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Jury finds Libby guilty of perjury in CIA leak trial

"Convicting [Libby] of perjury was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion or Alger Hiss of perjury. It doesn't mean they were not guilty of other crimes."

Joseph Wilson, former US ambassador

Once Vice President Dick Cheney's closest adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby stands convicted of lying and obstructing a federal media leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since former national security adviser John Poindexter over the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago.

In the end, jurors said they did not believe Libby's main defense: that he hadn't lied but merely had a bad memory.

The CIA leak case focused new attention on the Bush administration's much-criticized handling of intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war. The case cost Cheney his most trusted adviser, and the trial revealed Cheney's personal obsession with criticism of the war's legitimacy.

Trial testimony made clear that US President George W. Bush secretly declassified a portion of the prewar intelligence estimate that Cheney quietly sent Libby to leak to Judith Miller of the New York Times in 2003 to rebut criticism by ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson. Bush, Cheney and Libby were the only three people in government aware of the effort.

More top reporters were ordered into court -- including Miller after 85 days of resistance in jail -- to testify about their confidential sources among the country's highest-ranking officials than in any other trial in recent memory.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said the verdict closed the nearly four-year investigation into how the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, and her classified job at the CIA were leaked to reporters in 2003, just days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence.

No one will be charged with the leak itself, which the trial confirmed came first from then-deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.

"The results are actually sad," Fitzgerald told reporters after the verdict. "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."

One juror, former Washington Post reporter Denis Collins, said the jury did not believe Libby's main "bad memory" defense. Juror Jeff Comer agreed.

Collins said the jurors spent a week charting the testimony and evidence on 34 poster-size pages.

Libby, not only Cheney's chief of staff but also an assistant to Bush, was expressionless as the verdict was announced on the 10th day of jury deliberations. In the front row, his wife, Harriet Grant, choked out a sob and her head sank.

Libby could face up to 25 years in prison when sentenced on June 5, but federal sentencing guidelines will probably prescribe far less, perhaps one to three years. Defense attorneys said they would ask for a retrial, and if that should fail would appeal the conviction.

"We have every confidence Mr Libby ultimately will be vindicated," defense attorney Theodore Wells told reporters. He said Libby was "totally innocent and that he did not do anything wrong."

In a written statement, Cheney called the verdict disappointing and said he was saddened for Libby and his family.

"As I have said before, Scooter has served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction through many years of public service," Cheney said.

Wilson, whose wife left the CIA after she was exposed, said: "Convicting him of perjury was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion or Alger Hiss of perjury. It doesn't mean they were not guilty of other crimes."

Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury to the grand jury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame's identity and whom he told. He was acquitted of another lying count.
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