According to NBC: “Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team confirms the news. . . . Libby’s lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be ‘central themes’ of Libby’s defense. Libby’s lawyers write: ‘…any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory.’”

“Libby’s lawyers say that, during Libby’s hectic days handling sensitive national-security matters, “it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment status.”

People who function at Libby’s level don’t “forget.” That’s why they’re hired in the first place.

This post was written by Mary Mancini