Observers of the CIA leak case trial may be asking themselves one question: "Are there twelve people in America that don't dislike the Bush Adminstration?" Because, after reading several media and blogger reports, it seems that "legal eagles" working on the trial for former Bush and Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby are having problems finding them.
According to CNN, after potential jurors were interviewed by lawyers Thursday, "several were disqualified by midday after voicing negative feelings" about the administration. Of 25 potential jurors, CNN reports that "fourteen have been excused."
Among the excused, as ABC News' The Blotter reported, was a woman who revealed that she works for the same company that the "outed" Valerie Plame Wilson once toiled in secrecy for – or "not-so-secretly" according to Libby's defense.
"In an ironic twist at the CIA leak trial, after numerous dismissals of jurors for bias against the current administration, a female member of the jury pool told Judge Walton, 'I work for the CIA,'" Brian Ross writes.
The Blotter post continues, "The woman revealed that she did not know Plame, had never met her and had not followed the case because she did not read the newspaper. She said she only watched the local ABC News channel in the mornings. Asked about what she thought of the media, the woman said, 'We never hear anything positive in the news about the CIA.'"
In Thursday's Washington Post, Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein write, "To see how small a town Washington really is, drop in on jury selection at the trial of I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, where so far nearly every juror candidate seems to have a connection to the players or events surrounding the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity."
"There is the software database manager whose wife works as a prosecutor for the Justice Department, and who counts the local U.S. attorney and a top official in Justice's criminal division as neighbors and friends," the Post article continues. "A housecleaner who works at the Watergate and knows Condoleezza Rice, not by her title of secretary of state, but as the 'lady who lives up on the fifth floor.' And a former Washington Post reporter whose editor was now-Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward; he went to barbecues at the house of NBC's Tim Russert, a neighbor, and just published a book on the CIA and spying."
"The 38 possible questions the jurors will be asked include whether they know any of the potential witnesses and whether they would 'have any difficulty fairly judging the believability of former or present members of the Bush Administration…[or] a member of the news media,'" Brian Beutler reported for Raw Story the other day.
"They’ll also be asked whether they harbor 'feelings or opinions about the Bush Administration or any of its policies or actions, whether positive or negative, that might affect' their ability to give Libby a fair trial," Beutler added.
(CNN has a list of the questions for jurors which can be accessed here.)
In an unprecedented event in the history of Internet journalism, bloggers were credentialed and seated at the trial, liveblogging the proceedings.
At Firedoglake, blogger Pachacutec observed this morning, "We may be walking backwards today."
But, in an update just before 6 PM EST, Pachacutec added, "We now stand at 30 qualified jurors on the pool, but we need 36. It took us all day to get 6, so the Judge adjourned for the night and hopes to complete jury selection Monday. Opening statements, he said, will not commence until Tuesday at the earliest."
On the other side of the political spectrum, Clarice Feldman guest-blogging (or "guest-commenting") at Just One Minute, noted that one retired postal worker held no "opinions about [the] credibility of [the] Bush Administration."
In the MSNBC video below, Hardball's David Shuster reports further on the juror crisis, noting that out of the first twenty-four prospective jurors, only four were African-American, an "unusual breakdown given that D.C. is seventy-percent African-American."
Observers of the CIA leak case trial may be asking themselves one question: "Are there twelve people in America that don't dislike the Bush Adminstration?" Because, after reading several media and blogger reports, it seems that "legal eagles" working on the trial for former Bush and Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby are having problems finding them.