Tom Maguire has a gold mine post regarding recent filings by the Libby defense team, including more detail on the witness list – which I had pretty well covered in my list of predictions. The media names I had listed illustrated a strategy I would have pursued, which is to demonstrate how the Wilson’s shopped the Niger forgeries story and how many people in the media ended up knowing Valerie was Joe’s wife. Apparently team Libby is, right now, focused on how the news echoed through government circles first (more on that in a moment).

My instincts tell me that even before Novak wrote about Valerie some in the media where postulating the White House would ‘retaliate’ against this blockbuster story about going to war with Iraq based on forgeries. Why did they believe this? Because the media bought into the forgery angle and believed the administration was finally caught in a lie. Never forget the perspective and drivers of the time. Many in the press probably suspected the leak about Valerie was the retaliation THEY had expected and is was probably they who passed that idea onto Joe Wilson.

The angle about the Niger forgeries began unravelling quickly because the timing of Joe’s trip and the forgeries surfacing was all wrong. So Joe and his backers needed to switch the focus to something else besides the Niger forgeries and that impossible sequence.

Anyway, the fact is Libby’s defense filings are focused on the way the issue went through the government first, leaving the issue of the press (beyond the ones subpoened) until a later round.

I will not repeat all the great items Tom Maguire has out, except to try and discern the tactics behind the defense strategy (which is something way outside my field of expertise – fair warning!) and the tactics in the filing itself.

The filing is an effort to do a few things: get key information, request extra information that can be negotiated away if needed, send signals to Fitzgerald that might force his hand or make decisions on tactics beneficial to the defense, and to send signals to witnesses.

In my mind the key information is that regarding how the information flowed inside the govermment. Tom Maguire notes the battles going on between departments, but I think he glosses over the significance a little bit:

John Dickerson gets a mention for his “Where’s My Subpoena” column. The defense cites his point that the White House and the CIA were ‘at war” over the sixteen words, and ruminates about possible anti-Libby bias on the part of thr CIA witnesses. No!

Well, yes – and it is important. Fitzgerald is on very thin ice here. He claims one set of government officials (Armitage and/or Grossmanm etc) were (a) the source of the classified information being broadcast inside the government (classified information cannot be shared inside or outside the government) and (b) they will be prosecution witnesses against other people leaking classified information inside the government. It is too simple minded of Fitzgerald to think a leak of retribution goes directly to the media from the masterminds. The days of leaking to the press directly primarily exist in Hollywood and some rare examples like Deep Throat.

Fitzgerald apparently has not given much thought or credence to the possibility that the State Department was the source of the retribution – not the White House. One way to leak classified information is to tell people who interact with the media the information in question – and conveniently forget to mention the information is classified. I see this tactic in this filing statement noted by Tom:

We expect that documents from the White House, the State Department and the CIA will corroborate Mr. Libby’s account that Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was regarded throughout the government as a minor issue prior to Mr. Novak’s article. Such documents will show that the overwhelming focus of the government’s response to Mr. Wilson’s charges…

It is not a stretch to show the information was being spread wide in the government in hopes it would leak to the press. Libby’s defense team is taking no risks assuming everyone in the government had pure intentions. They cannot afford that luxury given what Libby faces. But the tactic is not unreasonable either. The statement about Grossman in the filing that Tom points to is a great example of this:

Documents pertaining to Mr. Wilson’s trip from Mr. Grossman’s files must also be examined carefully by the defense because Mr. Grossman may not be a disinterested witness.

Indeed. The possible motivations run from the innocent to the near criminal. The innocent story (the one easiest to demonstrate actually) is that all of the Plame debate at the time inside the government caused a typical breakdown on controlling classified information. That the talk became so broad so fast that it was not always being done with proper classifications involved.

Or there is an even more obvious explanation. To this day it is believed, but not established, Valerie was not covered under the statute covering the exposure of a covert agent. So it must have been the same at the time all this was going on. Unclear classification is not uncommon or criminal. I have been in briefings where information was discussed, and then there was a debate on whether it was classidied or not. It happens. People are not clear and sometimes classified information is exposed for a time. I point this out not to say everything Plame was all accidental, but to illustrate how people can get mixed signals on classification and innocently conclude nothing was classified.

If Libby can show lots of people discussing and passing on the information in all the various areas of government, he can claim it seemed the information was broadly known, and therefore he had no reason to cover anything up. These are alluded to in this statement:

The documents we have requested may further corroborate expected witness testimony that within the government Ms. Wilson’s employment status was not regarded as classified, sensitive or secret, contrary to the allegations in the indictment.

I really am intrigued by the phrase ‘expected witness testimony‘. While some see Ari and Grossman and others being confrontational witnesses for Libby, they could just as easily get on the stand and say ‘we tried to explain to Fitzgerald this was all well known in the government, but he did not seem to appreciate the implications’.

Also, there is a chance to show the prosecutor created an environment to generate shaded testimony and/or biased results. If Ari Fliescher also passed information on to the media, then Fitzgerald seems to be picking who was a good leaker verses a bad leaker based on how close the person was to the Vice President. Did he hint to some witnesses he would look past their indescretion if they could provide some information regarding Libby? Did he apply pressure that will come back to haunt him as witnesses like Ari get on the stand and expose that Fitzgerald’s interests seemed to focus on the OVP and not who leaked to the media?

In any event, Fitzgerald may have looked past a lot more leaks of the information Libby apparently did not leak to the media (a basis of the indictment) which would indicate he has not been discovering what happened but instead building a case to support a preconception.

The guy basically lied about his torment and jailing of journalists, saying he needed to get testimony on the outing of Plame. What he was really doing was trying to nail down sufficiently vague statements to apply pressure to Libby. Since Libby’s ‘crimes’ have no bearing on the original intent of the investigation (since Fitzgerald stipulates Libby never once leaked the inside infromation he had to the media, just lied about where he learned about Plame supposedly), and others have been discovered to have leaked to the press on the prime matter of this investigation, one can only conclude the investigation is a means to an end. An end different than the stated purpose of the investigation.

I am glad to see this included into what the defense hopes to establish:

Contrary to Mr. Wilson’s claims, he did not debunk as forgeries documents suggesting that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Africa.

Which will remind everyone of what the intent of Joe Wilson’s efforts were. While the review of who knew what and when in the government is a prime focus to many, I have always felt it was a bit of a diversion. In reviewing comments at Tom’s site I was reminded that Joe Wilson exposed himself at an EPIC conference where he was a speaker. It was at this conference where Joe Wilson said in his own words (from an audio recording of the conference) that to get Bush required generating an eye catching story in the media. This is how I captured Joe Wilson’s comments on ‘the plan’ to get Bush – which he discusses openly in the Q&A session after his speech – when I reviewed the EPIC audio last summer/fall:

Starting just around 12:30 into this 15 minute segment Wilson points out the administration was careful to only talk about uranium with respect to Africa initially. he says that until the story turned to Niger, and then the Niger angle was denied by state, it was difficult to make the case that the march to war was built on lies. Wilson admits, in his own words, that to attack Bush’s policies required the story to be about Niger and not Africa. Why? Well, because the forgery angle only applies to Niger, and the broader Africa angle has more substantiating intel and history.

Wilson also clearly states that people on the inside (CIA and others against the war in Iraq) could easily make the case if they could have been given voice. Which is what Joe Wilson would be doing in a few short days in the NY Times Op-Ed pages.

Fitzgerald has a real problem with Wilson. Wilson will be forced under oath to face his own recorded words outlining his plans (for Kerry?) to create a story out of whole cloth. Wilson had a plan to stage stories about the march to war with Iraq which have been proven to be a tissue of lies. Lies which were being addressed accurately by the administration. If Fitzgerald is not careful the trial will demonstrate he ignored, was fooled by or aware of Wilson’s lies in the media.

More on this once I have time to read the reference material in detail.

Addendum 1: Starting with the shortest filing first, I am struck by this request for information from CIA, DoS, NSC and WH, specifically the date:

(c) subsequent discussion, comment or analysis concerning the trip, including government documents concerning the trip and/or Ms. Wilson’s role in it, that were generated after May 6, 2003.

Why is this tied to the date of Kristof’s NY Times piece? Item (a) in the list is comprehensive in nature:

(a) the origins of Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger, including any role played by Ms. Wilson in connection with the trip;

I guess this could just be for completeness sake, but then wouldn’t the request cover all material Fitzgerald has from the press as well? Seems odd to focus on the government information only, and then specify this as an important date separating it out from all of the information requested in (a)?

Then there is this item which has an interesting angle:

All documents reflecting Mr. Wilson’s communications with officials at the State Department or other government agencies concerning his trip to Niger or the “sixteen words.”

Emphasis mine. Now I know why this is being done because Wilson already admitted he talked to people at State to demonstrate he was really concerned about the Niger forgeries he supposedly debunked- but why limit it to State? Would a Rand Beers communication fall under this? Didn’t Wilson claim he had talked to people in government outside State? The ‘sixteen words’ angle opens the list up to a wider range of contacts than just the Niger trip and, therefore, may be restricted by the judge.

And Finally this one:

Any notes from the September 2003 meeting in the Situation Room at which Colin Powell is reported to have said that (a) everyone knows that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that (b) it was Mr. Wilson’s wife who suggested that the CIA send her husband on a mission to Niger.

I had not heard of this meeting, but then again September 2003 means Powell could simply be repeating Andrea Mitchell’s statement which I believe came earlier. The second half of the statement was well known by September – so I wonder what this buys the Libby Defense? Or is this one of those items they could afford to lose if they had to.