2/3/06: NPR: Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense: "A high stakes chess game..."
Morning Edition, February 3, 2006: Lawyers for former White House aide Lewis Libby go to court Friday. The former top aide to vice president Dick Cheney is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the leaking of a CIA agent's identity. Libby's defense team says he needs access to highly sensitive documents to defend himself.
Reporter: Libby Lewis (really!)
Intro: Lawyers for former White House aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby will be in court here in Washington today. The former top aide to Vice President Cheney is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the leaking of a CIA agent's identity. Libby's lawyers argue that he needs access to highly sensitive documents from the White House and the CIA to defend himself. NPR's Libby Lewis reports:
Libby Lewis: If the jury ever hears his case, Libby's argument to the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice is fairly simple. If Libby wasn't telling the truth to investigators and to the grand jury about his conversations with reporters about CIA agent Valerie Plame, it wasn't because he was trying to deceive. He was confused. Or it was a memory glitch. Former prosecutor Randall Eliason explains the defense argument:
Randall Eliason: All these important national security matters, matters of life and death he's dealing with every day -- you know, he doesn't have time to remember little details about a single conversation with a single reporter that happened some time ago.
Lewis: Eliason said it's similar to a favorite defense in white collar cases -- in WorldCom, HealthSouth, and now Enron.
Eliason: Yeah. They have what they call the (inaudible) CEO defense.
Lewis: Of course Libby wasn't in any Vice President's office. He was in the Vice President's office. And his lawyers want the judge to order the government to turn over many documents, many of them classified. They want them partly to show how busy he was when he had those conversations about Plame. Libby's lawyers wrote to the judge that those conversations occurred in the midst of an unending torrent of meetings, briefings, and discussions of far more urgent and sensitive issues, including, for example, the detection and prevention of terrorist attacks against the United States. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has told Libby's lawyers much of the information the defense is seeking is not relevant to the case. But Tom Green says he thinks these are reasonable requests. He's a white collar defense lawyer in Washington.
Tom Green: If you look at the defense on its face, the request is basically saying We need to see what was occuping Mr. Libby's time and the defense team would like say that these are the burdens of the job, and these are the responsibilities, and these are the intricacies, and everything that he was having to deal with.
Lewis: Reasonable or not, New York University Law professor Stephen Gillers says he sees in the defense request the opening moves of a high stakes chess game aimed at heading off a trial.
Stephen Gillers: The legitimate or tactical reason for seeking it is to try to mount a defense based on the denial of access to that information. That if you won't give us this information, we cannot adequately defend our client. His constitution rights have been compromised. The case has to be thrown out.
Lewis: Will it work? It's early to be asking. But Libby's lawyers may not be disappointed. They drew the same judge who presided in the civil case of fired FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds. She sued and the government argued the case hinged on classified material that, if exposed, could harm national security. The judge threw out the case.
