Recollection problems haunt Fitzgerald's first two witness

Byron York:

Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who is on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice, claims he doesn’t remember, or mis-remembers, some of the conversations he had with reporters concerning the former CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson. That, Libby says, accounts for the differences between his testimony about talks with journalists like Tim Russert and Matthew Cooper and the accounts of Russert and Cooper themselves.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald didn’t buy Libby’s defense, ultimately deciding to indict Libby in November 2005. But now, at the long-awaited trial, some of Fitzgerald’s witnesses are having memory problems of their own. Under cross examination by Libby’s lawyers, two of Fitzgerald’s first witnesses had to concede that they could not remember aspects, sometimes important aspects, of their roles in the Plame matter and that they gave conflicting accounts of events during interviews with the FBI, during appearances before Fitzgerald’s grand jury, and at the trial itself.

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Read the interchange between the witnesses and Libby's attorneys. They are doing a good job of showing that the prosecution's witnesses have had different recollections of the same events on the several occasions that they have provided information and including their testimony at the trial. It appears to be a skillful cross examination. It is surprising that Fitzgerald would open his case with such weak witnesses. He has already put himself in rehab mode.

Links to the government exhibits in the case are available at this DOJ site.