Prosecutors set out to prove Libby's guilt

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Federal prosecutors have said for more than a year that former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby lied to a grand jury. Now, they have to prove it.

Opening statements begin Tuesday in the CIA leak case and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald plans to take an hour telling jurors about mid-2003, when Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Libby, were scrambling to deflect criticism on Iraq from former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Fitzgerald says Libby learned that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, told reporters so, then lied about it when FBI agents and the grand jury questioned him.

Fitzgerald is also expected to explain something that's not in the indictment but is key to the case: what he sees as the motive.

Defense attorneys argue that Libby didn't lie, but simply forgot some of the details of his conversations with reporters. They deny he had a motive and plan to say so to jurors. Libby wasn't charged with the leak and wasn't the source for syndicated columnist Robert Novak's article outing CIA operative Valerie Plame. Why, they ask, would Libby lie?

If Fitzgerald is to make his case, he'll need to answer that question in a way that convinces jurors. In court last week, Fitzgerald briefly touched on his explanation.

He said Libby feared political embarrassment and worried he might lose his job for discussing classified information with reporters. President Bush originally threatened to fire anyone who disclosed such information so, even though Libby wasn't Novak's source, Fitzgerald said Libby had a reason to lie.

The jury of nine women and three men will spend more than a month listening to conflicting statements from members of the Bush administration and journalists, trying to sort out the truth.

Libby's defense attorneys, William Jeffress and Theodore Wells, spent days trying to weed critics of the Bush administration out of the jury pool. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1, that wasn't easy. The final panel contains four people who criticized or doubted the administration's war policies.

Though Fitzgerald says the trial isn't about the war, the case will be set to the tumultuous backdrop of the war's early months. He is expected to tell jurors that the White House was preoccupied with discrediting Wilson's criticisms, so it's unlikely Libby forgot that effort.

Libby plans to testify and tell jurors he had many other issues on his mind at the time, such as terrorist threats and emerging nuclear programs overseas. Attorneys say they expect Cheney to testify for the defense. Historians say that would be a first for a sitting vice president.

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Associated Press Writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070123/ap_on_go_ot/cia_leak_trial [link]