Reply #22: Another possible take: Cheney went too far & backed off. Bush didn't "ask" Libby to leak,

[Garbo 2004]

Cheney did. Cheney does stuff on his own and then uses the President's name to claim or give the impression that Bush knows and authorized it. He'd done it before. Perhaps he thought of doing that again in the note, then thought better of it and crossed it out.

One of Fitz's earlier filings frequently overlooked IMO perhaps lends credence to this possibility. It refers to the same time period of the Cheney note, when Libby was trying to get the WH to give him a public "exoneration." H20 Man raised it again in one of his recent threads:

One of the most important pre-trial documents in the case is the Government’s Response to Defendant’s Third Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on April 5, 2006. On pages 27-28, we find the following:

"During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Plame’s CIA employment, defendant implored White House officials to have a public statement issued exonerating him. When his initial efforts met with no success, defendant sought the assistance of the Vice President in having his name cleared. Though the defendant knew that another White House official had spoken with Novak in advance of Novak’s column and that official had learned in advance that Novak would be publishing information about Wilson’s wife, defendant did not disclose that fact to other White House officials (including the Vice President) but instead prepared a handwritten statement of what he wished White House Press Secretary McClellan would say to exonerate him...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=63805