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Now that the Libby trial is imminent, I suppose Murray Waas decided to cough up a few little treasures he's been holding on to:

While questioning Libby during grand jury testimony, prosecutors were incredulous regarding Libby's claims that he and Cheney had not discussed Plame's CIA employment during the critical July 6 to July 14 period. They also expressed skepticism that Libby had supposedly forgotten — even though Libby's own written notes indicated otherwise — that Cheney had told him that Plame worked for the CIA much earlier, on either June 11 or June 12. They were also disbelieving of Libby's claims that even though Libby and Cheney met several times every day after Wilson's July 6 column appeared, the two men did not discuss Plame during the subsequent eight days, not until Novak's column appeared. And finally, prosecutors were disbelieving when Libby claimed that he was simply passing on a rumor to Cheney that he had purportedly learned from Tim Russert that Plame was a CIA officer.

Libby even mused before the grand jury that Cheney may have scribbled his comments about Plame working for the CIA and having been involved in selecting her husband for his "pro bono" mission to Niger only after Novak's column appeared on July 14, eight days after Wilson's own column appeared in the New York Times.

Exasperated prosecutors indicated during more than one of Libby's grand jury appearances that these claims by Libby seemed implausible.

On March 5, 2004, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald himself questioned Libby before the grand jury.

Asked by Fitzgerald if he recalled a conversation with Cheney during which they discussed Plame and that she sent her "husband on a junket," Libby replied:

"I don't recall the conversation until after the Novak piece. I don't recall it during the week of July 6. I recall it after the Novak…after the Novak article appeared…"

Fitzgerald then bore down on the witness: "And are you telling us under oath that from July 6th to July 14th you never discussed with Vice President Cheney whether Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA?"

Libby replied: "No, no, I'm not saying that. On July 10 or 11 I learned, I thought anew, that the wife—that the reporters were telling us that the wife worked at the CIA. And I may have had a conversation with the Vice President either late on the 11th or on the 12th in which I relayed that reporters were saying that." As Libby further told it, if he discussed with Cheney that Plame was a CIA officer, he had only done so in the context of saying that the information was only an unsubstantiated rumor that he had heard from Tim Russert.

In a subsequent grand jury appearance, a skeptical prosecutor indicated that he found it hard to believe that Cheney would have written the notations he did in the margins of former Ambassador Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed only after Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column appeared saying that Valerie Plame was a CIA "operative."

"OK," the prosecutor said, before asking, "And can you tell us why it would be that the Vice President read the Novak column and had questions, some of which apparently seem to be answered by the Novak column, would go back and pull out an original July 6th op-ed piece and write on that?"

"I'm not sure…," Libby answered, "He often kept these columns for awhile and keeps columns and will think on them. And I think what may have happened here is what he may have — I don't know if he wrote, he wrote the points down. He might have pulled out the column to think about the problem and written on it, but I don't know."

Libby then added: "You'll have to ask him."

Emptywheel has more on the Cheney connection.  It should be interesting to watch Fitzgerald try to bring Big Time into the story.

Related posts:

  1. SCOTUS Denies Valerie Plame Wilson Her Day in Court
  2. Cheney’s Betrayal Made an IIPA Charge for Libby Possible
  3. The Secrets Novak Took to the Grave
  4. Cheney Refused to Release the Journalists
  5. Hung Out to Dry: One Former VP Chief of Staff