Fitzgerald is tightening the noose around Cheney's neck in the Libby trial.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in tapes played Monday in the CIA leak trial, pressed Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff on whether Cheney had directed him to leak the identity of a CIA operative to reporters.

The audiotapes showed that Fitzgerald, just two months into his leak investigation, was asking pointed questions about the highest levels of government.

The first 90 minutes of audiotapes, recorded during the 2003 grand jury testimony of top Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were played for jurors in Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. More than six hours of additional tapes were to be played Tuesday.

Fitzgerald began his questioning by determining what he already knew to be true - that Libby was not the source of syndicated columnist Robert Novak's story revealing that the wife of an outspoken Bush administration critic worked for the CIA.

Almost immediately after that, however, Fitzgerald steered the discussion toward Cheney and how his office responded to the growing criticism from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who claimed to have led a fact-finding mission that refuted some prewar intelligence on Iraq.

I am developing a deep, purely heterosexual, man-crush on Patrick Fitzgerald. He could not be conducting this trial any more to my liking if he was calling me to ask what I wanted him to do next. He has taken that little ant Libby and used him to gain access to information that will blow the lid off of the administrations duplicity in convincing our country that Saddam Hussein was a danger that required a military solution.

They lied, we all know it, and Fitzgeralds about to prove it. It is going to be a very good day in America indeed when he gets Cheney on that witness stand.