On virtually every day of the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Lewis Libby, it was hard not to imagine that the jurors were asking themselves, “Why is this guy on trial?” Why wasn’t Richard Armitage, the former State Department official who first leaked the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, in the courtroom? Or Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who told reporters about Mrs. Wilson? Or Karl Rove, the top White House aide who ever-so-briefly discussed her with journalists?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ADVERTISEMENT

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As it turns out, that is exactly what jurors were thinking. “There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury,” said juror Denis Collins, the only one of the 11 jurors who chose to speak to the press after the verdict. “It was said a number of times, ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’ I’m not saying we didn’t think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as [Libby attorney Ted] Wells put it, he was the fall guy.”

Well, now he has fallen. The jury convicted Libby, who until October 2005 was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, on four of the five counts against him: one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury, and one of making false statements. The only count on which Libby was acquitted was Count 3, a charge that he lied to the FBI about a 2003 conversation he had with Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine.

The verdict confirmed speculation that had been running around the federal courthouse near the end of the jury’s ten days of deliberations. Jurors had asked several questions indicating they were troubled by Count 3. That led some to suspect—or to hope, in the case of the liberal activists who covered the trial—that the jury had already made up its mind on the other four counts but still couldn’t quite reconcile itself with Count 3. In the end, that appears to be exactly what happened. Once the decision to acquit on Count 3 was made, the verdict announcement followed quickly.

What convinced jurors to convict Libby, apparently, was the credibility of a single prosecution witness, NBC’s Tim Russert. “I thought he was very credible,” Collins said of Russert. “A lot of people thought he was very credible.” And Russert was the key in more ways than one. It was his phone conversation with FBI agent Jack Eckenrode in November 2003 that let prosecutors know there was a conflict between his story and Libby’s, thus turning the CIA-leak investigation into a perjury probe. And it was his testimony—that he did not tell Libby about Valerie Plame Wilson, as Libby told the grand jury—that was the fatal blow to Libby’s defense.

Libby had claimed that Russert told him about Mrs. Wilson and that, even though he, Libby, had learned about her earlier, he had forgotten about her in the crush of events in July 2003, and thus was surprised, as if hearing it for the first time, when Russert mentioned it to him. Russert denied that, and his testimony simply overwhelmed Libby’s version of events.

And because the jury believed Russert, they tended to discount problems they had with the testimony of other prosecution witnesses. For example, some jurors simply did not trust Ari Fleischer—“Some said, ‘I don’t believe him, he was Slick Willie,’” said Denis Collins—but because they believed Russert, it appears they tended to accept the other accounts that jibed with his story, including Fleischer’s. Fleischer had testified that Libby told him about Mrs. Wilson—“hush-hush, on the QT”—on Monday, July 7, 2003. The conversation with Russert, in which Libby said he was surprised to hear about Mrs. Wilson, was on Thursday, July 10. That led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in his opening argument, to utter what was, in retrospect, the line that convicted Libby: “You can’t learn something startling on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday and Tuesday.” Jurors could only accept that argument if they believed Russert and Fleischer. They did, and it appears that Russert’s credibility helped shore up Fleischer’s less-than-believable performance.

Other witnesses did not receive similarly friendly receptions. In addition to Fleischer, jurors had serious doubts about Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter. Collins told the press that one juror said of Miller, “I don’t know, her memory was terrible.” At that, according to Collins, another juror shot back, “Yeah, whose isn’t?”

During the trial, there was a lot of second-guessing about Libby’s decision not to testify. Only by looking the jury in the eye, some observers believed, could Libby convince the jurors that he had not lied to the grand jury. If Collins’s opinion is any indication, that wasn’t what was going on. “The eight hours was good,” Collins said, meaning that the jury had seen plenty of Libby when it watched all eight hours of his two appearances before the grand jury. Libby on the witness stand would likely have helped not at all.

So now Libby has been convicted. His lawyers say they will ask for a new trial and, failing that, they will appeal the verdict. “We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated,” lead attorney Ted Wells told reporters. “We believe Mr. Libby is totally innocent and that he didn’t do anything wrong.” If Libby loses again, he could face a maximum of 25 years in prison.

What is next? Libby’s—and Cheney’s—enemies have always hoped that a guilty verdict would result in Libby flipping, in fingering the vice president for some still-unspecified crime for which Cheney would then be tried and convicted, or, even better, impeached and removed from office. “Mr. Libby, are you willing to go to jail to protect Vice President Cheney?” shouted MSNBC’s David Shuster as Libby walked away after his lawyers’ statement. That question will undoubtedly be heard many times in the days to come.

At his post-trial news conference, however, Fitzgerald didn’t exactly encourage that speculation. “I do not expect to file any further charges,” he told reporters. “Basically, the investigation was inactive prior to the trial. I would not expect to see any further charges filed. We’re all going back to our day jobs.”

“If information comes to light or new information comes to us that would warrant us taking some action, we’ll, of course, do that,” Fitzgerald continued. “But I would not create the expectation that any of us will be doing further investigation at this point. We see the investigation as inactive.”

The temperature was around freezing, with winds making it seem much lower, as Fitzgerald spoke. When he turned to leave, to return to his day job, he seemed a satisfied man. After three and a half years of investigation, and the failure to charge anyone with the underlying crime of outing a covert CIA agent, he had finally won a conviction.