Libby loses bid for documents in CIA leak case (Defense to put Lying Joe on stand)

WASHINGTON - A federal judge refused on Friday to give I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby access to a wide range of information from several government agencies, saying he would not to allow the former White House aide's trial in the CIA leak case to become a debate over the war in Iraq.

"You want to try the legitimacy of us going to war," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told lawyers for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff. "I don't see how that will help us determine whether Mr. Libby lied when he talked to the FBI and went before the grand jury."

Walton ordered Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to turn over evidence - if he has any - of when and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney decided to declassify part of a secret government intelligence report on Iraq so Libby could disclose it to favored reporters in an effort to discredit administration critics in 2003.

The judge also seemed to be leaning toward denying a defense request for documents Fitzgerald has related to the activities of White House adviser Karl Rove, who remains under investigation and will be a defense witness if the prosecutor doesn't call him to testify.

Libby, 55, is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame and what he subsequently told reporters about her.

Lawyers for Libby wanted Walton to force Fitzgerald to turn over documents from the White House, CIA and State Department about a trip Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, took at the CIA's request in early 2002 to Niger.

The CIA sought to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Saddam Hussein's government had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports. Nevertheless, the allegation wound up in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak named Plame in a column on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the Bush administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.

At Friday's hearing, Walton abandoned plans to gag the lawyers in the widely publicized case to keep them from talking to the media.

Theodore Wells, Libby's lawyer, told Walton that he wanted government records of Wilson's trip, Plame's role in the CIA decision to send him to Africa and reports done after his return to tell the jury how the charges against Libby came about.

"The trip is what the whole controversy is about," Wells said.

Libby's defense is that the White House wanted to attack Wilson's charges on their merits and wasn't interested in using Plame to smear the former ambassador.

The defense also plans to attack several government witnesses, including State Department official Marc Grossman, suggesting they are biased against Libby because of their connections to one another and to Wilson.

Wells said Grossman and Wilson went to college and came up through the ranks of the State Department together.

The defense attorney said he has five witnesses who will testify that Wilson told them his wife worked for the CIA. The defense team believes such testimony will show that her status was well-known.

Fitzgerald said he will not offer proof that the outing of Plame damaged national security.

The prosecutor also said he does not know when Bush and Cheney decided to declassify sections of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate dealing with Iraq's efforts to obtain yellowcake so Libby could share it with reporters.

Fitzgerald said all he has is Libby's testimony, in which he said he might have shared the information with reporters before the decision was officially made in July 2003.

Wells added that Libby was told several times to go forward but abruptly told to stop before he finally talked to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and The New York Times' Judith Miller.

Related thread:

Bulletin from the Libby Courtroom (NRO Corner) ^
	Posted by Republican Red On News/Activism ^ 05/05/2006 3:21:35 PM CDT · 44 replies · 1,179+ views NRO Corner ^ \| Byron York Lewis Libby defense lawyer Theodore Wells told a federal judge a short time ago that the Libby defense team has located “five witnesses who will say under oath that Mr. [Joseph] Wilson told them his wife worked for the CIA.” Wells said he expects that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will call Wilson himself to the stand to rebut those accusations. Today's hearing concerning what evidence Fitzgerald is required to turn over to the Libby defense team turned into an extended discussion of whether jurors will be allowed to assess Joseph Wilson's credibility vs. that of the administration as it concerns the...

People, stop. Get This Through Your Heads.

The underlying issue is moot. None of that matters. The case is strictly and only about perjury during the investigation. It does not matter if the investigation had merit. Once it was authorized, it proceeded and perjury was forbidden.

So stop thinking in terms of the investigation because it is irrelevant to what is going on.

Libby's lawyers know that. All these maneuvers were an attempt to get the judge to say . . . yes, you can have these documents and then have the White House say No, they cannot be made public for National Security reasons -- and then the judge would declare the defendant not guilty because he was denied the right to defend himself.

The maneuver has failed. Next will be attempts to do the same thing with reporters' notes. Get this straight. Don't get excited when the demand for media notes is made because Libby's lawyers Don't Really Want Them. They want the notes demanded by the judge and refused by the media on constitutional grounds. Then, again, the judge would declare Libby not guilty because he is refused material with which he could defend himself.

The media in general will make much of Libby's case, but it is not about the subject of the investigation. It is very narrowly only about perjury.

But to win a perjury and/or obstruction case, the prosecutor has to prove intent. Just coming up with conflicting statements by the defendant and a witness is not sufficient. Libby is going to the heart of his defense with these motions, namely that he had no REASON to lie about how he learned about Plame's identity or who else he told about it, because EVERYONE already knew about it.

Clarice Feldman has also made a pretty strong case that if Libby can prove that Fitz knew he could not file any charges on the underlying "crime" (i.e. the outing of Plame) he cannot sustain a perjury or obstruction charge. You can't obstruct an investigation that the investigator knows is not going anywhere. If Libby can prove that everyone knew about Plame's identity, the whole case for perjury and obstruction falls apart and he moves to dismiss.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.