WASHINGTON — Abruptly reversing course, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby announced Tuesday that neither the defendant nor Vice President Dick Cheney would testify at Libby's trial on charges of lying to federal investigators -- a high-wire maneuver that drastically reduces the opportunity for presenting defense evidence and means the case will go to the jury early next week.
In a surprise disclosure in federal court, Libby's lawyer Theodore Wells Jr. said that he would finish his defense today, after three days of testimony.
The decision not to call Libby or his former boss, Cheney, deprives the trial of its most widely anticipated witnesses. It also rules out any major effort to buttress a key element of Libby's defense: that any misstatements he made to federal agents probing a leak of classified information sprang from his preoccupation with major policy matters, not from a desire to mislead.
The move apparently reflects a decision by Libby's legal team that exposing Cheney and his former chief of staff to crossexamination could do more harm than good.
Both men were facing difficult questions about their leading role -- disclosed in new and graphic detail during the trial -- in a White House campaign in summer 2003 to strike back at a critic of the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq.
The war critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former U.S. diplomat who publicly challenged White House claims that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain nuclear material from the West African nation of Niger. Wilson based his attack on a government-ordered fact-finding trip he had made to Africa, during which he concluded no such attempt had been made.
In hoping to discredit Wilson, government officials leaked to several reporters the fact that Wilson's wife was CIA operative Valerie Plame. The officials sought to suggest Plame had arranged Wilson's trip as a boondoggle.
Wells told the court Tuesday that he informed a lawyer for Cheney over the lunch hour that he would not be calling the vice president, who had been scheduled to testify Thursday.
At the same time, Wells disclosed that he had advised Libby that he did not believe his client should testify and that, after consulting his wife, Libby "has indicated to us that it is his intention to follow our advice."
"We will rest his case tomorrow," Wells said Tuesday.
