WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA would have a hard time advising President George W. Bush on security threats if a judge forced it to provide material sought by a former vice presidential aide accused of perjury, the agency said in a court filing made public on Tuesday.
CIA officials would need up to nine months to dig up classified information sought by Lewis "Scooter" Libby as part of his defense against perjury charges, the CIA said.
"The job would divert their precious time and effort away from their primary task: preparing breaking intelligence for the president's immediate attention," CIA information review officer Marilyn Dorn wrote.
[...]
Only those officials who prepare the reports have enough security clearance to handle the task, Dorn said, and the task could take months because information would have to be reassembled from many different sources.
Scooter Libby is charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements in the Plame Affair - a case in which a CIA agent was outed. Now it looks like the CIA is trying to fight back and they actually won a small victory.
In a response filed later on Tuesday, Libby's lawyers said a judge might conclude the agency was engaged in "unjustified foot-dragging."
Nevertheless, they said they were willing to narrow their request to the briefs Libby saw during the weeks he discussed Wilson with reporters and officials, and the days when he was queried by investigators, roughly 46 days in all.
They also scaled back the range of documents they wished to see and proposed limits on where they could view the material.
CIA - 1; Scooter Libby - 0
Good form, CIA. Good form!
(You know it's a bizarro day when you see me cheering for the CIA...)
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