Former Cheney chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s newly-disclosed recollections of the intense atmosphere surrounding the Bush-approved leaks of secrets from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate were clear, precise, lucid.
Now, scholars wonder if that doesn’t undermine his perjury defense — that any misstatements he made under oath were because the Wilson-Plame affair was so trivial, he and others didn’t pay much attention to it. From this morning’s LA Times:
Lawyers for the former White House aide, who is charged with lying to the FBI and a grand jury about whether he leaked the identity of a CIA operative to reporters, have argued that any misstatements he made to investigators were inadvertent and resulted from his immersion in more important matters than the agent’s identity.
But court papers filed late Wednesday by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald showed that the administration considered the matter anything but unimportant.
