Libby trial set to be a thriller

Toby Harnden, Washington
January 14, 2007

A GLAMOROUS CIA spy outed as part of an alleged political plot. Her ambassador husband sent on a secret mission to Africa. A vice-president taking the witness stand. Claims of yellowcake uranium being supplied to Iraq.

If the case of Lewis "Scooter" Libby was submitted as a Hollywood script, there is a fair chance it would be rejected for its Byzantine plot and implausibly villainous characters.

But in Washington, where Mr Libby, an erstwhile aide to vice-president Dick Cheney, is due to go on trial in Washington on Tuesday, the truth has so often been stranger than fiction.

Mr Libby, 56, faces 30 years in prison if convicted of five felony counts of false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury after being accused of lying to the FBI about his conversations with journalists.

The testimony of Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate story, could be crucial.

At the centre of the case is Valerie Plame, 43, a "NOC" or CIA officer operating under "non-official cover". As a member of an elite of clandestine operatives who spy without the protection of diplomatic immunity, her status was a highly classified secret.

Her CIA cover began to unravel when her husband Joseph Wilson, 57, was sent by the CIA to Niger at Miss Plame's recommendation to look into claims that the country had supplied yellowcake uranium to Iraq for a weapons of mass destruction programme.

It was early 2002 and President George W Bush was building his case for toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. Mr Wilson returned saying he could find no evidence of yellowcake, but the claim became the notorious "16 words" ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.") in Mr Bush's State of the Union address a year later.

Angered, Mr Wilson briefed journalists anonymously and then burst into print with a New York Times opinion article in July 2003 that was headlined "What I Didn't Find in Africa". Mr Cheney, a prime mover behind the drive to war, was incensed.

The prosecution alleges that Mr Cheney then ordered Mr Libby and other aides to get out "all the facts" about Mr Wilson's mission. Shortly afterwards, Miss Plame's name appeared in a column by the conservative commentator Robert Novak.

Miss Plame, a blonde mother of twins, protested that her life had been put in jeopardy but then posed in scarf and shades for an Annie Liebovitz photo shoot for Vanity Fair magazine with her husband.

Eventually, Patrick Fitzgerald, a Chicago prosecutor, was brought in to investigate who, if anyone, had committed a federal crime by revealing the identity of a cover operative to Mr Novak.

Soon journalists and politicians were being summoned to appear before a Grand Jury.

It became a case of "not the crime but the cover-up" when Mr Libby emerged as the only person to be charged. He had lied, it was alleged, to the FBI when detailing his discussions with journalists.



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