THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY MARCH 11
NEWS
7A
》 CIA TRIAL
Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, left, and his wife Harriet Grant, leave federal court Tuesday after the jury reached its verdict in his peruvian trial. Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing a leak investigation.
Jury finds Libby guilty
BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that reached into the highest levels of the Bush administration.
The verdict culminated a nearly four year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the administration were eager to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Libby, who was once Cheney's most trusted adviser and an assistant to President Bush, was expressionless as the jury verdict was announced on the 10th day of deliberations. He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5 but under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to face far less. Defense attorneys immediately promised to ask for a new trial or appeal the conviction.
The case brought new attention to the Bush administration's muchcriticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war.
"We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated," defense attorney Theodore Wells told a throng of reporters.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has led the leak
investigation, said no additional charges would be filed. That means nobody will be charged with the leak and Libby, who was not the source for the original column outing Plame, will be the only one to face trial.
"I think that any administration that has to go through a prolonged news story that is unpleasant and one that is difficult — when you're under the constraints and the policy of not commenting on an ongoing criminal matter — that can be very frustrating" she said.
Perino said "I would not agree" with any characterization of the verdict as embarrassing for the White House.
Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame's identity and whom he told. Prosecutors said he learned about Plame from Cheney and others, discussed her name with reporters and, fearing prosecution, made up a story to make those discussions seem innocuous.
Libby said he told investigators his honest recollections and blamed any misstatements on a faulty memory. He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.
White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush respected the jury's verdict but "was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family."
outside court said the jury had 34 poster-size pages filled with information they distilled from the trial testimony.
"Even if he forgot that someone told him about Mrs. Wilson, who had told him, it seemed very unlikely he would not have remembered about Mrs. Wilson," the juror, Denis Collins, said.
One juror who spoke to reporters
Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, said jurors wanted to hear from others involved in the case, including Bush political adviser Karl Rove, who was one of two sources for the original leak.
"I will say there was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury. It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Wheres Rove?' Where are these other guys?" Collins said.
Reaction to the conviction on Capitol Hill was swift. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed the jury's verdict and called on Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby. Before the trial began, the Justice Department had said that it had no pardon file active for Libby.
"It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." Reid said.
Wilson and Plame have sued Libby, Cheney and several other administration officials in federal court. Attorneys at the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which brought the lawsuit, praised the conviction and Fitzgerald's team.
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》 CRASH
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Plane hits former in-law's home
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BY TOM DAVIES
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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BEDI ORD, Ind. — Eric Johnson told his ex wife, "You're not going to get her," shortly before the small plane he was piloting with his 8-year-old daughter crashed into his former mother in law's house, killing them both.
She gave officers no indication of any threats against Emily, Parsley said, and told police that her ex husband, a property manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, had recently taken the girl to Cancun for a few days of vacation.
The couple had divorced in November after 12 years of marriage, Pace said.
said Tuesday.
The mother-in-law, Vivian Pace, wasn't injured and told reporters outside her damaged home Tuesday about the phone call.
Beth Johnson went to the Bedford Police Department the morning of the crash to file a missing person report, police Maj. Dennis Parsley said Tuesday.
She said her daughter, Beth Johnson, was worried after young Emily didn't show up for school after a weekend vacation with her father. She finally reached Eric Johnson by cell phone shortly before the crash.
("Emily) was to spend the weekend with dad, and dad was supposed to bring her to school Monday morning," Parsley said.
"I've got her, and you're not going to get her," he told her, according to Pace.
"That was the only way he could hurt Beth. That was the only way he could get to her," she said.
At Parkview Primary School in Bedford, where Emily was a first-grader, counselors were called in to help the students, Principal Sari Wood said Tuesday.
State and Bedford police were treating the case as a suicide and homicide, State Police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. He said they had yet to find any notes indicating Johnson's intentions with the flight, but the fact that the house was his ex-wife's mother's home raised serious questions.
morning. Less than two hours later, officials said, the plane smashed into a wall of Pace's home.
Johnson, a student pilot who had soled before, had taken off in a leased, single-engine Cessna from a southern Indiana airport near Bloomington on Monday
Andrew Todd Fox of the National Transportation Safety Board declined to say if Johnson, 47, said anything through the plane's radio before the crash. The airport has no controller on duty, so no recording was available of any communication, he said.
Pace believes the crash was deliberate.
"All of those things together lead us in the direction that this was done intentionally," Bursten
"We're all grieving over this," Wood said. "She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids."
Darron Cummings/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vivian Pace talks about the plane that crashed into her home in Bedford, Ind. Eric Johnson crashed a rented Cessna into his former mother-in-law's southern Indiana home Monday, killing himself and his八岁-old daughter, Emily Johnson. Empolyse's prangdauntress
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