http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15752207/Public to get a look at Libby documents
Judge orders redacted versions of evidence be available by next month
WASHINGTON - For the past few months all the public could know about the goings on during numerous closed-door hearings in Courtroom #16 were from one-line court filings indicating the proceedings were dealing with requests from I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff - to include classified materials in his defense of perjury and obstructions charges in the CIA leak trial.
Next month all that will change. Judge Walton will give the public a peek at the issues he has had to rule on concerning the thousands of classified document in question.
Until now carts full of sealed boxes entered and exited Judge Reggie Walton's courtroom, grey-suited CIA document specialists accompanied them, and court security officers roamed the hallways on the sixth floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal courthouse, but both the prosecutors and defense attorneys were mum on exactly what was going on. All the public knew from the filings was that it was a tense courtroom drama that was unfolding inside.
...
Prosecutors say Libby is trying to get the case dismissed by demanding so much sensitive information that the government has no choice but to refuse. The legal gambit is called "graymail."
Earlier this week Walton handed Libby a legal victory by allowing him to use at trial some classified material. Libby's legal team has been in a protracted battle with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald over Libby's desire to present classified documents at trial portraying him as so consumed by matters of national security importance in the summer of 2003, that any mistakes he made remembering his conversations with three reporters about Valerie Plame were, "inadvertent and not the product of willful disinformation."
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