Libby's last disinformation campaign

Not only did Scooter's defense rely on emotion over facts, but it appealed to the jury to dismiss the craft of journalism as false by nature.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: Politics, Sidney Blumenthal, Journalism, Saddam Hussein, CIA, Tim Russert, Press, Opinion, Dick Cheney, Judith Miller, Iraq War, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Patrick Fitzgerald, Scooter Libby

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, left, and his attorney Theodore V. Wells, arrive Wednesday at U.S. District Court in Washington.

Feb. 22, 2007 | On Tuesday, I observed the closing arguments at the federal courthouse in Washington in the case of United States v. I. Lewis Libby. The prosecution's systematic presentation of the evidence supporting the five-count indictment of perjury and obstruction of justice did not foreshadow the dramatic accusation about Vice President Dick Cheney that was to come at the day's end. "This case is about lying," deputy prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg dryly began. It was, he explained, about how Scooter Libby learned that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative, and about whom Libby spoke with about the revelation and what he said.

The defense, for its part, appealed to the jurors' empathy for what it characterized as Libby's bad memory, called the prosecutors "mad," conjured up the defendant's two young children for sympathy, and described him as a decent man diligently doing his job despite being surrounded by the chaos of an administration in which he was indispensable but for whose actions he apparently bore no responsibility.

Finally, hour after hour, the defense attacked not only the credibility of the journalists who had been witnesses but also the very notion that journalism itself has to do with representing the truth. After journalists, one after another, were held up to derision as clownish boobs and blamed for Libby's predicament, the defense appealed to the jury's common sense to dismiss the craft of journalism as false by nature, always to be discredited, and on that basis to find Libby not guilty. On one level, the final argument on behalf of Scooter Libby was Libby's last disinformation campaign. On another, it was a summation of the Republican hostility toward the press, as official an imprimatur as Richard Nixon's malevolent enemies list or George H.W. Bush's sophomoric 1992 campaign slogan: "Annoy the Liberal Media."

The prosecution and the defense appeared before the jury with more than two contending accounts of the Libby story. Indeed, the defense did little if anything to counter the prosecution. Poor Libby's errors were just attributable to his bad memory. While the prosecution operated on the plane of reason, the defense retreated to high emotion. Libby's case began with accusations of a dark plot within the White House to feed Libby to the wolves to save the skin of Karl Rove -- a conspiracy that was never mentioned during the trial -- and ended in tears with the sudden and choked sobbing of defense attorney Theodore Wells.

"Did you ever hear any evidence about a conspiracy to scapegoat Mr. Libby? It's not a problem with your memory," Zeidenberg said. The case, he went on, is not about "scapegoating, conspiracies or bad memory." With business-like swiftness, he detailed how Libby conveniently forgot nine conversations with eight individuals about Plame and fabricated out of whole cloth two conversations with two reporters. Names, dates and places were cited, all supported by the evidence. Libby's memory failed him on what had happened, but worked on what hadn't.

Zeidenberg ran through the narrative of the loyal Libby, doing the bidding of his principal, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was angered at Wilson's public revelations concerning the falsehoods about the justification for the invasion of Iraq, a CIA mission set in motion by Cheney's own inquiries, which particularly enraged him. Cheney tasked Libby to learn about Wilson's wife, the CIA operative, so that Wilson's trip to Niger could be traced to her and not to Cheney's initial request to dig up information about Saddam Hussein's seeking yellowcake uranium for nuclear weapons.

Libby tapped government official after official, Marc Grossman at the State Department and Robert Grenier at the CIA, from whom he demanded information on Plame. The officials each testified at the trial, vividly recalling his unusual questioning; but Libby remembered nothing about them in his grand jury testimony. Nor did Libby remember his conversations about Plame with Cheney's communications aide, Cathie Martin, or his CIA briefer, Craig Schmall, who also remembered the conversations well. Nor did Libby remember his conversations with Judith Miller, the New York Times correspondent, to whom he leaked Plame's name and an exclusive story about the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. President Bush had declassified the NIE at the insistence of Cheney; the only other person aware of the declassification was Libby -- not then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen Hadley. But Libby did not remember it. Libby did not remember his conversation with White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, which was "hush-hush" and "on the Q.T.," he said, divulging Plame's identity to him. Nor did he remember his conversation with David Addington, Cheney's counsel, Libby's Libby, telling Addington to keep his voice down behind a closed door as Libby asked him about Wilson's spouse sending him on his mission.

But Libby remembered conversations with Tim Russert, the host of NBC's "Meet the Press," and Matthew Cooper, former correspondent for Time magazine. Zeidenberg played tape recordings of Libby's grand jury testimony in which Libby recalls precisely all the words that Russert and Cooper say were never uttered. On the tapes, Libby blames the reporters. "All I had was information coming from reporters ... all I had was reporters telling us that ... I didn't know he had a wife ... I told a couple of reporters what reporters told us."

Libby's invented conversations, putting the onus of revealing Plame's identity on reporters, disclosed the broad attitude of the Bush White House toward the press. Having used reporters to plant false stories in the run-up to the war, Libby believed he could hide behind them. They tell so many stories, their habits are not always perfect, they get things wrong as they labor to get them right, they inhabit an inferno of petty envies about their fellow reporters, and they might never tell. They would not tell and if they did, ultimately, who would believe them? Who would find his way through the wilderness of the Washington press corps?

But Libby knew what he did, Zeidenberg explained. He feared he might be found out. The FBI came to his door. If he told the truth he would implicate the vice president in a smear campaign against a critic and give credence to Wilson's statements that the administration had led the country into war on a falsehood. But if Libby blamed the reporters, Libby's -- and Cheney's -- actions would seem "innocuous," said Zeidenberg. "He decided to lie." With that, the first part of the prosecution summation concluded.

Libby's attorney, Wells, strode before the jury and used his precious opening minutes to denounce Zeidenberg for a "personal attack," namely, Zeidenberg's reference to Wells' failure to develop the White House conspiracy he claimed at the start of the trial was the center of his defense. "Maybe I was drunk when I made my opening," said Wells. He described Libby as a sheer victim, using language that evoked the image of an abused prisoner: "They get Mr. Libby in the grand jury and start beating on him." Who can blame a beaten man for what he might blurt out? The prosecution, said Wells, was "madness."

Wells concocted a fantasy of how Russert, who testified that he did not tell Libby about Plame, might have done so even though there was no evidence whatsoever to prove it. Wells spun a tale about Robert Novak's infamous column of July 14, 2003, revealing Plame's identity, observing that it was distributed to various news outlets that subscribe to Novak's column through the Associated Press wire on July 11. "Maybe," said Wells, Russert read the column on the AP wire, misremembered the date and misremembered the entire conversation. "Maybe all that happened ... Maybe he's confused." Maybe Wells was trying to sow confusion.

Next page: How could Libby be expected to remember?