Chicago Tribune Editorial - Verdict: He lied.

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Verdict: He lied.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published March 7, 2007

Libby lied. That's what the jury said Tuesday. After all the suggestions of faulty memories and who said what to whom, that's what counts. I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, lied to federal agents and grand jurors. He lied during an investigation into how and why a CIA operative was unmasked in the midst of a debate about the Iraq war.

The jury didn't buy the defense that Libby was a busy man with a bad memory who simply forgot what he'd been told.

That answers one serious question. But it leaves a much larger--and more important--one hanging: Why?

Did Libby lie to help the White House avoid embarrassment? Because he wanted to cover his tracks? Because he just didn't think he'd get caught?

We don't know.

Many Americans long ago lost track of all the complicated twists in this case. And yes, some of the trial testimony was so complex and convoluted that it would take a phalanx of color commentators to help you follow the action.

Indeed, what many may remember most is not the case but the collateral damage it generated. Reporters have been dragged into court--and one of them was dragged off to jail for refusing to testify. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago has been accused of excessive zeal in his pursuit of a leak case in which no one was ever charged with leaking the CIA operative's name.

Politics helped drive the public discussion of this case, but politics didn't drive the case itself. Fitzgerald said Tuesday that he had done what "any responsible prosecutor" would do. "It's not the verdict that justifies the investigation," he said. "It's the facts. ... Any lie under oath is serious. The truth is what drives the justice system."

So what is the truth here?

The truth is that top government officials had a choice, and they chose badly. They had a choice when former ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, criticizing one aspect of the administration's rationale for war against Iraq.

Administration officials could try to refute Wilson's words with facts, fully and publicly.

Or they could launch a whispered smear campaign against Wilson to damage his credibility.

They foolishly chose the latter: Libby became a point man in a campaign to discredit a critic of the administration's war policy. In the process, Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, was outed in the press.

As Fitzgerald's prosecution of Libby played out, jurors--like all Americans--got an unflattering glimpse of a White House mobilized for action, ready to crush an opponent even if it meant the questionable declassifying of an intelligence report to undercut Wilson.

So now what? There is much speculation about the next chapter in this saga. Will Bush pardon Libby? Will Libby make a deal with prosecutors and step forward to fill in the blanks?

The full story of why top administration officials got so needlessly overwrought about a former ambassador's allegations in a newspaper commentary has yet to be told.

Americans deserve to hear it.