Dana Milbank describes (for the Washington Post) what Bob Woodward, Robert Novak,`Walter Pincus, Glenn Kessler and David Sanger had to say when took the stand at the Libby trial.
Libby must believe himself to be in desperate legal straits to have six journalists serve as his character witnesses. And, indeed, the reporters’ testimony appeared to do little to dent the prosecution’s case that the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney eagerly shared CIA officer Valerie Plame’s name with reporters and then said otherwise under oath. But Libby’s team did establish that the defendant wasn’t the only administration official dishing about Plame.
The leadoff witness, The Post’s Walter Pincus, testified that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told him about Plame’s identity — directly contradicting Fleischer’s sworn testimony. Next, Woodward testified that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him about Plame. Novak fingered top Bush strategist Karl Rove as well as Armitage. Combine that with earlier testimony that Fleischer and Libby each leaked to two other reporters, and it seems possible prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would have had an easier time finding out who in the administration didn’t leak Plame’s identity.
[…]
By the time it got to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, the defense lawyer was sheepish. “I pretty much have to ask you this question: Have you won any awards?”Pincus, wearing his reporter’s dog tag around his collar and his tie loose, had the day’s biggest revelation: Fleischer “swerved off” from the topic of a conversation in 2003 and told him about Plame’s identity. As recently as two weeks ago, Fleischer testified otherwise, saying it’s “absolutely correct” that he did not tell Pincus about the CIA worker.
[…]
Novak, whose column identifying Plame started the whole scandal, explained that while Rove and Armitage spoke to him about Plame, he didn’t remember whether Libby did, because “I kind of discard unhelpful conversations in my memory bank.”
The defense lawyers also “won permission to play for the jury a tape of [Woodward’s] interview with Armitage.”
Quite an interesting interview style.
You can listen to a part of the interview here and you can read the transcript here (h/t to Tom Maguire he rightfully points out: “Armitage mentions three times that she is a WMD analyst at the CIA, one might almost think he wanted to emphasize that point to Woodward”). Also read this article at The New York Times by Neil Lewis and Scott Shane and this one by Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein for The Washington Post).
In short… the entire White House was involved. Absolutely ludicrous. No matter how often I read about this… I cannot help but to be amazed.
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