The so-called "CIA leak" case was completely bogus from the beginning. Even before Attorney General Gonzales appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor, the Justice Department knew that it was Deputy Secretary of State (and administration critic) Richard Armitage who told Bob Novak (and Bob Woodward) that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.
Fitzgerald either concluded that "outing" Plame wasn't a crime — that is, Plame wasn't covert, and thus her identity wasn't protected by the statute — or that he'd give Armitage a pass on that major felony, and instead try to trip up someone else on picayune perjury charges.
Fitzgerald apparently glommed onto the left's (and media's) baseless contention that there was a Cheney-Rove-Libby conspiracy to persecute Wilson, and decided to get to the bottom of it. Or maybe he just liked the idea of having an all-powerful, high-profile, cushy government job with an unlimited expense account.
In any case, Fitzgerald "caught" Libby claiming that a conversation took place on a Friday, when it really took place on a Tuesday. Or maybe it was a Monday, not a Thursday. Was it perjury or forgetfulness? Fitzgerald persuaded the jury it was the former (with the help of a hostile judge). But consider this: no two witnesses who testified in that case had the same recollection of whom they talked to when.
Joe Wilson has demonstrably lied about his Niger trip and his wife every step of the way. The source of the Plame "leak" has been known from the beginning. The appointment of a special prosecutor was a stupid, foolish attempt to assuage unassuageable critics, and it should never have happened. Fitzgerald's dogged pursuit of something, anything, to charge someone connected to Cheney with was unconscionable. The conviction of Lewis Libby was a gross miscarriage of justice.
Pardon him now, Mr. President. And apologize for the suffering your administration's incompetence and disunity have caused this man.