The United States v. I. Lewis Libby.(BRIEF ENCOUNTERS)(Brief article)(Book review)

The United States v. l. Lewis Libby Edited and with reporting by Murray Waas, with additional editing and reporting by Jeff Lomonaco Union Square Press 584 pages, $12.95 paper

MURRAY WAAS, A DISCIPLE OF JACK Anderson, the ultimate outsider, has assembled a plump volume of the trial and grand-jury records in the case of I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to the vice president, convicted in March of obstruction of justice and lying in the case involving disclosure of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The transcripts make clear that Waas may have had less interest in Libby's missteps than in the foibles of a cohort of Washington's current insider journalists, among whom Tim Russert, Bob Woodward, Judith Miller (jailed for a time for refusing to testify), and Robert Novak (who first revealed Plame's identity to the public), were the most celebrated. Their accounts of dealing with Libby and other members of the administration constitute an encyclopedia of insiderdom--the anonymous-source-concealment dance, the sometimes transparent charade of selective source protection, the willingness to be spun in exchange for access to power. Most embarrassingly, the trial revealed the far-from-precise methods of top-rank journalists--lost notebooks, illegible notes, shaky recollections. It could happen to anybody, of course, but these were supposed to be among the best.

JAMES BOYLAN is the founding editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and professor emeritus of journalism and history at the University of Massachusetts--Amherst.

Print Get the Mag Weekly Updates