A Case of He Said, He Said

Feb. 5, 2007 — -- Jurors in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby heard audiotapes of his March 5, 2004, grand jury testimony. In those tapes, the vice president's former chief of staff made statements that contradict testimony from government witnesses at his perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial.

Libby was charged last year with lying to a federal grand jury and FBI investigators about how he came to know the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA officer married to former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Her name was revealed in a newspaper column by Robert Novak that resulted in the Justice Department investigation headed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

On the tape, Libby is asked if he was a source for Novak's column. "No sir," Libby told the prosecutors and grand jury members, who would eventually indict Libby on five counts.

At the outset of the grand jury testimony, Fitzgerald is heard asking Libby if he understands that false statements constitute perjury. Libby responded, "Yes." On the tapes Fitzgerald provided a brief overview of the investigation and told Libby, "You are a subject of the investigation."

The jury heard about an hour-and-a-half of Libby's grand jury testimony, during which he told Fitzgerald about his conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney about press reports in the spring of 2003 that criticized the vice president for allegedly organizing Wilson's trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- from the African nation.

The Iraq-Niger controversy grew in the spring of 2003 after President Bush claimed in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq had indeed tried to buy the material from Niger.

Libby is also heard on the grand jury tape describing a conversation he had with Cheney, telling him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in June 2003, a month before he told investigators he learned it from Tim Russert of NBC News.