Libby convicted of obstructing justice

Lewis Libby (photo: Boston Globe)

After more than a week of deliberations, a jury in Washington has found Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis Libby guilty of four of five counts stemming from a federal investigation into the 'outing' of a CIA operative.

Libby was charged with lying and obstructing the investigation into who allegedly disclosed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame – the only indictment in Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year investigation.

Fitzgerald probed whether Plame's identity was leaked by the White House as retaliation against her husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, for his assertion the Bush administration made false claims about Iraq's attempt to buy nuclear material in Africa.

But Fitzgerald failed to indict anyone for the underlying crime. Libby's charges pertained only to the investigation itself, not the 1982 act that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover.

The Washington attorney who spearheaded the drafting of that law said the verdict was "inconsistent" with itself. "The verdict is split; it doesn't make sense," said Victoria Toensing, although "legally, it doesn't make any difference."

She said there are "a lot of other bases for an appeal."

Defense attorney Theodore Wells said he was disappointed in the verdict. "We intend to file a motion for a new trial, and if that is denied, we will appeal the conviction, and we have every confidence that ultimately Mr. Libby will be vindicated. We believe, as we said at the time of his indictment, that he is totally innocent."

Toensing told WND in 2005 Plame's circumstances didn't meet the statute's criteria. Toensing – who worked on the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – said Plame most likely was not a covert agent when White House aides mentioned her to reporters.

Fitzgerald said with the verdict, he considered the overall investigation "inactive."

Valerie Plame appeared in Vanity Fair magazine with her husband Joseph Wilson in January 2004

The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United States within the previous five years. Wilson's own book, "The Politics of Truth," states he and Plame both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997 and never again were stationed overseas – placing them in Washington at least six years before the 2003 "outing."

Moreover, asserted Toensing, for the law to be violated, White House aides would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the knowledge they were disclosing a covert agent.

Wilson traveled to Niger in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored trip to check out the allegations about Iraq and wrote up his findings in a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

White House defenders insist the aides simply were setting the record straight about Wilson, seeking to put his credibility in context by pointing out it was Plame who helped him get the CIA consulting job. Wilson denied his wife's role initially, but a bipartisan report by the Senate panel documented it.

Wilson declared in the column his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA initially was thought to have been revealed in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert Novak, whose source presumably was in the White House. But one month before the column was published, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told investigative reporter Bob Woodward "everybody knows" Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, "who works for the agency."

Woodward: Well it was Joe Wilson who was sent by the agency, isn't it?

Armitage: His wife works for the agency.

Woodward: Why doesn't that come out? Why does that have to be a big secret?

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Armitage: Everybody knows it

Woodward: Everyone knows?

Armitage: Yeah. And they know 'cause Joe Wilson's been calling everybody. He's pissed off 'cause he was designated as a low level guy went out to look at it. So he's all pissed off.

Woodward: But why would they send him?

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Armitage: Because his wife's an analyst at the agency.

Also, as WND reported, Wilson threatened retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely with a lawsuit for "slander" for claiming on a radio show and in a WND interview Wilson revealed his wife's CIA employment to him in a casual conversation the year before she allegedly was "outed" by Novak.

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