After lunch break, Ari Fleischer continues testimony. He has contradicted the story that Scooter Libby tells of how he first learned of Valerie Plame’s CIA secret identity on July 10, 2003. Fleischer spoke of how Libby told him over lunch on July 7, 2003, that Plame — Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife– worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Over lunch in the White House mess, Libby brought up the name of Valerie Plame Wilson and said, “She works at the C.I.A., she works in the counter-proliferation division. I thought it was kind of odd,” Mr. Fleischer added.

Fleischer’s testimony about the lunch could be very damaging to Libby — who told a grand jury that he believed he first learned about Plame in a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC on Thursday, July 10, 2003 — unless defense attorneys can somehow shake him and undermine his credibility.

The prosecution asked again about the ’sixteen words’ in the State of the Union Address concerning how Iraq allegedly sought uranium from Niger. “The new White House position was that those words should not have been inserted” into the speech. Did this calm matters? No, says Fleischer, a furor erupted…

Inside the White House, numerous officials began talking about the affair, about who was to blame, and how to deal with the press regarding it all –among the officials, of course, Scooter Libby. Fleischer then recounts conversations with reporters during a trip to Africa — when the “sixteen words” flap was all they wanted to focus on.

In one of many conversations on the subject with the press, Fleischer tried to address the issues so as to make the matter go away. Who sent Ambassador Wilson to Africa? Was his allegation that the Administration had twisted intelligence to lead the nation to war accurate? etc.

Fleischer says he had been told by two WH officials that the Vice President was not involved in sending Wilson, as some thought. They had little reaction, and didn’t think it was particularly newsworthy that the CIA and not the VP had sent Wilson on his trip. Fleischer never in his “wildest dreams” thought that telling reporters about the CIA — through the intercession of Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame — had sent Wilson meant that he was disclosing classified information about Plame’s identity.

Defense attorneys cross examine Fleischer about the lunchtime conversation on July 7 with Libby. It was the first time they had ever had lunch together.

Fleischer had had a press gaggle that morning and used information given to him by Cathie Martin in Dick Cheney’s office — “I said what the Vice President’s office told me to say.”

During the Afrrica trip, Fleischer tried to manage the growing press storm over the uranium in Niger story. “Why did the President say those sixteen words in the State of the Union Address?” they still wanted to know.

Back to the Libby lunch — a short conversation about Ambassador Wilson’s wife, “very matter of fact and plain-spoken,” says Fleischer.

Defense asks Fleischer about mispronouncing Plame’s name. Fleischer says he “didn’t pay any attention to her name” at that time. Defense tries to get Fleischer to say he read the name first–and didn’t hear it first from Libby. Fleischer demurs, and says her name “didn’t matter much to me.”

Can he be sure that he heard the name from Libby at the lunch? “Absolute certainty? No,” says Fleischer–a victory for the defense, it would appear…

Fleischer was more concerned with Libby telling him at the lunch that the CIA (in the person of Wilson’s wife) had sent Wilson to Africa. “This backed up what I had been telling the press,” he says. “The press was interested in who sent Wilson,” according to Fleischer. The reporters were more interested in the substance of what Wilson had reported–and not who had sent him to Africa.

A the time, the press was all over the ’sixteen words story’–”How could this happen?” they wanted to know, according to Fleischer.

Fleischer is then asked about a CIA report that detailed Ambassador Wilson’s findings, about which he testifed before the grand jury. He told the grand jury that the report mentioned Wilson by name. Now it appears that the document does not mention Wilson by name — he is only referred to in it as “a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record.”

Even if it doesn’t have Wilson’s name ‘verbatim,” Fleischer says it was always clear to him that the report was all about Wilson’s trip. But the defense may have scored a small point in establishing that Fleischer’s testimony to the grand jury was at least inexact — if not erroneous — as they continue to labor to impeach his credibility.