Documents Reveal New Details of Libby Conversations

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 3, 2006; 3:51 PM



Court documents released today provide new details about the testimony that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff gave to a grand jury investigating his conversations with reporters and administration officials about a CIA operative.

The documents say I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby denied in his testimony ever mentioning CIA operative Valerie Plame to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer or former New York Times reporter Judith Miller in separate conversations he had with them in July 2003, and further never disclosed talking to Miller about Plame in June 2003.

Libby was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice in the course of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Plame's identity to the media. The indictment charges that Libby lied to investigators when he said he did not provide information about Plame to two reporters and when he said he learned about Plame from a third, NBC's Tim Russert.

Libby has pleaded not guilty to the charges and a judge today set his trial for next January.

The information about Libby and other individuals' secret grand jury testimony is included in sections of a once-sealed federal court opinion, portions of which the court made public today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that because Libby had been indicted, much of the material in the opinion that dealt with the grand jury investigation no longer needed to be kept secret.

However, some of the details of the testimony reveal many more insights into the case than Fitzgerald shared in his formal indictment of Libby or in a news conference announcing the charges.

Miller testified last year that Libby first mentioned Plame to her in a conversation in late June 2003 when she visited his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and they discussed her again on July 8 and July 12.

Fleischer testified that at a lunch with Libby in July 2003, Libby relayed to him "on the q.t." that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and sent him on the trip to Niger. Fleisher told the grand jury that he thought the lunch was "kinda weird" because Libby was normally "tight-lipped" and not so chummy that he would share such confidences with the press secretary.

The papers reveal that Libby said he never discussed Wilson's wife with Fleischer.

Also, Fitzgerald thought in February 2005 -- about a year into his investigation of the leak of Plame's name -- that charging Libby with a leak was "off the table" without other evidence, the court record says. He stressed to the circuit court that it was essential, however, to question journalists such as Miller before concluding whether Libby had violated federal laws barring the release of the identity of intelligence agents.

Fitzgerald began investigating in early 2004 whether administration officials broke the law and leaked information about Plame as retaliation. Her name and CIA role appeared in a July 2003 syndicated column by Robert D. Novak -- eight days after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly criticized the Bush administration's justification for waging war with Iraq.

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