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Politics

Libby, Cheney won't testify at trial

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 14, 2007

WASHINGTON - I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby abandoned plans to testify in his own defense and to call his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, to help defend him in the CIA leak trial.

The announcement in U.S. District Court on Tuesday by defense attorney Theodore Wells came after several days in which Libby's attorneys had inched in that direction.

The formal reversal in their announced tactics prompted Judge Reggie Walton to advise them the decision would limit how far they could go in using memory flaws as Libby's defense to perjury and obstruction charges.

Defense attorneys put in nearly two hours of testimony Tuesday from Cheney's current national security adviser, John Hannah, about how busy Libby was in 2003 with the war in Iraq and other national security issues while serving Cheney as both national security adviser and chief of staff.

Informed of Libby's decision, Walton said, "I understood the defense was going to be that these issues were of such significance that they so overwhelmed him so it was reasonable for him to forget" when he first learned that war critic Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

Libby is accused of lying to the FBI and a grand jury about his talks with reporters concerning Plame and obstructing the investigation of how her identity leaked in 2003. Libby says his memory failed him.

"Now that the defense has changed," Walton said, "they cannot suggest these events overwhelmed the other" information in his memory. But Walton said the defense could "ask the jury to draw that inference by rhetorical questions."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said there would be little more than "a semantic difference" between what the defense could argue. He moved to exclude three defense witnesses who would discuss terrorist threats mentioned in the CIA briefing book for Libby and Cheney during key weeks of 2003.

Walton agreed to admit these classified details only if Libby testified how much the topics consumed his attention and Fitzgerald could cross-examine him about them, the prosecutor argued.

"Some of these terror threats, frankly, weren't all that reliable," Fitzgerald said. He said that Libby would know that from experience but that jurors would have no basis for judging how compelling the classified data was.

Walton decided to rule today on whether the three briefers could still testify.

Libby acknowledges he learned about Plame's work at the CIA from Cheney on June 12, 2003, but says he forgot it and thought he was hearing it for the first time from NBC reporter Tim Russert on July 10. Russert testified he and Libby never discussed Plame at all.

Tuesday afternoon with the jury out of court, Wells told Walton that he had advised Cheney's lawyer during a break that the vice president's testimony would not be needed. Wells then said Libby had accepted his recommendation to rest his case this week without testimony from Libby.

In December, Wells had announced he would call Cheney. Cheney himself said in recent interviews he expected to testify. Historians say he would have been the first sitting vice president to be a witness in a criminal trial.

Walton asked Libby in court Tuesday if he was sure. Libby responded: "Yes, sir. I will follow the advice of my counsel."

Putting Cheney on the stand would have opened him to cross-examination about his efforts to rebut Wilson's criticism of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

[Last modified February 14, 2007, 01:02:31]