If the jury believes I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s lawyer, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide was being set up by President George Bush’s top aide to take the blame for leaking the identity of a CIA agent, and the government is relying on witnesses with faulty memories.
If the jury believes the prosecution, Libby is lying because he knew the FBI was zeroing in on him, he was aware that he had placed the president in an embarrassing position and he understood that the breach caused serious damage to the United States.
The fate of Cheney’s former right-hand man rests in the hands of 12 Washingtonians who for a month now, have received a behind-the-scenes look at the Bush White House and the media that covered it in the runup to the Iraq war.
Libby faces five counts of lying to investigators about conversations he had with two reporters, Tim Russert of NBC and Matthew Cooper of Time. Libby claims that Russert told him the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV.
Using charts and photos and re-playing key tape recordings, prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg Tuesday reviewed how four high-level government officials, including Cheney, told Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. Zeidenberg then showed that Libby passed on her identity to five other people, none of whom were Russert.
Libby concocted the story about Russert to hide the fact that he learned it from Cheney and from other classified sources, Zeidenberg said.
“It was made up out of whole cloth,” Zeidenberg said. “That’s not a matter of misremembering or forgetting. It’s lying.”
Libby lawyer Theodore Wells urged the jury to focus on a hand-written missive that Cheney fired off to the Oval Office after Joseph Wilson raised concerns about statements Bush made in his State of the Union speech. Cheney warned the White House that Libby would not take the fall for Karl Rove, the president’s top political operative, Wells said. Cheney wrote the note after Libby complained he was being scapegoated, and that Rove was the one who leaked Plame’s identity.
Libby’s complaint to his boss was an act of an innocent man trying to clear his name, Wells said.
“Rove lied. Scooter Libby didn’t lie,” Wells said.
Wells dismissed Russert’s testimony as not being credible because thejournalist was inconsistent and showed his own lapses of memory. Cooper’s notes, Wells said, confirm Libby’s story.
“This is madness,” Wells said.
