Key Witness: Prosecutor Manipulated Me Into Falsely Testifying Against Scooter Libby
11:36 AM, Apr 7, 2015 • By FRED BARNES
Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter, has blown a big hole in the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying to avoid blame for outing a CIA agent. Miller was a key witness in Libby’s trial, but in her new book she has repudiated her testimony.
Libby was “railroaded in his conviction” by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, she said in an interview on Fox News yesterday.
In her book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, she writes that Fitzgerald cajoled her into testifying in 2007 that Libby had told her Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, was a CIA officer. This undermined Libby’s own testimony and contributed significantly to his conviction for obstruction of justice, making a false statement, and perjury.
“I was the only reporter to state that Libby had discussed Wilson’s wife,” Miller writes. Wilson, a retired diplomat, had been sent at his wife’s suggestion to Niger to find if Iraq officials had sought to buy uranium there. Wilson said they hadn’t, thus disputing what Bush had said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.
“So my testimony, Fitzgerald said in his closing arguments, was crucial to the case against Libby,” according to Miller. “It was also crucial to Fitzgerald’s assertion that the vice president had been involved, since Libby had told the grand jury that [Dick] Cheney had approved his suggestion that he discuss the intelligence estimate about Iraq and WMD with me.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/key-witness-prosecutor-manipulated-me-falsely-testifying-against-scooter-libby_911815.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&utm_medium=referral
