Prober: Libby plays traitor card
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTONNY Daily News- Vice President Cheney's indicted former top aide was accused yesterday of threatening to divulge America's biggest national security secrets in court unless a prosecutor backs off.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald compared Lewis (Scooter) Libby to America's worst traitors by saying he's using the favorite legal tactic of spies trying to avoid a trial or death sentence.
Fitzgerald urged a judge to reject Libby's request for 277 CIA-prepared do ents from 2003 known as the President's Daily Brief - the most sensitive national security memos in the U.S. government - by arguing it was just a ploy to kill the case.
"The defendant's effort to make history in this case by seeking 277 PDBs - for the sole purpose of showing that he was 'preoccupied' with other matters when he gave testimony to the grand jury - is a transparent effort at 'graymail,'" Fitzgerald said in new court filings.
Graymail refers to defendants in espionage cases, who are trying to derail criminal trials and avoid possible execution, threaten to air the secrets they stole in open court in order to reach a plea deal for a lesser charge. Even the hint of doing it often works in spy cases.
Fitzgerald said the PDBs were "unrelated" to Valerie Plame's employment status, but concerned her husband Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy nuclear weapons-grade uranium.
Wilson was targeted by the White House in 2003 after he questioned administration explanations for invading Iraq.
Fitzgerald also revealed that he has turned over 11,000 pages of do ents to Libby's legal team, including papers concerning reporters who told a grand jury about how they learned Plame's iden y. But he refused to turn over information about news sources, other than Libby, who told reporters about Plame, saying he wasn't en led to it.
Graymail is a legal strategy that has been used by defendants in the past to try to get a case dismissed. Essentially, the defendant will claim that he can not present a proper defense because the do ents that he needs to defend himself are classified. Thus, if he can't use the classified materials to prove his innocence, he can not get a fair trial, and the case against him should be dismissed.
So, Libby's lawyers decide to employ the claim that the PDBs are the items needed for Libby to defend himself knowing full well that those do ents will never see the light of day because they contain sensitive government information. Essentially, they are trying to claim that those PDBs are proof that Libby had a whole lot of stuff on his plate when he testified before the grand jury. As a result, Libby can claim that when he lied and obstructed justice, his actions weren't willful; he was just too overworked to remember all the details. It's a huge stretch and the tactic doesn't work too well these days.
The tactic sure does make great headlines though doesn't it? An article that starts off by saying that Libby is threatening to divulge America's biggest... secrets... is a sure-fire way to lure the reader in. Those PDBs will remain classified and will not be a part of Libby's defense. If Libby started testifying about state secrets, well... that's a whole other indictment waiting to happen and it would be much more serious than the ones he's currently facing.
Call Libby's bluff. Haul is filthy Repug ass into court and let him sing "national security" secrets for weeks. It will be more proof, totally superfluous at this point, that dubya/ head don't give a goddam about the USA, but only about the Repug party's own skin.
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