its gonna be a fun trial
"Prosecutor: Libby destroyed Cheney memo
Fitzgerald says VP told his former top aide about CIA agent's identity
NBC News and news services
Updated: 9:21 a.m. PT Jan 23, 2007
WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied and destroyed a note showing Cheney's early involvement.
Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, in 2003 that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.
“But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,” Fitzgerald said, “he made up a story.”
Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 “destroyed” a Cheney note just before Libby's first FBI interview when he said he learned about Wilson from reporters, not the vice president.
I. Lewis Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction. He told investigators he was surprised to learn Wilson’s wife’s identity from NBC News reporter Tim Russert.
But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House. “You can’t learn something on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday,” Fitzgerald said.
Libby says he didn’t lie but was simply bogged down by national security issues and couldn’t remember details of what he told reporters about CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Fitzgerald believes Libby feared political embarrassment and worried he might lose his job for discussing classified information with reporters. President Bush originally threatened to fire anyone who disclosed such information so, Fitzgerald says Libby had a reason to lie.
Too preoccupied to forget?
Fitzgerald told jurors Tuesday that the trial isn’t about the war but that the case will be set against the backdrop of the first months of the invasion. He is expected to tell jurors that the White House was preoccupied with discrediting Wilson’s criticisms, so it’s unlikely Libby forgot that effort.
Libby plans to testify and tell jurors he had many other issues on his mind at the time, such as terrorist threats and emerging nuclear programs overseas. Attorneys say they expect Cheney to testify for the defense. Historians say that would be a first for a sitting vice president.
Libby’s attorneys had hoped U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton would tell jurors that “memory does not function like a tape recorder” and “a person is less likely to remember information if he is paying attention to several things at once.”
But Walton has refused to help defense attorneys make that point and on Tuesday rejected a request to allow defense attorneys to call a memory expert to testify at trial.
Motive to be alleged
Fitzgerald is also expected to explain something that’s not in the indictment but is key to the case: what he sees as the motive.
Defense attorneys deny he had a motive and plan to say so to jurors. Libby wasn’t charged with the leak and wasn’t the source for syndicated columnist Robert Novak’s article outing Plame. Why, they ask, would Libby lie?
If Fitzgerald is to make his case, he’ll need to answer that question in a way that convinces jurors. In court last week, Fitzgerald briefly touched on his explanation.
He said Libby feared political embarrassment and worried he might lose his job for discussing classified information with reporters. President Bush originally threatened to fire anyone who disclosed such information so, even though Libby wasn’t Novak’s source, Fitzgerald said Libby had a reason to lie.
Long juror process
The jury of nine women and three men will spend more than a month listening to conflicting statements from members of the Bush administration and journalists, trying to sort out the truth.
Libby’s defense attorneys, William Jeffress and Theodore Wells, spent days trying to weed critics of the Bush administration out of the jury pool. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1, that wasn’t easy. The final panel contains four people who criticized or doubted the administration’s war policies.
© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveMSNBC's David Shuster and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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