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Cheney's Fingerprint?
"No, its just the opposite, declared [defense attorney Theodore] Wells, who opposed showing the jurors these McClellan clips. Libby, he claimed, was not concerned about losing his job: 'he was concerned they were scapegoating him.' They? Wells meant the White House. Who in the White House? Wells hasn't said, but he's hinted that Rove was at the center of a get-Libby conspiracy that was trying to turn Libby into Washington-scandal roadkill. 'The government,' Wells argued, 'says what motivated him to lie was that he thought he would be fired. . . . My response is that he didn't care [about losing his job] . . . He acted like an innocent person. . . . Only an innocent person would go to the vice president and say what they're doing is unfair,' regarding clearing Rove but not Libby."
Matt Apuzzo writes for the Associated Press: "In a case that hinges on credibility, FBI agent Deborah Bond is making it clear from the witness stand just how believable she finds former White House aide I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby to be: not very.
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"Bond testified Thursday about interviewing Libby in 2003 about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and the 19-year FBI veteran refused to even use the word 'said' to describe Libby's statements.
"Libby told the FBI that he learned about Plame from Vice President
Dick Cheney, then forgot about it and was surprised to hear it again from a reporter weeks later.
"'He said that?' defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.
"'That's what he claimed,' Bond replied."
David Ignatius writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA's reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many little details that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.
"The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA. . . .
"This trial is about a cover-up that failed."
The trial is in recess today. Here are the trial exhibits and an Associated Press summary of the testimony so far.
Snow at His Most Disingenuous
Is there any doubt what press secretary Tony Snow is really trying to say here?
