Pursuant to the grand jury leak investigation, Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007, on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.

[7] That statement rebuts the prosecution's closing argument that as a result of the disclosure of Plame's identity, a CIA operative could be "arrested, tortured, or killed.

The Plame affair ensued after the identity of Valerie Plame was leaked to journalists, which took place after her husband Joseph Wilson criticized the Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War on July 6, 2003 by publicly stating that he had found no evidence for the claim that Saddam Hussein's regime had attempted to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger (a claim that first emerged due to the Niger uranium forgeries) in a New York Times op-ed entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa".

[10] Wilson had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger but had found no evidence for the claim that Iraq had been attempting to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa, as part of an active weapons of mass destruction program.

President Bush's controversial "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union Address alluded to the Niger claim: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

[13] On July 14, 2003, a newspaper column commenting on Wilson's claims written by Robert Novak, entitled "Mission to Niger", disclosed Plame's name and status as an "operative" who worked in a CIA division on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Wilson, her husband, stated in various interviews and subsequent writings (as listed in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth) that his wife's identity was covert and that members of the administration knowingly revealed it as retribution for his op-ed entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa", published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003.

[10] Some argue that his wife's employment at the CIA was no longer classified: Victoria Toensing, who helped craft the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, claims in her Washington Post opinion piece "The Plame Game: Was This a Crime?"

Libby was charged with lying to FBI agents and to the grand jury about two conversations with reporters, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

On December 30, 2003, Patrick J. Fitzgerald was named Special Counsel by Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and charged with conducting the investigation into the Plame affair.

Referring to Plame's husband, though not by name, a May 6, 2003, Times column by Kristof raised the possibility the Bush administration might have disregarded prewar intelligence suggesting Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

[21]On February 9, 2006, Murray Waas reported in The National Journal that Libby had testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized by his superiors to disclose classified information regarding intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons programs.

[23] On April 5, 2006, court filings distributed widely in the press and news media the next day, revealed that Libby had testified during the grand jury investigation about information that Vice President Cheney and President Bush had authorized disclosing; reportedly, the original intent of the filing was to restrict Libby's access to further classified information in defense discovery.

[24] A court filing by Libby's defense team argued that Valerie Plame was not foremost on the minds of administration officials as they sought to rebut charges made by her husband, Joseph Wilson, that the White House manipulated intelligence to make a case for invasion.

[35] On June 5, 2007, Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Libby to 30 months in federal prison, a fine of $250,000, and two years of supervised release, including 400 hours of community service.

[46] Given those non-binding guidelines, according to lawyer, author, New Yorker staff writer, and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Anderson Cooper 360°, the sentence based on Libby's conviction on four counts could have been between "one and a half to three years.

"[50] Although "Libby's attorneys asked that the order be stayed ... U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton denied the request and told Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff that he has 10 days to appeal the ruling"; in denying Libby's request, which had questioned Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's "authority to charge Libby," as quoted by CNN, Judge Walton said: "'Everyone is accountable, and if you work in the White House, and if it's perceived that somehow (you're) linked at the hip, the American public would have serious questions about the fairness of any investigation of a high-level official conducted by the attorney general,'" supporting Fitzgerald's authority in the case.

[50] The judge was also responding to an Amicus curiae brief that he had permitted to be filed, which had not apparently convinced him to change his mind, as he subsequently denied Libby bail during his appeal.

Many political observers believe that if Libby gets bail and his appeals fail, he stands a better chance of receiving a presidential pardon because President Bush's term will be nearing its end.

"[52] Though "Judge Walton granted the scholars permission to file their brief," Gerstein reports, "his order doing so contained a caustic footnote questioning the motivation of the legal academics and suggesting he might not give a great deal of weight to their opinion[:] It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the court on behalf of a criminal defendant," the judge wrote.

If the president does not pardon him, and if an appeals court refuses to second-guess Judge Walton's decision, Mr. Libby will probably be ordered to report to prison in six to eight weeks' time.

The decision will increase pressure on President George W. Bush to decide soon whether to pardon Libby, 56, as the former White House official's supporters have urged.

[55] U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a press release about the verdict, urging President Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby, and other Democratic politicians followed his lead.

[45] "The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials", held by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and chaired by Congressman Conyers, occurred on July 11, 2007.

[64][65][66] Speaking to the media outside the courtroom after the verdict, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "The jury worked very long and hard and deliberated at length ... [and] was obviously convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had lied and obstructed justice in a serious manner.

'"[34][67][68] As "the trial confirmed [that the leak] came first from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage", and since Fitzgerald did not charge Armitage and expects to charge no one else, Libby's conviction "closed ... the nearly four-year investigation into how the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, and her classified job at the CIA were leaked to reporters in 2003 just days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence.

[69][70] During his media appearance outside the courtroom after the verdict in the Libby case, Fitzgerald fielded questions from the press about others involved in the Plame affair and in the CIA leak grand jury investigation, such as Richard Armitage and Vice President Dick Cheney, whom he had said "[t]here is a cloud over," caused by Libby's obstruction of justice, as already addressed in his conduct of the case and in his closing arguments in court.

[75] President Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence became the subject of a hearing on "The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials" held by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative John Conyers, Jr., on July 11, 2007.

Beginning on February 26, the media reported that one of the twelve jurors had been "dismissed" because she "was exposed to information about the trial ... but the judge allowed the jury to continue deliberations with 11 members.

"[95] YearlyKos, a political convention for American liberal political activists, organized by readers and writers of Daily Kos, an influential American political blog, which took place in Chicago from August 2 through August 5, 2007, hosted a panel discussion, on August 2, by Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake, Jeralyn Merritt (TalkLeft), and Marcy Wheeler (The Next Hurrah) on their experiences of "live-blogging" the Libby trial, moderated by Merritt; the panel also included Sheldon L. Snook, Chief of Staff to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who was "the court official in charge of news media at the Libby trial.