President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege to avoid turning over records of an FBI interview of Vice President Dick Cheney and other documents subpoenaed by Congress in the CIA leak investigation. The materials demanded by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee "deal directly with internal White House deliberative communications relating to foreign policy and national security decisions,'' the Justice Department said in a letter to the panel's chairman, Representative Henry Waxman.

Waxman, a California Democrat, put off a vote today on a resolution citing Attorney General Michael Mukasey for contempt of Congress for not complying with the subpoena. At a hearing in Washington, Waxman dismissed Bush's constitutional claims.

"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person,'' said Waxman. "The president is wrong to shield Vice President Cheney from scrutiny.''

The committee is investigating what role Cheney and Bush may have had in the leak of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had questioned evidence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Also among the documents sought by the committee are notes about Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. In the speech, the president said that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium in Africa to use for nuclear weapons -- an assertion disputed by Wilson, who investigated the claim in 2002.

Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, was convicted last year of perjury and obstructing justice after a special counsel's investigation into the leak. The interview of Cheney was conducted during that probe.

Libby's 2 1/2-year prison sentence was commuted by Bush in July 2007.