Scooter Libby Convicted Of Perjury And Obstruction Of Justice
Libby, Ex-Cheney Aide, Convicted in CIA Leak Case
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By Laurie Asseo and Scott Cendrowski
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in a CIA leak probe prompted by a dispute over intelligence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Libby, 56, who resigned as Cheney's chief of staff upon being indicted in 2005, faces up to 10 years in prison for obstruction, the most serious charge. He also was convicted today in Washington of two counts of perjury and one count of making false statements to federal investigators and was acquitted of one false-statement count.
"We are very disappointed in the verdict of the jurors," defense lawyer Ted Wells, with Libby at his side, told reporters outside the courthouse. "We have every confidence that ultimately Mr. Libby will be vindicated. We believe, as we said at the time of the indictment, that he is totally innocent."
Wells said he will ask U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton for a new trial and, if that fails, will appeal the conviction.
The verdict is a blow to President George W. Bush's administration, which is suffering from public disapproval for the president's performance in office and handling of the Iraq war. Increasing opposition to the war was cited in polls as a factor in the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress in last November's election.
Libby twice winced slightly as the verdict was being read in court. Wells shook his hand and another defense lawyer, William Jeffress, patted him on the back.
'Sad' Result
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said outside the courthouse, "The results are actually sad. It's sad that we had a situation where" a high-ranking official "obstructed justice and lied under oath."
The prosecutor said he doesn't expect to file any further charges in the CIA leak case. "We're all going back to our day jobs," said Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush "respected the jury's verdict" and is "saddened for Scooter Libby and his family."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said Bush should promise not to pardon Libby. "I'm aware of no such request for a pardon," Perino said.
Bush said he was "not going to talk about it" when he was asked Feb. 14 whether he might issue pardons in the leak case.
Juror Comments
Cheney declined to comment when a reporter asked him about the verdict as the vice president left a weekly meeting of Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska said the conviction wasn't discussed at today's closed-door meeting.
Libby was the "fall guy" in the case, juror Denis Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, said outside the courthouse. "There was a tremendous amount of sympathy" for him even though his statements to the grand jury "were just hard to believe," Collins said.
"What are we doing with this guy?" Collins said jurors thought. "Where is Rove, where are the other guys?" he said, referring to top White House adviser Karl Rove, who testified five times before the grand jury and wasn't charged.
The jury began deliberating Feb. 21 and was in its 10th day. The panel included seven women and four men; one juror was dismissed after accidentally viewing out-of-court information in the case.
Libby was charged with lying to investigators probing whether the Bush administration deliberately leaked Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.
Prominent Witnesses
Testimony in the case featured some of the biggest names in Washington. Libby told a grand jury he first learned about Plame from Cheney. Syndicated columnist Robert Novak testified during the trial that her identity was leaked to him by ex-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and confirmed by Rove.
Prominent journalists took the witness stand, some after unsuccessfully fighting subpoenas. Ex-New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail to protect Libby as a confidential source, testified as a prosecution witness, as did NBC journalist Tim Russert. Testifying for the defense were Novak and Washington Post editor Bob Woodward.
Libby didn't testify, nor did Cheney, though the vice president said before the trial that he expected to take the witness stand on his former aide's behalf. Cheney called Libby "one of the finest individuals I've ever known," in a "Fox News Sunday" interview in January.
Libby was Cheney's national security adviser as well as chief of staff. His lawyers argued that national security issues kept him too preoccupied to remember details about the leak, and they said prosecution witnesses also suffered from faulty memories.
Sacrificial Defendant
Wells asked jurors during closing arguments Feb. 20 not to "sacrifice Mr. Libby to how you may feel about the war in Iraq or the Bush administration."
Wells said Libby worried that the White House was making him a "scapegoat" to protect Rove, who testified five times before the grand jury investigating the leak and wasn't charged.
Fitzgerald argued that Libby lied about Plame to protect his job because the White House had announced that anyone who leaked her identity would be fired. It's a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent. No one has been charged with the actual leak.
Jurors saw a note Cheney wrote when Libby expressed concern in 2003 that the White House hadn't publicly cleared him of leaking Plame's identity as it had Rove.
"Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others," Cheney's note said.
Obsessed With Wilson
The prosecutor said Cheney's office was obsessed with distancing itself from a 2002 trip to Niger by Wilson, who said he found no evidence to support intelligence that Iraq sought to buy uranium there. Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003 cited Iraqi efforts to buy uranium as a reason for going to war.
Wilson, a former ambassador, wrote a New York Times column on July 14, 2003, saying a query from Cheney's office prompted his trip to Niger and that the government should have known Bush's State of the Union statement wasn't true. Wilson accused the government of twisting weapons intelligence to justify invading Iraq.
Prosecutors showed the jury Cheney's handwritten notes on a copy of Wilson's column, including, "did his wife send him on a junket?"
Eight days after Wilson's article, Novak identified Wilson's wife in a column that cited administration officials as sources. The Justice Department later began investigating the leak.
Libby told a grand jury in 2004 that although he learned about Plame in mid-June 2003 from Cheney, he forgot about it and thought he heard about her for the first time from Russert on July 10, 2003. Russert testified that he never discussed Plame with Libby.
Talking to Miller
Libby also testified he didn't recall discussing Plame with Miller, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and several other government officials before his talk with Russert.
Prosecution witnesses including Miller, Fleischer and former Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper contradicted Libby's grand jury testimony.
The one charge on which Libby was acquitted accused him of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Cooper. He was convicted of lying to the grand jury about the same conversation.
Woodward, Novak and other journalists testified for the defense that Libby didn't mention Plame when they interviewed him around the same time.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said today that Libby's trial "unmistakably revealed -- at the highest levels of the Bush administration -- a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq."
Cheney's Role
Wilson and Plame said in a statement that the trial exposed "details of how Vice President Cheney orchestrated the concerted White House effort to discredit and retaliate against Joe Wilson."
The couple said they will continue to pursue a civil lawsuit against Libby, Cheney, Rove and Armitage that claims the four violated the couple's constitutional rights.
The case is U.S. vs. Libby, 05-394, U.S. District Court, the District of Columbia.
