Highlights from Libby Perjury trial
Tues. 1/23/07-- Libby defense contends Libby was 'scapegoated' to protect ROVE
-- Libby destroyed a memo from Cheney
-- Libby acting at Cheney's instructions to respond to allegations that the vice president withheld information that would have raised doubts about whether Iraq was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Wed. 1/24/07-- Associate Deputy Director Robert Grenier said he relayed all he had learned about former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man behind news reports of the trip that had Libby so concerned
-- Grenier is one of three government officials to testify, so far, that they held conversations with Libby about Wilson's wife weeks before Libby contends he learned her name.
-- Grenier testified that he did surmise that the White House was pointing a finger at the CIA for not alerting them about Wilson's findings.
"The administration was trying to suggest that had they only known about the eminent Ambassador Wilson's
. . . it would have somehow stopped the White House from continuing on its errant path to war," Grenier said. "I think they were trying to avoid blame for not providing about whether or not Iraq had attempted to buy uranium."
-- Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary who is expected to testify for the prosecution, also has a motive to help the prosecution, Wells has said. Fleischer had demanded immunity before he would talk about his conversations with Libby, then had admitted to government prosecutors that he had spoken to several reporters about Wilson's wife in the days before he left his job.
Thurs. 1/25/07
-- -- Vice President Cheney personally orchestrated his office's 2003 efforts to rebut allegations that the administration used flawed intelligence to justify the war in Iraq and discredit a critic
--Cathie Martin's (Cheney's former press aide) testimony also illustrated how doggedly Cheney insisted that the administration had significant evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction -- even after the White House had backed off that claim and admitted it was not solid enough for the president to have cited it in his 2003 State of the Union address.
-- Cheney dictated talking points for a White House briefing in the midst of the controversy that summer, his former press aide, Cathie Martin, testified, stressing that the CIA never told Cheney that a CIA-sponsored mission had found no real evidence that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.
-- Martin's testimony was buttressed by previously unreleased documents provided as evidence yesterday, including handwritten notes and margin scribblings Cheney's staffers hastily jotted at their boss's instruction.
-- Martin recalled giving Cheney and Libby information from CIA spokesman William Harlow that Wilson was the person sent to Niger "and his wife works for the CIA." Martin is the fourth witness from the administration to bolster the prosecution's claim that Libby had to be lying when he said he learned about Wilson's wife weeks later from NBC's Tim Russert.
-- Cheney told Martin to alert the news media that a highly classified and recent National Intelligence Estimate indicated no doubts about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium. Intelligence analysts have said that the uranium claim was never a key finding of the NIE and that there were doubts about it.
On college-rule paper, in blue ink, Martin scribbled what Cheney told her reporters needed to know about the Niger controversy as they conferred in his Capitol Hill office on July 7, 2003. "As late as last October, the considered judgment of the intel community was that SH had indeed undertaken a vigorous effort to acquire uranium from Africa, according to NIE ," she wrote.
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Libby's defense team still planning on using "faulty memory" as an excuse. they often use the "do you remember now?" or "have you refreshed your memory?" when questioning witnesses
Meanwhile - lots of stuff coming out which points the finger at Cheney regarding the original purpose of the investigation - WHO LEAKED and WHO AUTHORIZED THE LEAK.
FIREDOG LAKE is live-blogging the trial: http://www.firedoglake.com /
