December 1, 2006: Judge Releases Classified Document Ruling; Libby to Ask for 129 Classified Documents for Trial

Judge Reggie Walton releases a heavily redacted, 38-page document containing his November 15, 2006 opinion about the release of classified documents on behalf of the Libby defense team (see November 15, 2006 and November 22, 2006). Material pertaining to the classified documents themselves is redacted from the document. According to Walton’s ruling, Lewis Libby wants to use 129 classified documents to bolster his contention that his systemic and widespread memory failures led him to misinform investigators about his role in exposing CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see January 31, 2006). According to the Associated Press, if Walton decides to bar the use of some or all of those classified documents, Libby’s lawyers could then ask for a dismissal of the case. “If the case goes forward and the evidence is allowed,” the AP writes, “the trial could offer a behind-the-scenes look at the White House in the early months of the war in Iraq.” Walton has said he has tried to balance national security concerns with Libby’s right to a fair trial (see November 15, 2006 and November 22, 2006). He has said that pre-approving classified evidence “requires a court to play the role of Johnny Carson’s character Carnac the Magnificent by requiring it to render rulings before knowing the exact context of how those rulings will coincide with other evidence that has actually been developed at trial.” Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has characterized Libby’s threat to reveal classified information during the trial “graymail” (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, and (February 16, 2006)). Libby’s defense will argue that Libby was absorbed by several major national security areas of concern during the time Plame Wilson was exposed: threats from Islamist terror groups, working with Homeland Security to bolster US defenses, countering the nuclear threat posed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan (see Late February 1999) and North Korea, the Iranian threat, developing security in Iraq after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, Israeli-Palestinian relations, incidents between Iraq and Turkey, and the unrest in Liberia as it threatened the safety of the US Embassy in Monrovia. [US District Court of the District of Columbia, 12/1/2006 ; Associated Press, 12/1/2006; MSNBC, 12/4/2006]