Reporters' Info Sought - Plame case (WaPo)

[katty]

cont'd:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012602199_pf.html

Reporters' Information Sought
Leak Case Files Could Be Key to Libby Defense, Lawyers Say

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 27, 2006; A04

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney's former top aide urged a court yesterday to force prosecutors to turn over all the information they obtained from reporters about their confidential conversations with Bush administration sources in the course of a two-year CIA leak investigation.

Attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said they must cast a wide net to learn about any conversations regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame, and that the information could be crucial to Libby's defense against perjury and obstruction charges. In court papers, the lawyers said they will probably subpoena reporters and officials later to thoroughly investigate how widely Plame's identity was known before her name appeared in the news media in July 2003.

Libby was indicted by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald on five felony counts of lying to the FBI and a grand jury. The indictment asserted that Libby leaked information about Plame's CIA role to two reporters but pretended he had learned the information from Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News, and that he passed it along as unverified reporter chatter.