Swimming with the Weasels

January 25th, 2007

I’m giving the lead piece on the Plamegate trial to Christy Hardin Smith, a [legal] blogger [FireDogLake] that has been faithful to this story, as have we, for all these long months, and who is live-blogging at the courthouse. I trust her to be looking for what we’re looking for. The next is from Wayne Madsen, who always floats up the worst of the sewer scum … I don’t like his implications about Fitz, but we have to be pragmatic on this — when you read about what these boyz do, and the kind of hardball they play … HAVE played with our nation … I can see why he’d pull a punch with Rove; ultimately it’s the light of day on all this darkness that will tell the tale. And it’s getting lighter by the minute.

A legal eagle commenting on CNN yesterday said that Libby can’t plead that he’s being scapegoated by the administration AND that he’s memory impaired. Murky waters … sewer sludge.

Other reports here include the Washington Post and David Corn — and a whole new perspective about wack-job Tom Cruise in pursuit of Scientology. There is, I’m sure, an expectation that it … like both Islam and Christianity … must spread “truth” to every soul on the planet in order to assure cosmic bliss — giving us muddy choices between the tight boxes of Fundy repression, both Christ and Prophet inspired, and reptile ghosts. When I think about this stuff, I hear an echo of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and his Fosterite Church of the New Revelation. As an early SciFi guru, might he have influenced L. Ron Hubbard’s minions?

Ain’t we got fun?

I’ll keep an eye on today’s doings — go to FireDog for the mornings activity.

Jude

Libby Trial: No Swans Swimming In Sewers
Christy Hardin Smith, FireDogLake, HuffPo
01.24.2007

Is it really the intent of the Libby legal team to reintroduce the entire argument over the Bush Administration’s flawed case for war in Iraq? Especially after we just completed the tedious slog through jury selection, with the endless string of questions about the potential jurors feelings about Vice President Cheney and the mess that is Iraq?

Because if that truly is their intent — to bring up the Niger document forgeries, as they did with the Government’s witnesses Marc Grossman and Robert Grenier this morning; to bring up the war of words between the CIA and the White House/Vice President’s office on who would take the blame for the mess that is Iraq; to bring up an endless string of innuendos that the CIA was out to make Scooter Libby into their fall guy? I’m sorry, but I do not see this jury buying that failure to accept responsibility. It’s just a feeling from watching the jurors and the reactions of the folks in the gallery watching the trial…among which, there was a sense of confusion as to what, exactly, defense counsel was trying to get at today, other than to point out that people do, inherently, have memory questions over time.

But that is getting way ahead of the day’s testimony, so on to the summary.

We started the morning with the continuation of testimony from Marc Grossman, former number three man at the State Department. To be honest, I am not enamored with Ted Wells’ cross examination style — he’s scattered, very extemporaneous, and overly exuberant, so that his personality overshadows the answers he is trying to elicit with his questions. When the lawyer becomes the story instead of the case, that is a problem, in my mind, and having watched a number of the other attorneys on Team Libby and from the government, I can honestly say that, stylistically, Wells’ courtroom demeanor — the sort of forceful, boistrous lawyering — just is not my favorite.

One of the things we did the most today was sit in the courtroom and watch the attorneys haggle through objections and motions with the judge at the bench. It was a very slow, very long haul through the end of Grossman’s testimony this morning — and the government was forced to make a number of objections on hearsay and relevance and questions outside the scope of direct examination because Wells continued to try and push the Adminstration’s case for war around the edges in his questioning, including Wells’ attempt to get Grossman to testify with regard to Valerie Plame Wilson’s status at the CIA, despite the judge’s prior order that the issue was to be off the table for this trial.

It was a long morning.

One substantial hurdle that Team Libby appears to be setting up in its own path is the gap between the two sides of their argument: it is illogical to say that Libby was (a) so busy with national security threats and other very important matters that he could not possibly have cared about Joe and Valerie Wilson enough to pay attention to them and, at the same time, say that (b) he was forced to do damage control on the matter of Wilson’s questions of the Administration’s, and particularly Cheney’s, credibility by forcing them to confront the question of whether they had lied their way into war with Iraq, because it was a priority of the Vice President’s and, thus, a priority of Libby’s. Either it wasn’t important or it was — but you cannot reconcile the two at one time, especially given that today’s testimony elicited the following facts from the witnesses:

– From Marc Grossman: That Scooter Libby contacted him to ask about Joe Wilson, the trip to Niger and who was responsible for it. And that Libby was concerned that Grossman find this information out for him as expeditiously as possible. Grossman has some mitigating factors — he knew Joe Wilson from their tenure in the State Department, and Wells tried to intimate that his strong ties to Richard Armitage tainted him somewhat in terms of testimony aganst Libby, but I felt that Wells’ attempt at impeachment with this information fell short, because Grossman clearly thought of Armitage’s disclosure as wrong and yet appreciated being given a personal heads up about Armitage’s conversation with Novak.

– From Robert Grenier: Grenier was a Deputy Director at the CIA during this time frame, working under John McLaughlin. He knew Libby through the Deputies Committee meetings at the White House, which he would attend when the subject was Iraq. On June 11, 2003, Libby phoned Grenier for the first time over the two years that they had known each other in this capacity and tasked Grenier into researching Joe Wilson and his potential role in the Niger trip — and whether the CIA had sent him due to interest being expressed by the Vice President’s office. Grenier said that Libby’s tone during this call was “aggrieved,” and that he mentioned that Wilson had spoken with the press — which led Grenier to deduce that Libby wanted more information on the trip and on Wilson to deal with the inevitable pushback that would need to be done with press inquiries that led to uncomfortable questions. Grenier made some calls within the CIA to the Directorate of Operations Counterproliferation Division to “Kevin,” but was unable to reach his contact there. He tasked someone else with researching the issue, and within a couple of hours had an answer. He attempted to reach Libby around 4:00 pm, but was unable to get him, and then left his office for a 4:15 pm meeting with George Tenet. During the meeting, he was pulled out by a staffer — the first time anyone had ever requested that he be pulled from a meeting with Tenet — to take a call from Libby who asked if Grenier had secured the background information on Wilson. When Grenier filled Libby in on the details he had learned, Libby asked if the CIA would be willing to go to the press with the information that it was not simple the Vice President’s office, but also the Department of Defense and the State Department who had been seeking information about Iraq’s alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Niger. Grenier then went back to the meeting, pulled out the CIA’s press officer, and asked him if this would be possible and the two of them phoned Libby to say that there would be a way that this could be done — Grenier immediately put the press officer (Harlow) on the phone, where he spoke with a “Cathie” (presumably Cathie Martin, Vice President Cheney’s then press secretary, who is expected to testify tomorrow) about how best to disseminate the story.

Grenier was cross-examined by William Jeffress, whose demeanor reminds me quite a bit of William H. Macy, and whose courtroom style is very open and friendly, so that you do not see the sting coming until after it has already hit. Unfortunately for Jeffress, he didn’t quite land the stings that he was clearly hoping for at times. Essentially, the point that Jeffress was trying to make in his cross examination was that Grenier and others at the CIA had reason to fudge information to cast blame on folks at the Vice President’s office and, in particular, Libby. But Jeffress failed to adequately make that point stick to Grenier — and his frequent interruptions when Grenier was speaking (although a common technique for cutting off a witness’ answer that you don’t want the jury to hear on cross) was off-putting.

– From Craig Schmall: Schmall was the CIA briefer who was responsible for briefing Scooter Libby, first, and later both Libby and Cheney, for the daily morning briefings from the Agency. Schmall was the most intriguing witness of the day today, and very credible, as both the jury and the folks in the gallery paid fairly close attention to what he had to say throughout the afternoon.

Schmall put together briefing books, which included a summary page on which Schmall annotated questions, tasking assignments and other notes regarding issues that either Libby or the Vice President wanted addressed or answered during the course of the briefing. One of the funnier moments today came when we discovered that Scooter Libby, during the midst of these myriad of terrorist threats and other national security matters which were being briefed, met with Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz regarding the treatment of Church of Scientology members in Germany. (Yeah, busy and important schedule matter, that.)

Fitzgerald did the direct examination of Schmall this morning and I thought it was brilliantly constructed — he managed to elicit tidbits that were very damaging to Libby’s credibility and which directly challenged the “I was too busy and important to remember” defense, from a witness who was not hostile to Libby in the slightest and who came across as the sort of person who earnestly wanted to do a good job. Some of the information obtained included:

– Margin notes on the briefing slip for 6/14/03 (a Saturday briefing of Libby at his home): Libby complained about a story in the press about CIA analysts feeling bullied about his and VP Cheney’s visits to the CIA;

– Margin notes on the briefing slip for 6/14/03: Libby asked “Why was the Ex.

Amb. told this and was this a VP office question? Joe Wilson Valerie Wilson”

– Margin notes on the 7/14/03 briefing (a Monday, so it would have been with VP Cheney and with Libby potentially as well): “Did you read the Novak article — not your problem…”

All of this was very interesting, especially the timing of the questions asked about Wilson back on June 14, 2003. There is a bit of a puzzle about the “not your problem” portion of the 7/14/03 notation — does this mean that the briefer did not need to look further into the matter? And did this come from Vice President Cheney or from Libby?

Schmall also had a very effective moment of testimony regarding potential damage that could have been done if a covert agent was exposed to public scrutiny, both to that agent, and to all of the other agents and assets with whom the exposed agent worked, including possible harassment, torture, and death. It was a poignant moment, very effectively said with a firm tone by Schmall, and all the more powerful because he was repeating what he had said to Vice President Cheney and Scooter Libby on the morning that the Novak column appeared in newspapers outing Valerie Plame Wilson.

Cross examination of Schmall was begun by John Cline for Libby’s defense team, and he did a very methodical walk through of the matters that may have been briefed on June 14th, 2003, to show that Libby was a very busy and very important man. I also thought that Cline’s courtroom style was very effective, and that he was both prepared and quite straightforward in his lines of questioning. Unfortunately, again, for Team Libby the types of questions asked walks them right back to the twin points of their defense argument which are not easily reconciled and may, in the end, come crashing into each other: if you are a busy and important man, why were you, Scooter Libby, running around the national security and diplomatic arena asking questions about a matter that you now say was trivial — asking multiple people multiple questions over an extended period of time? It just does not add up to any logical conclusion.

Finally, a word about witnesses. Neither the government nor the defense gets to select its witnesses out of central casting. As is so often the case in any criminal matter, people involved on all sides of the case come to the witness stand carrying their own sets of baggage — that is true for the defendant, and for every witness on both sides who will be placed under oath. In criminal matters especially, you find that there is an awful lot of taint to a number of the people who testify — as a former colleague of mine in the prosecutor’s office used to say, “You don’t find swans swimming in sewers.”

In the Libby matter, there is already a growing sense of the level of infighting, nastiness, egotism, and backbiting that is going on within the Bush Administration and between the various segments of our national security apparatus, the highest levels of the executive and among the diplomatic and military wings. To be completely honest, it is a wonder that these people have managed to cobble together anything that functions at all and — frankly — looking at the mess that is Iraq and our burgeoning deficit, an argument can be made that it is not even functioning in any real sense of the word.

This case, and the testimony elicited therein, is lifting up an awful lot of uncomfortable rocks. And what we are all seeing squirming underneath them is not pleasant for anyone in the courtroom. And it is only going to get worse the further down the road of testimony that we go. Tomorrow, we will finish the testimony of Craig Schmall and move on to Cathie Martin, whose testimony will be key in so many ways. Much more to come from the Libby trial. ++

~ from Wayne Madsen Report
January 24, 2007

Opening arguments in the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby saw a double-barreled prosecution and defense shot being fired at the White House. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald argued that Libby lied in order to protect Cheney in the investigation of an orchestrated White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the media.

However, Fitzgerald’s statements paled in comparison to those made by Theodore Wells, Libby’s attorney. Wells stated that Libby told Cheney that he was afraid of being “set up” (a phrase not heard in Washington since the sting of Mayor Marion Barry) to protect George W. Bush’s chief adviser Karl Rove. Wells produced the fragment of a memo from Cheney that echoed the sentiment that Libby was being made the fall guy to cover up for criminal conspiracy within the Oval Office. Cheney’s memo stated: “Not going to protect one staffer [Rove] + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder [Libby] because of the incompetence of others.”

Wells’ statements indicate that a high-level conspiracy involving Rove and Ari Fleischer, who used his Fifth Amendment self-incrimination rights before the grand jury and was then granted immunity by Fitzgerald, and others was behind the outing of Plame and the retribution against her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wells stated that Fleischer told NBC’s David Gregory about Plame’s identity on Air Force One during a trip to Africa.

However, Fitzgerald did not opt to prosecute Libby or Rove for criminal conspiracy but chose the much riskier path of trying to prove a “he said, she said, I don’t recall” perjury and obstruction of justice case against Libby. It is also very apparent that Fitzgerald had the goods on Rove last May but his plan to indict the presidential aide ran into trouble at the eleventh hour. WMR reported last May that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke down the administrative firewalls within the Justice Department and applied pressure on Fitzgerald to leave Rove alone during the critical months prior to the congressional election. Fitzgerald also engaged in a long period of back and forth negotiations with Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin. Libby’s defense is that Rove was the key player in the leak of Plame’s identity.

Wells’ arguments of a criminal conspiracy at the highest echelons of the White House means that Libby’s team does not expect a presidential pardon and, therefore, are going for broke. With Fitzgerald indicating that Cheney, himself, was involved in disclosing Plame’s identity to the media, any trial appearance by Cheney on behalf of Libby runs several risks for Cheney, including the possibility that he will also invoke the Fifth Amendment if questioned directly by Fitzgerald on his role in the CIA leak and what transpired between his office and the Oval Office.

It was unexpected that Libby’s defense team would reveal any explosive information at the trial, however, that changed yesterday. If Rove continues to be the object of Libby’s team’s charges of a criminal conspiracy in the Oval Office and Fitzgerald fails to ask for a grand jury extension or a new grand jury to investigate Rove, the “independence” of Fitzgerald will become a major issue. ++

Former CIA Official Testifies Against Libby
Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein, WaPo
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

A high-ranking former CIA official testified today that he told I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in June 2003 that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA, after an “aggrieved” Libby called seeking information about Wilson’s CIA-sponsored trip to Africa.

Robert L. Grenier, a former CIA associate deputy director, became the second prosecution witness at Libby’s perjury trial to say he had disclosed information about CIA officer Valerie Plame to Libby weeks before Libby claims he learned her identity from a journalist.

The timing is central to government charges that Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, lied to FBI agents and a grand jury investigating how Plame’s name was leaked to the press. Libby has pleaded not guilty, contending he forgot some conversations with journalists in the crush of his work on national security issues.

Grenier, who at the time was the CIA official in charge of intelligence for Iraq, told jurors that early on the afternoon of June 11, 2003, he received a telephone message that Libby had called.

When he returned the call, the first he had ever received from Libby, the vice president’s top aide sounded “a little bit aggrieved,” Grenier said, about press reports that Cheney’s office had asked the CIA to undertake a mission to Niger to determine whether Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from that country for a nuclear weapons program. Wilson was sent on that mission.

Libby was so eager to learn the details of Wilson’s trip that he had Grenier called out of a 4:15 p.m. meeting with then-CIA Director George Tenet for an update on what Grenier had learned in the previous three hours, Grenier said. He said he told Libby that, in addition to Cheney’s office, the Departments of State and Defense also had been interested in the Africa mission.

Grenier said he told Libby that Wilson’s wife, whose name he did not know, had worked in the CIA unit that arranged the trip.

The former CIA official’s account came on the second day of testimony as defense attorneys began trying to cast doubt on the motives and memories of administration officials who have said Libby was obsessed with Wilson and Plame in the summer of 2003.

Defense attorney Theodore V. Wells Jr. argued that then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the prosecution’s first witness, was likely biased against Libby, had a “fishy” meeting with a key figure in the investigation and had given conflicting accounts of events over time.

Another defense attorney, William H. Jeffress Jr., sought to undermine Grenier’s testimony for the prosecution by pointing out that the former CIA official had initially told FBI agents and a grand jury that he did not remember whether he had told Libby that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. Only later, Jeffress said, did Grenier notify investigators that he had, indeed, mentioned that she was an employee.

“Do you find your memory gets better the further away from an event you are?” Jeffress asked pointedly.

Grenier replied that he been giving a lot of thought to his conversation with Libby and, while he did not specifically remember more of its details, he did realize that he had briefly felt guilty immediately afterward “that I had somehow said too much . . . specifically having mentioned that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, effectively having revealed the identity of a CIA officer. . . . It is information we usually guard pretty closely.”

The questioning highlighted what will be one element of the defense strategy — pointing fingers at former colleagues of Libby’s, particularly those at the CIA and State Department, who might have had reason to dislike him or his office’s campaign for the war.

Libby, 56, is charged with five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice. He is not charged with the leak itself to columnist Robert D. Novak; two other top government officials have acknowledged they were Novak’s sources.

Some critics of the administration have charged that the disclosure of Plame’s name was a way to discredit Wilson after he claimed that the administration had twisted the intelligence he had collected in its effort to justify the Iraq invasion.

Libby has said he believes he first learned about Plame from one journalist, NBC’s Tim Russert, and passed along that information as unconfirmed gossip to two others. The reporters, who remember those conversations very differently, are key witnesses against Libby.

But perhaps more crucial for the prosecution are at least eight current and former Bush administration officials — including Grenier and Grossman — who have said Libby was intensely seeking and spreading information about Plame and Wilson from May 29 until Plame’s name appeared in Novak’s column on July 14.

In questioning Grossman, Wells said it could appear that Grossman was “cooking the books” when he met privately with his boss, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the night before Grossman was interviewed by the FBI in October 2003. Grossman acknowledged that was when Armitage had confessed to him that he had leaked Plame’s name to Novak in a “stupid” offhand conversation.

“Did you agree your meeting with Mr. Armitage on the eve of your FBI interview, that some could construe that as fishy?” Wells asked.

Grossman good-naturedly disagreed. “You said some might see it that way, and I said that’s true, they could,” Grossman said. ” I did not [see it that way] at the time and do not now.”

Grossman added that he was disappointed at what Armitage had done, but glad his boss made the effort to confide in him before his FBI interview.

“He said it was the dumbest thing he’d ever done in his life,” Grossman said. “He said he felt terrible about it, that he’d offered to quit and reported it fully to the FBI. I was shocked and disappointed. But for me, I thought he’d given me a piece of professional courtesy and I appreciated it.”

Wells questioned Grossman about his allegiances. “You and Mr. Armitage are very close friends, correct?” Wells asked. “Whereas Mr. Libby is just a professional [associate].”

Said Grossman: “That’s correct.”

Wells noted that Grossman also had occasional contact with Wilson, who attended Grossman’s alma mater, the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Wells told the jury in opening statements yesterday that many government officials’ recollections are faulty and their motives conflicted when they say they remember Libby discussing Wilson’s wife with them before her name was publicly revealed.

The defense attorney also said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time, insisted on immunity from prosecution before testifying that Libby had told him about Wilson’s wife. Fleischer admitted to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that he had discussed Wilson’s wife with reporters after June 11. ++

CIA Leak: Ari Fleischer Took the Fifth, Testified Under Immunity
Jon Ponder
Jan. 24, 2007

I have long suspected that Ari Fleischer was up to this eyeballs in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity to Bob Novak. Yesterday, during the lawyers’ opening statements in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, Fleischer’s activities at the time were revealed — as was new information that Fleischer testified about his involvement under a grant of immunity from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

Fleischer was a short-timer when Plame’s name was leaked to Novak. He was replaced by Scott McClellan on July 15, 2003, the day after Novak’s column was published.

-[As] the two legal teams began their courtroom battle, new information was disclosed about the leak affair, including the revelation that Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time of the leak, had identified Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer to NBC News reporter David Gregory a week before the leak appeared in Robert Novak’s July 14, 2003 column, and that Fleischer, during the subsequent criminal investigation, took the Fifth Amendment and demanded (and received) immunity before testifying to Fitzgerald’s’ grand jury.

-Fleischer told the grand jury that he had learned about Valerie Wilson’s CIA affiliation first from Libby and then from Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. (This directly implicated yet two more White House officials in the scandal.) Gregory, though, did not report the information, and he later declined to talk to Fitzgerald about his conversation with Fleischer.

Fitzgerald never subpoenaed him. (In a response to an email from a colleague asking about today’s disclosure, Gregory emailed, “I can’t help you, sorry.”) The first day of the trial also brought the news that after the Justice Department opened an investigation of the CIA leak in fall 2003, Cheney pressured the White House press office to make a statement clearing Libby of any wrongdoing.

What prompted all this was former Amb. Joe Wilson’s column on July 7, 2003, in the New York Times, titled, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” in which he accused Pres. Bush of lying about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in his State of the Union speech in January 2003. It appears that Fleischer gave reporter David Gregory Plame’s identity within a day or two after Wilson’s article appeared.

Fleischer had announced his resignation in May 2003, and was a short-timer when Plame’s name was leaked to Novak. He was replaced by Scott McClellan on July 15, 2003, the day after Novak’s column was published. ++

Libby Trial Continues with Memory Attacks
David Corn, The Nation
January 24, 2007…

On the second day of the Scooter Libby trial, Ted Wells, the defendant’s attorney, continued with his double strategy of challenging the memories of the prosecution’s witnesses and of creating a series of narratives that could end up confusing jurors.

The first witness called to stand by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was Marc Grossman, who was the No. 3 at the State Department in the summer of 2003. His testimony was clear-cut.

On May 29, 2003, he was contacted by Libby, who was seeking information on former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger. Three weeks earlier, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof had written a piece–without mentioning Wilson by name–citing Wilson’s mission as evidence that the Bush administration had hyped the prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Few in the media had paid any attention to Kristof’s column, but Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus was looking into Vice President Dick Cheney’s connection to the Wilson affair. (Wilson had been sent by the CIA on this trip in 2002 after Cheney had asked an intelligence briefer for more information on the allegation that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.)

It was while Pincus was sniffing around that Libby, according to Grossman, called him and asked for information on Wilson’s mission. Grossman testified that he had known nothing about the trip, then learned the basic details from others at the State Department, and shared this information with Libby. He also testified that he had asked the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a memo on the trip. The memo noted that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA division that had dispatched Wilson. Grossman testified that he shared this fact with Libby during a face-to-face meeting on June 11 or June 12, 2003.

This is important because after the CIA leak criminal investigation was launched, Libby told the FBI and a grand jury that when he heard from Meet the Press host Tim Russert on July 10 or 11 that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA, he believed he was learning this fact anew. (Russert denies saying anything to Libby about Valerie Wilson.) Fitzgerald’s plan is to demonstrate that Libby aggressively gathered information on Joseph and Valerie Wilson before the leak to prove that his story to the grand jury and the FBI–that he had forgotten he knew anything about Valerie Wilson and had merely passed along to reporters rumors about her he had heard from other reporters–was an intentional lie.

If Libby was pressing Grossman for official information on Wilson and receiving information on Wilson and his wife (which was classified), it means he possessed far more than scuttlebutt. And Grossman was only the first of several witnesses Fitzgerald expected to call to make this point.

What could Wells do? Go after Grossman’s memory. He noted that the written report of his first interview with the FBI–which occurred on October 17, 2003-says that Grossman told the bureau that he conveyed information on the Wilson trip to Libby during two or three telephone calls. Yet now, Wells said, Grossman was testifying that there had been a face-to-face conversation. “I don’t know how to explain this,” Grossman said. Wells continued: An FBI memo regarding Grossman’s second interview with the bureau also said that Grossman had told the FBI he had informed Libby about Wilson’s wife in a phone call. “Again,” Grossman said, “I recall that as a face-to-face meeting.” Wells cited another discrepancy between the FBI reports of Grossman’s interviews and his jury testimony.

It was not devastating. But it was a shot across the bow of Fitzgerald’s case. Part of Libby’s defense is that he did not lie, he merely falsely remembered matters that were not so relevant at the time. If Wells can show the main witnesses against Libby have memory problems of their own, he will be quite pleased.

With Grossman on the stand, Wells also took a stab at bolstering one of the narratives he intends to throw at the jury: that Libby did not engage in any illegitimate effort to harm Joseph Wilson. Wells has signaled he will present the jury a complicated story–part of which will claim that Libby had been tasked by Bush and Cheney to address Wilson’s accusations on the merits. Referring to the memo and attachments pulled together for Grossman (in response to Libby’s request), Wells asked Grossman if one of the attachments showed that Iraq had indeed tried to purchase yellowcake uranium–which can be enriched for a nuclear bomb–from Niger. That’s not what the document said. It noted merely that a former Nigerien prime minister had told Wilson that in June 1999 a businessman had asked that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” and that he (the former prime minister) had interpreted this request to mean the Iraqis were interested in uranium purchases. But the former prime minister said he let the matter drop because he was not interested in dealing with Iraq (which was subject to United Nations sanctions) and angering the United States.

Wells was clearly looking for material to support the argument that Wilson was wrong in assessing the Niger charge as improbable and that Libby and the White House were right (perhaps even obligated) to challenge his accusation. But Wells did not go too far down this road. “Now, are we arguing this again?” exclaimed a reporter in the press room.

With his second witness–Robert Grenier, a former Iraq mission manager at the CIA–Fitzgerald developed his narrow narrative. Grenier testified that on June 11, 2003, he received a phone message from Libby at 1:15 in the afternoon. Previously, he had been in interagency meetings with Libby, but this was the first time the vice president’s chief of staff had ever called him. Grenier immediately phoned him back. Libby, according to Grenier, told Grenier that a former ambassador named Joseph Wilson was “going around town” claiming he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to determine if there was any truth to the Niger charge and that this trip had occurred because the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in the allegation. Was this true?

Libby asked. He sounded, Grenier said, “a little bit aggrieved,” and Grenier worried that Cheney’s office suspected the CIA of leaking information harmful for Cheney and the White House.

Grenier testified that he had heard nothing about Wilson’s trip prior to this conversation. He called a unit within the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division and obtained information about the Wilson matter–and he learned that Wilson’s wife worked at that particular unit. (He was not told her name or position.) But before he could call Libby back, Libby phoned again, and Grenier was pulled out of a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet. He conveyed to Libby what he had learned from CPD, including the information about Wilson’s wife. A few days later, when Grenier saw Libby, Grenier testified, Libby thanked him for the information and said that it was useful.

By Fitzgerald’s count, there were now two former government officials who maintained they had told Libby about Wilson’s wife in response to questions from Libby. Then Bill Jeffers got hold of Grenier. On the cross-examination, he dug into a problem with Grenier’s testimony. Grenier had conceded that when he first talked to FBI agents investigating the leak and when he first appeared before the grand jury he had said that he did not recall having told Libby about Wilson’s wife. He explained that he had recalled that he had done so only after thinking about the matter in response to stories in the media about the leak case. “I was going over it again and again in mind,” he testified. Then in the spring of 2005–more than a year after his initial grand jury appearance–he spoke to CIA lawyers and arranged to reappear before the grand jury to say he now realized he had spoken to Libby about Wilson’s wife.

Jeffers poked at Grenier’s claim that his recollection of his discussion with Libby had grown. He asked why he could not recall this phone call during his FBI interview and first grand jury appearance. And Grenier conceded that his recollection of his conversation with Libby “has a fair amount of vagueness attached to it.” Jeffers also pointed out that during Grenier’s first grand jury appearance Grenier had said that he did not even recall that a Counterproliferation Division staffer had told him about Wilson’s wife. But, Jeffers added, Grenier only had a clear recollection of this at his second grand jury appearance. Grenier could not explain the disparity. And he asked Grenier a series of questions that raised the notion that the CIA and the White House at the time of the leak were feuding over responsibility for the faulty prewar intelligence, perhaps in preparation for suggesting to the jury that Grenier and/or other CIA officers might have an interest going after Libby and Cheney.

Next up was Craig Schmall, who in 2003 was a CIA briefer for both Libby and Cheney. He testified that during his June 14, 2003 morning briefing of Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff had raised a few matters that were not part of the official briefing. One was a visit Libby had just had with actors Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. “He was a little excited about it,” Schmall said, explaining that Cruise had come to talk to Libby about Germany’s treatment of Scientologists. (Cruise had met with Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state on June 13.) Another issue was the Wilson mission and Valerie Wilson. Schmall’s handwritten notes on the table of contents of Libby’s briefing that day indicated that Libby had mentioned both Wilsons to him. Here was more evidence suggesting that Libby was on top of the Wilson business (before it became public) and knew about Valerie Wilson.

Schmall also testified that after the leak had occurred, while he was briefing both Cheney and Libby, they asked him what he thought about the leak scandal. Noting that some commentators had dismissed the leak as “no big deal,” Schmall explained that he considered it a “grave danger.”

He explained to Libby and Cheney that foreign intelligence services could now investigate everyone who had come into contact with Valerie Wilson when she had served overseas. “Those people,” he said, “innocent or otherwise, could be harassed…tortured or killed.” With such testimony in hand, Fitzgerald will be able to argue that Libby had motive to lie about his connection to the leak: he would not want to be implicated in a chain of events that could lead to the torture and death of innocent people.

There was not much Libby attorney John Cline could do to challenge Schmall. The CIA briefer had admitted that he had a “poor memory” of the specific briefings. But his notes said what they said. So Cline mainly asked Schmall about the other subjects on Libby’s plate during those briefings: bombings overseas, an arrest of a suspected terrorist, a proposed Middle East security plan, assorted possible terrorist attacks against the United States. This will be useful ammo if Libby’s lawyers later claim he was too damn busy with protecting America to have recalled accurately what he knew about Valerie Wilson. Yet he wasn’t too preoccupied to talk to Cruise about Scientology.

There were no bombshells today. It was hours of tough legal slogging. Fitzgerald is trying to create a chronology using witnesses who have–as most witnesses do–imperfect memories. Put enough of them together–and he’s not done yet–and he could have a case. Libby’s lawyers are doing what all defense attorneys do: raise doubts about the memories and motives of the prosecution witnesses. They landed a few blows. But Fitzgerald has more witnesses coming. After Schmall, the next scheduled witness is Cathie Martin, who was a spokesperson for Cheney. She was, in a way, a witness to the Grenier-Libby conversation and also spoke with Libby and Cheney several times about the Wilson affair. She was involved in the damage-control operation mounted in response to Joseph Wilson’s revelations. Might she have a better memory than the initial witnesses? ++

DICK CHENEY ORDERED TENET TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR NIGER URANIUM HOAX!
DailyKos

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves