Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, thought he was being set up to take the blame over the leak of a CIA operative’s name to protect White House official Karl Rove, Libby’s lawyer told jurors in his perjury trial.
Libby, 56, is accused of lying to investigators probing whether CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity was deliberately leaked to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Iraq war.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told jurors that Libby “made up” a story about learning of Plame’s identity from NBC journalist Tim Russert even though he heard it from Cheney a month earlier.
Libby was “the innocent person to be sacrificed” to protect Rove, defense attorney Ted Wells said during opening statements Tuesday in Washington. “He was concerned about being the scapegoat.”
Rove is one of President Bush’s closest advisers. Fitzgerald investigated Rove, 56, and decided not to press charges against him.
“Unlike Karl Rove, you will learn, Mr. Libby had not been out pushing stories about Ms. Wilson,” Wells said. “Mr. Libby was just a staff member. Karl Rove was the lifeblood of the Republican Party.”
After Libby began to worry that he would become a scapegoat, he went to Cheney with his concerns, Wells said. Cheney wrote a note saying one staffer shouldn’t be sacrificed to protect another, meaning Rove, Wells said.
“We are not commenting on an ongoing criminal matter,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said when asked about Wells’ statements.
Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of obstruction, the most serious charge. Libby resigned after he was indicted in October 2005.
Wells said any misstatements Libby made to investigators were “innocent mistakes” resulting from the faulty memory of a man focused on national-security concerns.
The indictment charges that Libby falsely told a grand jury that he first learned about Plame’s identity from Russert on July 10, 2003. Fitzgerald played for the jurors an audio excerpt from Libby’s grand jury testimony in which he described the conversation and said he didn’t want to confirm any information for Russert.
After the opening statements, the first witness, Marc Grossman, a former undersecretary of state, testified that he told Libby on June 11 or 12, 2003, that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.
Grossman said Libby had asked him whether he knew anything about an ambassador visiting Africa. Grossman confirmed the trip and that the ambassador was Wilson. Grossman then requested more information and found out that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative who coordinated her husband’s trip.
No one has been charged with leaking Plame’s identity. It is a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent.
