Libby Guilty of Lying
in C.I.A. Leak Case
By DAVID STOUT and
NEIL A. LEWIS, NYTimes on the Web, March 6, 2007
| |
 |
| |
Andrew Councill for The New York Times
I. Lewis
Libby arriving at federal court today in Washington. |
WASHINGTON, -- 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.
|
