Plame Was Still Covert at Time of CIA Leak

By: E&P Staff At long last, some of the famously "redacted" eight pages in a 2005 federal court ruling on the CIA leak case have surfaced, after a long court battle by The Wall Street Journal.

The pages provide new details relating to grand jury testimony -- or hoped-for testimony -- provided by journalists Matt Cooper, Judith Miller, Tim Russert, and Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Newsweek reported Sunday that the court papers could put holes in the defense of Libby in the Valerie Plame case.

Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, "have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003," Newsweek's Michael Isikoff notes. "But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done 'covert work overseas' on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA 'was making specific efforts to conceal' her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion."

The papers also reveal that Libby told prosecutors that Cheney had informed him "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June 2003 about the identity of Plame.

The documents, further, show that Libby denied in his secret testimony ever mentioning Plame to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller or ex-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in June and July 2003. And they offer fresh details on Libby's phone conversation with NBC's Russert in this period, which apparently was sparked by Libby's concern about comments by MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

In the eight pages, however, much material remains redacted, including likely references to top White House aide Karl Rove.

The material came from the case where special counsel Fitzgerald was seeking to compel grand jury testimony from Miller and Cooper. "We're pleased that the court recognized that grand jury secrecy is not absolute and that there's an important public interest in the public being able to scrutinize the basis for a judicial decision," Theodore J. Boutros Jr., a lawyer for The Journal, told The New York Times.

Libby was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. He is charged with lying to investigators when he said he did not provide information about Plame to Miller and Time magazine's Cooper, and when he said he first learned about Plame from Russert. Libby has pleaded not guilty. A judge today set his trial for January 2007.

A Washington Post report on the redacted pages today notes: "Fleischer testified that at a lunch with Libby in July 2003, Libby relayed to him 'on the q.t.' that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and sent him on the trip to Niger. Fleisher told the grand jury that he thought the lunch was 'kinda weird' because Libby was normally 'tight-lipped' and not so chummy that he would share such confidences with the press secretary.

"The papers reveal that Libby said he never discussed Wilson's wife with Fleischer."

A pdf of the complete 2005 ruling with the formerly redacted material on pages 31 to 39 can be found here.