Year: 2007
Let’s Have a Look at Scooter Libby’s ‘Exceptional Public Service’
When Pres. George Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence on Monday, he cited Libby’s “years of exceptional public service.” A casual observer might be surprised to learn Libby has been an “exceptional” public servant, since what is generally known about him is that he was a necon bureaucrat whose claim to fame prior to his crimes was his role in assisting Pres. Bush and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney in taking the country to war under false pretexts.
Having been found guilty of lying to a federal grand jury and FBI investigators and obstructing an investigation into an alleged White House conspiracy to reveal the identity of a covert CIA specialist in WMD, Libby has secured his place in history as the first sitting White House official to be indicted since the administration of U.S. Grant, a Republican, in the 1870s. He is also the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter, also a Republican, in the Iran-Contra affair in 1990.
Libby met Paul Wolfowitz at Yale. Wolfowitz became his mentor, and the two have worked together off and on over the years. Ironically, their separate roles in the Bush administration have led both men to fall from grace on parallel tracks. While Libby was under investigation, Wolfowitz resigned from the Pentagon, reportedly because of his role in botching the war. Around the time of Libby’s trial, Wolfowitz was forced out of the World Bank amid corruption charges.
At the White House, as the vice president’s chief of staff, Libby was Cheney’s closest confidante. Libby rode to work with Cheney every morning and was by his side throughout the day. He once told CNN’s Larry King, “I’m a great fan of the vice president. I think he’s one of the smartest, most honorable people I’ve ever met.”
Here are a few highlights from Scooter Libby’s bio:
[…]
Prophetic ’04 Bush Quote: CIA Leaker ‘Will Be Taken Care of’
On February 10, 2004, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that a criminal investigation into the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson was underway.
The next day, Pres. George Bush addressed the new development in a brief Q & A with reporters:
“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. “If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.
Now we know that those words were prophetic. By pardoning Scooter Libby, who was found guilty this year of perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the outing of Wilson allegedly by senior Bush officials, Bush has indeed “taken care of” one of the leakers.
We also know now that Wilson was a covert specialist in weapons of mass destruction.
Here’s a more complete White House transcript:
Support for Libby Pardon Reveals New Depths of Rightwing Decay
In its surprisingly full-throated defense of Pres. Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby, the rightwing has made clear what we on the left have long suspected: The conservative movement is rotting from the core.
Yesterday, Joe Wilson, Valerie Wilson’s husband, said about the Bush administration, “It‘s corrupt from top to bottom, and I think most Americans should understand that beyond a reasonable doubt now.” He could have been describing the entire conservative machine.
During the Clinton wars, when this same crowd was not draining the Treasury to launch one bogus investigation after another, all of which came up big juicy nothing-burgers, they were slobbering over the porn in the Starr report moaning, “What will we tell the children?”
They hated the Clintons as avatars of 1960s’ excess but then stole the 2000 election to install George W. Bush, who really did spend the anything-goes decade driving around drunk, doing coke and smoking pot. Under Bush, not surprisingly, the anything-goes political decadence that took root in the conservative ranks in the 1990s has come into full flower.
It was on vivid display this morning on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” in the nakedly bankrupt reasoning conservative callers used to justify the Libby pardon. The Dittohead spin was identical in call after call. Here’s my take:
Both Scooter Libby and Pres. Clinton were charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. However, Clinton did not go to jail, so Libby should not go to jail either. The fact that Pres. Clinton was acquitted whereas Libby was convicted his crimes, they insist, is completely irrelevant.
Here’s Digby:
That whole impeachment trial acquittal thing in the Senate and that whole guilty beyond a reasonable doubt thing in Walton’s courtroom are irrelevant because [rightwingers believe] Clinton committed perjury over a couple of furtive blow-jobs in a hallway which means Scooter Libby and his pals should be able to lie to federal prosecutors. If not, well then, life would just. not. be. fair
And:
[Even] though Libby was convicted in a court of law, he can’t serve even a day in jail, because Clinton was … acquitted.
From the outset, the Noise Machine has been in overdrive trying to minimize the importance of the CIA leak. In reality, the underlying issue was national security, in general, and the security of weapons of mass destruction, specifically. We’ll never know what assets were lost after Vice Pres. Dick Cheney directed his flying monkeys to reveal the identity of Valerie Wilson, who was a covert CIA specialist in weapons of mass destruction.
Because of Wilson’s outing by Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Scooter Libby and others, the lives and safety of her overseas contacts were put at risk, and, for all we know, terrorists may have acquired WMD she was tracking.
Quote du Jour
“Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail. No one in this administration should be above the law.”
— Dick Durbin, senator, D-Ill.
Novak: Sen. Minority Leader McConnell Criticized for ‘Dereliction of Duty’ on Immigration
For high Republican officials, it is bad when Robert Novak, “douchebag of liberty” and GOP tool, calls you out:
“It is difficult to exaggerate the pessimism about the immediate political future voiced by Republicans in Congress when not on the record.”
— Novak
— Novak
I asked one of the few conservative Republican senators who stuck with President Bush on immigration to assess how Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell handled the issue. Asking not to be quoted by name, he replied: “If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty.” Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version he supported, he abandoned his post, staying off the floor during final stages of the debate.
Novak does add this cheerful note:
It is difficult to exaggerate the pessimism about the immediate political future voiced by Republicans in Congress when not on the record. With an unpopular president waging an unpopular war, they foresee electoral catastrophe in 2008, with Democratic gains in both the House and Senate and Hillary Clinton in the White House. That’s the atmosphere in which these lachrymose lawmakers have for several months faced an increasingly hysterical onslaught from constituents demanding the death of the “amnesty” for immigrants they heard vilified on talk radio.
His lips to God’s ears, as they say.
Fred Thompson Voted ‘Guilty’ on Clinton Obstruction Charges, Now Supports Libby’s Half-Pardon
Longtime K Street lobbyist Fred Thompson was serving in the U.S. Senate during the Clinton impeachment in 1999. He voted “not guilty” on the charge that Pres. Clinton committed perjury in testimony about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and “guilty”* on related obstruction of justice charges. Back then, Sen. Thompson wrote:
[Because Pres. Clinton has been found to be not guilty, the] notion that anyone, no matter how powerless, can get equal justice will be seen by some as a farce. And our rule of law–the principle that many other countries still dream about–the principle that sets us apart, will have been severely damaged. If this does not constitute damage to our government and our society, I cannot imagine what does. And for that he should be convicted.
Thompson, now an television actor, has been a vocal supporter of a complete pardon for Scooter Libby, who was found guilty by a jury of perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the deliberate unmasking by Bush administration officials of a covert CIA specialist in weapons of mass destruction.
Here’s what Thompson had to say about the half-pardon Libby was awarded by Pres. Bush yesterday:
“While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the president’s decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life.” — Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.
Thompson, who was a lobbyist for 18 years and a senator for nine years, will announce that he is running for president this month. (Some reports say he will announce this Friday.)
The final verdict from the Senate on Pres. Clinton’s impeachment was not guilty on all charges.
Libby will almost undoubtedly receive a full pardon at the end of Pres. Bush’s term.
Update: *In the original version of this story, I had Thompson’s votes backwards.
Poll: Less Than A Quarter of Americans Agree With Libby ‘Pardon’
From Survey USA via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
A new SurveyUSA instant poll finds just 21% of Americans agree with President Bush’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, 60% say Bush should have left the judge’s prison sentence in place, and 17% wanted a full pardon.
Now That the Libby Case Is Over, Bush & Cheney No Longer Have an Excuse for Not Talking
From the outset, Pres. Bush and Vice Pres. Cheney have brushed aside questions about their involvement in the the CIA leak case first by claiming they could not talk about it while the investigation and subsequently the trial were underway — and more recently because Scooter Libby was appealing his conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
There are serious questions that require answers about the involvement of the president and the vice president in the conspiracy to out the agent, Valerie Wilson.
Well, it’s all over now. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence. While his appeals will continue, the Libby case is done, and either Bush and Cheney will be forced to answer questions about their involvement, or — and this is much more likely — they’ll have to come up with another, more creative excuse.
There are serious questions that require answers about the involvement of the president and the vice president in the conspiracy to out the agent, Valerie Wilson. Early on, Bush played ignorant, making statements to the effect that when he found the person who leaked Wilson’s identity, that person would be fired and “no longer part of my administration. Many people thought at the time that these statements were false — that within hours of the release of the Bob Novak column that outed Wilson they president was fully briefed on how her name came to be released to the press.
The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was said to suspect that outing Wilson was Cheney’s idea, and that leaking of her name to various journalists was done under his direction.
Perhaps you recall responses from the White House on this matter. Here’s the classic, from the White House press briefing on Oct. 25, 2005:
Breaking: Bush Commutes Libby’s Sentence
So much for the rule of law:
President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter†Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2½-year prison term that Bush said was excessive…
“I respect the jury’s verdict,†Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.â€
