Breeding ground for a new cynicism?

On any given day, it's possible to read the courtroom drama as either farce or tragedy, though those who care about the proceedings' implications for the Washington press corps probably will incline toward the latter.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury about whether he told reporters that Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent Iraq war critic, was a CIA agent. Libby's boss was obsessed with Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was sent by the CIA to determine whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from the West African country of Niger. Wilson had gone public with charges that President George W. Bush had distorted his findings to justify attacking Iraq, and Cheney wanted the diplomat discredited. Libby and other administration officials attempted to do that by planting anonymously sourced stories about Wilson with journalists they believed would be receptive.

In testimony this week, FBI agent Deborah S. Bond said that Libby had denied telling either former New York Times reporter Judith Miller or then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer that Plame worked for the CIA. Both Miller and Fleischer have testified that Libby told them who Plame was. Bond also testified that Libby had concealed at least one meeting he had with Miller, as well as a conversation with then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, and that he had told investigators he first learned of Plame's identity from NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert.

Russert, who also hosts the long-running Sunday chat show "Meet the Press," denies this and is expected to be the prosecution's last witness, when the trial resumes next week.

Libby's notes reveal that, in fact, he was told of Plame's connection to the CIA by Cheney himself and that their conversation occurred a full month before the alleged exchange with Russert. For their part, Libby and his attorneys insist that he simply was a busy man with a poor memory, and, if he had access to his notes when he was interviewed by the FBI agents, he would not have misled them.

Now that's interesting.

Cheney doesn't really strike one as a particularly tolerant boss, but let's assume -- as Libby's right to a presumption of innocence demands that we do -- that the vice president was so fond of his chief of staff that he didn't mind his occasional lapses of memory.