Former White House Aide Libby Found Guilty on 4 of 5 Charges By EVAN PEREZ and JOHN D. MCKINNON March 6, 2007 1:22 p.m. WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- A federal jury found I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, guilty of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation that originated from the leak into the identity of a CIA operative. Mr. Libby's lawyers said they will file motion for new trial, and if that fails, appeal the verdict. The former White House aide had little reaction to the court's decision. He stood expressionless as the jury left the room. His lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said they were "very disappointed." Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he was gratified by the verdict. "The results are actually sad," he added. "It's sad that we had a situation where a high level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did." The jury, which was reduced to 11 jurors after one juror was dismissed after being exposed to case-related information, found Mr. Libby guilty of four of the five counts he faced. He was found not guilty of one charge of false statements. Sentencing for Mr. Libby was set for June 5 -- he faces up to 30 years in prison, though under federal sentencing guidelines likely will receive far less. The verdict caps a nearly six-week federal trial that enthralled the nation's capital as current and former administration officials and famous journalists testified about a key period in the summer of 2003 as criticism began mounting over the Iraq invasion and the search for weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Mr. Libby was indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from statements he made to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a grand jury looking into the public disclosure of the name of a former CIA operative, who is married to a critic of the Bush administration. Mr. Fitzgerald never charged anyone with leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, the former CIA employee, despite the fact that early into his three-year investigation, he knew the original leaker was Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state. Instead, Mr. Fitzgerald pursued perjury-related charges. Under ferocious criticism, he proceeded to interview President Bush and Mr. Cheney and dragged reporters before a grand jury to testify about conversations with confidential sources, an effort which landed former New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail until she relented. Once he indicted Mr. Libby, right-leaning activists and Mr. Libby's supporters portrayed him as a prosecutor run amok. In an unusual twist, the prosecution case depended heavily on the credibility of journalists. Ms. Miller bolstered Mr. Fitzgerald's argument that Mr. Libby lied about learning about Ms. Plame during a phone call with Mr. Russert, the NBC television host, on July 10, 2003. Ms. Miller said Mr. Libby told her about Ms. Plame twice, well before the Russert phone call. Similarly, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, testifying under an immunity deal with prosecutors, told the jury that Mr. Libby told him about Ms. Plame during a lunch meeting three days before the call with the NBC newsman. Mr. Russert himself testified he couldn't have told Mr. Libby about Ms. Plame because he didn't learn about it until he read a July 14 article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Mr. Libby's defense, as put forth by a team of top-notch defense lawyers led by Mr. Wells and William Jeffress, was that he didn't intentionally lie, but rather had "mis-recollections" that he blamed on faulty memory. Indeed, Messrs. Wells and Jeffress fiercely questioned the memory of reporters and managed to shake at least some of them, most notably Ms. Miller, who finally acknowledged that she couldn't be certain she didn't learn about Ms. Plame from someone other than Mr. Libby. The roots of the Libby case lie in a debate over use of intelligence in the buildup to the Iraq war. It began when Ms. Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, complained privately to reporters and later in his own newspaper op-ed that the Bush administration had misused or ignored intelligence he gathered that cast doubt on Iraq's alleged efforts to obtain materials for weapons of mass destruction from Africa. In July 2003, Mr. Wilson went public with his story of taking a CIA sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger to check out claims of connections to Iraq's weapons program. In interviews and in an opinion article, he called into question Mr. Bush's use of intelligence related to Niger. In retaliation, prosecutors say, Mr. Libby and other officials sought to disclose Ms. Plame's identity to reporters, making the argument that her intelligence job was the only reason Mr. Wilson looked into Iraq's weapons efforts in the first place. Mr. Libby, in grand jury testimony played in court, argued that the trip to the impoverished country of Niger was a "boondoggle" akin to a lawyer going to Hawaii for a seminar that he could easily attend in his hometown. The administration subsequently backed off the Niger claim. However, Mr. Libby told the grand jury in the case that he continued trying to leak selective portions of intelligence reports to journalists in order to portray the Niger-Iraq link as true, under orders from Mr. Cheney. Administration officials complained that Mr. Wilson was the one misusing his role in the intelligence process by talking publicly about his findings. With the Democrats now the majority party in Congress, the verdict is likely to lead to further embarrassing hearings and accusations on Capitol Hill. In particular, it raises the visibility of a Senate Intelligence Committee report -- expected to be released within a month or so -- that will highlight the administration's supposed efforts to manipulate information about Iraq's nuclear weapon ambitions, among other issues. A Senate aide said the committee also will continue to examine "the manipulation of pre-war intelligence," including White House efforts like Mr. Libby's to discredit critics. The Senate Armed Services Committee also is seeking further interviews with Mr. Libby, among other administration officials. The House Judiciary Committee has been beefing up its investigative staff, with an eye to exploring a range of possible abuses of executive authority by the White House. A congressional aide said recently that "it's going to snowball into bigger issues" such as the conduct of the war. The focus of much of the attention likely will be Mr. Cheney himself, whose manipulation of classified information and of White House reporters alike during 2003 became perhaps the biggest revelation of Mr. Libby's trial. Write to Evan Perez at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and John D. McKinnon at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. 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