The Cloud Over Cheney

As Fitzgerald explained it: Right after Cheney first read Wilson's op-ed -- and wrote the question, "[D]id his wife send him on a junket?" in the margins of his own carefully clipped copy-- Cheney dictated "talking points" for his staff to use with the press about Wilson's mission.

As a result, the lead talking point morphed from "The Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger" in a version drafted the day before by Cheney press aide Cathie Martin to "It is not clear who authorized Joe Wilson's trip to Niger" in the vice president's version.

Without quite coming out and saying so directly, Fitzgerald strongly implied that was an invitation for White House officials to talk about how Plame played a role in her husband's selection for the mission.

"There's something funny about how they want to talk about who sent him, but they don't want to talk about the wife," Fitzgerald said, mocking the defense's position that those two were somehow entirely separate issues.

Fitzgerald's broad hint at Cheney's role, while in my mind the biggest news, was nevertheless not the central drama yesterday. The traditional media mostly focused on the two sets of passionate closing arguments reflecting wildly different views of what had been accomplished in the past four weeks of testimony.

In the defense's closing arguments, lead attorney Ted Wells declared that the courtroom had "become like a laboratory of recollection," where just about everyone had memory problems. The defense in particular attacked the credibility of Fitzgerald's two star witnesses -- Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC News -- and Wells insisted that any mistakes Libby might have made were innocent, and that the government had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Wells repeatedly and emotionally attacked the government's case. "Think about the madness of this prosecution," Wells said at one point. "It is outrageous! Just outrageous!" At the end of his statement, Wells suddenly began to sob.

Opening his rebuttal, Fitzgerald mocked Wells -- "Madness! Madness! Outrageous!" Fitzgerald said -- then reasserted that the prosecution's evidence as a whole was irrefutable, and that Libby had discussed Plame's identity with a slew of people -- starting with the vice president himself -- in the days and weeks before his conversation with Russert.

"I submit you can't believe that nine witnesses remembered 10 conversations exactly the same wrong way," Fitzgerald said.

On Cheney's Role

Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun, who was sitting right next to me in court yesterday, was possibly the only print reporter to lead with the big news: "The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick Fitzgerald, is suggesting in his strongest terms yet that Vice President Cheney was involved in an effort to unmask a CIA operative married to an administration critic.

"Mr. Fitzgerald's explosive comments came as he delivered closing arguments yesterday in the monthlong obstruction-of-justice and perjury trial of Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr."

In fact, Gerstein astutely spotted an even wider critique of the White House than I did: "Broadening his attack on the White House, Mr. Fitzgerald took a shot at President Bush, indirectly criticizing him for not firing officials implicated in the leaks about the CIA officer, Valerie Plame. The prosecutor noted that in 2003 the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Mr. Bush would immediately dismiss anyone involved in leaking Ms. Plame's identity.