Vice President Dick Cheney speaks to military personnel at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. Time magazine revealed that President George W. Bush's confidence in his top team of advisors, including Cheney, has fallen sharply in the wake of the CIA leak scandal. (AFP photo)

BEIJING, Oct. 31 -- Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called Sunday for a White House shakeup in the wake of the CIA leak case, urged an internal investigation into any involvement by Vice President Dick Cheney.

    Democrats called on both President Bush and Mr. Cheney to apologize to the American people for the affair that led to the indictment on Friday of Mr. Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr. Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, remains under investigation by the special federal prosecutor.

    "There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said. He said Bush and Cheney "should come clean with the American public."

    Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, resigned Friday after he was indicted on five charges relating to statements he made to the FBI and a grand jury investigating the Plame leak.

    Karl Rove, Bush's top political strategist and deputy chief of staff, was not charged in the indictment. Rove, who has made four appearances before the grand jury, discussed Plame with at least two journalists, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

    Rove's legal fate remains a central unresolved question in the probe. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said Oct. 28 his investigation was continuing, leaving open the possibility that others might be charged later. 

    Democrats again sought today to frame the leak scandal as reaching beyond Mr. Libby and implicating Mr. Cheney , and therefore affecting the broader debate over how the administration moved the nation toward war.

    "The vice president was the leader of the effort here to get us into this war in Iraq," said Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. To suggest that the Plame leak had nothing to do with the war "is to be terribly naive," he said on Fox-TV.

    Conservative commentators today emphasized that special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald appeared not to have found evidence to indict anyone on the underlying charge of knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert C.I.A agent, and even argued that the affair could soon slip from the public memory.

    But Senator Dodd countered that Mr. Bush would make a mistake to assume that the leak problem would simply be forgotten with time.

    "I think he makes a mistake if he minimizes it," he said. "Do not minimize this. This is very serious, and it's not going to go away."

    (Agencies)