nothing as he entered the Washington courthouse just before 9am yesterday and justice department officials said there would be no public announcement before today.
President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, have both been told they are in legal jeopardy.
Both are believed to have discussed Ms Plame's identity with reporters after her husband debunked claims that Saddam Hussein tried to import nuclear materials from Niger.
Mr Fitzgerald could charge one or both men with unlawfully revealing the identity of a CIA undercover agent but they could only be convicted if it was shown that they leaked the information intentionally, knowing that Ms Plame worked undercover.
The prosecutor has also considered charges of obstructing justice, mishandling classified information and making false statements to his inquiry.
The New York Times reported this week that Mr Fitzgerald had evidence that Mr Cheney knew about Ms Plame's identity before the leak and knew more about her husband, a former ambassador, than he admitted in public.
The CIA leak inquiry is one of a number of headaches for the White House, which is struggling to persuade senators to back Mr Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the supreme court. Ms Miers was yesterday due to resubmit a questionnaire about her career history, qualifications and judicial philosophy to the senate judiciary committee.
Conservative groups usually loyal to Mr Bush have launched websites and television ads denouncing Ms Miers's nomination and Republican senators have been slow to offer her public support.
"There is an awful lot of Republican senators who are saying 'we are going to wait and see'. . . she has really got to raise the comfort level around here," said South Dakota Republican John Thune.
Some conservative expressed concern about a speech Ms Miers made in 1993 to the Executive Women of Dallas, when she said that the principle of "self-determination" should guide decisions about abortion and school prayer.
Conservative critics say the speech appears to contradict Ms Miers' robust anti-abortion stance expressed to an anti-abortion pressure group four years earlier.
A new CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll shows that only one in 10 Americans believes Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the CIA leak; 39 per cent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter and the same percentage said administration officials acted unethically but did nothing illegal.
The poll shows support for Mr Bush falling and 54 per cent of voters say they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who opposed the president.
As Mr Bush becomes an electoral liability, Republican candidates are avoiding opportunities to appear with him in public.
James Kilgore, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, will not attend a presidential event in the state tomorrow but has asked former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain to campaign with him. One third of senate seats and the entire House of Representatives are up for re-election next year.
