Blumenthal: Libby's cynical defense

In the courtroom, I watched Libby's lawyers grill Bob Woodward and Robert Novak, trying and failing to obscure the charges against the vice president's man.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Feb. 15, 2007 | Throughout the anxious months before the trial of United States v. I. Lewis Libby, one of Scooter Libby's old mentors, a prominent Washington attorney and Republican with experience going back to the Watergate scandal and with intimate ties to neoconservatives, implored him repeatedly to stop covering up for Vice President Cheney and to cut a deal with the special prosecutor. Yet another distinguished Washington lawyer and personal friend of Libby's, privy to the mentor's counsel, reinforced his urgent advice and offered to provide Libby with introductions to former prosecutors who might help guide him. But Libby rebuffed them. He refused to listen. He insisted on the trial.

This Tuesday, Theodore Wells, Libby's chief defense lawyer, abruptly announced that neither Cheney nor Libby would testify on his behalf. In effect, the defense was resting. Did his own lawyers mistrust Libby on the stand? Would he lie and prompt another count of indictment? Would Cheney, indisputably the director of the campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, be stepping into a perjury trap or open the door to conspiracy charges implicit from the beginning? Those questions, along with their testimony, remain moot.

According to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby's case amounts to an attempt at "jury nullification." Libby is charged with five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about where he learned the identity of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame (Wilson's wife) and to whom he spread that information. Fitzgerald presented two government officials, former CIA officer Robert Grenier and State Department official Marc Grossman, who swore they were the first to inform Libby. Libby was in pursuit of that information, Fitzgerald further revealed through testimony from past and present Bush administration officials, because the vice president had tasked him to find and spread it. And Libby also passed on the information to Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, to get him to pass it on to the press. Three reporters, Matt Cooper (then at Time magazine), Judith Miller (then at the New York Times) and NBC's Tim Russert, testified that Libby had conveyed to them the information about Plame. Fitzgerald's prosecution was well honed, unadorned and a straight arrow.

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Yet, under cross-examination by Fitzgerald, Hannah was cracked apart in a matter of minutes. Fitzgerald asked him whether defending Cheney in the media was an important part of Libby's job. "It would be important to push back on those issues, yes," Hannah said. Fitzgerald then got Hannah to acknowledge that getting Libby to give up an hour's worth of his time, given his heavy load of work, would be difficult. Fitzgerald zeroed in on Libby's two long meetings in the St. Regis Hotel's dining room on June 23 and July 8, 2003. "So, during the time of all these threats if he gave someone an hour or two of his time ... it was something Mr. Libby would think was important, correct?" Fitzgerald asked. Hannah answered that it was. "Is it fair to say that what was important to the vice president was important to Mr. Libby?" Fitzgerald asked. "Yes, that's correct," Hannah replied.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/02/15/libby_trial/

Fitzmas may be late this year, but it's here at last!