Libby Responds to Fitzgerald's CIA Filing by Jeralyn Merritt, TalkLeft, March 8, 2006
Libby's lawyers have filed a response (pdf) to the CIA's affadavit. Merritt analyzes the argument and opines:
The thrust behind the pleading seems to be that Libby was distracted by hugely important national matters and couldn't be expected to remember his Plame conversations with reporters at the time he was questioned by FBI agents or the grand jury. Once, I might believe. But on four separate occasions? You'd also have to buy that Libby didn't prepare either for his two FBI interviews or his two grand jury appearances. I'm skeptical. Even if he hadn't lawyered up for the FBI interviews, he did so before his grand jury appearances and no lawyer lets his client go into a federal grand jury without prepping him, least of all a lawyer with a client as high-profile as Libby. And the media has consistently reported that Libby took copious notes.It seems more likely to me that Libby intentionally misled investigators and the grand jury in an attempt to protect Cheney (see the timeline here), never dreaming that the reporters would be subpoenaed, and now in hindsight is trying to reconstruct not his memory but an alternative explanation for having lied.
