That means if U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton orders Libby
to start his jail term in July while his appeals proceed – as it now
appears the judge will – Bush will be faced with the prospect of Libby
serving more than half his sentence before November 2008 and a risk
that Libby finally might cooperate with special prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald.
If Libby, who was Vice President Cheney’s chief of
staff, were to start talking, he could explain the full role of Bush
and Cheney in orchestrating the smear campaign against Iraq War critic
Joseph Wilson, which set the stage for Libby and other administration
officials to leak the identity of Wilson’s wife, covert CIA officer
Valerie Plame, in summer 2003.
Libby also had a front-row seat
to the White House cover-up that followed the revelation in September
2003 that the CIA had sent a criminal referral to the Justice
Department, complaining about the security breach and prompting the
start of a formal investigation.
The evidence from Libby’s trial
makes clear that Bush and Cheney had authorized a media campaign to
discredit former U.S. Ambassador Wilson, who undertook a CIA
fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 and accused the White House in July
2003 of “twisting” intelligence about Iraq’s alleged pursuit of uranium
in Africa to justify going to war.
At minimum, the evidence
shows that Bush selectively declassified parts of a National
Intelligence Estimate to undercut Wilson, and Cheney ordered Libby to
share the information with friendly reporters.
In executing this
media strategy, Libby and other administration officials exposed
Plame’s identity, though it’s still unclear if Bush or Cheney
specifically authorized release of Plame’s CIA employment to discredit
Wilson’s Niger trip as a case of nepotism.
Signaling the Conspirators
Beyond
the Plame leak itself, a strong case could be made that the President
and Vice President sought to mislead federal investigators and the
public. On Sept. 30, 2003, Bush declared that anyone who knew anything
about the leak should speak up, even as he was concealing the fact that
he had authorized parts of the anti-Wilson campaign.
“If there
is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush
said. “I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information
inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be
helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out
whether or not these allegations are true.”
Since Bush himself
was withholding key information, Bush’s statement could be read as a
signal to subordinates to hang tough and deny knowledge, anticipating
that the inquiry – then under the control of Attorney General John
Ashcroft – would peter out.
In early October, Cheney wrote a
memo to the White House press office demanding that a statement be
issued clearing Libby of a role in the Plame leak as had already been
done for other White House officials, such as Bush’s political adviser
Karl Rove.
“Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy
the Pres that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because
of incompetence of others,” Cheney wrote. In the memo, the Vice
President initially ascribed Libby’s sacrifice to Bush but then crossed
out “the Pres” and put the clause in a passive tense.
On Oct. 4,
2003, pursuant to Cheney’s memo, White House press secretary Scott
McClellan added Libby to the list of officials who have “assured me
that they were not involved in this.”
There was also a larger
context to the cover-up. In fall 2003, the Republicans controlled both
houses of Congress and the Washington press corps had been easily
deceived about the Iraq invasion. So, the administration had reason to
be confident that the cover-up would hold – as long as the Justice
Department played ball.
But Attorney General Ashcroft threw the
White House a curve when he recused himself and let Deputy Attorney
General James Comey pick a special prosecutor outside the
administration’s direct control. Comey chose Chicago U.S. Attorney
Fitzgerald, known as a no-nonsense prosecutor with a record of pursuing
public corruption cases.
Suddenly, Libby and other senior
officials were facing sterner FBI questioning. Still, instead of
admitting a role in leaking Plame’s identity, Libby stuck to his
denials, concocting a story that he had learned about Plame’s CIA work
from NBC’s Tim Russert.
Libby apparently still hoped that his
allies in the mainstream news media, particularly New York Times
reporter Judy Miller, would shield him from the truth. Indeed, Miller
went to jail for 85 days instead of divulging what her source, Libby,
had revealed about Plame’s identity.
Under pressure in 2005,
however, Libby released Miller from her pledge of confidentiality but
phrased his letter in a way that suggested she should stick with the
team.
“Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be
turning,” Libby wrote. “They turn in clusters, because their roots
connect them.”
But Libby’s bid failed. With testimony from
Miller and others, Fitzgerald built an ironclad case that Libby had
lied to investigators and obstructed justice.
‘Sacrificial Lamb’
At
the start of Libby’s trial in 2007, defense lawyer Theodore Wells
claimed that his client had been assigned the role of White House fall
guy. In opening remarks, Wells told the jury that Libby went to his
boss, Dick Cheney, in early October 2003 and complained, “they’re
trying to set me up; they want me to be the sacrificial lamb.”
But
Wells never fleshed to this fall-guy argument during the trial, nor did
Libby testify in his own defense. That left the impression to some that
Libby may have been sending a message to Bush and Cheney that he
expected to be taken care of, one way or another.
Since
Fitzgerald has never disclosed what Bush and Cheney told investigators
during their own interviews, it’s also unclear how vulnerable they
might be to criminal charges if Libby were to agree to give the full
story in exchange for greater leniency.
But it is clear that
Bush did not live up to his early pledge to punish any administration
official who helped leak Plame’s classified identity. Instead, Bush
promoted Karl Rove, who served as a source on Plame’s identity for at
least two journalists, including Robert Novak, the first to unmask
Plame in a newspaper column on July 14, 2003.
By making Rove
deputy White House chief of staff, instead of firing him, Bush reduced
the risk that Rove might join Libby in running to the prosecutor with
evidence of a presidential-level conspiracy to obstruct justice. Though
there was no choice but to cast Libby outside the tent, Rove was kept
inside.
The Plamegate cover-up also has extended beyond just the
direct conspirators. Bush and Cheney have counted on the Republican
attack machine and the frequently complicit mainstream news media to
keep up a steady barrage of talking points against Wilson, Plame and
anyone else who tries to keep this scandal alive.
The
administration has succeeded in sowing so much confusion that many
Americans have tuned out Plamegate or have succumbed to the
oft-repeated talking points, even those that have been disproved.
For
instance, right-wing talk shows continue to insist that Plame was not
“covert” despite the fact that the CIA has confirmed she was.
Bottom Lines
Still, there remain two bottom lines to this story:
First,
senior administration officials did divulge the identity of a covert
CIA officer destroying her career and endangering foreigners who
cooperated with her in investigating the proliferation of dangerous
weapons in the Middle East.
Reasonable people can disagree
whether these actions meet the requirements of premeditation contained
in the Intelligence Agents Identities Act of 1982 and whether the
available evidence – especially given the President’s broad control
over classification authority – could establish guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt.
But there can be little question that the
White House-orchestrated campaign against Wilson, which led to the
disclosure of his wife’s identity, resulted in serious damage to U.S.
national security.
Second, the evidence is overwhelming that the
administration conducted a cover-up of the Plamegate facts, relying not
only on their own false statements about the leak itself but enlisting
foot soldiers in the Washington press corps and among Republicans in
Congress to continue smearing Wilson to this day and thus confuse the
American public.
From the start, Bush and Cheney appear to have
sensed that they could make the cover-up work if they transformed it
into a political spat. To a great extent, they have been proven correct
in that assumption.
Now, their last remaining Plamegate concern
is that “Scooter” Libby might calculate that he stands a better chance
of reducing his time in jail if he tells the whole story rather than
trust that his loyal silence will be rewarded by a pardon from a
thankful President Bush.
The next move in this four-year-old
chess match between those who want to hide the truth and those who want
to expose it rests with Judge Watson and whether he sends Libby off to
jail now rather than later.
[For more on the Libby case, see Consortiumnews.com’s Special Report, “
Scooter Libby’s Time-Travel Trial.”]
Writings 
It’s a well-worn talking point for George W. Bush’s supporters to say there was no underlying crime beneath former White House aide I. Lewis Libby’s conviction for obstructing justice, a debatable point itself. But the evidence is clear there was a larger cover-up conspiracy – and it could still unravel.
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