Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Will Cheney Take the Stand?

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald submitted a court filing on Wednesday (not yet available on his website for the Plame case) in which he makes the assertion that VP Cheney would be a 'logical government witness' to determine Scooter Libby's state of mind at the time of Plame's outing.

The New York Times reports:

Fitzgerald said Cheney's ''state of mind'' is ''directly relevant'' to whether I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, the vice president's former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters.

Libby ''shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,'' the prosecutor wrote. ''Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Plame's) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.''

Cheney's office declined comment.

Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson's article was published.

In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson's allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. ''He was very keen to get the truth out,'' Libby testified, quoting Cheney as saying, ''Let's get everything out.''
[...]
The fact that Cheney's notations [on his copy of Joseph Wilson's editorial] included a reference to Wilson's wife makes it ''more likely than not'' that the vice president and Libby discussed her shortly after Wilson's article was published -- and not weeks or months later as Libby told the grand jury, Fitzgerald wrote.

It appears that Libby's lies are piling up and Cheney may be the one to actually contribute to his successful prosecution in the end.

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