I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby AP PHOTO

He is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal in two decades.

Jurors said they did not believe Libby's main defense: that he hadn't lied but had a bad memory.

The case has cost Cheney his most trusted adviser, and the trial revealed Cheney's personal obsession with criticism of the legitimacy of the war in Iraq.

Trial testimony made clear that President George W. Bush secretly declassified a portion of the prewar intelligence estimate that Cheney quietly sent Libby to leak to Judith Miller of The New York Times in 2003 to rebut criticism by another journalist. Bush, Cheney and Libby were the only three people in government aware of the effort.

The Japan Times Weekly: March 10, 2007
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