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Libby Trial Resumes: Return Here for Updates
Scooter Libby By E&P Staff and The Associated Press
Published: February 01, 2007 10:00 AM ET updates all day
WASHINGTON The "CIA leak" trial resumes today, after two critical days of testimony from reporters Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. As in past days, E&P will provide running updates here.
After a long day or legal wrangling and no witnesses, an FBI agent took the stand shortly before 3 p.m. She is Deborah Bond, a 19 year veteran, called into the probe of who may have leaked name of classified agent.
She described the bureau's interview with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Oct. 14, 2003. Asked where he first learned of Plame, he had told the FBI then -- from the vice president, on or about June 12 that year.
Vice President Cheney had also said that she worked in "CP" or counter-proliferation at the agency. How did Cheney know this? From someone at the CIA -- possibly director George Tenet, but Libby wasn't sure.
How to explain Libby originally claiming he had first heard name from NBC's Tim Russert in July? He had simply forgotten he had actually heard it from the vice president a month or more earlier. But Libby's notes, produced by prosecutors during this testimony, do show notations from June 12 regarding Wilson's wife.
But said it seemed like news to him when Russert asked him if he knew that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife worked at the agency and, allegedly, other reporters knew this. Then Libby told other reporters about it, including Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and NBC's Andrea Mitchell.
Libby at that FBI interview also said he had not mentioned Plame in his July 8 meeting with Judith Miller -- or the lunch with Ari Fleischer that Fleischer testified about earlier. And he claimed that in his chat with Time's Matt Cooper he had closed by warning Cooper that what other reporters were saying about Plame working at the CIA might not be true.
He also described other conversations relating to all this with Cheney.
Cross-examination then began, with defense suggesting that Libby, in that interview, had not been given fair chance to refresh his memory via notes etc.
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