NYTimes: "Ex-Bush Aide Contradicts Libby on C.I.A. Agent"

[FourScore]

"The former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today contradicted the account of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, that Mr. Libby first learned of a C.I.A. agent’s identity on July 10, 2003.

Mr. Fleischer, testifying in Mr. Libby’s trial under a grant of immunity, said Mr. Libby told him over lunch on July 7, 2003, that the wife of a critic of President Bush’s Iraq policy worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“This is hush-hush,” Mr. Fleischer recalled Mr. Libby as saying in effect. “This is on the Q.T. Not many people know about this.”

Mr. Fleischer said he had lunch with Mr. Libby in the White House mess that Monday, July 7, and that they had a general conversation (“We talked a little football”) before Mr. Libby brought up the subject of Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. agent whose husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat, had criticized the president’s Iraq policy in an opinion essay in The New York Times.

The former Bush spokesman testified that Mr. Libby said, “She works at the C.I.A., she works in the counter-proliferation division...”

SNIP

"...Unless defense lawyers can undermine Mr. Fleischer’s credibility, the testimony about the July 7 lunch could prove very damaging to Mr. Libby, who told a grand jury that he believed he first learned about Ms. Wilson in a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC on Thursday, July 10, 2003, and that he had been taken aback by Mr. Russert’s information..."




http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/washington/29cnd-libby.html?hp&ex=1170133200&en=8088c54e29fe4bb6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[soleft]

1. Football in July?

[pberq]

2. K&R

[oldtime dfl_er]

3. I hate to see Ari get immunity

but I rather enjoy watching him throw Libby under the bus.

[dubyaD40web]

4. I agree.

I just want the whole truth to come out.

[FourScore]

5. Can someone explain why Fleisher needed

immunity? Did he give false testimony or something?