I haven’t posted here at all about the Libby trial since it’s start, but today it took an interesting twist as Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus “testified in court this morning that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, not I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was the first person to tell him that a prominent critic of the Iraq war was married to undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.”

Pincus testified as the first defense witness at Libby’s perjury trial. He was followed today by five other Washington journalists, including Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward and syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak. All of them testified either that they learned about Plame from other administration officials or that they had conversations with Libby, who did not mention her to them — or both.

Ari Fleischer, the WaPo notes “testified last month as a prosecution witness that he mentioned Plame only to two reporters — John Dickerson, then of Time Magazine, and David Gregory of NBC News — during a trip that President Bush took to Africa.”

Pincus, who covers national security and intelligence issues for The Post, told jurors that he was at his newsroom desk on Saturday, July 12, 2003, when he had a telephone conversation with a source. They were discussing a story he was preparing about a trip Wilson took to Niger on behalf of the CIA to explore reports that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from the African nation for its nuclear weapons program.

“The person I was calling suddenly swerved off and said . . . ‘Don’t you know, in effect, his wife works at the CIA, is an analyst on weapons of mass destruction?’ ” Pincus testified. He told the court that the source said, “That’s why people aren’t paying attention” to Wilson’s findings that the Iraq reports were unfounded, because he had been sent on the mission by his wife.

Asked by defense attorney William Jeffress Jr. whether his source had been Libby, Pincus replied that he had not. Asked who the source was, Pincus replied: “Ari Fleischer.”

Under cross-examination by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Pincus said that Fleischer did not tell him the person from whom he had learned about Plame. Fleischer said during the trial that he had been told by Libby, over a lunch in a White House dining hall.

When Pincus gave a deposition to investigators during a federal probe of the CIA leak, he did not identify his source in the conversation he recounted this morning. He told jurors that he was naming Fleischer now because the former press secretary gave him permission last week.

Talk about your tangled web… Libby’s defense attorneys are casting Libby as the White House scapegoat.

Firedoglake has daily coverage from the trial. Check out their latest here and here.

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