The Cloud Over Cheney

Fitzgerald has long maintained that Libby's testimony to investigators -- that all he had done was pass along unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC Washington bureau chief Russert -- was a pure fabrication.

But yesterday, he called the jurors' attention to the fact that before telling that story to investigators in October 2003, Libby had only shared it with one person: Cheney, who also happened to be the person from whom Libby first learned about Plame, fully a month before the conversation with Russert.

"What's the one thing he tells one person in the fall of 2003?" Fitzgerald asked. "He goes and tells the person who told him" about Plame this story he had made up.

"Think about that," Fitzgerald said momentously, in an obvious attempt to get the jury -- and quite possibly, a wider audience -- to consider that Libby and Cheney may have been agreeing on a cover story at the time.

That, by the way, was precisely the possibility suggested by Murray Waas, in a particularly prescient piece for the National Journal on Sunday. Waas also quoted sources as saying that if Libby is found guilty, the prosecution may pursue Cheney -- presumably by trying one more time to "flip" Libby and turn him into a prosecution witness.

The Blow By Blow

Most of the traditional media coverage focused on yesterday's blow by blow. There was certainly plenty to cover, over the course of more than six hours of arguments.

Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff lied to investigators about his role in leaking a CIA officer's identity in order to keep his job and protect the White House from political embarrassment, prosecutors told jurors yesterday in the closing arguments of I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby's perjury trial. . . .

"But two defense attorneys argued that Libby was a harried and hardworking public servant who was guilty only of forgetfulness about a relatively insignificant matter given his pressure-cooker job."

Neil A. Lewis writes in the New York Times: "Defense lawyers and prosecutors in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. made their final summations on Tuesday, offering the jury two starkly different ways to evaluate the evidence presented over the last few weeks."

Michael J. Sniffen writes for the Associated Press: "Prosecutors told the jury Tuesday that former White House aide I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby made up a ludicrous lie to save his job during the CIA leak investigation. But defense attorneys said he behaved like an innocent man with a bad memory. . . .

"The arguments built to a late afternoon crescendo as defense attorney Theodore Wells, whose voice rose and fell dramatically, choked back a sob as he asked the jurors to acquit his client no matter how they 'may feel about the war in Iraq or the Bush administration.'

"Wells was followed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, speaking a mile-a-minute and lacing his rebuttal to the defense with sarcasm. Fitzgerald said that, by lying, Libby 'threw sand in the eyes of the FBI investigators and the grand jury' trying to find out if someone leaked classified information that could endanger lives."