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Originally Posted by loquitur
sorry, I don't see how all this fits here.
But then, I don't see conspiracies everywhere.
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loquitur, you're an attorney, I'm just a lay person with too much time on his hands.....
Here's a link to Judge Walton's 38 page order, in response to Libby's defense team's "graymail" demands:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...inion_CIPA.pdf
Here is a much better explanation of the defense team's strategy and demands on the government and on the judge:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120101219.html
Libby Trial May Discuss Terror, Nukes
By MATT APUZZO
The Associated Press
Friday, December 1, 2006; 9:14 PM
WASHINGTON -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby says that during the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity he was preoccupied with terrorist threats, Iraq's new government and emerging nuclear programs in Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.
Court records released Friday offered the first glimpse of the type of classified information Libby wants to share with jurors at his upcoming perjury and obstruction trial.
<b>Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, is accused of lying to investigators and a grand jury about his conversations with journalists regarding former CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Libby plans to testify that he had other, more weighty issues on his mind and simply misspoke or forgot when interviewed by the FBI and the grand jury.</b>
Among those issues were the 2003 rise of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, a diplomatic crisis in Turkey, the ousting of Liberian President Charles Taylor and the role of the Iraqi military after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled last month that Libby must have access to some classified information at trial but, until Friday, the topics were sealed.
A redacted copy of Walton's opinion revealed that Libby wants to use 129 classified documents. Walton said Libby could discuss documents that fell on or near key dates in the case, such as when the aide spoke to reporters and investigators.
Libby's bid for classified information is significant for two reasons. If the government decides the material Walton orders released cannot safely be made public, the case could be dismissed. If the case goes forward and the evidence is allowed, the trial could offer a behind-the-scenes look at the White House in the early months of the war in Iraq.
Exactly what Libby may say about the classified topics is unclear. Prosecutors and defense attorneys continued to argue those issues behind closed doors this week.
Walton said he tried to balance national security concerns with Libby's right to a fair trial. The judge stressed that pre-approving classified evidence "requires a court to play the role of Johnny Carson's character Carnac the Magnificent by requiring it to render rulings before knowing the exact context of how those rulings will coincide with other evidence that has actually been developed at trial."
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has said he may appeal Walton's ruling, a move that could delay a trial scheduled to begin next month. Cheney and White House aide Karl Rove could be called as witnesses.
Libby is the only person charged in Fitzgerald's three-year investigation into whether the White House revealed Plame's identity as retribution for her husband's criticism of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. Nobody has been charged with the leak.
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Libby 's request for classified material was contingent on him taking the witness stand and testifying that he was "too busy" around July 11, 2003, to remember that he had been told, at least a month before, that "Wilson's wife" worked for the CIA.
He later testified before the Plame leak investigation, that he learned it. "as if for the first time", from Tim Russert. Russert gave a sworn statement saying that he never discussed Wilson's wife with Libby.
This week, Libby's attorney tried to work the CIPA material into his opening, and he told the jury that Ari Fleischer would be giving "bargained testimony" against Libby, because he had made an immunity agreement with prosecutor Fitzgerald.
If you are genuinely interested in understanding my point, please go back and read the last quote box in my last post, and then persuade me that Libby is an innocent defendent represented by a zealous defense team that is acting ethically and is trying to avoid pissing off Judge Walton and the prosecution.
Quote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christ...r_b_39634.html
.....To set the scene, prior to the testimony of Craig Schmall, the CIA briefer for Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, there had been a series of hearings and motions filed by the government, led by Patrick Fitzgerald, and Libby's legal team, primarily led in these matters by John Cline and Ted Wells, over the last few months preceding the trial. Judge Walton heard arguments on these matters under the CIPA rules and regulations, and then issued orders and memoranda laying out the procedures by which any of this information -- relating to highly classified national security documents and intelligence -- could be admitted, if at all, in the course of these legal proceedings.
In order to introduce the "memory defense" that Libby's legal team wants to use to defend Libby -- the "my difficult job made me lie and forget" defense -- Mr.
Libby himself will have to take the stand because it is ultimately his memories which are at issue in terms of his state of mind and his alleged flashoods to the FBI and the grand jury. <b>During Mr. Schmall's testimony, the Libby defense team is trying to slip that memory defense and the national security information which has already been ruled, in part, to be very limitedly admissible, if at all, into the minds of the jury through a back door and a completely unrelated witness.
In effect, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald argued this morning, to "bootstrap" the evidence and the arguments into the case.
</b>
I can certainly understand wanting to defend your client with every legal weapon in your arsenal. I can also understand feeling constrained in terms of your defense because national security considerations require you to be circumspect in how you can or cannot introduce certain evidence into the trial proceedings. But the CIPA hearings in this matter occurred over a series of weeks, months even, and the Libby legal team has had quite some time ot work out their witness questions and other strategies to overcome this obstacle.
In fact, Judge Walton has bent over backward in a number of his rulings, pressing the government repeatedly for more expansive summary information to be provided as evidence for the jury's consideration -- so much so that Fitzgerald and his team, and attorneys from the CIA had to start from scratch and re-draft and re-redact documents in order to fulfill the judge's orders.
To pull this sort of stunt during trial is a slap at the authority of the court and its very detailed, very specific orders -- and the judge's very careful and thorough consideration of the defendant's rights to this very closely guarded, very difficult to obtain information regarding some highly classified national security matters. Judge Walton was clearly not happy, but was still leaning toward a ruling that left the information somewhat on the table for Team Libby until Wells could not stop himself from "gilding the lily" -- Wells started arguing that CIA witnesses "should not be believed" because of their biases toward the Vice President's office, and tat he should be able to argue that to the jury based on Schmall's briefing notes. <b>Judge Walton informed Libby's legal team that he would not permit an argument on a memory defense at closing absent testimony from Libby, because otherwise the memory defense was not relevant to the proceeedings</b>...and that ended the argument, and the judge agreed to issue a terse cautionary instruction on the CIPA information and questions that Mr. Clne had asked, and we went on to the next legal argument........
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How convincing will Libby's "important man, important job....too busy to remember" defense" look to the jury, if he does not testify....to describe the CIPA material that was supposed to be indispensable to properly defend himself, and after Ari Fleischer testifies that Libby discussed Plame's identity with him, 3 days before Libby swore that Russert "told" him, and when Ari describes being so concerned that he committed a crime when he passed along what Libby told him, that he refused to testify before the same grand jury, invoking his fifth amendment rights?