ConsortiumNews.com Libby's Trial Becomes Cheney's Trial By Brent Budowsky February 4, 2007 Editor's Note: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is presenting a case to prove that former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby committed perjury and obstruction of justice. But Libby's old boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, lurks in the background as a de facto unindicted co-conspirator in a White House scheme that involved disclosing the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame. In this guest essay, political analyst Brent Budowsky -- who helped Sen. Lloyd Bentsen write the law prohibiting the willful disclosure of covert CIA officers -- looks at how the Libby trial has morphed into the shadow trial of Vice President Cheney: For the judge and jury, it is the Libby trial. For America and American politics, it is the Dick Cheney trial and the stakes are far higher than reported in the media. What has emerged in evidence so far, is not surprising, but it is astonishing. Vice-President Cheney was so deeply involved and obsessed with discrediting Joe Wilson that the impact and implications are enormous and underestimated. The Vice President was choreographer of the attack on Wilson. He acted as though he was the deputy White House political director and the deputy White House press secretary. He was organizing meetings, drafting talking points and assigning which staff would talk to which reporter. This is not what Vice Presidents do. This is more than an attack on his enemy Wilson. Most of us who have had high government positions have faced these situations, and launching a counter-attack could have been done far more discreetly and professionally. Plus: the naming of the Plame name, at the very least, created harm to national security and was an unpatriotic act. The minute the Vice President, Libby and Rove knew Valerie Plame worked at the CIA in a bureau that insiders would know immediately was highly sensitive that without any doubt triggered red lights, immediately. When we were writing the original indentities protection law, not one of us could have ever imagined that identity disclosers would be high officials in the U.S. government. The law was aimed at people very hostile to the U.S. who were acting in a manner that helped the KGB. It was unthinkable to all of us that anyone involved in these disclosures, felonious or not, would be high in the U.S. government. Anyone who goes on television and says otherwise is a liar. Why? My theory, with substantial evidence to back it up, is that the danger of Joe Wilson was not the damage that Wilson's view did to the Administration policy. It was the danger that Wilson's work would unravel a long-term, well-planned, highly deceptive campaign that preceded Wilson's involvement to deceive the country to drive us to war. Prediction: major plea bargaining either has begun, or will begin, before the verdict and watch out if Libby sings in a plea deal. Prediction: the original defense argument that Libby was a fall guy for others will only anger and inflame the judge and jury. It is no defense to say that others might have committed similar or related crimes and that is the impression this argument created. Watch this: the sequence of events that could be explosive includes a) the original Cheney deposition to Fitzgerald, then b) testimony on the record of extensive and absurd involvement by the Vice President to the micro-level on the attack against Wilson, leading to c) Cheney's testimony in the trial if it happens. The prosecutor and jury will compare what Cheney said in the deposition, what facts emerged in the trial and Cheney's testimony at trial. Do not be surprised if the word pardon appears in the press, though the reaction would be as strong as the Saturday Night Massacre in the Nixon years. The surprise: what will shock people will be when the Senate Intelligence Committee releases its report on pre-war intelligence, which was covered up by the committee's Republican leaders before the elections. The Senate report will, I predict, show major deceptions that well preceded the events in the Wilson case. This will put the whole case in context. It will turn the spotlight on the misrepresentations prior to Wilson, that will explain the obsessive attack of Cheney and Libby against Wilson. Fasten your seat belts. Nobody is out of the woods yet, and these woods are dark and deep. Brent Budowsky was an aide to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen on intelligence issues, and served as Legislative Director to Rep. Bill Alexander when he was Chief Deputy Whip of the House Democratic Leadership. Budowsky can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net. *** World Socialist Web Site WSWS.org Is there a Bush pardon in Lewis Libby’s future? Cheney aide abruptly ends defense in perjury trial By Patrick Martin 15 February 2007 Attorneys for I. Lewis Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who is facing perjury charges, rested their case Wednesday after declining to call either Cheney or Libby himself as defense witnesses. The result was a nearly uncontested prosecution case demonstrating that Libby repeatedly lied to the grand jury investigating the leak of the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. The decision not to have Libby take the stand in his own defense and not to call Cheney as a character witness represents an abrupt abandonment of the trial strategy which Libby’s attorneys had made public over the past year. They had repeatedly suggested that Libby’s defense—given the overwhelming evidence that he had given false testimony to the grand jury—was that he had forgotten the details of the Wilson affair because of the press of high-level national security work in which he was engaged. Cheney’s testimony was critical both as a character witness and to support the portrayal of Libby as an overburdened aide with many more important concerns than whether Valerie Wilson, wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was employed at the CIA. Libby himself would have to take the stand to substantiate the “forgetfulness” defense, as Judge Reggie Walton made clear in a series of rulings before the start of the trial. In pretrial motions and discussions with both the judge and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby’s attorneys had pressed for the use of classified government documents that would show Libby’s busy schedule and document his preoccupation with possible terrorist attacks and other security matters that supposedly outweighed the defense of the Bush administration against Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat who had gone to the press with an inside story of Bush’s use of false charges of weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. It is possible, although it seems highly unlikely, that the defense attorneys rested their case because they believed the prosecution had failed to provide convincing evidence against their client. Perhaps they were making the best of a bad situation, concluding that a character reference from Cheney would cut little ice with a Washington jury, and that Libby would only damage his own cause if he took the stand and faced cross-examination by prosecutor Fitzgerald. There is, however, a more plausible explanation for this sudden reversal: that Libby has been promised a presidential pardon in return for his agreement to take the fall in the perjury case. By essentially shutting down his defense case—calling only a handful of journalists and lower-level officials—Libby allows the White House to avoid the danger of an unprecedented cross-examination of the vice president, under oath, on the administration’s efforts to punish and suppress criticism of the Iraq war. In return—a possibility suggested in press coverage last year, but unmentioned in the media since the trial began—Libby is likely to receive a presidential pardon before Bush leaves office in January 2009. With appeals, it is unlikely that the former vice presidential chief of staff would see the inside of a jail cell before Bush could act. Bush’s father took similar action on behalf of many of the convicted Iran-Contra conspirators before he left office in January 1993, pardoning former national security adviser John Poindexter, former State Department official Elliott Abrams and others convicted of perjury before Congress or other felonies. Despite its narrow focus on Libby’s contacts with several journalists and his subsequent lies about these contacts while testifying before the grand jury, the prosecution case did provide a glimpse of the frenzied efforts by top Bush administration officials, led by Cheney, to retaliate against the criticism by Wilson, a former US diplomat who had served in Iraq at the onset of the first Persian Gulf war and received a medal from Bush’s father. The vice president was the leading advocate in administration circles of the claim that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons, and he had pressed the issue of alleged Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in West Africa. His repeated demands, relayed through Libby, finally pushed the CIA to send Wilson to Niger in 2002, where Wilson found nothing to confirm the charge. After reporting his findings to the agency, Wilson was surprised when nine months later Bush included the claim in his January 2003 State of the Union speech. Wilson began voicing his concerns to the media, finally writing an op-ed column in the New York Times. Eight days later, syndicated right-wing columnist Robert Novak published the name of Wilson’s wife and revealed that she worked as an analyst at the CIA, blowing her cover and effectively ending her undercover career. Libby’s defense attorney Theodore Wells suggested in his opening argument that Libby was being made a scapegoat to protect more powerful officials in the administration—a clear reference to chief White House political operative Karl Rove, one of the two sources for Novak’s column, if not to Cheney and Bush themselves. But Rove was not called as a witness, despite being identified by several journalists, including Novak, as one of the officials who was circulating information about Wilson’s wife and her role at the CIA. One intriguing piece of evidence introduced by the prosecution was a note in Cheney’s handwriting declaring that he would not allow Libby to be sacrificed to save other White House aides (an apparent reference to Rove). The note contained the words “the pres” which were then struck out. Cheney on the witness stand could well have been asked whether the president had played a role in deciding that the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity should be attributed to Libby rather than Rove. Press coverage of the defense reversal made it clear that it took both the prosecution and the judge by surprise. The Los Angeles Times reported that Cheney “had been scheduled to testify Thursday.” The Washington Post noted, “From the start, the defense repeatedly said that Libby and Cheney probably would take the stand. Potential jurors were asked their opinion of Cheney, and those with strongly negative views of him were not chosen. Before the trial, defense lawyers had told Walton that Libby would testify, and that persuaded the judge to let the defense note during the trial the crush of national security issues Libby was handling.” The decision not to call Libby undermines the core of his defense, the claim of forgetfulness, since Judge Walton has ruled that no witnesses can testify about Libby’s own state of mind unless Libby himself does so. Walton had agreed to admit a slew of classified documents into evidence to support Libby’s testimony, but after the defense reversal, Walton ruled Wednesday that nearly all the documents would be barred. “My absolute understanding was that Mr. Libby was going to testify,” the judge said. “My ruling was based on the fact that he was going to testify.” Prosecutor Fitzgerald, in arguing that the documents should not be introduced, accused the defense of a “bait-and-switch” tactic, using Libby’s proffered testimony as the basis for admitting the documents, than deciding not to testify but seeking admission of the documents anyway. The documents could be used only if Libby was available to testify and be cross-examined on their significance, he said. *** Libby and Cheney Chickenhawk their Way out of Testifying in CIA Leak Case Thu, 02/15/2007 A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS Scooter Libby had no problem leaking the identity of a CIA operative to cover up a lie. He had no problem lying about the leak under oath to a grand jury. But now Libby and his defense team have decided to cut and run from defending his actions at his own trial. Even his old boss, Dick Cheney, won't have to account for what happened. Talk about chickenhawks. Both men have claimed innocence from the beginning and blasted prosecutors for even bringing charges for perjury, let alone investigating the leak itself. But with the case on the line neither one will step up to the plate. The strongest defense argument left for the jury to consider is that Libby - the VP's ex-Chief-of-Staff - suffers from chronic amnesia. Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin notes that Bush Administration officials have gotten used to being able to secure softball interviews from the media (if they even come before the public at all). After Dick Cheney freaked out when Wolf Blitzer asked him a few though questions, defense lawyers must have been terrified of what Libby or Cheney might do under cross-examination. "Smart move for them," Froomkin writes. "Bummer for a public craving a better understanding of what went so terribly wrong." After his own testimony in the case, Tim Russert explained a lesson he learned in seventh grade: "If you tell the truth, you only have to remember one story. And that's what I did." Of course, had the Bush Administration simply told the truth from the beginning they would not have had to break the law to discredit Joe Wilson for exposing them in the first place. More importantly, 3,105 Americans would still be alive and we would still have the few hundred billion dollars we've wasted in Iraq. But Libby and Cheney can't be bothered with such minor concerns or lessons. At least this time it's Libby's neck on the line instead of someone else's.