WASHINGTON – NBC newsman Tim Russert testified yesterday that he never discussed a CIA operative with vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, contradicting Libby's version to a grand jury in the CIA leak investigation.
Tim Russert
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The testimony came as prosecutors prepared to rest their perjury case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” testified about a July 2003 phone call in which Libby complained about a colleague's coverage. Libby has said that, at the end of the call, Russert brought up war critic Joseph Wilson and mentioned that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
“That would be impossible,” Russert testified. “I didn't know who that person was until several days later.”
That discrepancy is at the heart of Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. He is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
During Libby's 2004 grand jury testimony, he said Russert told him “all the reporters know” that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Libby now acknowledges he had learned about Plame a month earlier from Cheney but says he had forgotten about it and learned it again from Russert as if new.
Libby subsequently repeated the information about Plame to other journalists, always with the caveat that he had heard it from reporters, he has said. Prosecutors say Libby concocted the Russert conversation to shield him from prosecution for revealing information from government sources.
Plame's identity was leaked shortly after her husband began accusing the Bush administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq. The controversy over the faulty intelligence was a major story in mid-2003.
Given that news climate, defense attorney Theodore Wells was skeptical about Russert's account.
“You have the chief of staff of the vice president of the United States on the telephone and you don't ask him one question about it?” Wells asked. He followed up moments later with, “As a newsperson who's known for being aggressive and going after the facts, you wouldn't have asked him about the biggest stories in the world that week?”
“What happened is exactly what I told you,” Russert replied.
Russert originally told the FBI that he couldn't rule out discussing Wilson with Libby but had no recollection of it, according to an FBI report Wells read in court. Russert said yesterday that he did not believe he said that.
Russert also acknowledged that in November 2003, shortly after the investigation began, he told an FBI agent that he had not discussed Wilson's wife with Libby. The NBC News reporter subsequently resisted a subpoena for his testimony, but he agreed to give it after negotiations with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's office.
Fitzgerald has spent weeks making the case that Libby was preoccupied with discrediting Wilson. Several former White House, CIA and State Department officials testified that Libby discussed Plame with them – all before the Russert conversation.
Russert is scheduled to resume testifying today. Prosecutors said they plan to rest their case after his testimony.
