Prosecutor: Libby 'wiped out' Cheney memo
Defense in CIA leak trial counters that White House tried to set up Libby
NBC News and news services
Updated: 1:20 p.m. ET Jan 23, 2007
WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied about Cheney's early involvement in the disclosure of a spy’s identity.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, in 2003 that the wife of Iraq critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA, and that Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

“But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,” Fitzgerald said, “he made up a story.”

Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 “wiped out” a Cheney note just before Libby's first FBI interview when he said he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, from reporters, not the vice president.

It was not clear if Fitzgerald meant that the note was destroyed or that Libby had forgotten about it.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction. He told investigators he was surprised to learn the identify of Wilson’s wife from NBC News reporter Tim Russert.

Libby says he didn’t lie but was simply bogged down by national security issues and couldn’t remember details of what he told reporters about Plame.

But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House. “You can’t learn something on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday,” Fitzgerald said.

Defense: Libby was sacrificed
In their opening statements, Libby's attorneys said Bush administration officials tried to blame him for the leak to cover up for presidential adviser Karl Rove’s own disclosures.

Attorney Theodore Wells said Libby went to Cheney in 2003 and complained that the White House was subtly blaming him for leaking Plame’s identity to columnist Robert Novak.

“They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,” Wells said, recalling the alleged conversation between Libby and Cheney. “I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.”

Libby plans to testify and tell jurors he had many other issues on his mind at the time, such as terrorist threats and emerging nuclear programs overseas. Attorneys say they expect Cheney to testify for the defense. Historians say that would be a first for a sitting vice president.

Libby’s attorneys had hoped U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton would tell jurors that “memory does not function like a tape recorder” and “a person is less likely to remember information if he is paying attention to several things at once.”

But Walton has refused to help defense attorneys make that point and on Tuesday rejected a request to allow defense attorneys to call a memory expert to testify at trial.


Motive to be alleged
Fitzgerald is also expected to explain something that’s not in the indictment but is key to the case: what he sees as the motive.


Defense attorneys deny he had a motive and plan to say so to jurors. Libby wasn’t charged with the leak and wasn’t the source for Novak’s article outing Plame. Why, they ask, would Libby lie?

If Fitzgerald is to make his case, he’ll need to answer that question in a way that convinces jurors. In court last week, Fitzgerald briefly touched on his explanation.

He said Libby feared political embarrassment and worried he might lose his job for discussing classified information with reporters. Bush originally threatened to fire anyone who disclosed such information so, even though Libby wasn’t Novak’s source, Fitzgerald said Libby had a reason to lie.


Long juror process
The jury of nine women and three men will spend more than a month listening to conflicting statements from members of the Bush administration and journalists, trying to sort out the truth.

Libby’s defense attorneys spent days trying to weed critics of the Bush administration out of the jury pool. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1, that wasn’t easy. The final panel contains four people who criticized or doubted the administration’s war policies.

© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveMSNBC's David Shuster and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16770023/

Opening statement in Libby trial: 'The defendant lied.'
01/23/2007 @ 12:53 pm
Filed by Michael Roston

http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=4485
The opening statements in the trial against former Bush administration official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby kicked off today. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Libby destroyed a note written by Vice President Dick Cheney with instructions on how he should deal with federal investigators, while Libby's defense attonrey maintained that he was a "sacrificial lamb."

Advertisement
A broadcast on MSNBC described Fitzgerald's opening statement, in which he challenged Libby's defense against perjury and obstruction of justice, notably that he didn't remember what he had said because he was busy dealing with national security issues:

Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 “destroyed” a Cheney note just before Libby's first FBI interview when he said he learned about Wilson from reporters, not the vice president.

I. Lewis Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction. He told investigators he was surprised to learn Wilson’s wife’s identity from NBC News reporter Tim Russert.

But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House. “You can’t learn something on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday,” Fitzgerald said.

The blog Firedoglake is also liveblogging from the trial, providing an unofficial paraphrasing of what has transpired.

"The defendant lied. He made up a story," they quote Fitzgerald saying.

Background on the case against Libby and the jury selected to hear his case can be viewed in the following video clips from APTN and MSNBC.

The AP reports: "Lewis Libby's attorney countered with a White House effort of his own, one in which Libby was blamed for the leak to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures."

AP continues: "They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling a conversation between Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, as the leak investigation heated up in 2003. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."

G4A, thanks for staying on top of this for the rest of us....

MSNBC.com
Libby: White House sacrificed him for Rove
Fitzgerald says Libby lied about Cheney; first witness takes stand
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 4:42 p.m. ET Jan 23, 2007

WASHINGTON - Top White House officials tried to blame vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby for the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity to protect President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, Libby's defense attorney said Tuesday as his perjury trial began and the first witness took the stand.

I. Lewis Libby is accused of lying to FBI agents, who began investigating after syndicated columnist Robert Novak revealed that a chief Bush administration critic, Joseph Wilson, was married to CIA operative Valerie Plame.

When the leak investigation was launched, White House officials cleared Rove of wrongdoing but stopped short of doing so for Libby. Libby, who had been asked to counter Wilson's criticisms, felt betrayed and sought out his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, Wells said.

"They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling Libby's end of the conversation. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."

White House infighting
Rove was one of two sources for Novak's story. The other was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Nobody, including Rove and Armitage, has been charged with the leak. Libby is accused of lying to investigators and obstructing the probe into the leak.

Cheney's notes from that meeting underscore Libby's concern, Wells said.

"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder," the note said, according to Wells.

The description of the White House infighting was a rare glimpse into the secretive workings of Bush's inner circle. It also underscores how hectic and stressful the White House had become when the probe was launched.

By pointing the finger at Rove, whom he referred to as "the lifeblood of the Republican party," Wells sought to cast Libby as a scapegoat.

"He is an innocent man and he has been wrongly and unjustly and unfairly accused," Wells said.

The first witness
Marc Grossman, the former under secretary of state, was the first person to be called to the witness stand by prosecutors. Grossman is said to have advised Libby on June 12, 2003 that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and helped arrange for his fact-finding trip to Niger. Defense attorneys have called him "a critical witness for the government."

Grossman according to prosecutors is one of the first officials to tell Libby that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and had a role in the Niger trip.

Fitzgerald said Tuesday that Cheney also told Libby about Wilson's wife working at the CIA in early June.

Libby has told FBI investigators and a grand jury that he first learned Plame's identity from NBC Washington Bureau Tim Russert, in a conversation on July 10 or 11, 2003. Russert has testified that Plame never came up in their talk.

(MSNBC.com is owned, in part, by NBC News.)

Libby is charged with five felony counts. He allegedly obstructed an investigation into the leaking of C-I-A officer Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 and lied to the F-B-I and a grand jury.

Wilson's Africa trip
The June-July 2003 time period is crucial to the charges brought against Libby.

In the spring of 2003, two newspaper articles reported on a trip by a former ambassador to Africa sponsored by the C.I.A. to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms program.

Neither article identified the ambassador, but it was known inside the government that he was Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie Plame Wilson's husband. White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment.

In May 2003, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was first to write that an unnamed ambassador traveled to Niger to investigate uranium sales. The envoy, Kristof wrote, reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

Fitzgerald contends that the Kristof column sparked a frenzy of queries from the office of the vice president to both the State Department and the CIA about ambassador Wilson and who arranged his trip.

The defense's approach
The prosecution says Grossman recalls telling Libby that "Joe Wilson's wife works for the CIA" and that "our people say that she was involved in the organization of the trip."

Ted Wells, Libby's may take aim at Grossman, and cast doubt on the accuracy of any testimony by Grossman, who is identified as a longtime friend and traveling partner of Wilson's, suggesting they are biased against Libby because of their connections to one another and to Wilson.

The defense says that Grossman was visited by the state department's second in command Richard Armitage, the night before his interview with the FBI.

Armitage admitted this summer that he was the first to reveal Plame to columnist Robert Novak.

Ted Well's says Armitage told Grossman that he spoke to Novak and he already told the FBI about Novak. Wells says "this is cooking the books"

Wells said Grossman and Wilson went to college and came up through the ranks of the State Department together.

Tuesday's testimony ended with Grossman still on the stand. He is expected to resume his testimony on Wednesday, when the court resumes at 9:30am ET.

Sorting conflicting statements
As the trial opened with a preview of each side's position, it was clear that the jury will be tasked with sorting through conflicting statements in a high-profile case that has opened a very public window on the behind-the-scenes Washington practice of leaking sensitive information to the news media.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told a far different story from Wells. He described for jurors a Bush administration effort to beat back early criticism of the Iraq war and accused Libby of lying to investigators about his role in that campaign.

Using a computerized calendar during opening statement, Fitzgerald described a tumultuous week in 2003 when he said the White House was under "direct attack" from Wilson.

Fitzgerald said Libby learned from five people -- from Cheney to members of the CIA and State Department -- that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Libby discussed that fact to reporters and others in the White House, Fitzgerald said.

"But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did," Fitzgerald said, "he made up a story."

Memory or lying?
Libby told investigators he learned about Plame from NBC News reporter Tim Russert. But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House.

"You can't learn something on Thursday that you're giving out on Monday," Fitzgerald said.

Libby says he didn't lie but was simply bogged down by national security issues and couldn't remember his conversations with New York Times report Judith Miller, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and Russert.

"He spends his day trying to connect the dots to be sure we don't have another 9/11," Wells said.

Opening statements were expected to continue into Tuesday afternoon. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks.
© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveNBC's Joel Seidman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16770023/
© 2007 MSNBC.com