Scooter Libby told a grand jury that he first learned about Valerie Plame on July 10, 2003, during a chat with NBC’s Tim Russert. Ari Fleischer yesterday made it quite clear that Libby was lying.
Ari Fleischer may turn out to be a stronger — and more credible — witness than he was a White House press secretary.
During several hours on the witness stand in the I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby Jr. perjury and obstruction trial Monday, President Bush’s former chief spokesman was cool, unruffled, chatty and at times combative — especially when he underwent hostile cross-examination from one of Libby’s lawyers. But he stuck to his story and, in the process, delivered what may have been the most damaging testimony yet against Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.
Fleischer described with damning new details a lunch he had with Libby in the White House mess on July 7, 2003, just as the controversy over the president’s State of the Union claim that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa was spreading into a major Washington firestorm.
During that lunch, Fleischer said, Libby was anxious to rebut criticism by former ambassador Joseph Wilson…. As Fleischer related the story to the jury, Libby told him: “The vice president did not send Mr. Wilson. Ambassador Wilson was sent by his wife. She works for the CIA.” Libby then told him which part of the CIA employed her. “He said his wife works at the Counter-Proliferation Division. I think he told me her name,” Fleischer testified. Libby added: “This is hush-hush, this is on the Q.T. Not very many people know about this.”
As Fleischer explained it, the news about Wilson’s wife was new to him, and he took it to mean that Libby was passing on some “nugget” of interesting news. In turn, the then-White House press secretary passed along the information to NBC correspondent David Gregory and then-Time magazine correspondent John Dickerson. (It was this leaking that led Fleischer to think he may have done something wrong, which led him to get an immunity agreement before testifying.)
The only catch to this is that Dickerson has a very different story.
Dickerson, now at Slate, was in the courtroom, covering the trial for the magazine. His version of events is different.
I wanted to raise my hand and ask, “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”
I was at the Scooter Libby trial to cover it, and all of a sudden, I found myself in the middle of the case. In his testimony today, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told the courtroom—which included me—that when I was a White House correspondent for Time magazine, he had told me that Joe Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.
He did? […] I have a different memory. My recollection is that during a presidential trip to Africa in July 2003, Ari and another senior administration official had given me only hints. They told me to go inquire about who sent Wilson to Niger. As far as I can remember — and I am pretty sure I would remember it — neither of them ever told me that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. In a piece I wrote about a year ago, I figured that the very reason I’d never been subpoenaed in the case or questioned by any lawyers was that I’d been given only vague guidance and not the good stuff.
It’s not entirely clear why Fleischer would get this part of the story wrong, or whether he would have any motivation for making this up.
Nevertheless, the jury has now heard from five witnesses who have contradicted Libby’s version of events.
Former New York Times reporter Judy Miller is slated to take the stand today. The fun continues.