Bush Commutes Libby's Prison Term in CIA Leak Case (Update1)

By Edwin Chen

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush commuted Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby's prison term in the CIA leak case, saying the 2 1/2 year prison term was ``excessive.''

Libby, 56, was convicted of lying to investigators probing the 2003 leak of CIA official Valerie Plame's identity. Backers of Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, had argued for a pardon. Bush acted after a U.S. appellate court today refused to let Libby stay out of prison during his appeal.

``My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby,'' Bush said in a statement. ``The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long- lasting.''

The president's action means that Libby's conviction still stands and he is still required to pay the $250,000 fine ordered by a federal judge.

The question of whether to intervene in Libby's case had been termed a ``no-win situation'' for the president by David Gergen, who advised Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

With Bush already suffering poor approval ratings, a Cable News Network/Opinion Research survey conducted after Libby's March 6 conviction found that 69 percent of respondents opposed a pardon while 18 percent favored it. Congressional Democrats, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, demanded that Bush promise not to pardon Libby.

Pro-Libby Firestorm

At the same time, a pro-Libby firestorm was being fanned by self-described conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts, and many conservative leaders asked the president to step in.

Until now Bush had stayed out of the case, with his aides saying he would let the appeal go forward.

Libby's supporters argued that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was over-zealous in prosecuting Libby for lying to investigators when no one was charged over the actual leak of Plame's status as a Central Intelligence Agency official.

Libby was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury and making false statements. He resigned as Cheney's chief of staff upon being indicted in 2005.

Libby was found guilty of lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a grand jury probing whether the Bush administration deliberately leaked Plame's identity to retaliate against her husband, Joseph Wilson. In a New York Times column on July 6, 2003, Wilson accused the government of twisting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq earlier that year.

Novak Column

Plame's status as a CIA official was disclosed eight days later in an article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Novak testified during the trial that Plame's identity was provided to him by then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and confirmed by White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Fitzgerald argued that Libby lied about his knowledge of the leak to protect his job. It's a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent, and the White House had announced that anyone who leaked Plame's identity would be fired. No one was charged with a crime or fired for the leak.

Libby's lawyers said national security matters kept him too preoccupied to remember details about the leak.

Bush sucks the big donkey dick out loud.

Judge Reggie Walton set the pardon alarm clock today. Scooter Libby will go to prison six to eight weeks from now, unless President Bush intervenes. Walton denied Libby's request that he remain free pending his appeal of his two-and-a-half-year sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice. The vice president's former chief of staff will appeal the sentencing, but if he loses, the pressure will be on the president.

It has always been the view among Cheney loyalists and former Bush administration officials who have followed the case closely that the president would never allow Libby to spend a single day in an orange jumpsuit. The few people who may have held serious conversations with the president about a pardon are staying mum (this is the Bush administration, after all). But those I've talked to who know the president well and have worked for him predict a pardon for two reasons.

First: Dick Cheney. The vice president may not be winning as many foreign-policy battles as he used to, but Libby's fate is a highly personal matter for Cheney. He will ask Bush for a pardon, and he is unlikely to back down. If Bush resists, Cheney could argue that his close aide Libby should not go to jail while Karl Rove, another key figure in the scandal, has been protected by Bush and the administration.

The second reason Libby will walk is President Bush's dismal approval rating. The number of people who would be angered by a pardon who haven't already abandoned the president could fit in an airport shuttle bus. Given the conservative defections from Bush over his support of immigration reform, a pardon of Libby—which would be popular with conservatives—might actually improve his approval ratings. Libby's conviction is seen as such an outrage among conservatives that one former Bush aide suggested "the consequences of not pardoning, if Scooter is led away in shackles, will be uglier than pardoning."

The issue of Libby's pardon raises thorny questions for the Republican presidential candidates. In the debate last week, all 10 GOP candidates were asked if President Bush should pardon Libby. Rep. Ron Paul and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gillmore said they would not, but several others said or intimated that he should. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani offered the prevailing Republican critique: A runaway prosecutor convicted Libby, even though he did not commit the underlying crime of leaking the name of the undercover CIA agent.

Rudy Giuliani was particularly adamant that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald overreached. It seems inconsistent that a law-and-order candidate would appear to countenance lying to a grand jury and FBI agents, particularly as he campaigned to head a party that has always championed the rule of law.
All-but-announced candidate Fred Thompson has been a consistent vocal critic of the Libby prosecution, but for him that is an intellectually consistent position: He voted against Clinton's perjury charge when he was in the Senate and worked in the Senate to kill the independent counsel law. As Libby's strongest defender among the crop of candidates, would Thompson consider bringing Libby into a Thompson administration? Thompson's spokesperson didn't respond to this question by press time, but it would seem that the only logical answer for Thompson or any other GOP candidate would be to welcome Libby, if not actively court him. They say they believe Libby has been wrongly convicted, which means they should have no legal objection. Based on Libby's résumé, they shouldn't have any substantive problems, either. The GOP foreign-policy and legal establishment testified effusively about Libby's qualifications in letters asking Judge Walton for a lenient sentence.
It would be a bold and principled stance for a GOP candidate to say he'd welcome Libby into his administration and probably as unlikely to happen as a pardon is certain. It would curry favor with conservatives but risk brutal political problems in the general election. However, it would be the human thing to do if they really are convinced Libby has been wronged. In 1987, Reagan's Labor Secretary Ray Donovan famously asked after his acquittal on larceny and fraud charges: "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" He worried that the sensational coverage of his indictment would always overpower the smaller news coverage of his exoneration. One way for Libby's supporters running for president to restore his good name would be to send him a job application now.

b/c in cheney's words "the vp is outside the executive branch".

someone brought this up on another board: paris hilton did more jail time than libby.

The libs are going to be spitting up their lattes up on this one.