Blumenthal: Libby's last disinformation campaign [View All]

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Not only did Scooter's defense rely on emotion over facts, but it appealed to the jury to dismiss the craft of journalism as false by nature.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Feb. 22, 2007 | On Tuesday, I observed the closing arguments at the federal courthouse in Washington in the case of United States v. I. Lewis Libby. The prosecution's systematic presentation of the evidence supporting the five-count indictment of perjury and obstruction of justice did not foreshadow the dramatic accusation about Vice President Dick Cheney that was to come at the day's end. "This case is about lying," deputy prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg dryly began. It was, he explained, about how Scooter Libby learned that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative, and about whom Libby spoke with about the revelation and what he said.

The defense, for its part, appealed to the jurors' empathy for what it characterized as Libby's bad memory, called the prosecutors "mad," conjured up the defendant's two young children for sympathy, and described him as a decent man diligently doing his job despite being surrounded by the chaos of an administration in which he was indispensable but for whose actions he apparently bore no responsibility .

Finally, hour after hour, the defense attacked not only the credibility of the journalists who had been witnesses but also the very notion that journalism itself has to do with representing the truth. After journalists, one after another, were held up to derision as clownish boobs and blamed for Libby's predicament, the defense appealed to the jury's common sense to dismiss the craft of journalism as false by nature, always to be discredited, and on that basis to find Libby not guilty. On one level, the final argument on behalf of Scooter Libby was Libby's last disinformation campaign. On another, it was a summation of the Republican hostility toward the press, as official an imprimatur as Richard Nixon's malevolent enemies list or George H.W. Bush's sophomoric 1992 campaign slogan: "Annoy the Liberal Media."

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"Did you ever hear any evidence about a conspiracy to scapegoat Mr. Libby? It's not a problem with your memory," Zeidenberg said. The case, he went on, is not about "scapegoating, conspiracies or bad memory." With business-like swiftness, he detailed how Libby conveniently forgot nine conversations with eight individuals about Plame and fabricated out of whole cloth two conversations with two reporters. Names, dates and places were cited, all supported by the evidence. Libby's memory failed him on what had happened, but worked on what hadn't.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/02/22/libby_trial/