Where'd We Leave That Darn Fact?

Elizabeth F. Loftus doesn't believe any of it.

"Human memory does not work like a video camera; memory is more selective," writes the professor of psychology at the University of California at Irvine. "The act of remembrance is reconstructive . . . human memory can change in dramatic and unexpected ways with time. Memory can be altered through the reconstructive process, unconsciously blending actual fragments of memory of the event with information provided during the memory retrieval process."

Her specialty is the murkiness of memory. Her super-specialty is explaining how memory works -- and doesn't work -- to juries. She has appeared as an expert witness in more than 200 cases. Loftus was called in by Libby's defense team to speak to the court about the vagaries of memory. Fitzgerald cast doubt on Loftus's own memory through questioning.

"If you are having lots of conversations with similar kinds of people, lots of politicians and reporters, lots of interaction with media," says Loftus, "it can be very difficult for even the most intelligent person to know which detail you received from which source."

Loftus says that memories are fungible. She has even proposed that the oath "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" be amended to read: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth or whatever it is you think you can remember?"

"True memories," Loftus writes, "cannot be distinguished from false without corroboration."

So how do we improve our memories?

That corroboration, Loftus says, can be notes or photos or other memory helpers. They trigger associations, then recollections. Often our memories are even reshaped by these things. If we look at the same photo of us on a tricycle enough times, we may come to believe we actually remember the feel of the wind and the sun on that long ago day.

In the Libby courtroom, handwritten notes from Cheney to Libby and from Libby to himself were entered as exhibits. So were e-mails, calendars, marginalia, statement drafts.

Wells says that Libby relies on his notes to assist his poor memory. "And the way he kept track of things," Wells told the court, "was with his notes, either with his notes and, in addition, notes of his staff. That's the only way he could juggle all of the things he was doing."

Maybe, if you believe in Loftus's arguments. Maybe not, if you don't.

And yet, perhaps nowhere on Earth except here are people dealing with such a broad spectrum of things to remember -- from misplaced gloves in the morning to a global warming conference in the afternoon, from remembering to put the cap on the toothpaste to raising the prime interest rate, from memorizing the security code at the mudroom door to knowing the ignition sequence on the nuclear football. Did you remember to pick up milk at the 7-Eleven, honey, and did you drop off those presidential papers at the National Archives?