My capacity for outrage at the Bush administration must have reached its limit: I just can't get all that worked up over Scooter Libby's get-out-of-jail-free card. Sure, Libby lied repeatedly to investigators, but he was a fall guy, one link in a much bigger chain of deception. Why should he alone go to jail while others who are more culpable serve their time in the luxurious confines of the White House?
The real tragedy of the whole Valerie Plame-Wilson affair is that more people didn't get tagged with the crime of exposing her identity as an undercover CIA operative. Outing Plame was part of a conspiracy to stifle dissent as the question of going to war in Iraq was being debated. "There is a cloud over the vice president," independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told jurors. "That cloud is something you just can't pretend isn't there."
Fitzgerald said he wasn't able to uncover the conspiracy because of all the sand thrown in his eyes by Libby to obstruct the investigation. Looking back at the trial, it was as inevitable as night following day that President Bush would find a way to get Libby off the hook. The fix was in when Libby's high-priced legal team mounted a curiously passive defense. After pointing to Vice President Cheney as an instigator in the Plame naming, hinting they might even call the veep to testify, they abruptly backed off, slow-walking Libby toward conviction with no alibi for his lies other than that he didn't remember. As legal eagles, they didn't impress, but they did preserve the pardon option.
Libby did not seek a pardon because he didn't have to. Bush and Cheney knew what they had to do—keep Libby out of jail, lest he be tempted to give away sensitive information in exchange for his freedom. Bush settled on a commutation, leaving open the possibility, even the likelihood, of a full pardon before he leaves office. It is a distinction without a difference. Not challenging the $250,000 fine and the loss of Libby's legal license maintains the illusion that Bush respects the rule of law, and is just acting in this one instance because he thinks the sentence of 30 months is excessive. The fact is that a quarter of a million dollars is chump change to the friends in high places who rallied around Libby, and while he can't practice law, these same friends will ensure a lucrative livelihood for Libby and his family. He's their hero.
Democrats can rant about it all they like, but abusing the pardon process is a time-honored privilege of presidents. Bush's father pardoned Ronald Reagan's secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, on Christmas Eve in 1992 just weeks before Weinberger was scheduled to go to trial for his role in the Iran-contra affair. President Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day in office, including one for disgraced financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife had raised money for Clinton. The difference, other than sheer volume, is that Bush, father and son, short-circuited the legal process by not waiting for court proceedings to be completed. Silencing Libby is part of a larger narrative to cover up the trail of deception and manipulation that led us to war.
This is an administration for, by and about the wealthy and well connected. Libby's defense team submitted 150 letters from the Washington cognoscenti attesting to their client's good character. The Republicans running for president fell over each other to condemn Libby's sentencing as harsh. Now they're stuck with having to defend Bush's action when the American public by 3 to 1 opposed lifting his sentence as special treatment. They didn't like it when Paris Hilton, a vacuous celebrity, was briefly released early from jail; they like it even less when it's a person of consequence and involves a war that's deeply unpopular. The Libby commutation won't have anywhere near the impact of the Nixon pardon, which arguably cost Gerald Ford the presidency. Neither will history judge Bush as kindly as it ultimately did Ford, who acted to spare a traumatized nation, while Bush acted to save his own and Cheney's skin.
It didn't surprise me to learn that Bush bypassed the Justice Department in reaching his decision. He went with his gut, which Bush trusts more than his brain, understandably. As governor of Texas, Bush refused to commute the death sentence to life in prison for Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who after 14 years on death row had become a born-again Christian and model prisoner. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Bush mocked the woman's pleas for clemency. "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." Bush had no qualms sending the first woman since the Civil War to death in Texas despite Pope John Paul II's plea to spare her life. Bush smirking over life and death is what gets me worked up, not Scooter Libby
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
