• Front page
• Receive this content on your RSS reader

By Jeralyn Merritt, Denver

The cable news airwaves were filled Tuesday with juror No. 9, Denis Collins, discussing how jurors in the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, deliberated and arrived at their verdict of guilty on four of the five counts against him. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements to FBI officials and perjury before the grand jury. He was acquitted of one false statement count.

I had the opportunity to sit through much of the trial in Washington, D.C., covering it as a reporter for my own blog, TalkLeft: the Politics of Crime, as well as for Huffington Post and the Firedoglake blogs.

As a political liberal, I wanted prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to win. I wanted to see Libby, Dick Cheney and other administration officials held publicly accountable for leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters, ruining her career and smearing her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the guts to go public with his charge that the administration had misled the country on the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.

As a criminal defense attorney, I wanted Libby’s lawyers to win. This was a case dependent on memory and every witness’s memory was flawed as to some aspects of events. I was hoping the inconsistencies in their testimony would leave jurors with a reasonable doubt. The jury deliberated 10 days. They were told they could not consider whether Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent or whether her employment status was classified.

The task before them was a narrow one. Did Libby lie to investigators and the grand jury about where he first learned of Valerie Wilson’s CIA employment and whom he disclosed it to, and did he intend to impede the criminal investigation? Juror No. 9 explained they painstakingly dissected every bit of testimony and exhibit, filling up 34 large pages of post-it notes. They didn’t take a straw vote until after their first week of deliberations. There were no holdout jurors. They would have liked to have heard from Cheney, but it didn’t bother them that Libby didn’t testify, since they heard eight hours of his grand jury testimony. They felt sympathy for him, but they couldn’t ignore the evidence in front of them. He lied, he impeded the investigation and he was guilty.

Juror No. 9 said the jury wondered why Libby but not the leaker — Richard Armitage — or Karl Rove, among others, had been brought before them. He believed that Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, may have been correct in saying Libby was a fall guy for the administration. It just didn’t excuse Libby’s lies.

I agree with the jury’s verdict, but I feel cheated.

Having followed the Plame investigation closely since 2003, I believe there was an orchestrated attempt by the White House — and Cheney in particular — to discredit Joseph Wilson by alleging his trip to Africa in 2002 to check on intelligence claims that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger for use in weapons of mass destruction was the result of nepotism. Cheney’s handwritten notes, introduced at trial, plainly asked whether Wilson had been sent on a junket by his wife.

This trial should have been about whether the vice president of the United States — in an effort to justify going to war by hiding the truth from the American public that there was no intelligence establishing that Iraq was in the process of acquiring materials for weapons of mass destruction — used Libby and other officials to manipulate the media and cause them to disclose the identity of a classified CIA agent.

Instead, because Libby clammed up, as is his right, and took a bullet for the team, even claiming to the grand jury he forgot the details of his conversations with Cheney, prosecutors weren’t able to get to the truth and decide if they had a case against Cheney. As Fitzgerald said when he announced Libby’s indictment, Libby had thrown sand in the face of the umpires.

In the end, while Libby’s lawyers were unsuccessful in defending their fall guy, they did a heck of a job for the administration.

Jeralyn Merritt is a criminal defense attorney in Denver and blogs at TalkLeft.com and 5280.com.

READER COMMENTS

Gear up for grub with a tripleheader of pigskin, including a meeting of brothers in Dallas. Everybody knows it's been a rough year for her, but find out who else had issues

So much "sound and fury signifying nothing" coming from the right wing.

The fact is that Scooter Libby deliberately lied to a federal officials investigating the criminal outing of a covert CIA agent in order to obstruct that investigation. As Jeralyn makes clear, all the available evidence points to a deliberate conspiracy to discredit Wilson by intentionally or recklessly disclosing the fact that his wife was a covert operative for the CIA -- and that Libby lied in order to protect himself and his boss.

One suspects that Fitzgerald went after Libby on the perjury and obstruction charges for the same reason that Capone was charged with tax evasion --- that there is often a difference between what prosecutors know to be the facts, and whether there is sufficient admissible evidence to establish those facts beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Because any prosecution under the IIPA or Espionage Acts would have required extensive disclosure of CIA sources and methods -- and because the CIA would have denied permission for that disclosure to the defense for use in open court -- it is virtually impossible to prosecute someone for outting a CIA agent. This is especially true of someone with the financial resources that Libby had -- he had four law firms working for him, including one (Jones Day) that was hired because of the greymail expertise of one of its lawyers (John Cline).

I'm hoping that, thanks to the Democratic majority that now exists in Congress, that Jeralyn won't feel cheated for long. Unlike the court system, Congress can "convict" Libby, Cheney, Rove, Armitage, Hadley and the rest of the conspirators in the "court of public opinion" -- and their permanent legacies will be that of the first traitors to the US in the 21st Century.

Remember, too, that Bush said "Africa," not Niger, and was referencing a British intel report that they never backed away from. The area of interest? The Congo.

And now you know why. From the rightwing rag, the BBC:

IAEA probes Congo uranium claims
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa editor

The UN nuclear agency says it is concerned by reports that top nuclear officials in the DR Congo have been held on suspicion of smuggling uranium.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was investigating the situation, its spokesman said.

DR Congo's attorney-general said the two were accused of illicitly selling uranium but did not reveal the buyer.

A local newspaper said hundreds of bars of uranium had disappeared from the nuclear research centre in Kinshasa.

The newspaper said that illegal trafficking had been going on for years.

Last August, a British newspaper reported that uranium from the Democratic Republic of Congo had been sold to Iran, a charge vigorously denied by the Congolese authorities.

The IAEA says Kinshasa has signed strict protocols requiring it to declare all its uranium exports, and has so far failed to make any such declaration.

The country has a long history of producing the mineral.

A mine in the southern province of Katanga supplied the uranium used in the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Ready yourselves for the Libby pardon. And mark me down as one of those people who think it too bad Joseph Wilson wasn't indicted for being just an all-around opportunistic media whore and serial liar.

Canuck --

See, you assumed Jeralyn wasn't my actual friend -- she is -- and you got burned.

There's a lesson here about bringing preconceived notions to bear on your ability to reason with a modicum of objectivity, but I'll be damned if I can find it...

Incidentally, Tom Maguire, to whom I link, has all his facts carefully sourced.

Your reply, rather than arguing from Jeralyn's presumed authority, should rather take care to deal with facts: Wilson lied in his op-ed, he lied in his book, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, no one was harmed by her outing, and there was no underlying crime.

If there was, why aren't we seeing charges brought against Richard Armitage?

And rather than spitting out a bunch of fallacies of argument -- an attempt to make yourself appear erudite, I'm assuming, but an attempt that fails nevertheless -- why not give EXAMPLES of my having done such. Do you even know what my argument is? Because somehow I think it whizzed right by you while you were putting on your partisan battle armor and preparing to condescend to me.

Pot, kettle, shake.

Interesting comments. In reading an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today, it should be interesting to see, if this verdict is appealed, how quickly the conviction is over-turned.

Conspiracy theories aside, it will be quite interesting to see how history records this era we are currently living in.

Factual rebuttal = 'hit job"

Canuck, what makes you think that political figures are just supposed to cower in the corner when they're the target of a hit job like the one Wilson wrote in the NYT? Why shouldn't they take action to debunk lies broadcast to the nation?

If you've read his Op-Ed and also the Senate Intel Committee Report, it's perfectly clear that the Op-Ed is stacked with lies.

Who says that the Administration is supposed to let them stand, or that rebutting them makes Wilson a victim? If there was some sort of illegality here, why isn't it being prosecuted? Why isn't Richard Armitage being prosecuted?

"It would be nice if you had the reality and the logic to go with your self-delusional rectitude."

Projection is not your friend.

To Jeff G at the top of the page. I suspect that your use of the term friend to describe your relationship with Jeralyn is both derogatory and condescending. However, I'm not privy to her friends list--except to say that she has a collegial relationship with several other fact- and reality-based specialists in L'affaire Plame. Be that as it may. Defense attourney or not, JG, JM's meticulously documented fact file dismantles the specious argument you mount in Protein whatever (and the 'data' you think support your contention). You regurgitate just those same lies that have been making the rounds since Deadeye got it in his skull to encourage a hit job on Ambassador Wilson. You're putative facts are refuted by even a cursory glance at the documents your authority refers to. You have as little right to criticize JM as George W. Bush has to be this country's president. So much for your glib representation of JM as Uri Geller. But the greater sin of your 'blog' appears to me to be that you couldn't erect a logical argument on this matter if your life depended on it. Your crimes? Shifting the argument, tautology, straw man (argument elenchi), affirming the consequent, to name just a few. All negate your assertions, whether based in fact or not. Finally, you have a very authoritative 'voice' in your writing (like so many so-called wingnuts). I'm sorry, did I say authoritative? I meant to say authoritarian. And with such little to stand on? Tsk. Tsk.

It would be nice if you had the reality and the logic to go with your self-delusional rectitude.

For a defense attorney, my friend Jeralyn certainly leaves out a number of facts -- key among them, that Joseph Wilson has been shown time and again to treat the truth like Uri Geller treats silverware.

Anyway, for those interested, I've posted a longer response to Jeralyn's op-ed here.

POST A COMMENT

• It’s open enrollment time: Could consumer-driven health plans be the right choice for you?
• Rural Revitalization or deeper distress?
• No more ‘Mr. Nice Guv’
• In Pakistan, or U.S., lawyers make a stand
• First lesson in Disability 101: Treat me like a regular person -- because I am
• A few questions about abortion
• GUEST COLUMNIST: A new Russia emerges
• Returning veterans need support