More Bad News for Libby

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified Monday that “Scooter” Libby revealed Valerie Plame’s CIA status three days before he claims to have learned the information. Fleischer also said Libby mentioned that the matter was “hush-hush.”

New York Times:

Mr. Fleischer, testifying in Mr. Libby’s trial under a grant of immunity, said Mr. Libby told him over lunch on July 7, 2003, that the wife of a critic of President Bush’s Iraq policy worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. That is three days before he told a grand jury that he first learned her name.

“This is hush-hush,” Mr. Fleischer recalled Mr. Libby as saying in effect. “This is on the Q.T. Not many people know about this.”

Mr. Fleischer said he had lunch with Mr. Libby in the White House mess that Monday, July 7, and that they had a general conversation ("We talked a little football") before Mr. Libby brought up the subject of Valerie Wilson, a covert C.I.A. agent whose husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat, had criticized the president’s Iraq policy in an opinion essay in The New York Times.

The former Bush spokesman testified that Mr. Libby said, “She works at the C.I.A., she works in the counter-proliferation division.”

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nytimes.com

Ari Fleischer (center) arriving at the court Monday.