Political Skullduggery

Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby are using greymail tactics, requesting mountains of sensitive documents, to try to prove that their client had simply too much on his plate, and could have easily misremembered important details of the Valerie Plame affair.

Attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby insist they need hundreds of pages of classified daily briefings prepared for President Bush to show that Libby did not intentionally lie about discussing Plame with reporters, as prosecutors allege. They contend that he was preoccupied with more serious matters when the conversations took place and when investigators questioned him months later.

"One of the central themes of Mr. Libby's defense at trial will be that any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory," the lawyers wrote in a court document filed late Tuesday. "Given the urgent national security issues that commanded Mr. Libby's attention, it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events [such as] alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status."...

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald argued in court filings last week that Libby's attorneys were attempting to derail the prosecution with a "breathtaking" request for nearly a year's worth of Presidential Daily Briefs, the closely guarded document that summarizes threats to the United States and is almost never released.

There is at least one big problem with Libby's defense. Simple faulty memory cannot reasonably account for an elaborate story, the entirely ficticious account of being originally told of Plame's identity by Tim Russert.

Regular jurors will be able to tell the difference. The court will not look kindly on this either.