Scooter Libby

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr.
Occupation(s)	former lawyer former chief of staff to the Vice President
Spouse	Harriet Grant
Children	Two
Criminal charge	Obstruction of justice False statements Perjury
Penalty	30 months in prison (commuted by President George W. Bush in a Grant of Executive Clemency) $250,000 fine Two years of supervised release

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. (born August 22 1950) served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs, and an assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He resigned from his senior White House position hours after he was indicted in federal court on five felony counts of obstruction of justice, making false statements, and perjury in the CIA leak grand jury investigation into the "Plame affair". In United States v. Libby, Libby was found guilty on four of the five counts and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, a fine of $250,000, and two years of supervised release.

Libby is the first sitting White House official to be indicted in 130 years and the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a federal-level government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair in 1990.

Before being indicted, Libby was a licensed corporate lawyer, admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Libby's law license is inactive in Pennsylvania. In April 2007 the Washington, D.C. Office of Bar Counsel (DC Bar) disbarred him on legal grounds of "moral turpitude" and recommended to the DC Court of Appeals his permanent disbarment if his conviction is not overturned on appeal. While Libby's appeal in United States v. Libby is still pending, the presiding judge, Reggie Walton, denied his request for a stay and ordered Libby to begin his prison sentence. Libby appealed Walton's ruling the following week. Two weeks later he lost that appeal. Within hours, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence, eliminating the prison term while not changing the other parts and their conditions. As President Bush observes in his public statement, "The reputation [Scooter Libby] gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged."

Personal history

Background and education

Libby was born to an affluent family in New Haven, Connecticut; his father was an investment banker. The Libby family lived in the Washington, D.C. region, Miami, and Connecticut.

In 1965 Libby graduated from the Eaglebrook School, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he was a co-captain of the debating team, according to his old friend, former roommate and co-captain Nick Bromell, who is now professor of English and director of graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Libby and his older brother, Hank, were the first in the family to graduate from college. In 1972 he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, where he met his future mentor, Paul Wolfowitz.

He received his Juris Doctor (JD) degree from Columbia Law School in 1975.

Marriage and family

Libby is married to Harriet Grant, whom he met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1980s while he was a partner and she an associate in the law firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin: "'When he and Harriet became serious,' Dickstein partner Kenneth Simon wrote, 'she chose to leave the firm rather than maintain the awkward situation of an associate dating a partner.'" Later, Grant worked as a staff lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, becoming "one of the senior Democratic lawyers to interview Anita Hill during the [1991] Senate hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas." Libby and Grant married in the early 1990s, have a son and a daughter, and live in McLean, Virginia.

Name and nickname

Various news accounts report that Libby has been secretive about his actual first name, and that the initial "I." stands for Irving; or, alternatively, abbreviations of "Irving" — "Irv" or "Irve." Eric Schmitt says that he learned the "secret" of Libby's first initial from telephoning Hank Libby, who told Schmitt that the 'I' stands for 'Irv'. These various news sources offer contradictory information about his actual given name and its correct spelling.

According to Schmitt and others, Libby first acquired his nickname "Scooter" as an infant, when his father, after seeing him move quickly across his crib, jokingly compared him to "a scooter," exclaiming: "'He's a Scooter!'" In their February 2002 interview on Larry King Live, King asked Libby specifically, "Where did "Scooter" come from?"; Libby replied: "Oh, it goes way back to when I was a kid. Some people ask me if ... [crosstalk] ... as you did earlier, if it's related to Phil Rizzuto [nicknamed "The Scooter"]. I had the range but not the arm."

The Apprentice

The Apprentice

Main article: The Apprentice (book)

In 1996 Libby published a novel entitled The Apprentice about a group of travelers stranded in northern Japan in the winter of 1903 during a smallpox epidemic, generally described as "a thriller ... that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape." First published in paperback by St. Martin's (Thomas Dunne Books) in 2002, it was reissued in paperback by St. Martin's Griffin imprint in 2005, after Libby's indictment that October.

Legal career

After earning his J.D. from Columbia in 1975, Libby joined the firm of Schnader, Harrison, Segal, and Lewis, becoming a partner the following year, in 1976. He was admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976. He practiced law there for six years until joining the State Department under Paul Wolfowitz, then head of State’s policy planning staff. In 1985, returning to private practice, he joined the firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin (now Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin, and Oshinsky), where he became a partner in 1986. He was admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on May 19, 1978.

Beginning in 1995, Libby served as the Managing Partner of the Washington office of the international law firm of Dechert, Price, and Rhoads (now part of Dechert LLP); he was a member of the firm's litigation department, and he chaired the Washington office's Public Policy Practice Group.

One of Libby's clients in his work as a private litigator was fugitive billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich, who had been convicted of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran, and who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. Libby represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000; early in March 2001, at a "contentious" Congressional hearing to review Clinton's pardons, Libby testified that he thought the prosecutions's case against Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law". According to Jackson Hogan, Libby's roommate at Yale University, as quoted in the already-cited U.S. News & World Report article by Walsh, "'He is intensely partisan...in that if he is your counsel, he'll embrace your case and try to figure a way out of whatever noose you are ensnared in.'"

Related positions

At various points throughout his professional career, Libby has also held positions with the American Bar Association, been on the advisory board of the RAND Corporation's Center for Russia and Eurasia, and been a legal advisor to the United States House of Representatives, as well as served as a consultant for the defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

Legal suspension and disbarment

After his conviction in United States v. Libby, Libby's was temporarily disbarred from the District of Columbia bar. He is on inactive status in Pennsylvania. Therefore, he is not currently licensed to practice law in either Washington, D.C. or Pennsylvania, respectively.

Government public service and political career

At Yale Libby was vice president of the student Democrats. After working as a lawyer in the Philadelphia firm Schnader LLP, Libby went to work for Paul Wolfowitz as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff. From 1982 to 1985, according to his official U.S. State Department biography, Libby served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In 1985, he resigned and entered private legal practice. In 1989, he went to work at the Pentagon, once again under Wolfowitz, as principal deputy under-secretary of defense for strategy and resources.

In 1993 Libby was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award and the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. He had received the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service in 1985. During the George H. W. Bush administration, Libby was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy under secretary of defense for policy. In 1992, he served as legal adviser for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. Libby co-authored the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) with Wolfowitz for Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense

Libby became part of a network of neo-conservatives known as the "Vulcans" — its other members included Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. While he was still a managing partner of Dechert Price & Rhoads, Libby was a signatory to the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (a document dated June 3, 1997). He joined Wolfowitz, PNAC co-founders William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and other "Project Participants" in developing the PNAC's September 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century".

Further information: Project for the New American Century § "Fundamental propositions", and Project for the New American Century § Rebuilding America's Defenses

After becoming Cheney's chief of staff in 2001, Libby was reportedly nicknamed "Germ Boy" at the White House, for insisting on universal smallpox vaccination. His was also nicknamed "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney" for his close working relationship with the Vice President. Mary Matalin, who worked with Libby as an adviser to Cheney during Bush's first term, said of him "He is to the vice president what the vice president is to the president."

Libby was active in the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee of the Pentagon when it was chaired by Richard Perle during the early years of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2003).

Libby was also actively involved in the Bush administration's efforts to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace; for example, he participated in a series of meetings with Jewish leaders in early December 2002 and a meeting with two aides of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in mid-April 2003, culminating in the Red Sea Summit on June 4, 2004. Former British Foreign Secretary (2001-2006), current Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw said of Libby: "It's a toss-up whether [he] is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day." In their highly-controversial and widely-contested "Working Paper" entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", University of Chicago political science professor John J. Mearsheimer and academic dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Stephen M. Walt argue that Libby was among the Bush administration's most "fervently pro-Israel ... officials" (20).

Further information: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

On June 5, 2007, after Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Libby, Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington, D.C. bureau chief Ron Kampeas observed that former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician and writer Natan Sharansky was one of many Jews pleading for leniency for Libby, and that Arye Genger, who served as a liaison between Sharon and the Bush administration, credited Libby with trying to reduce civilian casualties among Israelis and Palestinians during the second intifada.

Resignation from government

On October 28, 2005, after his indictment, Libby resigned as Cheney's chief of staff, as assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs, and as assistant to the President.

Subsequent work experience

In January 2006 Libby joined the Hudson Institute as a senior advisor, with a focus on issues relating to Asia and the War on Terrorism.

Involvement in the Plame affair

Further information: [[:CIA leak grand jury investigation, Plame affair, and Plame scandal timeline]]

Libby and Judith Miller

Main article: Plame affair § Judith Miller

Between 2003 and 2005 intense speculation centered on the possibility that Libby may have been the administration official who had "leaked" classified employment information about Valerie Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and a covert CIA agent, and later tried to hide his having done so. In August 2005, as revealed in grand jury testimony audiotapes played during the trial and reported in many news accounts, Libby testified that he met with Judith Miller, a reporter with the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, and discussed Plame with her.

After refusing to testify to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury about this July 2003 meeting with Libby, Miller was jailed on July 7, 2005 for contempt of court. Although Libby signed a general waiver allowing journalists to discuss their conversations with him, Miller maintained that such a waiver did not serve to allow her to reveal her source; moreover, Miller argued that Libby's general waiver pertaining to all journalists could have been coerced and that she would only testify if given an individual waiver. Months later, her new attorney, Robert Bennett, found out she'd had a written, voluntary waiver from Libby all along.

After Miller had served most of her sentence, Libby reiterated that he had indeed given her a "waiver" both "voluntarily and personally". He attached the following letter, which, when released publicly, became the subject of further speculation about Libby's possible motives in sending it:

As noted above, my lawyer confirmed my waiver to other reporters in just the way he did with your lawyer. Why? Because as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call.

. . . .
You went to jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats, bird flu and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work — and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

With admiration, Scooter Libby.

After agreeing to testify, Miller was released on September 29, 2005, appearing before the grand jury the next day, but the charge against her was rescinded only after she testified again on October 12, 2005. For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously-undisclosed meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003, two weeks before Wilson's New York Times op-ed was published. In her account published in the Times on October 16, 2005, based on her notes, Miller reports:

... in an interview with me on June 23 [2003], Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, discussed Mr. Wilson's activities and placed blame for intelligence failures on the C.I.A. In later conversations with me, on July 8 and July 12 [2003], Mr. Libby, ... [at the time] Mr. Cheney's top aide, played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance. ... My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A. ... My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name [i.e., Valerie Plame]. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or "operative" ....

Her notes on her July 8, 2003 meeting with Libby does contain the name "Valerie Flame [sic]," which she added retrospectively. While Miller reveals publicly that she herself had misidentified the last name of Wilson's wife (aka Valerie Plame) in her own marginal notes on their interview as "Flame" instead of "Plame," in her grand jury (and later trial testimony), she remained uncertain when, how, and why she arrived at that name and did not attribute it to Libby:

I was not permitted to take notes of what I told the grand jury, and my interview notes on Mr. Libby are sketchy in places. It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses. On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name "Valerie Flame." Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled. ... I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby, in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.

A year and a half later, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice in part for misleading the grand jury about when and how he learned that Plame was a CIA agent.

Richard Armitage

Main article: Plame affair § Novak's "primary source": Richard Armitage

On August 30, 2006, the New York Times reported that Deputy Secretary of State Department Richard Armitage was the "initial and primary source" for columnist Robert Novak's article of July 14, 2003, which named Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. CNN reported also that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as disclosing Plame's CIA role in a "casual conversation" with Novak.

Indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing

Main article: United States v. Libby

The five counts in the indictment of Libby that Fitzgerald announced on October 28, 2005, include one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements when interviewed by agents of the FBI, and two counts of perjury in his testimony before the grand jury. On March 6, 2007, the jury convicted him on four of the five counts but acquitted him on count three, the second charge of allegidly making false statements when interviewed by federal agents about his conversations with Time reporter Matthew Cooper .

Pursuant to the grand jury investigation, Libby had told FBI investigators that he first heard of Plame's CIA employment from journalist Tim Russert and that he had forgotten that Cheney had already told him that information. The indictment alleges that those statements to federal investigators and the grand jury were false, in that Libby had numerous conversations about Plame's CIA employment before speaking to Russert; Russert did not tell Libby about Plame's CIA employment; Libby knew with certainty that Plame was employed by the CIA; and Libby told reporters that Plame worked for the CIA without making any disclaimer that he was uncertain of that fact. The false statements counts in the Libby indictment charge that he made these claims to the FBI; the perjury counts charge that he repeated these claims to the grand jury; and the obstruction of justice count charges that Libby made these statements in order to impede the Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation.

After being questioned by the FBI in the fall of 2003 and testifying before a Federal grand jury on March 5 2004, and again on March 24 2004, Libby pleaded not guilty to all five counts. According to the Associated Press, David Addington, Cheney's legal counsel, described a September 2003 meeting with Libby around the time that a criminal investigation began, saying that Libby had told him, "'I just want to tell you, I didn't do it'... I didn't ask what the 'it' was.'"

Libby retained attorney Ted Wells of the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to represent him. Wells had successfully defended former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy against a 30-count indictment and had also participated in the successful defense of former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan.

After Judge Reggie Walton denied Libby's motion to dismiss, the press initially reported that Libby would testify at the trial. Libby's criminal trial, United States v. Libby, began on January 16 2007.

Despite earlier press reports and widespread ongoing speculations, neither Libby nor Vice President Cheney testified. The jury began deliberations on February 21, 2007.

Verdict

After deliberating for 10 days, the jury rendered its verdict on March 6, 2007. It convicted Libby on four of the five counts against him: two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation, and one of the two counts of making false statements to federal investigators––and acquitted him on one count of making false statements.

Comment on the verdict by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald

Speaking to the media outside the courtroom after the verdict, Fitzgerald said that "The jury worked very long and hard and deliberated at length ... [and] was obviously convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had lied and obstructed justice in a serious manner. ... I do not expect to file any further charges". The trial confirmed that the leak came first from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; since Fitzgerald did not charge Armitage and expects to charge no one else, Libby's conviction effectively ended the investigation.

In his October 28 2005 press conference about the grand jury's indictment, Fitzgerald had already explained that Libby's obstruction of justice through perjury and false statements had prevented the grand jury from determining whether the leak violated federal law.

During his media appearance outside the courtroom after the verdict in the Libby case, Fitzgerald fielded questions from the press about others involved in the Plame affair and in the CIA leak grand jury investigation, such as Armitage and Cheney, whom he had already described as "under a cloud", as already addressed in his conduct of the case and in his closing arguments in court.

Comment on the verdict by Libby's defense team

After the verdict, initially, Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and that, if that attempt were to fail, they would appeal Libby's conviction. Libby did not speak to reporters."

Libby's defense team eventually decided against seeking a new trial.

Comment on the verdict by juror Denis Collins

As reported in CNN Newsroom, and subsequently on Larry King Live on CNN and by various other television networks, including MSNBC (on Scarborough Country), one juror — Denis Collins, a journalist and former reporter at The Washington Post — said: 'We're not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but it seemed like he was the fall guy. ... tasked by the vice president to go and talk to reporters." Collins offers a day-by-day account of his experience as Juror #9 at the Libby trial in an "Exclusive" at The Huffington Post.

Sentencing

Given current federal sentencing guidelines, which are not mandatory, the convictions could have resulted in a sentence ranging from no imprisonment to imprisonment of up to 25 years and a fine of $1,000,000; yet, as Sniffen and Apuzzo observed, "federal sentencing guidelines will probably prescribe far less, perhaps one to three years." In practice, according to federal sentencing data, three-fourths of the 198 defendants found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2006 served jail time. The average length of jail time on this charge alone was 70 months.

On June 5, 2007, Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000. According to Apuzzo, Walton also sentenced him to two years probation [i.e., "supervised release"] after his prison sentence expires. There is no parole in the federal system, but Libby would be eligible for supervised release after two years.

On June 5, 2007, after the announcement of Libby's sentencing, CNN News reported that Libby still "plans to appeal the verdict."

That day, in response to the sentencing, Cheney issued a statement in Libby's defense on The White House website. The statement concluded: "Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man."

Prior to the sentencing, along with Natan Sharansky, as cited earlier, 173 others had sent Walton letters "plead[ing] for leniency" for Libby.

Order to go to jail pending appeal

After the June 5 sentencing, Walton said he was inclined to jail Libby after the defense laid out its proposed appeal, but the judge told attorneys he was open to changing his mind"; however, on June 14, 2007, Walton ordered Libby to report to prison while his attorneys appealed the convictions. Libby's attorneys asked that the order be stayed, but Walton denied the request and told Libby that he would have 10 days to appeal the ruling. In denying Libby's request, which had questioned Fitzgerald's authority to make the charges in the first place, Walton supported Fitzgerald's authority in the case. He said: "'Everyone is accountable, and if you work in the White House, and if it's perceived that somehow (you're) linked at the hip, the American public would have serious questions about the fairness of any investigation of a high-level official conducted by the attorney general.'" The judge was also responding to an Amicus curiae brief that he had permitted to be filed, which had not apparently convinced him to change his mind, as he subsequently denied Libby bail during his appeal. Walton indicated he was not inclined to grant bail. Walton granted the scholars permission to file their brief, and wrote of them[:]

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of this nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it."

At the beginning of the hearing, Walton told the court that he had received 'harassing' and 'hateful' messages[:] 'In the interest of full disclosure, I have received a number of harassing, angry and mean-spirited phone calls and messages. Some wishing bad things on me and my family," the judge said. 'Those types of things will have no impact. ... I initially threw them away, but then there were more, some that were more hateful,' Walton said. 'They are being kept.'"

New York Times reporters Neil Lewis and David Stout estimated subsequently that Libby's prison sentence could begin within "two months," explaining that

Judge Walton’s decision means that the defense lawyers will probably ask a federal appeals court to block the sentence, a long-shot move. It also sharpens interest in a question being asked by Mr. Libby’s supporters and critics alike: Will President Bush pardon Mr. Libby? ... So far, the president has expressed sympathy for Mr. Libby and his family but has not tipped his hand on the pardon issue. ... If the president does not pardon him, and if an appeals court refuses to second-guess Judge Walton’s decision, Mr. Libby will probably be ordered to report to prison in six to eight weeks’ time. Federal prison authorities will decide where. "Unless the Court of Appeals overturns my ruling, he will have to report," Judge Walton said.

On June 20, 2007, Libby appealed Walton's ruling in federal appeals court. The next day, Walton filed a 30-page expanded ruling, in which he explained his decision to deny Libby bail in more detail.

On July 2, 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied Libby's request for release.

Presidential pardon issue

See also: United States v. Libby § Presidential pardon issue

Soon after the verdict, calls for Libby to be pardoned by President George W. Bush began to appear in some newspapers; some of them are posted online by the Libby Legal Defense Trust. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a press release about the verdict, urging President Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby, and other Democratic politicians followed his lead.

Surveying "the pardon battle" and citing both pro and con publications, The Washington Post online columnist Dan Froomkin concludes that many U.S. newspapers opposed a presidential pardon for Libby. In an op-ed published in the The Washington Post, former federal prosecutor William Otis argues that the sentence is too stringent and that, instead of pardoning Libby, President Bush should commute his sentence.

After the sentencing, President Bush stated on camera: "... [I] will not intervene until Libby's legal team has exhausted all of its avenues of appeal ... It wouldn't be appropriate for me to discuss the case until after the legal remedies have run its course."

But, ultimately, less than a month later, Bush chose Otis's "third option"––"neither prison nor pardon"––in commuting Libby's prison sentence.

Presidential commutation of prison sentence

See also: United States v. Libby § Presidential commutation of Libby's sentence

After Libby was denied bail during his appeal process, on July 2 2007, President Bush commuted Libby's 30-month federal prison sentence, calling it "excessive." The commutation left in place the felony conviction, the $250,000 fine, and the terms of probation. The commutation of a sentence that had not been served, even in part, appeared unprecedented in recent history; presidential commutations have been traditionally been carried out after a substantial portion of the sentence had been served. A former Justice Department pardon attorney stated that she could not find any precedents for commuting a sentence before it had begun, especially in the last half-century.

Bush explained his "Grant of Executive Clemency" to Libby (in part):

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury's verdict. 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.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

Libby's lawyer, Theodore V. Wells, Jr. "issued a brief statement saying Mr. Libby and his family 'wished to express their gratitude for the president’s decision. ... We continue to believe in Mr. Libby’s innocence,' Mr. Wells said."

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, however, "took issue with Bush's description of the sentence as 'excessive,' saying it was 'imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. ... It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals,' Fitzgerald said. 'That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.'"

The day after the commuting of Libby's sentence, James Rowley (Bloomberg News) reported that President Bush has not ruled out pardoning Libby in the future and that Bush's press spokesman, Tony Snow, denied any political motivation in the commutation. Quoting Snow, Rowley added: "'The president is getting pounded on the right because he didn't do a full pardon.' If Bush were 'doing the weather-vane thing' he 'would have done something differently.'"

Nevertheless, Democratic politicians' responses stressed their outrage at what they called a disgraceful abrogation of justice, and, that evening CNN reported that Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D, Michigan) announced that there would be a formal Congressional investigation of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence and other presidential reprieves.

In response to President Bush's justifications for clemency, liberal commentator Harlan J. Protass noted that in Rita v. United States, the case of a defendant convicted of perjury in front of a grand jury which had been decided two weeks earlier by the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. government had successfully argued that sentences that fall within Federal Sentencing Guidelines are presumed to be "reasonable", regardless of individual circumstances.

Press coverage of the trial

Further information: [[:United States v. Libby#Press coverage of the trial|United States v. Libby § Press coverage of the trial]]

Blogs played a prominent role in the press coverage of this trial. Scott Shane, in his article "For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder", published in The New York Times on February 15, 2007, quotes Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, who wrote that the trial was "the first federal case for which independent bloggers have been given official credentials along with reporters from the traditional news media." The trial was followed in the mass media and engaged the interest of both professional legal experts and the general public.

The Wilsons' civil suit

Main article: Valerie Plame § The Wilsons' civil suit

Libby is also named as a party in an on-going civil suit that Joseph and Valerie Wilson have brought against Libby, Cheney, Armitage, and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Joseph and Valerie Wilson have posted their statement on Libby's sentencing in United States v. Libby on their website.

Reportedly "outraged" by Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence on July 2, 2007, Wilson told CNN: "I have nothing to say to Scooter Libby. ... I don't owe this administration. They owe my wife and my family an apology for having betrayed her. Scooter Libby is a traitor. Bush's action ... demonstrates that the White House is corrupt from top to bottom."

See also

• CIA leak grand jury investigation
• Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
• List of disbarred attorneys
• Neoconservativism
• Plame affair
• Plame affair criminal investigation
• Plame affair timeline
• Project for the New American Century
• United States v. Libby

Further reading

• Bromell, Nick. "Scooter Libby and Me". The American Scholar (Phi Beta Kappa) (Winter 2007). Accessed 8 June, 2007.
• –––. "Scooter's Tragic Innocence: Why My Friend Scooter Libby Is Loyal to Bush, Cheney and an Arrogant Administration Whose Values Are Not His Own". Salon, 24 January, 2007. Accessed 8 June, 2007. (Premium content; restricted access).
• Dickerson, John. "Who Is Scooter Libby?The Secretive Cheney Aide at the Heart of the CIA Leak Case". Slate, 21 October, 2005. Accessed 28 June, 2007.
• Frankel, Max. "The Washington Back Channel". The New York Times, 25 March, 2007. Accessed 8 June, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Garfield, Bob. "'Former New York Times Staffer Judith Miller'". On the Media from NPR, National Public Radio, WCNY, 11 November, 2005. Accessed 5 March, 2007. (Transcript and RealAudio link.)
• "I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby". Right Web (International Relations Center). Last updated 21 March, 2007. Accessed 1 July, 2007.
• Libby, Lewis. The Apprentice: A Novel. Rpt. ed. 1996; New York: Griffin, 2005. ISBN 0312284535 (10). ISBN 978-0312284534 (13).
• "Libby's Guilty Verdict: Media Myths and Falsehoods to Watch for". Media Matters for America, 6 March, 2007. Accessed 8 June, 2007.
• Alex Markels. "Legal Affairs: I. Lewis Libby: The Plight of a Disciplined Risk-Taker". National Public Radio, 28 October, 2005. Accessed 5 March, 2007.
• Merritt, Jeralyn, moderator. "Verdict in the Libby Trial". Transcript. The Washington Post ("Live Online" discussion), 6 March, 2007, 2:00–3:00 p.m., ET. Accessed 6 March, 2007. (Duration: one hour.) N.B.: "Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. washingtonpost.com is not responsible for any content posted by third parties."
• Template:PDFlink in "United States of America, v. I. Lewis Libby, Defendant". Criminal No. 05-394 (RBW). United States District Court for the District of Columbia, filed 10 January, 2007. Accessed 10 February, 2007. ["USA-v-Libby_Rules-of-Order.pdf".]
• "President Commutes Libby's Sentence". Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 3 July, 2007. Accessed 4 July, 2007.
• Scooter Libby Archived White House biography from 2004. Accessed February 10, 2007.
• United States Department of State Biography, February 2005. Archived by web.archive.org. Accessed March 4 2007.
• Waas, Murray. "Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information". National Journal, February 9 2006. Accessed March 6 2007.
• –––, ed., with Jeff Lomonaco. The United States v. I. Lewis Libby. New York: Union Square Press (imprint of Sterling Publishing), 2007. ISBN 1402752598 (10). ISBN 978-1402752599 (13). ("Edited & with reporting by Murray Waas" and with research assistance by Jeff Lomonaco.)
• Steven Weisman "White House Is Pressing Israelis To Take Initiatives in Peace Talks". The New York Times, 17 April, 2003. Accessed 24 March, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Wilson, Joseph C. "Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson's Response to Bush Spokesman Tony Snow's Comments at Today's White House Briefing". Online posting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), 3 July, 2007. Accessed 4 July, 2007. (Statement in Response to President Bush's Commutation of Lewis Libby's Sentence).
• –––. "Statement in Response to Jury's Verdict in U.S. v. I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby" (now outdated URL). Press release. Originally posted online. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), 6 March, 2007. Accessed 6 March, 2007. Posted as "CREW Statement on Libby Conviction: No Man Is Above the Law." Citizens ^Blogging for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (blog), 6 March, 2007. Accessed 18 April, 2007. Also posted as "Wilsons' Attorney Statement in Response to Jury's Verdict in U.S. v. I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby". Joseph and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust, 6 March, 2007, home page. Accessed 18 April, 2007.

External links

• CNN Special Reports: CIA Leak Investigation compiled by CNN Newsroom; incl. interactive timeline in Case History. Updated periodically. (Includes events relating to Lewis Libby's federal trial.)
• "Legal Affairs: Lewis Libby's Complete Grand Jury Testimony". Full audio clip and transcript provided by National Public Radio on npr.org, 7 February, 2007. Accessed 17 February, 2007. (8 hours.)
• Libby Legal Defense Trust. Website sponsored by friends and supporters of I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby. Incorporates "News". (Press releases; news reports; links to "Legal Filings" and "Statements" relating to Libby's defense in United States v. Libby. Updated periodically.)
• "Scooter Libby" Index at Salon.com.
• Times Topics: I. Lewis Libby Jr. (Index of news articles pertaining to Libby published in The New York Times; incorporates: "The Counts", a summary of the Libby trial verdict; "Diary of the Leak Trial", a graphical timeline; and multimedia links. Access to some archived articles requires TimesSelect subscription.)

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