Libby found guilty in CIA leak case; sentencing scheduled for June

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that reached into the highest levels of the Bush administration.\nLibby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. The case brought new attention to the Bush administration’s much-criticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.\nThe verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the administration were eager to discredit Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.\nLibby, who was once Cheney’s most trusted adviser and an assistant to President Bush, was expressionless as the jury verdict was announced on the 10th day of deliberations. His wife, Harriet Grant, choked out a sob and sank her head.\nHe faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5 but under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to face far less. Defense attorneys immediately promised to ask for a new trial or appeal the conviction.\n“We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated,” defense attorney Theodore Wells told a throng of reporters. “We believe Mr. Libby is totally innocent and that he didn’t do anything wrong.”\nLibby did not speak to reporters.\nSpecial Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has led the leak investigation, said no additional charges would be filed. That means nobody will be charged with the leak and Libby, who was not the source for the original column outing Plame, will be the only one to face trial.\n“The results are actually sad,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did.”\nWhite House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush watched news of the verdict on TV in the Oval Office. Perino said the president respected the jury’s verdict but “was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family.”\nPerino said “I would not agree” with any characterization of the verdict as embarrassing for the White House.\n“I think that any administration that has to go through a prolonged news story that is unpleasant and one that is difficult – when you’re under the constraints and the policy of not commenting on an ongoing criminal matter – that can be very frustrating,” she said.\nLibby was convicted of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame’s identity and whom he told. Prosecutors said he learned about Plame from Cheney and others, discussed her name with reporters and, fearing prosecution, made up a story to make those discussions seem innocuous.\nLibby said he told investigators his honest recollections and blamed any misstatements on a faulty memory. He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.