Where are the Stories Exculpating Cheney?

This week--as indictments of senior White House officials began to look increasingly likely in the CIA leak investigation--a number of stories were published which served to distance the President from the conduct at the heart of Fitzgerald's investigation. Murray Waas, John Solomon, and Peter Yost all reported--presumably based on the same anonymous source--that Karl Rove told the President back in 2003 that he was not involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. The seemingly obvious purpose of this trio of stories was to do some pre-emptive damage control, to limit the potential fallout to the President should Rove or anyone else be indicted.

But based on what we know about the leak investigation, it is the Vice President, not the President, who was more directly involved in the events at issue. It was Cheney who was implicated most directly by Joseph Wilson's original charges. It was Cheney who was accused by Nicholas Kristof--using Wilson as an anonymous source--of ignoring a CIA report that supposedly debunked the Niger-uranium claims. And it is Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby who is apparently most directly in the crosshairs of Fitzgerald's probe. So my question is this: why haven't we seen any public attempts to distance the Vice President from this investigation? Why haven't there been any anonymously-sourced stories laying out Cheney's defense? Why is it that no one is engaging in damage control on Cheney's behalf?

It's clear that the White House is bracing for indictments and making a concerted effort to make public any facts that exculpate the President. Why isn't the same thing being done for the Vice President? Could it be that the Huffington Post is on to something?