Friday, Mar. 19, 2010

October 2005
Libby's Leak

"Revealing my wife Valerie's secret CIA identity was very wrong and harmful to our nation. I feel that my family was attacked for my speaking the truth about the events that led our country to war."

Joseph Wilson, on the leaking of his wife Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative


On October 28, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leaking of C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame's identity. Plame's husband Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat, wrote an op-ed critical of the administration's claims that Saddam had bought yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s — a critical component of the administration's case that Saddam had WMD. After months of speculation surrounding Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, Libby is the only administration figure indicted in the case, and during the trial in early 2007 his defense team briefly tries to paint him as the fall guy in a broader White House smear campaign. Libby was found guilty on four out of five counts on March 6, 2007.