A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

We already knew that Scooter Libby's defense for perjury is that he simply mixed up the facts over exactly when and how he learned the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. But testimony [1] today from John Hannah, the vice president's national security adviser, goes far beyond that assessment. The entire purpose of Hannah's testimony was to paint Libby as a bumbling idiot plagued with what amounts to chronic amnesia.

Take this excerpt from the NY Times [2]:

"On certain things, Scooter just had an awful memory," said Mr. Hannah. On occasions “too many to count” Mr. Libby would forget details of early-morning conversations by dinnertime.

What?! We all forget a detail here and there, but over the course of his testimony Hannah described a serious psychological condition. Remember that, as Cheney's chief-of-staff, Libby was essentially the cornerstone of the guy running the government, especially when it came to planning the Iraq invasion. People actually called him "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney." [3] No wonder the war was so poorly executed.

Libby's position was surely difficult - Hannah described it as "essentially two full-time jobs." But if Libby couldn't handle it, Cheney should have diffused the workload through others or found someone else who could handle it.

Libby has obviously decided to take the White House down with him though his scapegoat defense. We have certainly learned much about Bush Administration corruption through testimony about how top officials scrambled to reveal a CIA agent's identify to cover up their misleading use of intelligence. But now we learn they kept a man in one of the highest positions in the executive branch who - by the admission of Libby's own case - apparently could hardly remember his own name.

We already knew [4] Cheney himself ordered his staff to leak Plame's name to the press, and that Libby complied (and then lied about it). But this new revelation surrounding the mental wellbeing an ex-chief-of-staff is a significant problem in its own right and says a great deal about the competence of Libby and his bosses during his five-year tenure in the White House.

(by the way, the witness, John Hannah, is probably the most truthful source from the White House since he is the only one who has admitted [5] that "the administration considers 2007 'the year of Iran' and indicated that a US attack was a real possibility.")

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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