WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorneys for former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby say the testimony of the government's first witness in the CIA leak trial may have been improperly influenced. Marc Grossman, the former No. 3 official at the State Department, took the stand Tuesday and testified that in June 2003 he was the first person to tell Libby that one of the Bush administration's most vocal critics on Iraq was married to a CIA operative.
Libby is charged with lying and obstructing the investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. The leak came shortly after her husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, emerged as a prominent war critic.
Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told a grand jury that he believed he learned Plame's identity from NBC newsman Tim Russert. Grossman is the first in a string of government witnesses who will say they told Libby about Plame well before his conversation with Russert.
Foreshadowing a tactic he'll use throughout the case, defense attorney Theodore Wells planned to attack Grossman's credibility. Grossman's memory is spotty and Wells believes his testimony may have been influenced by his former boss at the State Department, Richard Armitage. The night before Grossman spoke to the FBI, Armitage confessed that he was Novak's original source and was a subject of the investigation.
As Grossman continued to the cooperate in the probe, defense attorneys say, he went back to Armitage and told him what the FBI was asking and discussed his answers. Prosecutors sought to block Wells from inquiring about those conversations but U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton refused.
"It seems to me there might have been some inappropriate behavior taking place," Walton said.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to make the case that it's implausible Libby would forget several conversations he had with officials about Plame.
Wells counters that Libby's memories are no more flawed than those of the government's key witnesses. The more doubt he can cast on their stories, the more likely Wells is to convince a jury that Libby made honest mistakes.
In opening arguments Monday, both sides described a tumultuous period in the White House in which the Bush administration was eager to rebut criticism from Plame's husband, Wilson, who charged in a New York Times opinion piece in July 2003 that the administration had distorted intelligence to justify its invasion of Iraq.
Fitzgerald believes that in such a high-stakes environment, Libby never would have forgotten details about in conversations with reporters. Wells countered that Libby was busy fielding intelligence on terrorist threats, possible assassination plots and Middle East tensions.
Wells also accused the White House with unfairly blaming Libby for the leaks to protect political strategist Karl Rove's own leaks.
"They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Wells said, recalling Libby's end of a conversation with Cheney. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."
The trial is expected to last up to six weeks.
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Associated Press Writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.
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Documents for the Libby trial may be found at:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/index.html
