Opening statements in the criminal trial against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, are still a week away, but the special prosecutor has already provided a preview into the government's case against the ex-White House official accused of lying to the FBI and a grand jury about his role in the leak of a covert CIA operative.
According to court documents, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has said he plans to focus on the week of July 7 to 14, 2003, during which Libby allegedly told several reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and was responsible for convincing the agency to send her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had sought 500 tons of uranium from the African country.
"I'm not going to argue it was the most important issue consuming the Bush administration," Fitzgerald told US District Court Judge Reggie Walton during a February 24 federal court hearing, a transcript of which was obtained by this reporter.
Fitzgerald said, according to the transcript, that he will argue that Mr. Libby was consumed with Wilson more than he should have been during that week. "But he was, and you can look at the time he spent with people,"
Fitzgerald added. "When talking about Mr. Wilson for the first time, he described himself as a former Hill staffer. He meets with people off-premises. There were some unusual things I won't get into about that week. At the end of the day, we're talking about someone who spent a lot of time during the week of July 7 to July 14 focused on the issue of Wilson and Wilson's wife."
Last year's hearing also shed light on the defense strategy that will be employed in an attempt to prove Libby's innocence. Instead of focusing on the obstruction of justice and perjury charges their client is charged with, Libby's attorneys have attempted to downplay the importance of Plame Wilson's CIA status and work with the agency. That strategy has been carried out in recent court filings as well.
Last year's hearing also shed light on the defense strategy that will be employed in an attempt to prove Libby's innocence. Instead of focusing on the obstruction of justice and perjury charges their client is charged with, Libby's attorneys have attempted to downplay the importance of Plame Wilson's CIA status and work with the agency. That strategy has been carried out in recent court filings as well.
By devaluing Plame Wilson's work and status with the agency, Libby's attorneys said they hope to prove to a jury that their client had no incentive to lie to investigators and the grand jury about how and when he found out she was a CIA employee as well as Ambassador Wilson's wife.
Proving how adept the defense can be in circumventing the facts related to the perjury and obstruction of justice charges filed against Libby, at one point during the hearing, Wells suggested that Plame Wilson's undercover status should have been declassified five years ago, but wasn't because of a bureaucratic error.
"I need to understand, is she covert or not," Wells said. "If she's classified, is she really classified or is [she] just classified because some bureaucracy didn't unclassify her five years ago when they should have? I just want to know the facts."
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