Jury selection ends for day in Libby perjury trial

News media credibility
The believability of the news media was also significant part of the questions to the potential jurors were asked to answer.

"Would any of you have any difficulty fairly judging the believability of a person who is a member of the news media?" asked Walton.

Jurors were asked specifically if they had watched NBC's "Meet the Press" or had an opinion of moderator Tim Russert.

(MSNBC.com is owned, in part, by NBC News.)

Presidential pardon?
At the White House Tuesday, press secretary Tony Snow declined to discuss the case. Asked about the possibility of a presidential pardon for Libby, he replied, "I'm not aware of any discussions about a pardon."

The leak of Plame's identity touched off a political scandal and an FBI investigation that Libby is accused of obstructing. Attorneys for both sides want to know how closely potential jurors have been following the case.

Juror restrictions
Walton prohibited jurors from reading newspapers, watching TV news or listening to the radio. He said court officials would screen newspapers and provide jurors with edited copies to read.

After the group was asked 38 questions, each juror was then scheduled to take the stand for follow-up questions from defense attorneys, prosecutors and the judge.

Twelve jurors along with four alternates will be chosen from the pool of 100 possible jurors. Once the jury pool has been narrowed to 36, Judge Walton will check the criminal backgrounds of those potential jurors before lawyers make their final selections.

Fitzgerald requested the background checks because, during his prosecution of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, two jurors were replaced because they had police records. Defense attorneys are using that to challenge Ryan's conviction and Fitzgerald doesn't want to face the same problem in the Libby case.

Walton expects jury selection to take two to three days and if a jury is seated by Thursday, has scheduled opening arguments to begin next Monday. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks.

A glimpse of the inside
The trial should give the public glimpses of how administration insiders responded to a high-level critic -- former ambassador Joseph Wilson -- who claimed the president and his closest advisers distorted intelligence and lied to push the nation into war with Iraq.

The case won't assess blame for the leak itself, however. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has acknowledged being the original leaker, has not been charged.

Libby plans to be his own star witness. He says he didn't lie to investigators.

During the Plame scandal and the FBI investigation, he says, he was dealing with terrorist threats, the war in Iraq and emerging nuclear programs in Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. He says those overshadowed the Plame issue and clouded his memory about how and when he learned Plame's identity.

NBC producer Joel Seidman and Kelly O'Donnell contributed to this story.

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