Jury convicts Libby on four of five charges
Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. Libby faces up to 30 years in prison, though under federal sentencing guidelines likely will receive far less. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17479718/?GT1=9145
Verdict in the Scooter Libby trial
The individual charges and their corresponding verdicts in the trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby:
1 Obstruction of justice: Guilty
2 False statements to FBI investigators (concerning conversations with NBC newsman Tim Russert): Guilty
3 Perjury to the grand jury (Russert conversation): Guilty
4 Perjury to the grand jury (Cooper conversation): Guilty
So it looks like Libby has taken the fall for the Bush Administration's cover up of pre-war Iraq intelligence. In response to the ruling, Libby's attorney Theodore Wells tried to pin it all back on the administration responsible for his clients conviction:
"The wheels were falling off the Bush administration" in the summer of 2003, Wells argued. How could Libby, serving Cheney as both chief of staff and national security adviser, remember Plame's job when 100,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq and hadn't found the weapons of mass destruction the administration had cited to justify the war? Wells asked.
"And he still had his day job of trying to prevent another 9/11" terrorist attack, Wells said.
Was Wells implying that the administration was responsible for 9/11 too?
