Jury to begin deliberating in CIA leak case

Five weeks and 19 witnesses into the CIA leak trial, US jurors are today set to begin deciding the fate of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Jurors heard a full day of closing arguments in Mr Libby’s perjury and obstruction trial in Washington yesterday and are scheduled to begin deliberating today.

US District Judge Reggie Walton said he planned to instruct the jury about legal issues this morning before sending them off to deliberate.

Mr Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is charged with lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, though he’d likely get far less under federal sentencing guidelines.

Ms Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who emerged in mid-2003 as an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s case for the Iraq war. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says Mr Libby learned about Ms Plame from Mr Cheney and other officials in June 2003 and relayed it to reporters.

Lawyers left jurors with two very different impressions of the case. Prosecutors described a methodical effort by Mr Libby to conceal the fact that he discussed Ms Plame with reporters in June 2003. Defence lawyers recounted a confusing, sometimes contradictory month of testimony that they believe is too shaky to base a conviction on.

Ms Plame was outed by reporter Robert Novak, who touched off an FBI investigation with a July 2003 syndicated column. Though Mr Libby wasn’t Mr Novak’s source, prosecutors say he feared he’d be charged with discussing classified information with other reporters.

So, prosecutors say, Mr Libby lied. He told investigators he learned about Ms Plame from Mr Cheney, then forgot about it until a month later, when he was surprised to hear it during a phone call with NBC’s Tim Russert. Mr Russert says the conversation about Ms Plame didn’t happen.

“It’s simply not credible to believe he would forget this information about Mr Wilson’s wife,” prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said during closing arguments. “It’s ludicrous.”

Mr Libby’s lawyers say it’s the prosecution’s story that doesn’t make sense. Why, they ask, would Mr Libby make up a story that hinges on Mr Russert, someone Mr Libby knew could be questioned?

And while prosecutors have shown that Ms Plame came up in several conversations with government officials in mid-2003, defence lawyers say there’s no proof Mr Libby deliberately set out to lie when he spoke to investigators three months later.

“They haven’t given you anything that says Mr. Libby didn’t just have one of those moments that we all have in life where he thought something happened one way and it happened another,” said defence lawyer Theodore Wells.