Looking for extra cash? Perhaps you can find an indicted politician who
will pay big bucks for you to provide expert testimony (that also just
happens to support his or her case)? :-)
Chris Green
York University
Toronto, ON
http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/2006/02/scooter_libbys_.html#below-fold
Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, has hired a
renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard
psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by
Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team
confirms the news.
Schacter, who has been at Harvard since 1991 and who has a 29-page resume, is
the author of "The Seven Sins of Memory" and "Searching for Memory: The
Brain, the Mind and the Past." His books offer explanations for the
"vulnerability of memory." Schacter writes that if we are distracted as an
event unfolds, "we may later have great difficulty remembering the details of
what happened." Time, of course, often weakens our memory. And, he writes, it
is easy to "unwittingly create mistaken -- though strongly held -- beliefs
about the past."
Libby's lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be
"central themes" of Libby's defense. Libby's lawyers write: "...any
misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were
not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory."
Libby's lawyers say that, during Libby's hectic days handling sensitive
national-security matters, "it is understandable that he may have forgotten or
misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less
important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame
Wilson's employment status."
Libby has been charged with lying to investigators about his role in the
disclosure of Valerie Wilson's role as a CIA operative. His trial is scheduled
to begin in January 2007.
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