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Libby Defense Seems to Meet a Setback on Evidence    [

    Libby Lawyer to Argue Bush's Role in Leak
    By James Vicini
    Reuters

    Friday 05 May 2006

    Washington - The lawyer for former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby said on Friday he would argue that his client revealed intelligence on Iraq after Vice President Dick Cheney authorized it and President George W. Bush declassified the information.

    At a hearing on what documents the prosecution must turn over to the defense, lawyer Theodore Wells also said he believed there may be testimony or statements by Bush and Cheney that the disclosure of the intelligence was authorized.

    Wells said he was entitled to any such information from the special prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to the news media.

    US District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that prosecutors must turn over information about how the intelligence was declassified because it was important to Libby's defense.

    Prosecutors disclosed last month that Libby had testified he had been authorized to disclose the intelligence to reporters in the summer of 2003, to counter criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from Plame's husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson.

    Bush has acknowledged declassifying the information, prompting charges of hypocrisy from Democrats who say he has denounced some leaks while encouraging others.

    Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, is charged with lying to investigators as they sought to determine who disclosed Plame's name to a conservative columnist in July 2003.

    Wells said he would tell the jury that Libby disclosed the intelligence with Cheney's authorization and with the understanding Bush had declassified it.

    The trial is scheduled to begin in January, keeping alive an issue that has dogged the White House for months.

    Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he already turned over the relevant documents. Fitzgerald said he agreed with the defense the intelligence had been declassified, but did not know precisely when that happened.

    The leak occurred at a time when opponents were stepping up their criticism of the March 2003 invasion after US forces had failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

    Wells also said he planned to attack the credibility of Wilson, a former ambassador. He said he planned to call five witnesses who would say that Wilson told them about his wife working at the CIA.

    Wilson investigated for the CIA an administration claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium, an ingredient used in nuclear weapons, in Niger, and he later wrote in a New York Times article that the charges could not be substantiated.

    Wells said he wanted a wide range of government documents about Wilson's trip to Niger.

    The judge rejected the request on the grounds that it was not relevant to the lying charges against Libby. "I'm just not going to let this case become a judicial resolution of the legitimacy of the (Iraq) war," he said.

    Wells also said top White House aide Karl Rove would likely be a defense witness at the trial and the prosecutor must turn over information about Rove, who remains under investigation.

    Fitzgerald said he was not withholding information about Rove. Rove, who faces possible perjury charges, last month testified before a grand jury for the fifth time. Fitzgerald has yet to decide whether to charge Rove.

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   Libby Defense Seems to Meet a Setback on Evidence
   By Neil A. Lewis
   The New York Times

   Saturday 06 May 2006

   Washington - The judge in the perjury and obstruction of justice case against I. Lewis Libby Jr. said Friday that he was skeptical that the defense needed additional documents about the trip a former ambassador took to Africa to check reports of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.

   Lawyers for Mr. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, have claimed a need for government accounts of the trip, taken by Joseph C. Wilson IV, who, contrary to the Bush administration's claims, later declared that there was no evidence of such efforts.

   "You want to try the legitimacy of our government going to war in Iraq," the judge, Reggie B. Walton, told the defense. Judge Walton said the accuracy of Mr. Wilson's description of his trip had little relevance to the charges that Mr. Libby lied to a grand jury and government investigators when asked whether he had disclosed to reporters that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie, was an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency.

   The CIA sent Mr. Wilson to Niger in 2002 to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Saddam Hussein's government had tried to buy uranium there to make a nuclear weapon. In July 2003, four months after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times maintaining that to justify going to war, the administration had twisted intelligence reports about ostensible Iraqi efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

   Robert D. Novak identified Ms. Wilson in his syndicated column eight days after publication of Mr. Wilson's article. Mr. Libby later told a grand jury and federal agents that he had not shared information about Ms. Wilson's employment at the CIA with reporters. After reporters testified that he had in fact discussed Ms. Wilson with them, he was indicted. His trial is set for January.

   Mr. Libby has also testified that he was authorized by the White House to disclose intelligence information as a way of countering Mr. Wilson's criticism. Theodore V. Wells Jr., Mr. Libby's chief lawyer, told Judge Walton on Friday that he needed the government records of Mr. Wilson's trip because "the trip is what the whole controversy is about." Mr. Wells said the government wanted to narrow the case to the issue of Ms. Wilson's identity, but "that was only a small sliver."

   Although Judge Walton expressed strong disagreement with Mr. Wells, he did not issue a final ruling.