Times: What we learned from Libby trial about the secretive operation of Vice President Dick Cheney

Monday's New York Times contains an article which will tie together some of the revelations that resulted from testimony at the trial for former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to investigators probing the alleged leaking of a CIA operative's name to journalists, and his defense rested its case last week, without calling his former boss, Cheney, to the stand, as had been widely speculated. Libby didn't testify in his own behalf, either.

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A Man of Mystery- Richard Hohlt is the heavy hitter you've never heard of

Feb. 26, 2007 issue - Robert Novak, as usual, had a scoop to unload—only this time, it was from the witness stand. Testifying last week in the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the conservative columnist gruffly described how he first learned from two top Bush administration officials that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. But then Novak injected a new name into the drama—one that virtually nobody in the courtroom knew.

Asked by one of Libby's lawyers if he had talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column, Novak said he'd discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who, the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt? "He's a very good source of mine" whom I talk to "every day," Novak replied. Indeed, Hohlt is such a good source that after Novak finished his column naming Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn't tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak's sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.

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