Libby Defense: Bush's WMD Concerns

(AP)  Ten months ahead of his scheduled trial in the Valerie Plame affair, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby seems intent on zeroing in on three little letters the Bush White House would like to forget forever: WMD.

To hear Libby's lawyers tell it in their latest court filing, Plame's CIA status was hardly a blip on the radar screen as the administration tried to dodge incoming criticism. Libby's legal team described her CIA identity as "at most a peripheral issue" to "the media conflagration over the failure to find WMD in Iraq."

It's the media conflagration, and the resulting finger-pointing among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over who was to blame, that Libby's lawyers want to focus on in a bid to get him off, their court papers suggest.

In a prelude to a possible courtroom defense, Libby's lawyers also suggested in a court filing late Friday night that it's the State Department — not Libby — who's to blame for leaking Valerie Plame's CIA identity to the news media.

The court papers underscore the possibility that a criminal trial of Libby could turn into a major political embarrassment for the Bush administration by highlighting the ongoing debate over whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

If the jury learns the background information about "finger-pointing," and also understands Libby's additional focus on urgent national security matters, the jury will more easily appreciate how Mr. Libby may have forgotten or misremembered "snippets of conversation" about Plame's CIA status, the defense lawyers stated.

Cheney's former chief of staff was indicted Oct. 28 on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of Plame's CIA employment and what he told reporters about her.

Libby's lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton for access to government documents about a 2002 trip that Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, made to the African nation of Niger at the CIA's behest and about "his wife's involvement" with that mission.

The documents relate to what prospective witnesses — including then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove — probably would say at Libby's trial.


Noting press reports last week, the court papers say there has been speculation that Armitage told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and speculation that Woodward's source and the primary source for conservative columnist Robert Novak are the same person.

Novak disclosed Plame's identity on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson contended in a New York Times op-ed column that the administration twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from a nuclear weapons program.

"If the facts ultimately show that Mr. Armitage or someone else from the State Department was also Mr. Novak's primary source, then the State Department and certainly not Mr. Libby bears responsibility for the 'leak' that led to the public disclosure" of Plame's CIA identity, Libby's lawyers said.

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