As Trial Begins, Cheney's Ex-Aide Is Still a Puzzle

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 — Paradox seems to define I. Lewis Libby Jr., who remains a bit mysterious even to close colleagues. He is the White House policy enforcer who also wrote a literary novel; a buttoned-down Washington lawyer who likes knocking back tequila shots in cowboy bars and hurtling down mountains on skis and bikes; and a 56-year-old intellectual known to all by his childhood nickname, Scooter.

But now comes the most baffling paradox of all, as Mr. Libby, former chief of staff and alter ego to Vice President Dick Cheney, began his trial in federal court here on Tuesday on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. By all accounts a first-rate legal mind and a hypercautious aide whose discretion frustrated reporters, he is charged with repeatedly lying to a grand jury and to the F.B.I. about his leaks to the news media in the battle over Iraq war intelligence.

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“Libby didn’t plan the war,” said John Prados, a historian of national security who wrote a book in 2004 on the flawed Iraq intelligence. “But he did enable the administration to set out on that course. He was the facilitator.”

Both fans and critics of Mr. Libby might be surprised by some anecdotes from Yale, where Mr. Libby graduated in 1972. Fellow students recall his helping silkscreen T-shirts proclaiming “solidarity” between Yalies and the Black Panthers and going with shoulder-length blond hair and in a leather jacket to help at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.

A couple of years after graduation, a classmate, Donald Hindle, met Mr. Libby, then a student at the Columbia Law School, and noted a decidedly nonpolitical talent.

“He could remember not only all 79 ‘Star Trek’ episodes, as I could, but he knew all the titles, too,” Mr. Hindle said. “I think he always liked fantasy.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17libby.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=8c459b1ef993e5aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

This is the best defense a brilliant legal mind can come up with? I forgot? That's what you've got? You might as well just punt, Scooter.

Also, the Palpatine-Vader relationship between Wolfowitz and Libby gives me the creeps.

He gave his life away.