Known for Discretion, Libby Is A Surprising Figure in CIA Leak

Another, who worked with Libby in the White House and considers him a friend, echoed the position of Libby's lawyer: "Perhaps he really did get balled up in the sequencing of his conversations and didn't remember who first told him about her. Unless you've been there, you can't imagine what those jobs are like. It starts at 6 in the morning and ends 8, 9, 10, 11 at night. Seven days a week the phone is ringing off the hook. . . . Not many people would be able to recall who you talked to first."

Friends say Libby is working on expanding his legal team to include white-collar criminal lawyers to get him through this week's arraignment and a potential trial. But at least two close friends worried that the legal battle facing Libby would wipe him out financially.

He left a high-paying job at a law firm to work in government five years ago, and he had recently talked to friends about returning to private practice to rebuild his finances. His wife, Harriet Grant, was a Democratic staff lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee who chose to stay home after their children were born.

"It takes a lot of dough to deal with this, and I would not characterize him as wealthy," said Jackson Hogan, a friend from Andover and Yale. "It wouldn't take too long to empty the family's coffers with legal bills."

Another friend who, like others interviewed, spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case, said that Libby had often talked about going back into the private sector to secure his family's future. "He certainly does not have enough money -- not with what he's facing now," the friend said. Some friends are planning to set up a legal defense fund to help Libby.

He found his way into government in the early 1980s through his mentor Paul D. Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, whom he met when Wolfowitz was teaching at Yale. An undersecretary of state at the time, Wolfowitz hired him as a speechwriter and later brought Libby to the Defense Department with him. From those early days in government, Libby developed an interest in terrorism, particularly chemical warfare.

He also built a reputation in Washington as a self-effacing public servant, more interested in service than power, more interested in dealing with terrorism than pushing a political agenda. "Despite what you read, Scooter Libby is not an ideologue," said another longtime friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He was very much a pragmatist."

It is for this reason that those who know him are astonished that a quiet guy who writes fiction and is interested in poetry, and who strove to stay under the radar screen, is now viewed as a guy who talked too much to reporters, and who concocted a story to cover up his role in the revealing of Plame.

William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said that he never viewed Libby as anything but discreet and honorable in his dealings with the media. "If I talk to 10 people at the White House, the other nine are more open than Scooter. . . . We got nothing from him."

"I remember he would tell us early on not to take a lot of notes -- and if you do, get rid of them shortly thereafter. And not to talk to the press," said Cesar V. Conda, a former domestic policy aide to Cheney.

"If there was such an award in high school -- most likely not to be indicted -- that would have been him," said Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. "He's a by-the-book guy, sure-footed and careful. He's not someone known to play footsie with reporters."

But journalists he spoke to testified that Libby did just that -- that it was Libby who tipped them off to Plame's identity.

"I know he has a story. Believe me, he'll answer," Matalin said. "People who wish the best for Scooter . . . have to take a step back. It's so completely inconsistent with Scooter's work ethic, his intelligence and his history. There's no context in the indictment . . . it's only one side of the story."