In Libby's case, it's credibility at issue

rick.schmitt@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Back story

---

The CIA leak affair began to unfold in July 2003, around the time former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote an opinion article in the New York Times attacking the Bush administration as twisting the intelligence it used to go to war in Iraq. In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, in West Africa. Wilson wrote that, during his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in 2002, he found no evidence to support Bush's claim -- and that the administration knew it. The White House soon afterward admitted that it should not have included the claim in Bush's speech.

Eight days after Wilson's article appeared, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA and may have played a role in sending him to Niger. Disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA operative can be illegal, and a criminal investigation was launched to find out who leaked the information.

No one was charged with leaking Plame's identity. But in October 2005, a grand jury indicted then-White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors said Libby told three reporters -- including Judith Miller, then a New York Times staffer, who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to disclose her source -- about Wilson and Plame but lied to investigators about it. Libby's defense is that he didn't lie, but simply forgot the conversations because, as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, he had been focused on more important national security matters at the time.

---

Source: Times research