Former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review her civil lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials, who blew her cover to reporters five years ago, an attorney for Plame said Monday.

The announcement was made after the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit turned down Plame’s request for a rehearing on a lawsuit that was rejected by a District Court judge. She and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ex-White House political adviser Karl Rove, former Deputy Secretary of State and unnamed administration officials for allegedly violating their civil rights.

Libby was convicted on four of five counts and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W. Bush later commuted the sentence, sparing Libby jail time and dangling the possibility of a full pardon at the end of his term.

In August, in a 2-1 vote, the Republican-dominated federal Appeals Court judges let stand a district judge’s order dismissing the lawsuit stating there was no constitutional precedent established to allow the case to move forward and the court declined to set one.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the organization representing the couple, said Monday that despite the denial for a rehearing “it is not over yet.”

“The Wilsons and their counsel are certainly disappointed by the Court of Appeals’ decision,” Sloan said. “Now we will petition the Supreme Court to hear the case.” Sloan continued, “There must be consequences when government officials abuse their power and endanger national security for political ends. This is an issue worth fighting over and we will not give up.”

A federal investigation led by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White House officials–including Cheney and Libby–had retaliated against and sought to discredit Joseph Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had manipulated prewar Iraq intelligence.

Administration officials countered Joseph Wilson’s criticism by disclosing to reporters, privately, Valerie Plame worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium. The White House was trying to imply that Wilson’s trip was the result of nepotism. Plame testified before Congress last year that she had had no role in selecting her husband for the mission to Niger.

Libby was convicted on four of five counts and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W. Bush later commuted the sentence, sparing Libby jail time and dangling the possibility of a full pardon later.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates dismissed the civil lawsuit last year. At the time, Bates wrote, as a technical legal matter, Plame and Wilson can’t sue under the Constitution. Bates added that the defendants-Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others-had the right to rebut criticism aimed at Wilson, who accused the administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence. Bates said the leak of Plame’s undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters was “unsavory” but simply a casualty of Wilson’s criticism of the administration.

“The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson’s comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory,” Bates wrote. “But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration’s handling of prewar foreign intelligence by speaking with members of the press, is within the scope of defendants’ duties as high-level Executive Branch officials.”

“This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me.” Wilson said following Bates’s ruling last year. “We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation. Today’s decision is just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are committed to seeing this case through.”

Senior Bush administration officials disclosed Plame’s identity to several journalists in June and July of 2003 amid White House efforts to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

Her CIA employment was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak, effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers.

Initially, Bush professed not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides, including Rove and Libby followed suit.

However, it later became clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical information to friendly journalists.

On June 24, 2004, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed Bush for 70 minutes about the Plame leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to a press briefing by then-press secretary Scott McClellan.

“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.”

Fitzgerald had interviewed a couple of weeks earlier, Cheney.

According to sources knowledgeable about the vice president’s testimony, Cheney was specifically asked about conversations he had with senior aides, including Libby, and queried about whether he was aware of a campaign led by White House officials to leak Plame’s identity.

It is unknown how Cheney responded to those questions. Cheney retained a private attorney, Terrence O’Donnell. Neither O’Donnell nor Sharp returned calls for comment on Monday.

CREW, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, and Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have been trying to gain access to Cheney’s interview transcript, but have been rebuffed by the Justice Department.

In September, the agency responded to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act request by saying that it could not turn over the transcript because some of the statements Cheney made during his interview with Fitzgerald were classified. It was the first time the DOJ had made the claim.

In a letter sent to CREW Chief Counsel Anne Weismann, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said the documents have been withheld, in part, because it contains information “protected from disclosure by the National Security Act.”

“We are withholding the records . . . because they are protected by the deliberative process, presidential communications, and law enforcement investigative privileges,” states the Sept. 18 letter sent by OLC attorney Paul Coborn to CREW chief counsel Anne Weissman. “We are also withholding them . . . because the records were compiled for law enforcement purposes and their production “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The Department is concerned that releasing the records could interfere with future Department investigations by discouraging voluntary cooperation.

“Finally, we are withholding portions of the records . . . because they are classified and contain information protected from disclosure by the National Security Act of 1947.”

Waxman subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey in June for Cheney’s interview transcript as well a copy of Bush’s interview transcript with Fitzgerald. Waxman also subpoenaed Rove’s grand jury testimony.

But Mukasey did not state that the either of the transcripts contained classified information when he refused to comply with Waxman’s subpoena. Mukasey advised Bush to assert his executive privilege powers to block release of the transcripts.

“I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the [House Oversight] Committee’s subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations,” Mukasey wrote in a letter to Bush on July 16.

Fitzgerald, who spent three years investigating White House officials’ role in the Plame leak, said in a letter sent to Waxman in July that the interviews he conducted with Bush and Cheney in 2004 were not protected by grand jury secrecy rules and could arguably be turned over to Congress if authorized by the Justice Department.

Moreover, Fitzgerald said that in his capacity as special counsel he did not enter into a pre-arranged agreement with the White House to keep secret Bush and Cheney’s interview transcripts.

“I can advise you that as to any interviews of either the President or Vice President not protected by the rules of grand jury secrecy, there were no agreements, conditions and understandings between the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and either the president or vice president “regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews,” Fitzgerald’s July 3 letter addressed to Waxman says.

Fitzgerald has turned over to Waxman’s committee “FBI 302 reports” of interviews with CIA and State Department officials and other individuals involved in the CIA leak, Waxman said in a letter to Mukasey last December.

But “the White House has been blocking Mr. Fitzgerald from providing key documents to the Committee,” including transcripts of Fitzgerald’s interviews with Bush and Cheney, Waxman said.

Conyers also subpoenaed Mukasey for a wide range of documents related to the Plame leak and was denied.

Conyers and Waxman’s interest in the CIA leak case was revived with the publication in June of former White House press secretary McClellan’s memoir which suggested Bush and Cheney played a larger role in the matter than they have admitted publicly.

McClellan says Rove arranged a private meeting with Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting suspicion for leaking Plame’s identity.

Calling the scene “one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan writes in his new memoir “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. …

“Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card's office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.”

In his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception, McClellan doesn’t offer substantive evidence that Rove and Libby used the meeting in 2005 to coordinate their cover stories.

“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately,” McClellan writes.

“At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much,” McClellan said. “I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic?”

For more than a year in three separate appearances before a federal grand jury, Rove had insisted he was not a source for columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, two journalists who were told about Plame’s CIA identity when it was still secret.

Rove told the grand jury that he first learned that Plame worked for the CIA when he read it in Novak’s column, according to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin. But the truth was Rove had been an unnamed source for both Novak and Cooper.

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.

Fitzgerald told jurors that his investigation into the true nature of the vice president’s involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice.

Libby’s attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors during his closing arguments that Fitzgerald had been trying to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby and that the prosecution believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.

“Now, I think the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney,” Wells said.

Rebutting Wells, Fitzgerald told jurors, “You know what? [Wells] said something here that we’re trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We’ll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting — the two-hour meeting — the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. “