9 women, 3 men to decide fate of Scooter Libby

The Bush administration factor
The prosecutor wants the trial to stick closely to the five felony counts against Libby: that Libby obstructed an investigation into the leaking of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 and lied to the FBI and a grand jury about three conversations with reporters about her.

Plame's name and employer were disclosed in a newspaper column, attributed to two senior administration figures. The column by Robert Novak was published shortly after Plame's husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused Bush of saying Iraq was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons long after the administration knew the story was untrue.

Walton said during pretrial hearings that he does not want the trial wandering far from the charges. But he responded to Fitzgerald's objections last week by saying the defense has a right to know if a potential juror "has a very negative attitude to the Bush administration."

So the judge gave Wells and Jeffress considerable latitude. He even let them ask several potential jurors if they could assure the court their opposition to Bush's war policies would not subconsciously influence their deliberations.

Politics and Judge Walton interview
National Public Radio interviewed Judge Walton, who got his last three jobs from Republican presidents.  He said that when he was first appointed as a Superior Court judge by President Reagan, he was a Democrat.  He told NPR, "as a judge you don't let party affiliation have an impact," not allowing any hint of his party preferences now. He also told NPR that he is a supporter of affirmative action programs. "I am a product of affirmative action." said Walton. "If not for affirmative action, I wouldn't have gotten into law school," he said.

Politics is an important aspect of the Libby trial. Even some of the questions jury candidates are being asked focus on politics and give some clues about the course the trial will take. For example:

"Do any of you have feelings or opinions about the Bush Administration or any of its policies or actions, whether positive or negative, that might affect your ability to give a former member of the Bush Administration a fair trial?"

"Do you have any feelings or opinions about Vice President Cheney, whether positive or negative, that might affect your ability to be fair in this case or that might affect your ability to fairly judge Vice President Cheney's believability?"

Jurors' political leanings are important because parts of the trial will focus on White House operations in the months leading up to the Iraq war. That's the time period when Libby allegedly talked with reporters about Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent whose husband publicly criticized the Bush administration's justification for war. Libby's defense team wants to find jurors who may be sympathetic to the Bush administration, while prosecutors are looking for jurors who may be more critical of the White House.

More than politics at issue
Potential jurors are also being asked questions that focus on their thoughts regarding memory:

"Is there anyone who believes that everyone's memory is like a tape recorder and therefore all individuals are able to remember exactly what they said and were told in the past?"

"Is there anyone who believes that it is absolutely impossible for a person to believe very strongly that he or she has certain memories about something, even though it is determined that those memories are inaccurate?"

Faulty memory is also a key part of Libby's defense strategy. His lawyers contend that Libby did not intentionally obstruct the investigation into the CIA leak. Instead, his lawyers say he was so preoccupied with his many responsibilities at the White House that he simply forgot the correct sequence of events.

Whatever other arguments over evidence occur, those jurors will hear that Wilson claimed administration officials leaked his wife's identity to punish him and scare other war critics in the intelligence agencies into silence.

They also will hear from the defense that whatever errors Libby made in describing his conversations with reporters in 2003 resulted from innocent memory failure as he was dealing with a wide array of issues involving the war and national security.

NBC's Joel Seidman contributed to this story.

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