A Lurid Look Behind the Curtain

"Mr. Wells did not, however, fully explain the connection between an effort to protect Mr. Rove and the actions that led to Mr. Libby's indictment. . . .

"Mr. Wells told the jury that White House officials, whom he did not name, wanted to protect Mr. Rove because they believed his survival as President Bush's chief political adviser was crucial to the health of the Republican Party. . . .

"Mr. Libby, Mr. Wells said, complained to Vice President Dick Cheney that he was being set up as a fall guy. Mr. Cheney supported that view, Mr. Wells said, and handwrote a note saying, 'Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.' . . .

"Interpreting the vice president's note, Mr. Wells said that 'incompetence' was a reference to the fact that the C.I.A. had mistakenly allowed the White House to use inaccurate information in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech about Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium in Africa. The staff official whom the vice president believed should not be protected, he said, was Mr. Rove. Mr. Libby had been assigned to speak to reporters to straighten out the confusion from Mr. Bush's speech, a chore Mr. Cheney likened to sticking his head in the meat grinder."

James Gordon Meek writes in the New York Daily News: "The lawyer also added that, unlike Libby, Rove was 'out pushing stories' that outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative."

Earlier, however, "Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald accused Libby of being mired in discrediting Plame's husband, ambassador and Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. . . .

"Fitzgerald described Libby as equal parts manager of Cheney's office, national security adviser and a political hatchet man eager to get back at Wilson. He said Libby told reporters that Wilson's CIA wife sent him to Africa on a 2002 junket to see whether Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had bought uranium for nuclear bombs."

Amy Goldstein and Carol D. Leonnig write in The Washington Post: "Libby told investigators that at one point he was surprised to learn from NBC's Tim Russert in July 2003 that Wilson was married to Plame. But Fitzgerald contended that Libby, at Cheney's direction, had been actively telling people about Wilson at the same time.

"He said Libby's claim to a grand jury that he simply had forgotten what he knew was implausible, because he had passed on Plame's name to reporters and then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer days before speaking with Russert.

"'You can't learn something startling on Thursday that you're giving out Monday and Tuesday of the same week,' Fitzgerald said. 'Day after day after day after day, he focused on this controversy.'

"Wells, the defense attorney, countered that 'this is a weak, paper-thin, circumstantial evidence case about he-said, she-said.'"

Richard B. Schmitt writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The defense suggestion of a high-level conspiracy, made on the opening day of the trial, was the first indication of a breach within the normally secretive White House over the handling of a case that had cast a legal and political cloud over the Bush administration for three years.