Libby 'Told a Dumb Lie,' Prosecutor Says in Closing Argument

Wilson turned out to be a potent critic. He had been sent to Niger by the CIA a year earlier to check on reports that Iraq had tried to obtain material for nuclear weapons there, and concluded that the reports were false. Within days of Wilson going public about his findings in July 2003 , the White House acknowledged that President Bush's State of the Union address should not have included the assertion that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium.

Fitzgerald told the jury yesterday that Libby was engaged in a campaign to make reporters skeptical of Wilson. His wife's post at the CIA and her role in suggesting him for the mission became a useful tool to insinuate that he wasn't qualified for the mission to Niger. The prosecutor disputed the defense's argument that Libby did not remember Plame because she was so trivial to him.

"To [Libby] she wasn't Valerie Wilson, she's wasn't a person," the prosecutor said, sipping from a plastic cup of water as he walked back and forth in front of the jury box. "She was an argument, a fact to use against Joe Wilson."

Prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, summing up the government's evidence, said Libby "absolutely fabricates two conversations that never happened" -- with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and NBC's Russert. He said Libby's claim that he didn't remember the conversations was "just not credible" because Cheney considered the matter very important and it commanded much of Libby's time.

Zeidenberg also said Libby had several motives to lie. The president had said he would fire whoever had disclosed Plame's identity, a criminal investigation had begun, and, at Libby's urging, Cheney had personally vouched for Libby, getting the White House to say publicly that Libby was not the leaker.

In the defense's closing argument, Wells countered that the case was simply "he said, she said." He contended that it was "madness" to try to convict Libby of a crime based on his foggy memory about fragments of conversations that were the subject of FBI questions three and four months after they took place.

"It's a case about different recollections between Mr. Libby and some reporters," Wells said. "This is an important trial, and I represent an innocent man."

Wells said that Libby honestly believed he learned about Plame for the first time from Russert in a July 10, 2003, conversation -- a month after he was actually told about her by the vice president, Libby later acknowledged. Wells emphasized to the jury that Russert first told the FBI that he couldn't completely rule out discussing the subject with Libby because he talks to so many people.

"That's reasonable doubt right there," Wells said of an FBI agent's notes. "If you say, 'I believe Mr. Russert beyond a reasonable doubt,' my client's life would be destroyed. His reputation would be destroyed."

Defense attorney William Jeffress Jr. reminded the jury of the pointed questioning that Libby endured when Fitzgerald asked Libby several different ways about nearly every conversation he had in a two-month period in 2003.

"It's not easy being in a grand jury. And Mr. Libby was there for eight hours," Jeffress said. "If he got something wrong in eight hours of questioning, that wasn't an intentional lie. Which witness came in here that didn't get something wrong?"

Jeffress highlighted the conflict between testimony of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who said he had not told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Plame, and Pincus's account, in which Fleischer was his source for that information. Jeffress said there were a lot of possible explanations, including that Fleischer lied.

"Of course, possibilities don't cut it in a criminal case," Jeffress said.