Libby Sentenced: some background

washingtonpost.com:

Defense attorneys sought to portray Libby as a bright man with a notoriously bad memory who innocently misremembered what he knew and said about Plame, who, they contended, was a trivial matter in comparison with his crushing workload of sensitive national security issues. After the trial, a few members of the jury said they and fellow jurors did not believe that the defendant's memory was as faulty as the defense said.

The month-long trial cast a harsh light on the way power and information flow through Washington. It offered a window onto the nation's divisions over the war, the Bush administration's disdain for critics and the complex working relationship between an elite tier of Washington journalists and their confidential sources inside the government.

The weeks of testimony and evidence also exposed rivalries within the White House, and the close guarding of information, even among the president's top aides. The trial also made clear that Cheney was involved more personally than had previously been known in the administration's campaign to discredit Wilson.