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Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case </font>
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By DAVID STOUT and NEIL A. LEWIS</B>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/washington/06cnd-libby.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
<b>WASHINGTON, Feb. 6th 2007</b>— I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted today of lying to F.B.I. agents and grand jurors investigating the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative amid a burning dispute over the war in Iraq.
The jury rejected Mr. Libby’s claims of memory lapses as it convicted him of obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the F.B.I. and perjuring himself, charges embodied in four counts of the indictment.
The panel acquitted him on a single count of making false statements.
The jury deliberated for 10 days before handing up their verdict to Federal Judge Reggie B. Walton this morning, ending one of Washington’s most closely watched trials of recent years. Mr. Libby, 56, could theoretically face more than two decades in prison, but as a first offender he will almost surely get a much lighter penalty when he is sentenced in early June.
Even if the conviction is overturned on appeal, or voided by a presidential pardon, the conviction is, for the moment, a personal tragedy for “Scooter” Libby, as he has been known since childhood. It is also a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, whose Iraq policy is increasingly unpopular with the public and is under increasing attack on Capitol Hill.
The jury of seven women and four men reached their decision after a 12th member of the panel was dismissed. Judge Walton found that the 12th juror had disqualified herself by inadvertently listening to information about the case outside the courtroom.
Right up to the final stages of the deliberations, there were hints of some confusion on the jury as to just what Mr. Libby was accused of doing. This morning, for instance, Judge Walton was asked if Mr. Libby was accused of making a false statement to a reporter from Time magazine. No, the judge said; he was not.
The trial pitted a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who contended that Mr. Libby lied repeatedly in an attempt to hamper an investigation into who disclosed the name of the operative, against Mr. Libby’s lawyers, led by Theodore V. Wells Jr., who insisted that any inconsistencies or inaccuracies in Mr. Libby’s accounts came from the innocent memory lapses of a very busy man.
Mr. Fitzgerald told jurors near the trial’s conclusion that Mr. Libby “made a gamble — he threw sand in the eyes of the grand jury” rather than tell the truth and risk being prosecuted for leaking the name of the operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.
Nonsense, Mr. Wells countered: “Scooter Libby is innocent. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t leak to anybody. Think about the madness of this prosecution. He’s been indicted for perjury, false statements — it’s craziness.”
Ms. Wilson’s husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a harsh critic of President Bush’s Iraq policy. He traveled to Africa in 2002 to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium there. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, he wrote that those reports were “highly doubtful.”
Eight days later, the columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that the Central Intelligence Agency chose Mr. Wilson for the Africa trip at the suggestion of his wife, who worked for the C.I.A. and specialized in intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
The hint of nepotism was seized upon by White House allies and critics of Mr. Wilson, who said it undermined the credibility of his account. But Mr. Wilson and critics of the White House contended that Ms. Wilson was unmasked in order to intimidate foes of the administration.
A paradox in the Libby case is that no one was ever charged criminally with the leak itself. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald knew early on that Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State, was the primary source.
Mr. Armitage first told the authorities in October 2003 that he was the source for the Novak column that set off the investigation. And Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser, is known to have provided extra confirmation of her identity for Mr. Novak.
Depending on the circumstances, disclosure of a C.I.A. employee’s name may or may not be a crime. People familiar with Mr. Armitage’s role said he cooperated in the inquiry, turning over his calendars and datebooks and testifying several times before the grand jury. Mr. Rove, who testified before the grand jury five times, was not told by Mr. Fitzgerald until last June that he would not be charged.
During the trial, Mr. Wells tried to show that his client was being made a scapegoat to protect Mr. Rove, who was considered vital to President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.
Mr. Libby did not testify at his trial. In his earlier accounts, to grand jurors and F.B.I. agents, he said he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity from reporters, and no earlier than July 10, 2003. But Mr. Fitzgerald maintained that Mr. Libby learned Mrs. Wilson’s identity well before that, from high administration officials, and that he was telling reporters about her, rather than the other way around, in an attempt to discredit her husband.
The four-week trial offered glimpses, not altogether flattering, into the workings of the vice president’s office, the government’s relationships with news organizations and the professional and personal shortcomings of journalists.
Mr. Fitzgerald subpoenaed several reporters who testified that Mr. Libby told them about Mrs. Wilson before July 10, 2003. But Mr. Wells, in his cross-examination, brought out several instances, some almost comic, in which those reporters garbled their own notes, or lost them, or displayed fuzzy recollection.
An early spark in the long-burning controversy was a 16-word statement by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Mr. Bush’s statement came as the administration was preparing to go to war with Iraq on the ground that the country was refusing to give up its deadly unconventional weapons.
Months after the speech, the White House acknowledged that the uranium allusion should not have been in the speech. By that time, a major political debate was brewing, as the quick conquest of Iraq and the ouster of its dictator had failed to turn up the deadly weapons that were cited repeatedly as justification for the war.
The controversy was fanned by Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003, article in The Times in which he accused the administration of using “twisted” intelligence to justify the war. The same day his article appeared Mr. Wilson repeated his conclusions on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mr. Wilson’s July 6 article was, in Mr. Libby’s view, “a very serious attack,” Mr. Fitzgerald told jurors, one that impelled him to peddle Ms. Wilson’s name and then try to cover his own tracks.
Among the several admonitions Judge Walton gave the jurors was that they must not be influenced by their feelings about the Iraq war or the Bush administration. During jury selection, the defense filtered out those District of Columbia residents who acknowledged negative feelings about the Bush White House and the war.</font>
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Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case </font>
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<b>
By DAVID STOUT and NEIL A. LEWIS</B>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/washington/06cnd-libby.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
<b>WASHINGTON, Feb. 6th 2007</b>— I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted today of lying to F.B.I. agents and grand jurors investigating the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative amid a burning dispute over the war in Iraq.
The jury rejected Mr. Libby’s claims of memory lapses as it convicted him of obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the F.B.I. and perjuring himself, charges embodied in four counts of the indictment.
The panel acquitted him on a single count of making false statements.
The jury deliberated for 10 days before handing up their verdict to Federal Judge Reggie B. Walton this morning, ending one of Washington’s most closely watched trials of recent years. Mr. Libby, 56, could theoretically face more than two decades in prison, but as a first offender he will almost surely get a much lighter penalty when he is sentenced in early June.
Even if the conviction is overturned on appeal, or voided by a presidential pardon, the conviction is, for the moment, a personal tragedy for “Scooter” Libby, as he has been known since childhood. It is also a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, whose Iraq policy is increasingly unpopular with the public and is under increasing attack on Capitol Hill.
The jury of seven women and four men reached their decision after a 12th member of the panel was dismissed. Judge Walton found that the 12th juror had disqualified herself by inadvertently listening to information about the case outside the courtroom.
Right up to the final stages of the deliberations, there were hints of some confusion on the jury as to just what Mr. Libby was accused of doing. This morning, for instance, Judge Walton was asked if Mr. Libby was accused of making a false statement to a reporter from Time magazine. No, the judge said; he was not.
The trial pitted a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who contended that Mr. Libby lied repeatedly in an attempt to hamper an investigation into who disclosed the name of the operative, against Mr. Libby’s lawyers, led by Theodore V. Wells Jr., who insisted that any inconsistencies or inaccuracies in Mr. Libby’s accounts came from the innocent memory lapses of a very busy man.
Mr. Fitzgerald told jurors near the trial’s conclusion that Mr. Libby “made a gamble — he threw sand in the eyes of the grand jury” rather than tell the truth and risk being prosecuted for leaking the name of the operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.
Nonsense, Mr. Wells countered: “Scooter Libby is innocent. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t leak to anybody. Think about the madness of this prosecution. He’s been indicted for perjury, false statements — it’s craziness.”
Ms. Wilson’s husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a harsh critic of President Bush’s Iraq policy. He traveled to Africa in 2002 to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium there. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, he wrote that those reports were “highly doubtful.”
Eight days later, the columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that the Central Intelligence Agency chose Mr. Wilson for the Africa trip at the suggestion of his wife, who worked for the C.I.A. and specialized in intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
The hint of nepotism was seized upon by White House allies and critics of Mr. Wilson, who said it undermined the credibility of his account. But Mr. Wilson and critics of the White House contended that Ms. Wilson was unmasked in order to intimidate foes of the administration.
A paradox in the Libby case is that no one was ever charged criminally with the leak itself. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald knew early on that Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy Secretary of State, was the primary source.
Mr. Armitage first told the authorities in October 2003 that he was the source for the Novak column that set off the investigation. And Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser, is known to have provided extra confirmation of her identity for Mr. Novak.
Depending on the circumstances, disclosure of a C.I.A. employee’s name may or may not be a crime. People familiar with Mr. Armitage’s role said he cooperated in the inquiry, turning over his calendars and datebooks and testifying several times before the grand jury. Mr. Rove, who testified before the grand jury five times, was not told by Mr. Fitzgerald until last June that he would not be charged.
During the trial, Mr. Wells tried to show that his client was being made a scapegoat to protect Mr. Rove, who was considered vital to President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.
Mr. Libby did not testify at his trial. In his earlier accounts, to grand jurors and F.B.I. agents, he said he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity from reporters, and no earlier than July 10, 2003. But Mr. Fitzgerald maintained that Mr. Libby learned Mrs. Wilson’s identity well before that, from high administration officials, and that he was telling reporters about her, rather than the other way around, in an attempt to discredit her husband.
The four-week trial offered glimpses, not altogether flattering, into the workings of the vice president’s office, the government’s relationships with news organizations and the professional and personal shortcomings of journalists.
Mr. Fitzgerald subpoenaed several reporters who testified that Mr. Libby told them about Mrs. Wilson before July 10, 2003. But Mr. Wells, in his cross-examination, brought out several instances, some almost comic, in which those reporters garbled their own notes, or lost them, or displayed fuzzy recollection.
An early spark in the long-burning controversy was a 16-word statement by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Mr. Bush’s statement came as the administration was preparing to go to war with Iraq on the ground that the country was refusing to give up its deadly unconventional weapons.
Months after the speech, the White House acknowledged that the uranium allusion should not have been in the speech. By that time, a major political debate was brewing, as the quick conquest of Iraq and the ouster of its dictator had failed to turn up the deadly weapons that were cited repeatedly as justification for the war.
The controversy was fanned by Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003, article in The Times in which he accused the administration of using “twisted” intelligence to justify the war. The same day his article appeared Mr. Wilson repeated his conclusions on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mr. Wilson’s July 6 article was, in Mr. Libby’s view, “a very serious attack,” Mr. Fitzgerald told jurors, one that impelled him to peddle Ms. Wilson’s name and then try to cover his own tracks.
Among the several admonitions Judge Walton gave the jurors was that they must not be influenced by their feelings about the Iraq war or the Bush administration. During jury selection, the defense filtered out those District of Columbia residents who acknowledged negative feelings about the Bush White House and the war.</font>
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