Tangled Webs (36 page)
Authors: James B. Stewart
Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #Law, #Ethics & Professional Responsibility
“I haven’t done that here because, as I understand it, you don’t want me to do that here. I’m happy to do it at some point, but I haven’t. So I apologize if my recollection of this stuff is not perfect, but it’s not in a way that I would normally do these things. . . . And I apologize if there’s some stuff that I remember and some I don’t, but it’s–I’m just trying to tell you what I do in fact remember.”
Libby was excused from what had been, at times, a grueling ordeal. Fitzgerald’s skepticism at Libby’s testimony had been all too evident. The proceeding was adjourned, and Fitzgerald made clear he wasn’t finished; members of the grand jury filed out of the room. Libby was no doubt exceptionally busy, preoccupied by the weightiest affairs of state, the war in Iraq, and international terrorism. But he and the vice president had spent what seemed an inordinate amount of time on the issue of Joe Wilson’s mission to Niger: who inspired it, why he was chosen, and what he found there. Libby’s memory about that was clear. So was his recollection of his conversation with Tim Russert, during which he learned that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, something “all the reporters” knew about. Libby was at pains not to confirm this to other reporters, even inadvertently, insisting that he didn’t know this, or didn’t remember it, and in fact believed he was hearing it for the first time from Russert. He had made this point at least eight times in the course of his testimony.
L
ibby returned to the grand jury a few weeks later, on Wednesday, March 24. His lawyer, Joe Tate, had called Fitzgerald to say Libby wanted to correct his earlier testimony in two respects, and Fitzgerald said Libby could do so, inviting him to “forget” his earlier testimony and start over. This, too, was an opportunity for Libby to change his story, or at least suggest he might have been confused. But Libby added little of substance. He now recalled bantering with Marc Grossman about sending an ambassador to Niger, but reiterated that they hadn’t discussed Wilson’s wife. And he now recalled that at his lunch with Ari Fleischer, he’d thanked Fleischer for mentioning the vice president’s talking points at that morning’s press gaggle. So they had definitely discussed the Wilson affair. But he again denied discussing Wilson’s wife with Fleischer.
ibby returned to the grand jury a few weeks later, on Wednesday, March 24. His lawyer, Joe Tate, had called Fitzgerald to say Libby wanted to correct his earlier testimony in two respects, and Fitzgerald said Libby could do so, inviting him to “forget” his earlier testimony and start over. This, too, was an opportunity for Libby to change his story, or at least suggest he might have been confused. But Libby added little of substance. He now recalled bantering with Marc Grossman about sending an ambassador to Niger, but reiterated that they hadn’t discussed Wilson’s wife. And he now recalled that at his lunch with Ari Fleischer, he’d thanked Fleischer for mentioning the vice president’s talking points at that morning’s press gaggle. So they had definitely discussed the Wilson affair. But he again denied discussing Wilson’s wife with Fleischer.
Fitzgerald reminded Libby that in his FBI interview, he’d said it was “possible” he’d discussed Wilson’s wife with the vice president during their talk on Air Force Two. “It’s possible that would have been one of the times I could have talked to him about what I learned from Russert and what Karl Rove had told me about Novak.”
“And as you sit here today, do you recall whether you had such a conversation with the vice president on Air Force Two on July 12?”
“No, sir. My best recollection of that conversation was what I had on my note card which we have produced which doesn’t reflect anything about that.”
Throughout his second grand jury appearance, Libby’s testimony was consistent with his earlier testimony, especially that he thought he had first learned about Wilson’s wife from Russert. But in one critical regard, his recollection was much better and more detailed: he clearly recalled that he had told Cheney about his conversation with Russert–making Cheney another witness to the purported conversation with Russert. Fitzgerald was asking Libby about his calls to reporters on July 12 when Libby volunteered:
“I went to the vice president and said, ‘You know, I was not the person who spoke to Novak.’ And he said something like, ‘I know that.’ And I said, ‘I learned this from Tim Russert.’ And he sort of tilted his head to the side a little bit.” He continued, “I told him [the vice president] about Russert, that I had learned it from Russert. And I think at that point I may have told him that I had talked about the wife to Cooper. I just don’t recall that. But what was important to me was to let him know I wasn’t the person who leaked the information to Mr. Novak, and that in fact I had heard it from Russert, at which point . . . Mr. Russert told me it was well known, known to all the reporters.”
Considering that less than three weeks earlier Libby had no memory of telling Cheney about his conversation with Russert, he now had a surprisingly vivid recollection. This conversation was “in person”; “at his [Cheney’s] desk in the White House”; the vice president had “tilted his head.”
Fitzgerald asked about the significance of the head gesture. “The Tim Russert part caught his attention. . . . He reacted as if he didn’t know about the Tim Russert thing or he was rehearing it, or reconsidering it, or something like that.”
Fitzgerald also questioned Libby at considerable length about his efforts to clear his name as a potential source for Novak or, more broadly, as a source for any classified information. Libby acknowledged that he never told McClellan or the president that he had spoken to Cooper and Miller about Wilson’s wife or that he might have been one of the two White House officials described as sources in the
Washington Post
article. Nor was it clear he had disclosed this to his immediate boss, the vice president. “I would have been happy to unburden myself of it,” Libby told Fitzgerald, “about all of this, and I went to the vice president and offered to tell him everything I knew, and he didn’t want to hear it, and I assumed that I should not go into it, and that if he wanted to hear it, I would be happy to tell him.”
Washington Post
article. Nor was it clear he had disclosed this to his immediate boss, the vice president. “I would have been happy to unburden myself of it,” Libby told Fitzgerald, “about all of this, and I went to the vice president and offered to tell him everything I knew, and he didn’t want to hear it, and I assumed that I should not go into it, and that if he wanted to hear it, I would be happy to tell him.”
Libby was vague about when this might have happened. “I had a second conversation with him [Cheney], or maybe it’s a third. In my first conversation with him, I told him, ‘Look, I wasn’t the source of the leak of this. In fact, I learned it from Tim Russert. And, you know . . . by that point lots of reporters knew, he told me all the reporters knew,’ something like that. So that it was Russert, but it wasn’t just Russert. And as I say, that was most of the conversation.” Then Libby had discovered his June 12 notes. “And so I went back to him and said, you know, I told you something wrong before. It turns out that I have notes that I had heard about this earlier from you and I didn’t want to leave you with the wrong statement that I heard about it from Tim Russert. In fact, I had heard about it earlier, but I had forgotten it.”
“From me?” Cheney had asked. And then he had again “tilted his head.”
Libby hadn’t said anything then about speaking to other reporters, but he offered to tell Cheney on another occasion. “He said, ‘Fine,’ and held up his hand. ‘I understand.’ I took from it, we shouldn’t talk about the details of this.”
Libby insisted that he never knew Valerie Plame was a covert agent; he said he played softball and basketball with CIA employees who readily volunteered they worked for the agency, and he assumed the vast majority of its employees weren’t covert agents. In this regard, it didn’t matter whether he’d first heard the information from the vice president or other reporters. In neither case did he suspect her identity might be classified.
Before adjourning, Fitzgerald asked if any of the grand jurors had any questions for Libby, and one followed up on this point:
“If you did not understand the information about Wilson’s wife to be classified and didn’t understand it to be classified when you heard it from Mr. Russert, why was it that you were so deliberate to make sure that you told other reporters that reporters were saying it and not assert it as something you knew?”
“I didn’t know if it was true, and I didn’t want the reporters to think it was true because I said it,” Libby answered.
E
ckenrode, agent Tim Fuhrman, and Fitzgerald interviewed Vice President Richard Cheney on May 8. As he was both a potential subject of the investigation and an important witness, his testimony was critical. No one had implicated Cheney in any crime, but there was circumstantial evidence. Had he directed Libby to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity or any other classified information to reporters? As a witness, he could corroborate Libby’s alibi, which was that Libby learned about Wilson’s wife from Tim Russert and reported this to the vice president.
ckenrode, agent Tim Fuhrman, and Fitzgerald interviewed Vice President Richard Cheney on May 8. As he was both a potential subject of the investigation and an important witness, his testimony was critical. No one had implicated Cheney in any crime, but there was circumstantial evidence. Had he directed Libby to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity or any other classified information to reporters? As a witness, he could corroborate Libby’s alibi, which was that Libby learned about Wilson’s wife from Tim Russert and reported this to the vice president.
Like many of the witnesses, Cheney began with a broad statement, saying the president had directed him and all White House employees to cooperate fully and he would do so, consistent with any privileges that might arise. He said he had “no idea” who disclosed Plame’s identity to Robert Novak. Nor did he know of any other reporters who might have been given that information, either before Novak’s column on July 14 or afterward. No one ever told him they talked to any other reporters and provided the information about Mrs. Wilson’s employment. “Furthermore, he has no personal knowledge of anyone having provided this information to Robert Novak, or any other reporter, and he has never been advised by anyone to that effect,” the FBI agent wrote.
Consistent with others’ recollections, Cheney remembered asking about Iraq’s possible purchase of uranium in Niger at an intelligence briefing in 2002, but knew nothing about Wilson’s mission until he read about it in Kristof’s column in the
Times
. About that time Cheney had spoken to CIA director Tenet using the direct phone line in his office, and Tenet identified the former ambassador as Joe Wilson and mentioned that his wife “worked in the unit that sent him.” Cheney thought Tenet sounded “defensive and embarrassed” and “had not known what was going on with this mission.”
Times
. About that time Cheney had spoken to CIA director Tenet using the direct phone line in his office, and Tenet identified the former ambassador as Joe Wilson and mentioned that his wife “worked in the unit that sent him.” Cheney thought Tenet sounded “defensive and embarrassed” and “had not known what was going on with this mission.”
So Libby had been correct in surmising that Cheney learned Plame’s identity from Tenet and it was plausible that Cheney had discussed this with Libby before the June 12 Pincus article. Cheney recalled the article, and that Pincus had called with questions. He didn’t remember any conversation with Libby in which he mentioned what he’d learned from Tenet, but conceded “if he shared it with anyone, it would have been Libby.” Cheney said he had “no recollection” of Cathie Martin coming into his office to tell him and Libby that she’d heard from the CIA about Wilson’s wife.
Cheney recalled cutting out the Wilson op-ed piece, but didn’t remember underlining portions or making notes on it. Asked for his reaction to it, Cheney thought it made the CIA look like “amateur hour,” and Wilson’s conclusions were so sloppy and unfounded that his mission “was not really a serious enterprise,” reactions that caused him to question the previous high regard in which he held the agency and its employees. He reiterated all the complaints familiar to the agents from the talking points: that he hadn’t sent Wilson or known about the mission and that he never saw the report. He didn’t remember discussing Wilson’s op-ed piece with Tenet, other than sarcastically suggesting, when Tenet asked about another intelligence question, that he “ought to send Joe Wilson to check it out.”
The issue of Wilson’s wife, and whether she sent him, “was just not a big deal,” Cheney said, and “did not figure prominently” in his thinking, despite his note asking “Did his wife send him on a junket?” He said he never discussed either of the Wilsons with President Bush.
Cheney said he “assumed” he’d discussed Joe Wilson and his mission with Libby around the time of the Kristof and Pincus articles. But his memory of those conversations was largely a blank slate. He didn’t recall discussing Valerie Wilson with Libby before Novak’s column appeared; he didn’t remember Libby complaining about Chris Matthews, and he didn’t recall hearing about Libby having any contact with Tim Russert. Cheney said he “clearly remembered” the trip to Norfolk to commission the USS
Ronald Reagan
, and had been “pleased” that the president declined the opportunity so Cheney could appear in his stead. He “was particularly looking forward to spending some time with former first lady Nancy Reagan,” and took his wife with him, but didn’t recall that Libby had brought his family. He had no specific memory of discussing the Wilson affair with Libby on the flight home, dictating a statement, or asking Libby to call reporters, but it was “possible,” and “he would not be surprised” if he had done so. The FBI agent noted that Cheney “cannot recall if he and Scooter Libby talked about Valerie Wilson’s CIA position as a data point.”
Ronald Reagan
, and had been “pleased” that the president declined the opportunity so Cheney could appear in his stead. He “was particularly looking forward to spending some time with former first lady Nancy Reagan,” and took his wife with him, but didn’t recall that Libby had brought his family. He had no specific memory of discussing the Wilson affair with Libby on the flight home, dictating a statement, or asking Libby to call reporters, but it was “possible,” and “he would not be surprised” if he had done so. The FBI agent noted that Cheney “cannot recall if he and Scooter Libby talked about Valerie Wilson’s CIA position as a data point.”
The last issue was significant, since both Libby and Cheney, the only two participants, had now said it was “possible” they discussed disclosing the identity and role of Wilson’s wife to the press. Still, neither recalled actually doing it.
Since it was critical testimony, the agents returned to how and when Libby learned about Valerie Wilson’s identity.
“Although the vice president has no specific memory of such a conversation, Libby may have told him he was not Novak’s source. In any event, the vice president did not suspect Libby of being Novak’s source. He cannot recall Scooter Libby telling him how he first learned about Valerie Wilson. It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson’s employment from the vice president after the vice president’s phone call with George Tenet, but the vice president has no specific recollection of such a conversation. The vice president also cannot recall ever waving Libby off, at a certain point in time, when Libby offered to tell him everything he knew about the Wilson matter. The vice president has no recollection of Libby saying that he’d learned about Valerie Wilson from a reporter. . . . Moreover, Vice President Cheney does not have any recollection of Libby indicating that reporters with whom Libby was speaking about the Wilson matter ever informed him of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the CIA.”
Asked specifically about Judith Miller and Matt Cooper, Cheney said he wasn’t aware of any meetings or conversations between Libby and Miller and said he didn’t even know who Matt Cooper was.
So much for Libby’s alibi, or at least any possibility that the vice president would support it.
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