When meeting with White House official Dan Bartlett several days after the lunch with Libby on July 7, 2003, Fleischer does not say anything when Bartlett’s remarks about Plame being in the CIA or having sent Wilson to Africa — despite the fact that Libby had told Fleischer this several days before. The defense is aggressively going after Fleischer now, in an obvious attempt to undercut the damage his earlier testimony about hearing Plame’s secret identity from Libby on July 7. “Why didn’t you tell him you had heard this before?’ the defense demands. They then quote Fleischer’s grand jury testimony again, to the effect that he simply didn’t think the revelation was so important.

Fleischer interpreted Bartlett’s statement as him saying that the CIA was incompetent in the Plame affair. Bartlett also never told him any of the information was classified in any way.

There was a lot of tension between White House and CIA over the ’sixteen words’ issue — Ambassador Wilson’s report was only one of the many problems associated with the controversy. CBS News, for example, reported that the president knew the words were false and put them into the SOTU address, nonetheless… Soon the many small problems began to merge into one huge problem…

Court breaks for a brief recess…