[misterrob]

"...What we came up with from that," he said, "was that Libby was told about Mrs. Wilson [Valerie Plame] nine times" in that time period. "We believed he DID have a bad memory," he said, "but it seemed very unlikely he would not remember about being told about Mrs. Wilson" so many times....Hard to believe he would remember on Tuesday and forget on Thursday," and so on.

This is the crux of the situation. Libby's lawyers tried to sell the jury on his being busy and having a bad memory and they wouldn't bite on it. Frankly, he deserved to lose this case based on that approach.

Libby did wind up being the fall guy here and it sucks. The administration's opponents outdid them on this one. They had little room to rebut Wilson's claims and tried to fight back against a stacked deck.

[chesley]

Not that hard to believe. I would say easy enough to buy reasonbale doubt. I've been cross-examined, myself, though not in a court of law. It is easy to get confused, and it is easy to have your words twisted.

[Abathar]

I agree with your opinions, they were my gut feeling too.

[Steve_Seattle]

"This is the crux of the situation. Libby's lawyers tried to sell the jury on his being busy and having a bad memory and they wouldn't bite on it. Frankly, he deserved to lose this case based on that approach."

Then why was the jury so impressed with Russert, who couldn't remember writing a letter to a TV station defending his performance as a debate moderator, who couldn't remember an appearance on the Today show and the Imus show, who couldn't remember grand jury rules that he'd discussed on national television, who couldn't remember his "Santa Claus" comments? Go back and look at the prosecution's exhibits - these were very brief conversations, scraps of paper with almost illegible scrawls, fragmentary memos - NOT memorable stuff. And reams of this stuff passed by Libby every day. I've worked around big-shot executive types, and half of what you tell them bounces right off, never sinks in.

And remember how Russert claimed when he saw the Novak story he knew it was "huge" that Wilson's wife was mentioned? I'm convinced he's wrong about that, that it didn't become "huge" in his mind till days later when Wilson et al concocted the "outing" theory. Novak thought it was mildly interesting, but not "huge."

So I think that Libby did originally hear about Plame from Cheney et al, but forgot about it because it was a relatively minor issue at the time, and only became "huge" later on WHEN HE BEGAN TO DISCUSS IT WITH REPORTERS WHO WERE ADVANCING THE "OUTING" THEORY. THEN he would start to remember it better.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

What happened to "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "innocent until proven guilty"? I was sure he would get off since it was one person's word against another, and that is not sufficient proof of perjury.

Now if they had a stained blue dress, he would surely be guilty . . .

[ironman]

"Hard to believe he would remember on Tuesday and forget on Thursday"

I don't get the point here. Libby testified months after the incident broke in the media. That's when he says he forgot.

[Paul Ross]

They had little room to rebut Wilson's claims and tried to fight back against a stacked deck.

Pflame and Wilson should have been prosecuted for being nepotistic defrauders of their positions. Immediately from the time of that column. And a lot more should have been made of the fact that the supposed victims were extremely loose with the lips themselves.