In yesterday's indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald laid out the case that Libby had knowingly deceived both investigators and the grand jury about his role in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Today, as Pete Yost reports for the AP, Libby's lawyer sketched out his client's defense.

The lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide is outlining a possible criminal defense that is a time-honored tradition in Washington scandals: A busy official immersed in important duties cannot reasonably be expected to remember details of long-ago conversations.

Friday's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby involves allegations that as Cheney's chief of staff he lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury.

Libby, who resigned immediately, was operating amid "the hectic rush of issues and events at a busy time for our government," according to a statement released by his attorney, Joseph Tate.

"We are quite distressed the special counsel (Patrick Fitzgerald) has not sought to pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr. Libby's recollection and those of others and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements," Tate continued.

"As lawyers, we recognize that a person's recollection and memory of events will not always match those of other people, particularly when they are asked to testify months after the events occurred."

[...]

The facts, prosecutor Fitzgerald said, are that the month before the conversation with Russert, Libby learned about the CIA status of Valerie Plame from Cheney, from a senior CIA officer and from an undersecretary of state.

Yost notes that this same defense was used by those implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, to varying levels of success. It's hard to gauge how the 12 jurors selected for this case will read that defense, but to me, it's not entirely compelling.