‘Scooter’ Libby Lawyers Claim Press Immunity Less Important Than Fair Trial

WASHINGTON – A lawyer for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby told a federal judge Tuesday that the former White House aide’s right to a fair trial outweighs any special protection claimed by press organizations touched by the CIA leak investigation.“We are in a case that for better or worse, the press is right in the middle of,” one of Libby’s lawyers, William Jeffress, said.During a three-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, Mr. Jeffress debated lawyers for NBC News, The New York Times, and Time magazine over subpoenas seeking access to e-mails, drafts of news articles and reporters’ notes that he said are essential to Mr. Libby’s defense.U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton was skeptical of many of the defense’s requests, saying he respects “the important role the press plays in society.” He did not rule immediately.Instead, the judge said he will privately review some of the press materials Mr. Libby wants before deciding whether to order that they be turned over.Mr. Jeffress wants to use the records during Mr. Libby’s trial early next year to cast doubt on the prosecutor’s claims that Mr. Libby lied about outing a CIA officer to punish her husband for criticizing the Bush administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq.The materials include: uncensored portions of two notebooks that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller kept during the period in which she talked to Mr. Libby in 2003, a transcript of a tape-recorded interview Times reporters did with Ms. Miller for an article the paper published in October 2005 about her role in the case and a document that Time magazine has that refers to Valerie Plame but not to her CIA affiliation.Mr. Libby, 55, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about how he learned about Ms. Plame and what he subsequently told reporters about her.Syndicated columnist Robert Novak named Ms. Plame in a column on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, alleged in an opinion piece in the New YorkTimes that the administration had twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.The CIA sent Mr. Wilson to Niger in early 2002 to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Saddam Hussein’s government had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon. Mr. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation nevertheless wound up in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address.Mr. Libby’s indictment grew out of conversations he had with Ms. Miller, NBC’s Tim Russert, and Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper in June and July 2003, a two-month period in which the White House, according to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, was mounting a campaign to undermine Mr. Wilson’s charges about the Iraq war.The key to Mr. Libby’s defense is whose memory is correct – Mr. Libby’s or the three reporters.The press lawyers dismissed the defense’s subpoenas as “a fishing expedition” and told Judge Walton that Mr. Jeffress had failed to prove the relevancy of his requests.“My duty is not to prove anything,” Mr. Jeffress said, referring to the requirement that the government must prove a defendant’s guilt.Mr. Jeffress said his duty is to raise reasonable doubt with the jury.For Mr. Libby, that means raising questions about whether Ms. Miller, Messrs. Russert and Cooper could have learned about Ms. Plame and her CIA connection from other reporters at their respective news organizations or government officials besides Mr. Libby.Mr. Jeffress also wanted one page of undated notes kept by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that seemed to be of a conversation she had with Mr. Libby.He said the notes would bolster Mr. Libby’s contention that he talked with several reporters and never mentioned Ms. Plame or her CIA status. Mr. Jeffress said the defense will call six or seven reporters who will say Mr. Libby never brought up Ms. Plame in their conversations with him.Judge Walton seemed to accept an NBC lawyer’s argument that Ms. Mitchell’s notes wouldn’t help Mr. Libby.

‘Scooter’ Libby Lawyers Claim Press Immunity Less Important Than Fair Trial

‘Scooter’ Libby Lawyers Claim Press Immunity Less Important Than Fair Trial

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