Jury thought Libby was 'fall guy'

WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- Jurors in Washington who convicted I. Lewis Libby of perjury Tuesday believed that he was the "fall guy" for others in the Bush administration, one said.

Denis Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, was the only member of the jury to talk to the press after the verdict. He said that jurors were not convinced by the defense that Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, simply had a series of memory lapses.

Libby was charged with lying to the FBI and a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and the release of her name was allegedly to discredit Wilson after he wrote an op-ed piece critical of the Bush administration and the Iraq war.

Collins said the jurors during 10 days of deliberations sometimes wondered why Libby was the one on trial.

"Where's Rove, where's -- you know, where are these other guys?" he asked, referring to Karl Rove, one of President Bush's top advisers, and Richard Armitage, another former White House aide. Both, according to testimony, leaked Plame's identity.

Wilson, in an interview with MSNBC, said that his wife "wept" when she heard about the verdict.