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As I recall it, Libby misremembered a meeting with Bob Woodward and claimed it was with Tim Russert. Russert disputed his account, but Woodward came forward and said that Libby’s account was accurate except that he had met with Woodward and not Russert.

The prosecutor knew that Libby was not the leaker and knew who the real leaker was, but prosecuted Libby for perjury for making a mistake that anyone could have made in a similar situation. And that rat Bush let him rot in jail for it and didn’t even have the decency to give him a full pardon at the end of the day.

There wasn’t any reason to ‘take the heat off the administration’, because the real leaker wasn’t even sanctioned for the supposed crime. But hey, maybe I remember it wrong.

What sunk Libby was that he claimed he didn't know Plame worked at the CIA, in the relevant timeframe. That was not credible, given that he personally inquired of the CIA of that exact question, and he knew she worked there.

Any confusion between what he told to who was smoke.

Libby was a leaker, but not the only one. The leaks were not illegal. The lack of underlying crime causes many (maybe most) people to say that makes is impossible to mislead an investigator about a material fact. The case law says otherwise, and I think prudence indicates that it is unwise to allow people to mislead investigators on the chance the investigators are working a blind alley.

I blame Bush for much of this. He could have said "no crime, Plame is not NOC" but he was covering for his friends in deep state CIA.

The reason Libby's action was taking heat off Bush, is that Bush tacitly admitted the fiction that the leak was a risk to the CIA, and ought to be investigated.

Libby served no time. Cheney was pissed that Bush commuted the sentence rather than issue a pardon.