Saturday, March 18, 2006
The defense is suggesting that the State Department leaked an agent's identity.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide are signaling they may delve deeply at his criminal trial into infighting among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.
In a prelude to a possible defense, the lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby also are suggesting that the State Department -- not Libby -- may be to blame for leaking the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media.
Court papers filed late Friday raise the possibility a trial could become politically embarrassing for the Bush administration by focusing on the debate about whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The defense team stated that in June and July 2003, Plame's CIA status was at most a peripheral issue to "the finger-pointing that went on within the executive branch about who was to blame" for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"If the jury learns this background information" about finger-pointing "and also understands Mr. Libby's additional focus on urgent national security matters, the jury will more easily appreciate how Mr. Libby may have forgotten or misremembered ... snippets of conversation" about Plame's CIA status, the lawyers said.
Indicted
Cheney's former chief of staff was indicted Oct. 28 on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of Plame's CIA employment and what he told reporters about her.
Libby's lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton for access to government documents about a 2002 trip that Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, made to the African nation of Niger at the CIA's behest and about "his wife's involvement" with that mission.
The documents relate to what prospective witnesses -- including then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove -- probably would say at Libby's trial.
Noting press reports last week, the court papers say there has been speculation that Armitage told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and speculation that Woodward's source and the primary source for conservative columnist Robert Novak are the same person.
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