Libby Defense: Bush's WMD Concerns

Scooter's Case To Perpetuate Issue Administration Wants To Forget

(AP) 
The court filing also focused on Marc Grossman, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs who allegedly told Libby a month before Plame's identity was disclosed that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

"If Mr. Armitage or another State Department official was in fact the primary source for Mr. Novak's article, Mr. Grossman's testimony may be colored by either his personal relationship with Mr. Armitage or his concern for the institutional concerns of the state Department," Libby's lawyers wrote.

Rove — a source for Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper — is under investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the probe of the leak of Plame's CIA identity.

Libby's lawyers say that "either the government or the defense may call Mr. Rove as a witness at trial" and note that "the grand jury's investigation may be continuing with respect to Mr. Rove or other witnesses."

The defense says the documents it seeks will help demonstrate that the White House did not launch a concerted effort to punish Wilson by leaking his wife's identity, as administration critics have alleged.

Libby also is asking for notes from a September 2003 meeting in the White House Situation Room where Colin Powell, who was secretary of state, is reported to have said that everyone knows Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and that it was Wilson's wife who suggested the CIA sent her husband to Niger.

"The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find WMD in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson's criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq's WMD capabilities," the court papers state.

"The government's version of events blows out of proportion the minor role Ms. Wilson actually played and in doing so creates an impression that is highly prejudicial to Mr. Libby," they say.

Wilson's accusations stemmed from President Bush's assertion in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003, that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Based on his 2002 trip, Wilson said he had found it highly doubtful the nation of Niger had agreed to sell uranium yellowcake to Iraq, as alleged in intelligence provided to the CIA.