Although Scooter Libby often used an anteroom outside the vice president’s office in the West Wing of the White House, he had a larger office as part of the vice presidential suite in the Old Executive Office Building next door, where he met Eckenrode and the FBI agents Deborah Bond and Kirk Armfield. Unlike many in the White House, Libby had hired an outside lawyer: Joseph Tate, from the Philadelphia office of Dechert LLP, where Libby had been the managing partner in the DC office during the Clinton administration.
Tate opened the session with a statement: “My client is here to cooperate; the president has asked for the full cooperation of everyone in the administration, and that’s what my client is here to do.” The FBI agents thought it was peculiar that he kept referring to him as “my client,” and Libby looked slightly uncomfortable, unlike Rove and Armitage. Eckenrode said there might well come a time when they’d need to discuss classified documents or other information, and at that point Tate would have to leave the room. But as with the other interviews, Eckenrode asked Libby an open-ended question, suggesting he share whatever information he considered relevant to their inquiry into the possibly unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame’s name and identity.
Libby began by emphasizing that he was only motivated by the truth. He and the vice president had simply wanted to “set the record straight” because what Wilson wrote was “totally inaccurate and unfair.” In preparation for the interview, Libby had prepared a list of points, which he had typed and now handed to the agents:
AMBASSADOR WILSON’S CLAIMS
1. The VP asked the CIA to investigate a particular Niger report.
2. Ambassador Wilson’s report shows that Iraq did not seek to acquire uranium from Niger.
3. Because the VP asked and the report of Ambassador Wilson’s trip showed that Iraq had not sought to buy uranium from Niger the VP would have seen the report.
4. Because the VP/White House must have seen the report resolving that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger the VP/White House twisted the intelligence to support the statement in the State of the Union.
Libby went over them one by one, insisting that each was false and thus Wilson’s conclusions were drawn from false premises. It was as if Libby were still pleading the case for the administration, one that he’d never managed to get into the mainstream press. Eckenrode had to gently steer him back to the purpose of the interview, which was the source of administration leaks–not the accuracy or fairness of Wilson’s column.
Unlike Armitage or even Rove, Libby was not a natural narrator. Eckenrode had to interrupt frequently with questions; Libby seemed to like specific questions to which he could give precise answers. He said he hadn’t even known Wilson had a wife; he didn’t know her name, let alone that she worked at the CIA, until NBC’s Tim Russert told him on July 10 or 11. At least, that’s what he’d thought until the week before, when he went through his notes to prepare for the FBI interview. He seemed eager to show the agents a note, written in his distinctive narrow, slanting script, filled with odd shorthand symbols.
6/12/03 Telephone–VP re “Uranium in Iraq”–Kristof NYT Article
1. Took place at our behest–functional office
CP/- his wife works in that division
debriefing took place here
& was mtg in region
VP hold get agency to answer that 1) didn’t know about mission
2. didn’t get report back
3. didn’t have any indication of forgery was from IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]
4. OVP and Defense and State–expressed strong interest in issue
Eckenrode and the agents hadn’t seen this; document production from the White House was proceeding sporadically through the White House counsel’s office, and this hadn’t yet been produced. Libby explained that the note indicated that the vice president had told him during a phone conversation in June that the wife of the ambassador sent to Niger worked at the CIA. The letters
CP
stood for the counterproliferation division of the CIA. The date had a squiggle over it, meaning that he’d written it sometime after the conversation, so it could be off slightly. Most likely the conversation had occurred a day or two earlier, since he and Vice President Cheney had been discussing how to respond to questions from
Washington Post
reporter Walter Pincus, who was following up on Nicholas Kristof’s
Times
article questioning the accuracy of the State of the Union and whether “deceit” had been employed in building the case for war with Iraq. Pincus’s article had run on June 12.
Eckenrode asked if the vice president had mentioned how he knew that the ambassador’s wife worked at the CIA.
Yes, Libby said. The vice president had learned it from someone at the CIA. Libby believed Cheney’s source was Director Tenet, but it might have been someone else.
Libby stressed that even then he didn’t know the name of the ambassador sent to Niger, whose name doesn’t appear on the note. Wilson wasn’t named in either Kristof’s or Pincus’s article, and Libby said he didn’t know his name until he read Wilson’s op-ed piece in July. By then he’d forgotten the conversation with Cheney and the reference to Wilson’s wife. Libby said again that when Tim Russert told him that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, it was as if he were hearing it for the first time.
Eckenrode asked why Libby was talking to Russert, and why the subject of Wilson’s wife would have come up.
Libby explained that at least twice during the week after Wilson’s op-ed appeared,
Hardball
host Chris Matthews had repeated the false claim that the vice president’s office had asked the CIA to send Wilson to Niger. Libby had called Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, to complain about Matthews and see if Russert could make him correct the record or at least stop saying that Cheney and Libby were behind Wilson’s trip to Africa. Russert had returned his call on July 10. He’d listened to Libby’s concerns, but said he wasn’t Matthews’s supervisor, so there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Russert suggested Libby call Matthews’s producer.
Then Russert had volunteered: “Do you know that Ambassador Wilson’s wife works for the CIA?”
Libby said no, he didn’t.
Russert answered, according to Libby, “Yeah, all the reporters know it.”
Libby said he wasn’t aware of that either.
Eckenrode asked what Libby thought Russert meant by “all the reporters,” and he said he assumed Russert meant reporters in Washington, DC.
The FBI agents scribbled furiously. Libby was suggesting that even before Novak’s column, many reporters knew Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.
Eckenrode asked if he’d discussed Wilson’s wife with other administration officials, Karl Rove in particular, and Libby confirmed that he and Rove had spoken the Friday that Tenet issued his statement. Rove had told Libby he’d spoken to Bob Novak, that Novak had encountered Wilson in the greenroom at
Meet the Press
, wasn’t impressed by him, and was going to write an article on Wilson. Rove told him that Novak already knew that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, which prompted Libby to tell Rove about his phone call with Russert, in which Russert told him the same thing.
The agents recognized this was critical evidence–that Libby had learned Plame’s identity from Russert and then told Rove about it. It was the first indication that Libby had told the Russert story to someone right after the call occurred, as opposed to FBI agents months after the fact. Rove might be a corroborating witness–but Rove had said nothing about Libby saying this during their interview with him.
Besides Russert, Eckenrode asked Libby what other reporters he’d talked to during the June-July time frame. Libby said he didn’t often speak to the press, but had several contacts related to the serious charges about the State of the Union address and then the Wilson op-ed piece. He mentioned David Sanger from the
New York Times
, to whom he’d spoken on July 2, four days before Wilson’s piece, and Judith Miller two days after, on July 8. He’d met Miller at the dining room of the St. Regis hotel to discuss the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from October 2002, which supported the notion that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons and other WMD. Before the meeting, the vice president had told Libby he wanted the contents of the NIE disseminated to the press to counteract the notion that the administration had deliberately misled the public. The NIE was classified, but Cheney had told him the president had declassified it, and Libby had checked with vice presidential counsel David Addington to make sure the president had that authority and it was okay for him to disclose its contents to a reporter. They also spoke more generally about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The Wilson affair had come up, but Libby said he had “no recollection” of discussing Wilson’s wife with Miller then (consistent with his statement that he’d forgotten about the connection until he was told by Russert on July 10 or 11).
Libby said he’d had a follow-up conversation with Miller again on July 12. This time Miller had asked, “Why did they send this guy?” It isn’t clear exactly what Libby answered. Agent Bond scribbled in her notebook, “Ambassador Wilson’s wife–may have mentioned indirectly. (?)” Bond meant to follow up with another question, but the interview moved on, and she never got back to it.
That conversation with Miller was the same day as the trip to Norfolk, Virginia, for the commissioning of the USS
Ronald Reagan
. Libby described the trip and his conversation on the plane during which the vice president encouraged him to get out the story and use an on-the-record quote. Libby had taken “verbatim” notes of what the vice president wanted him to say, and as soon as they landed, he and his assistant, Jenny Mayfield, and Cathie Martin had gone to an office just off the lobby at Andrews Air Force Base. They’d called reporters Matt Cooper of
Time
, Evan Thomas of
Newsweek
, and Glenn Kessler of the
Washington Post.
When Cooper answered, Libby said he wanted to give him an on-the-record quote, and read the words he’d written down from the vice president. Cooper asked why Wilson kept saying the office of the vice president had sent him to Africa, and Libby said he told him–off-the-record–that reporters were saying Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and she had suggested him for the trip, but that he, Libby, didn’t know if that was true.
Eckenrode was startled: Libby had just acknowledged that he had disclosed Plame’s identity to a reporter, although he was attributing his knowledge to unnamed reporters.
Libby had left a message for Evan Thomas, and had reached Glenn Kessler at the zoo, where he was spending the afternoon with his children. Kessler had said he’d call him back.
Later that week, Libby said he and Andrea Mitchell of NBC exchanged several messages and spoke at some point after July 10. Libby was upset because Mitchell was also making negative comments about the vice president. Like Cooper, she had wanted to know why Wilson was insisting the vice president’s office had sent him. Libby said this posed a dilemma for him: he could have told her about Wilson’s wife, but he didn’t want to have to tell her how he knew that, because Russert was his source and Russert was her boss. Libby thought it would be “awkward” if he told her Russert had told him about Plame’s identity, but hadn’t confided in his own reporter. Still, he thought he “might” have told her that other reporters were saying that Plame worked for the CIA without saying who those reporters were.
And what about Novak? Eckenrode asked.
Libby had spoken to Novak, but only after July 14, when the column appeared, and not about Wilson’s wife. Libby was certain he was not a source for the Plame column.
At this point Tate indicated that the ninety minutes allotted for the interview was over, and Eckenrode asked if they could schedule another session. Tate said yes, but that he and Libby wanted some time to review documents before they spoke again. Like Rove, Libby agreed to submit to a lie detector test if asked. When Libby was asked for a waiver releasing journalists from any promise of confidentiality, Tate intervened and said he’d have to review it before Libby signed anything. The FBI agents closed their notebooks and left.
As they had after the other major interviews, the agents met with Dion and other lawyers working on the investigation for a postmortem at the Justice Department. As trained investigators, they felt they had witnessed a remarkable performance. Their instincts told them that something was awry. They were surprised that Tate had allowed his client to go on at such length and in such detail with the Russert story, when it had already been contradicted by the notes Libby produced indicating the vice president, not Russert, had first told Libby about Plame’s role and identity. Indeed, it was hard to recall another instance of a witness immediately undermining his own alibi. Libby knew Plame’s identity before Novak disclosed it, and he had a motive to discredit Wilson. He was eager to “set the record straight,” which meant refuting Wilson. He had discussed Wilson’s wife with at least one reporter–Matt Cooper–and might have done so with Judith Miller and Andrea Mitchell. Still, they were trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Was Libby’s story plausible?