Openings and Closings

These claims came in the fourth month of the war in Iraq, the fourth month when weapons of mass destruction had not been found. Coming as they did, they ignited a media firestorm.

At first, the White House was stunned. A day later, the White House admitted that some of the things it said before the war about Iraq's efforts to get nuclear weapons should not have been said. But then the White House began to push back. People in the White House, and particularly people in the office of the vice president, looked at Wilson's claim and said, you know what, we don't agree. We don't think all the facts are there. We don't think all the logic is there. We think some of his accusations are unfounded and unfair. So they pushed back. And people in the White House said things to the newspapers, using their names, saying, here is why we disagree with Wilson.

But some people pushed back in a different way. They said things about Wilson to the newspapers on the understanding that the newspapers wouldn't print their names. And in the shooting back and forth between Wilson and the White House, at one point Wilson's wife got dragged into it. Some officials told some reporters that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and some reporters printed that in the paper.

As a result of those disclosures, a very serious criminal investigation began. First, the FBI, and then later a grand jury, had to look into whether the laws protecting classified information, and whether the laws protecting covert CIA employees had been broken by any government officials who talked to reporters about Wilson's wife working at the CIA.

The FBI and the grand jury had an important but tough job. They had to figure out a lot. They had to figure out who were these officials who knew that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA? How did they learn it? What did they learn? What did they understand about the information? And, more importantly, what did they do with it? Did they talk to reporters about it? What did they say? Why? Did they want the story to appear in the paper? That's what they had to do.

To make it simple, they had to find the truth.

This case is about how the defendant, Scooter Libby, then the chief of staff to the vice president of the United States, obstructed that search for truth. It's about how the defendant obstructed the search for truth by lying repeatedly to the FBI while it was doing its investigation. It's about how the defendant appeared before a federal grand jury in this courthouse, raised his right hand, took an oath, swore to tell the truth, and then violated that oath repeatedly by lying to the grand jury both about how he had learned that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and what he did with that information.

The evidence in this case will show that the defendant lied repeatedly both to the FBI and the grand jury.

In short, what the evidence will show is that the defendant learned that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA directly from the vice president himself, and that the defendant discussed the fact that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA with multiple government officials in June and July 2003, and he also talked to more than one reporter on more than one occasion about Wilson's wife working at the CIA, and also gave the information to the White House press secretary, a man whose job it was to talk to the press.

When the FBI and the grand jury asked questions about what he did, the defendant lied. He made up a story. He told the FBI and the grand jury that all he told reporters was stuff he had heard from other reporters, rumors he was told that he didn't even know if they were true. In fact, you will learn that the defendant went so far as to say that he first learned -- or learned it as if it were new -- on Thursday, July 10, 2003, from Tim Russert that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA he said he was startled by this information and taken aback.

You will also learn through the course of this trial, that on Monday, July 7th, the defendant told the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, that he had hush-hush information that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA on the morning of Tuesday, July 8th, the defendant told New York Times reporter Judith Miller that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

You can't learn something startling on Thursday that you are giving out on Monday and Tuesday.