Former CIA Official Testifies Against Libby
    By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 24 January 2007

    A high-ranking former CIA official testified today that he told I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in June 2003 that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA, after an "aggrieved" Libby called seeking information about Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Africa.

    Robert L. Grenier, a former CIA associate deputy director, became the second prosecution witness at Libby's perjury trial to say he had disclosed information about CIA officer Valerie Plame to Libby weeks before Libby claims he learned her identity from a journalist.

    The timing is central to government charges that Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, lied to FBI agents and a grand jury investigating how Plame's name was leaked to the press. Libby has pleaded not guilty, contending he forgot some conversations with journalists in the crush of his work on national security issues.

    Grenier, who at the time was the CIA official in charge of intelligence for Iraq, told jurors that early on the afternoon of June 11, 2003, he received a telephone message that Libby had called.

    When he returned the call, the first he had ever received from Libby, the vice president's top aide sounded "a little bit aggrieved," Grenier said, about press reports that Cheney's office had asked the CIA to undertake a mission to Niger to determine whether Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from that country for a nuclear weapons program. Wilson was sent on that mission.

    Libby was so eager to learn the details of Wilson's trip that he had Grenier called out of a 4:15 p.m. meeting with then-CIA Director George Tenet for an update on what Grenier had learned in the previous three hours, Grenier said. He said he told Libby that, in addition to Cheney's office, the Departments of State and Defense also had been interested in the Africa mission.

    Grenier said he told Libby that Wilson's wife, whose name he did not know, had worked in the CIA unit that arranged the trip.

    The former CIA official's account came on the second day of testimony as defense attorneys began trying to cast doubt on the motives and memories of administration officials who have said Libby was obsessed with Wilson and Plame in the summer of 2003.

    Defense attorney Theodore V. Wells Jr. argued that then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the prosecution's first witness, was likely biased against Libby, had a "fishy" meeting with a key figure in the investigation and had given conflicting accounts of events over time.

    Another defense attorney, William H. Jeffress Jr., sought to undermine Grenier's testimony for the prosecution by pointing out that the former CIA official had initially told FBI agents and a grand jury that he did not remember whether he had told Libby that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Only later, Jeffress said, did Grenier notify investigators that he had, indeed, mentioned that she was an employee.

    "Do you find your memory gets better the further away from an event you are?" Jeffress asked pointedly.

    Grenier replied that he been giving a lot of thought to his conversation with Libby and, while he did not specifically remember more of its details, he did realize that he had briefly felt guilty immediately afterward "that I had somehow said too much . . . specifically having mentioned that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, effectively having revealed the identity of a CIA officer. . . . It is information we usually guard pretty closely."

    The questioning highlighted what will be one element of the defense strategy - pointing fingers at former colleagues of Libby's, particularly those at the CIA and State Department, who might have had reason to dislike him or his office's campaign for the war.

    Libby, 56, is charged with five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice. He is not charged with the leak itself to columnist Robert D. Novak; two other top government officials have acknowledged they were Novak's sources.

    Some critics of the administration have charged that the disclosure of Plame's name was a way to discredit Wilson after he claimed that the administration had twisted the intelligence he had collected in its effort to justify the Iraq invasion.

    Libby has said he believes he first learned about Plame from one journalist, NBC's Tim Russert, and passed along that information as unconfirmed gossip to two others. The reporters, who remember those conversations very differently, are key witnesses against Libby.

    But perhaps more crucial for the prosecution are at least eight current and former Bush administration officials - including Grenier and Grossman - who have said Libby was intensely seeking and spreading information about Plame and Wilson from May 29 until Plame's name appeared in Novak's column on July 14.

    In questioning Grossman, Wells said it could appear that Grossman was "cooking the books" when he met privately with his boss, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the night before Grossman was interviewed by the FBI in October 2003. Grossman acknowledged that was when Armitage had confessed to him that he had leaked Plame's name to Novak in a "stupid" offhand conversation.

    "Did you agree your meeting with Mr. Armitage on the eve of your FBI interview, that some could construe that as fishy?" Wells asked.

    Grossman good-naturedly disagreed. "You said some might see it that way, and I said that's true, they could," Grossman said. "I did not [see it that way] at the time and do not now."

    Grossman added that he was disappointed at what Armitage had done, but glad his boss made the effort to confide in him before his FBI interview.

    "He said it was the dumbest thing he'd ever done in his life," Grossman said. "He said he felt terrible about it, that he'd offered to quit and reported it fully to the FBI. I was shocked and disappointed. But for me, I thought he'd given me a piece of professional courtesy and I appreciated it."

    Wells questioned Grossman about his allegiances. "You and Mr. Armitage are very close friends, correct?" Wells asked. "Whereas Mr. Libby is just a professional [associate]."

    Said Grossman: "That's correct."

    Wells noted that Grossman also had occasional contact with Wilson, who attended Grossman's alma mater, the University of California at Santa Barbara.

    Wells told the jury in opening statements yesterday that many government officials' recollections are faulty and their motives conflicted when they say they remember Libby discussing Wilson's wife with them before her name was publicly revealed.

    The defense attorney also said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time, insisted on immunity from prosecution before testifying that Libby had told him about Wilson's wife. Fleischer admitted to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that he had discussed Wilson's wife with reporters after June 11.