Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Vice President's Chief Of Staff to Plead Innocent To Indictments, 11/02/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/libby_11-02.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Is it ever okay to lie about something?

2. Is lying illegal? What kind of lies might be illegal?

3. What is the difference between an intentional lie and an unintentional lie?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Who is I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and why is he in the news?

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, goes to court Thursday to face charges that he lied during the investigation into who revealed the identity of a secret agent working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

2. What is Libby accused of doing?

The prosecutor alleges that Libby lied to the grand jury and obstructed the investigation into whether someone in the government knowingly leaked information about a secret CIA agent to the press.

"Compromising national security information is a very serious matter. And the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised … by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important," said special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

3. What is Libby's expected response to the charges?

Libby, who resigned from his White House position following the indictment, will plead innocent, his lawyers say, claiming that any incorrect information he gave was the result of lapses in memory not intentional acts of deception.

4. What is the Intelligence Protection Act and how does it relate to this case?

Libby's are the first charges stemming from a two-year investigation prompted by Robert Novak's July 2003 newspaper column publicly disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

To knowingly unmask a covert operative is a violation of a 1982 federal law, the Intelligence Protection Act.

Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed piece challenging President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger.

5. Who is the special prosecutor in this case and what did he say Libby told the FBI and the grand jury?

According to Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, Libby told the FBI he learned about Valerie Wilson and that she may have had something to do with her husband's trip to Africa from reporter Tim Russert.

Libby said he wasn't even sure if that information was accurate, but he passed it on to at least two other reporters.

Later, under oath before the grand jury Libby added that he had learned about Mrs. Wilson from Vice President Cheney before his conversation with Russert, but had forgotten it when he and Russert talked.

6. What might happen if Libby goes to trial?

If Libby does go to trial it could be a potentially embarrassing event that highlights the inner workings of a very private administration.

Many White House officials, even Vice President Cheney, could be forced to testify about how they handled intelligence, dealt with the media and built a case to go to war in Iraq, the Washington Post reported.

7. How does the Iraq War factor into this case?

When making the claim to go to war with Iraq, President Bush said former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program posed an immediate threat to the United States.

Wilson said the CIA sent him to Niger in 2002 to investigate the uranium claim but that he found no evidence to support it. He said his wife's identity was leaked as revenge for his criticizing President Bush and the Iraq war.

Democratic leader Senator Harry Reid of Nevada said the case is "about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its cases for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president."

8. According to the article, how serious are Republicans taking these charges against Libby?

But Republican columnist David Brooks noted that the prosecutor would have announced bigger charges if there were bigger crimes.

"It was about one person, and it was about somebody calling a series of reporters, not about a big conspiracy, not about broader issues," Brooks said.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. The original purpose of the grand jury investigation was to determine if any wrongdoing occurred in the disclosing of a CIA operative's identity to the public. Libby was not charged with violating the Intelligence Protection Act. Why is this case significant? Do you agree with the special prosecutor that Libby's alleged actions are important? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning.

2. Have you ever lied without meaning to? How can you tell if someone lied on purpose or not?

3. Do you believe Libby's expected argument that any incorrect information he gave was the result of poor memory and not intentional acts of deception? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning. Do you now have enough information to make a judgment?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.