White House liar faces jail term

The man who was once US vice president Dick Cheney’s closest adviser is facing up to 25 years behind bars after being convicted of lying and obstructing a media leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since the national security adviser John Poindexter, in the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago.

In the end, jurors said they did not believe Libby’s main defence: that he had not lied but merely had a bad memory.

The CIA leak case focused new attention on the Bush administration’s much-criticised handling of intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The case cost Cheney his most trusted adviser and the trial revealed Cheney’s personal obsession with criticism of the war’s legitimacy.

Trial testimony made clear that president George Bush secretly declassified a portion of the pre-war intelligence estimate that Cheney quietly sent Libby to leak to Judith Miller of The New York Times in 2003 to rebut criticism by ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson. Bush, Cheney and Libby were the only three people in government aware of the effort.

More top reporters were ordered into court – including Miller after 85 days of resistance in jail – to testify about their confidential sources among the nation’s highest-ranking officials than in any other trial in recent memory.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said the verdict closed the nearly four-year investigation into how the name of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, and her classified job at the CIA were leaked to reporters in 2003, just days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of doctoring pre-war intelligence.

No one will be charged with the leak itself, which the trial confirmed came first from then-deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

Libby, not only Cheney’s chief of staff but also an assistant to Bush, was expressionless as the verdict was announced yesterday, on the 10th day of jury deliberations. In the front row, his wife, Harriet Grant, choked out a sob and her head sank.

Libby could face up to 25 years in prison when sentenced on June 5, but government sentencing guidelines will probably prescribe far less, perhaps one to three years.

Defence lawyers said they would ask for a retrial and if that should fail, would appeal against the conviction.

“We have every confidence Mr Libby ultimately will be vindicated,” lawyer Theodore Wells said. He said Libby was “totally innocent and that he did not do anything wrong”.

Libby did not speak to reporters.

President Bush watched news of the verdict on television at the White House. Deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush respected the jury’s verdict but “was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family”.

In a written statement, Cheney called the verdict disappointing. “As I have said before, Scooter has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction through many years of public service,” he said.

Wilson, whose wife left the CIA after she was exposed, said, “Convicting him of perjury was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion or Alger Hiss of perjury. It doesn’t mean they were not guilty of other crimes.”

Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury to the grand jury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame’s identity and whom he told. He was acquitted of another lying count.

Libby learned about Plame from Cheney in June 2003 about a month after Wilson’s allegations were first published, without his name, by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Prosecutors said Libby relayed the Plame information to other government officials and told reporters – Miller of the Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine – that she worked at the CIA.

On July 6 2003, Wilson wrote publicly that he had gone to Niger in 2002 and debunked a report that Iraq was seeking uranium there for nuclear weapons. He wrote that Cheney, who had asked about the report, should have known his findings long before Bush cited the report in 2003 as justification for the war.

On July 14, columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and she, not Cheney, had suggested he go on the trip.

When an investigation of the leak began, prosecutors said, Libby feared prosecution for disclosing classified information so he lied to investigators to make his discussions appear innocent.

Libby swore that he was so busy he forgot Cheney had told him about Plame and was surprised to learn it a month later from NBC reporter Tim Russert. He swore he told reporters only that he learned it from other reporters and could not confirm it.

Russert said he and Libby never discussed Plame.