Jury selection begins in the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case.
Libby is not charged with an unauthorized disclosure of a CIA agent's name, but instead with repeatedly lying under oath about his role in talking to reporters about Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Wilson had been sent to Niger by the CIA to ascertain whether Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium for an Iraqi nuclear-weapons development program — something that Wilson concluded was untrue.
When President Bush continued to make that claim as part of his justification for the war in Iraq, Wilson went public with his findings. Eight days later, his wife's CIA identify was leaked to the press.
As a result of the investigation that followed, only Libby has been charged.
Libby says he never lied — but that if he said things that were incorrect, it was because his memory was faulty. In screening potential jurors at the federal courthouse in Washington, potential panelists were asked whether they had opinions about the Bush administration that would prevent them from hearing the case impartially.
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