At Libby Trial, Russert of NBC Gives and Gets
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Tim Russert Wednesday after testimony in which his demeanor was alternately confident and uncomfortable.
By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — The prosecution in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr.
neared the end of its case Wednesday with a final dramatic flourish
— putting Tim Russert of NBC News on the witness stand to deliver
what could be a serious blow to Mr. Libby’s defense.
Did I Say That? Memory Proves Weak in the Libby Perjury Trial
Nevertheless, Mr. Russert,
who is accustomed to asking tough questions of his guests on
“Meet the Press,” found himself in the clearly
uncomfortable role of being the subject of tough questions during a
cross-examination by Mr. Libby’s defense lawyer.
Mr.
Russert, whose signature technique in interrogating officials on his
television program includes confronting them with documents and texts
of previous quotes, found the technique used on him. A defense lawyer
displayed documents on a large television screen in the courtroom as he
challenged Mr. Russert’s recollection of events.
The
cross-examinationis expected to conclude on Thursday. He is the last of
10 witnesses who testified in 10 days of trial in which the prosecution
has tried to show that Mr. Libby lied repeatedly to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about the Central Intelligence Agency operative at the heart of the leak case.
After
the prosecution concludes its case, Mr. Libby’s lawyers will face
a daunting task in trying to undo it. The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald,
has offered a straightforward case in which the jurors have heard from
numerous witnesses supporting the charges against Mr. Libby.
On
Wednesday, Mr. Russert testified under a prosecutor’s questioning
that, contrary to Mr. Libby’s testimony, he never spoke with him
about Valerie Wilson, the C.I.A. officer.
Mr.
Russert, the moderator of “Meet the Press,” was unequivocal
in his testimony that no such conversation with Mr. Libby occurred. But
when Mr. Libby’s chief defense lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr.,
began his efforts to disparage Mr. Russert’s reliability in
cross-examination, Mr. Russert’s confident demeanor changed
abruptly.
Mr. Russert, whose appearance drew the largest crowd of
spectators yet in the three-week-long trial, stopped speaking in the
confident, complete sentences in which he had answered the prosecutor
in his direct testimony. Instead, he became more deliberate and halting
in his responses, frequently asking Mr. Wells to repeat the question or
asking for time to examine the document about which he was being asked.
“Say again?” he said frequently.
Mr. Libby, who is
charged with five felony counts, has sworn that it was Mr. Russert who
informed him about Ms. Wilson sometime on July 10 or July 11, 2003.
Although Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney,
has acknowledged he heard about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Cheney earlier, he
said he had forgotten about that. He said, “It was like hearing
it for the first time” when he said Mr. Russert told him weeks
later.
The prosecution has offered testimony that Mr. Libby
learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity from Mr. Cheney’s former
spokeswoman, a former under secretary of state and two officials of the
C.I.A. In addition, two reporters, Judith Miller, formerly of The New
York Times, and Matthew Cooper, formerly of Time magazine, testified
that Mr. Libby discussed Ms. Wilson’s identity with them.
White-collar
criminal defense lawyers said on Wednesday that Mr. Libby’s
lawyers faced an uphill battle, although most cautioned that a criminal
trial almost always appeared bleak for a defendant after the
prosecution had presented its case, before the defense put on its own
evidence.
Some of the lawyers, including those with clients in
the case who would not discuss the trial on the record, said Mr.
Fitzgerald’s case lacked emotional appeal, but gave the jurors an
uncluttered and convincing story of wrongdoing.
Defense efforts
to trap prosecution witnesses in contradictions and memory lapses had
probably helped Mr. Libby, the lawyers said, although they expressed
doubt that the effort had jelled into a plausible explanation of Mr.
Libby’s conduct.
Andrew G. McBride, a lawyer in Washington,
said that the defense could seek to show that Mr. Libby dealt with a
wide array of issues that were more important than responding to an
Op-Ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, by
Valerie Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Mr. Wilson wrote that he had been on a mission to Africa to look into reports that Saddam Hussein
was trying to buy uranium for his weapons program. He said that he
discovered no evidence of that and asserted that the Bush White House
had willfully distorted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
On July 14, Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. operative was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak.
Several
of the lawyers said that the defense must find a way to cast Mr.
Libby’s actions in a sympathetic light, which raises the question
of whether Mr. Libby will testify in his own defense.
“Whether
a defendant takes the stand in his own defense is the most difficult
decision that an attorney and his client have to make,” said
Richard Ben-Veniste, a prominent lawyer in Washington who has attended
the trial.
Howard M. Pearl, a lawyer in Chicago, said that
these decisions hinged on a careful balancing of the potential benefits
of the defendant’s testimony weighed against the risks of
alienating a jury or opening oneself to embarrassing questions.
“If
a defendant does testify, the case is usually won or lost on the basis
of the credibility of his testimony,” Mr. Pearl said.
In
the complex story behind Mr. Libby’s criminal trial, the
Russert-Libby conversation has loomed increasingly important. Mr. Libby
has said that he learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Russert in a
conversation in which he had called to complain about Chris
Matthews’ comments on “Hardball.”
Mr.
Russert, who limped into the courtroom Wednesday using a crutch because
of a broken ankle, recalled that conversation for Mr. Fitzgerald, who
took less than nine minutes to draw out the account, in which Mr.
Russert said that Mr. Libby was “agitated” about Mr.
Matthews.
Asked how he could tell Mr. Libby was agitated, Mr.
Russert replied: “He said, ‘What the hell’s going on
with Hardball. Dammit, I’m tired of hearing my name over and over
again.’ ”
Mr. Russert insisted that it “would
be impossible” for him to have told Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson in
their conversation on July 10 or 11, 2003, “because I
didn’t know who that person was until I read the Bob Novak
column.” He said that, when he read it on July 14, he said to
himself, “Wow, this is really big.”
In challenging
Mr. Russert’s reliability, Mr. Wells homed in on a dispute he had
with The Buffalo News in 2004 over his serving as a debate moderator.
Using Mr. Russert’s technique, Mr. Wells displayed on the
television screen documents in connection with the incident in which
Mr. Russert had acknowledged that he had forgotten making a telephone
call to a Buffalo reporter.
He also challenged Mr. Russert
about initial efforts to avoid testifying. Mr. Russert had said in an
affidavit that it was a matter of journalistic principle to refuse to
divulge his conversation with Mr. Libby. But Mr. Wells, who also
displayed this affidavit on-screen, noted that when Mr. Russert was
first reached by telephone by an F.B.I. investigator, weeks before the
affidavit, he spoke freely about it.
::Tullycast:: 