WASHINGTON — In his opening statement three weeks ago in the federal perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, defense lawyer Theodore V. Wells Jr. dropped a bombshell. In dramatic tones, Wells declared that Libby had been the victim of a White House conspiracy to make Libby the fall guy for the CIA leak scandal.
But when the jury begins deliberating the fate of the former vice presidential aide next week, it will have seen virtually no evidence to back up the provocative claim.
The difference between what Wells promised and delivered, and how it will play with the 12-member panel, is just one of the wild cards as the trial winds up. Libby himself did not take the stand, and the unusually spare defense seemed built on the hope that prosecutors did not make their case.
Indeed, the case is hardly a slam-dunk for the government. The defense punched some holes in the stories and memories of government witnesses, including journalists.
The biggest worry for the prosecution may be whether the jury will think it fair to convict Libby, the only person charged in the three-year federal probe, when he was neither the first nor the only high-level government official to talk about CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Libby is charged with attempting to conceal his involvement in the events that led up to the disclosure of Plame's identity in published reports in the summer of 2003. Plame, a CIA arms-proliferation analyst, is married to Bush administration critic Joseph C. Wilson IV. The New York Times published a scathing anti-administration op-ed article by Wilson in July 2003, and eight days later his wife's identity was exposed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Testimony at the trial indicated that Libby and several other administration officials were discussing Plame with journalists, offering up her identity to explain Wilson's CIA-directed trip to Africa, which turned up evidence that contradicted administration claims about Iraq's nuclear intentions.
Libby denied to a federal grand jury that he knew about Wilson's wife, but conceded that at one point he had heard it from a journalist, and then passed along the information as gossip.
The government said that he was lying, and that he had fabricated a story after realizing he may have disclosed classified information.
