Libby Ends Abbreviated Defense Testimony

Attorney Theodore V. Wells, right, puts his arm around his client I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, left, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, as they leave U.S. Federal Court, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Pablo Martinez Monsivais - AP)

WASHINGTON -- The testimony phase of the long-anticipated trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby ended with a whimper rather than the bang of testimony from high-profile defense witnesses like Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby himself.

Libby's attorneys rested a trimmed down defense Wednesday after the judge barred much of their classified evidence because Libby decided not to testify in his perjury trial.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrapped up the government's rebuttal in minutes.

That clears the way for the jury to hear closing arguments next Tuesday over whether the former chief of staff to Cheney lied to the FBI and a grand jury about whether he leaked to reporters in 2003 that Valerie Plame, the wife of prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA.

In 14 days of testimony, the trial never filled an overflow courtroom, with a video hookup, to handle the crowds expected _ particularly for the cross-examination of Libby and Cheney.

Nevertheless, testimony showed that Cheney was intimately involved on a daily basis in July 2003 in rebutting Wilson's allegations that President Bush had lied about intelligence to push the nation into war with Iraq.

Cheney was described by his own aides as particularly upset that Wilson suggested the vice president knew one key justification _ that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons _ had been debunked by Wilson in 2002.

The defense put in a handwritten note in which Cheney told the White House press secretary to exonerate Libby in the leak and not sacrifice him to protect Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.

The trial also brought top-level Washington reporters, including five Pulitzer Prize winners, and some of their usually unidentified government sources into the courtroom. The defense, with limited direct evidence to rebut the government's case, used these witnesses to raise questions about the memory, techniques and ethics of reporters who had testified against Libby.

In the process, they illuminated the interactions between top reporters and officials.

The government case marched chronologically through the tumultuous spring and summer of 2003, when the administration was embarrassed that U.S. forces in Iraq had not found any of the weapons of mass destruction that Bush had used to justify the war.

Fitzgerald's goal was to render Libby's statements to the FBI and the grand jury unbelievable.