Defense Exhibit 1972, a tape-recorded interview from the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, is another of those revealing moments in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
"So . . . what happened?" radio host Don Imus asks NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell about her confusing reporting on an undercover CIA officer. "Were you drunk?"
"I obviously screwed up," Mitchell responds in the exchange, which Libby's defense hopes to play for the jury in coming days. "I guess I was drunk," she jokes.
Just when you thought it was impossible for more harm to come to the national news media's reputation, the defense in the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff is about to present its case.
Starting today, when Libby's attorneys try to show that he did not intentionally lie about his role in leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, they will rely heavily on a string of journalists as witnesses. In several ways, those witnesses will be asked to raise doubts about the testimony and accuracy of other reporters, and some may end up tarnishing themselves or their sources.
Libby, 56, is charged with lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003, during what prosecutors allege was a White House campaign to discredit her husband, outspoken war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV. Days after Wilson accused the administration of twisting intelligence he gathered on a CIA-sponsored mission as it defended the invasion of Iraq, Plame's classified CIA role was revealed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak. Libby, who has pleaded not guilty, is not charged with the leak itself.
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1. Recent clues point to Abbott and Costello as original architects of Plame Leak.
ReplyDeleteGrand Jury testimony of Scooter Libby, former Chief of Staff of the United States (COSTUS) for the Vice President, leaked by Rove-ing reporter (humor).
Bob Woodward Tells Grand Jury Who Leaked First: http://woodwardtellsgrandjurywholeakedfirst.blogspot.com/
Bobbing and weaving, a tangled web we do. Book him, Danno.
Please keep my identity a secret. Double super Secret.
Middle-aged, Middle-of-the-road, Mid-Westerner
We can only hope that Fitz doesn’t fizzle.
I think Mr. Fitzgerald’s motto should be: “If you do a white collar crime then you will serve blue collar time.” Look where he lodged Judith Miller. A few months in a blue collar jail and she was ready to sing. Unfortunately, she says she forgot the words
The Times & Post They Should Be A-Changin
Bloggers Request:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the Times & Post should be a-changin’.
Good Bye Sulzberger, Keller, Miller, and Woodward!
Fitzgerald’s response:
Come politician’s, journalists
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the convictions, they are a-comin’.
–Bob Dylan
Perhaps for Rove?