Charge against Libby: He lied

Special prosecutor accuses Cheney's top aide of perjury during investigation of leak of CIA agent's identity

BY TOM BRUNE | WASHINGTON BUREAU

October 29, 2005

WASHINGTON - After two years of investigation and suspense, the special counsel in the CIA leak case dealt a severe blow to the Bush administration Friday by indicting the vice president's top aide on charges of obstructing justice while weighing whether to charge influential presidential adviser Karl Rove.

In the first indictment in the probe of who blew the cover of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said that I. Lewis Libby, who resigned later Friday, was the first in the White House to leak her name to reporters in 2003.

Then, Fitzgerald said, Libby "repeatedly lied" about his conversations with reporters to the FBI and a federal grand jury, throwing sand in the eyes of investigators to prevent them from finding the truth.

Yet as Fitzgerald announced a five-count indictment against Libby, he left the fate of Rove in doubt, filing no charges and refusing to discuss his status.

Early Friday, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said Fitzgerald had advised them that he has "made no decision about whether or not to bring charges" against Rove, and that Rove continues to cooperate with the investigation.

"It's not over," Fitzgerald said of the investigation. Although the grand jury expired Friday, he said he will keep another grand jury open "to consider other matters."

The uncertainty left the White House uneasy.

"Today I accepted the resignation of Scooter Libby," said a grim-faced President George W. Bush Friday afternoon.

Conceding that the investigation and charges were serious, Bush added that Libby "is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial."

Libby resigned as chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after a federal grand jury handed up an indictment charging him with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.

If convicted on all counts, Libby, 55, faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine, though Fitzgerald said sentencing guidelines would likely result in a lower penalty. Neither Libby nor his attorney offered comment. The charges arose from Fitzgerald's investigation into whether any Bush administration officials knowingly revealed Plame's identity to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Fitzgerald said he determined that Libby was the first Bush administration official to reveal Plame's identity to journalists, but that Libby lied about it to FBI agents in the fall of 2003 and twice before a grand jury early last year.

"Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false," the prosecutor said. "And he lied about it afterward, under oath, repeatedly."

Fitzgerald determined that by doggedly pressing reporters to testify about their conversations with Libby, taking nearly a year to take a case to the Supreme Court to force Time magazine's Matt Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller to testify. Miller spent 85 days in jail before talking.

What Fitzgerald said he determined from testimony by Miller, Cooper and NBC's Tim Russert was that Libby told them about Plame.

In fact, he said, Libby told Miller about Plame in June 2003, before her cover was blown by Robert Novak in a column on July 14, 2003.

Fitzgerald said that Libby, before talking to reporters, had been told that Plame had a role in arranging a CIA mission for her husband that led to his criticism of Bush from the State Department, a senior CIA official, his CIA briefer and the vice president.

The indictment says Libby knew Plame's CIA status was classified, telling one of his aides he could not discuss her on an unsecured telephone line.

But Fitzgerald said he could not prove an espionage charge because he could not determine Libby's motivation or state of mind when he leaked Plame's name.

Fitzgerald conceded the narrow indictment left many questions unanswered, but he bristled at Republican and other critics' talking points that he failed because he did not charge on the underlying crime of outing a covert agent.