In the past couple of days many have speculated that Patrick Fitzgerald must be looking hard at Vice President Cheney’s staff if not the Dick himself. Today in the Washington Post, Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus confirm this.

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney’s office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney’s long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife’s position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney’s top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, lawyers involved in the case said. …

…Lawyers in the case said Fitzgerald has focused extensively on whether behind-the-scenes efforts by the vice president’s aides and other senior Bush aides were part of a criminal campaign to punish Wilson in part by unmasking his wife.

Josh Marshall writes that three points in this story stand out. First, Fitzgerald’s investigation has dug into Cheney’s running battle with the CIA regarding Iraq intelligence. Second, Fitzgerald said he would announce his findings in Washington and not in his office in Chicago; a hint that the end is at hand, perhaps? The third is this paragraph in the WaPo story:

The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.

Josh explains:

[Millerwise] was Cheney’s Press Secretary from 2001 to 2003. She then went to work on Bush-Cheney 2004. Then in January 2005 she was appointed Director of Public Affairs for the CIA. She had apparently also worked for then-incoming CIA-Director Porter Goss on Capitol Hill. And her installation appears to have been part of Goss’s effort to install Republican operatives in key positions at the Agency. Douglas Jehl, in the Times last January, called her appointment “the latest in a series of former Republican aides to be installed by Mr. Goss in senior positions at the C.I.A.”