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"The President ... was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward," McClellan said. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States."
A couple of weeks earlier, Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald. Cheney retained a private attorney, Terrence O'Donnell, to represent him in the matter.
Fitzgerald's criminal investigation led to Libby's indictment in October 2005 and his subsequent conviction in March 2007 on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, which Bush later commuted.
During closing arguments at Libby's trial, Cheney was implicated in the leak, as Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal and may have told Libby to leak Plame's status to the media.
Court papers filed by Obama's Justice Department in July revealed that Bush and Cheney were in contact about the scandal, including what is described as "a confidential conversation" and "an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President."
That court filing also revealed that Fitzgerald questioned Cheney about his participation in the decision to declassify parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's alleged WMD. It ultimately fell to Bush to clear selected parts of the NIE so they could be leaked as part of the White House campaign to disparage Wilson.
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