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Copyright © 2006/2007 by Jay B. Gaskill

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July 2, 2007

Please Note:

All the Prior “Human Conspiracy” Posts, from June, 2006, though June 6, 2007, are now archived in chronological order.  You can visit (and search them) only by going to the following link: http://www.jaygaskill.com/BLOGARCHIVE.htm .

Jay B. Gaskill

LIBBY IS SPARED. 

MANY (SECRETLY) ARE RELIEVED…

AP today

WASHINGTON - President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive. Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.

“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.”

I talked briefly about the Libby case in March, noting that Senator Clinton, among others who seek the President’s chair will be relieved when Mr. Libby no longer faces prison.

Here is that earlier piece as it was posted:

SCOOTER LIBBY --TAKING  A BULLET FOR “THE GOOD OF THE ORDER”

March 8, 2007

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, aide de camp to vice President Cheney, has done what is expected of the Secret Service agents surrounding POTUS: He took a bullet for the “good of the order”.  By every account, though now a convicted perjurer, Mr. Libby was and is a “good man”.  I was particularly moved by Davis Brooks’ column in today’s NYT.

 “And so, like everybody who knows him, I greet his conviction with a profound sense of sadness. You can convince me that Libby is guilty, but I’ll always believe he’s a good man.”

 

Naturally everything looks different in hindsight: “Scooter” could have prevented this sad outcome by keeping better notes and exercising much more care when he talked to reporters.  But who would have thought that his many “background” and “off the record” conversations with these journalists would end up used against him in a federal criminal prosecution?

Lewis Libby’s travails resulted when a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, initially retained to investigate the leaks surrounding “Plamegate”, failed to implicate Cheney with the impropriety of leaking Ms. Plame’s CIA employment status to the press.  The main case collapsed completely when it out turned out that the leaker-in-chief was the State Department’s Richard Armitage, an embedded liberal, and that Ms. Plame was not a covert operative at the time.  The case should have been shut down right then.  This is like one of those movies where the heat seeking missile is launched; misses its primary target; then heads down the smokestack of the nearby kindergarten, killing the night watchman.

Every heavy hitter in politics needs a “scooter”.  Ask Hillary.  This is why even the most partisan opponents of the administration will breathe a sigh of relief if Libby prevails on appeal or --in the waning days of the administration -- POTUS issues a pardon or commutation of sentence.

I agree with the special prosecutor that perjury cannot be countenanced in the judicial system.  But I find it beyond irony that in Libby’s case, a juror wanted to know whether perjury could be committed by telling a lie to a Time reporter.

Oy vey.

The impulse to talk, to say something, is as deeply ingrained in the DNA of the political animal as is the thirst for gossip among media hounds. 

Think how differently history might have played out if POTUS’ predecessor had chosen non disclosure over dissimulation: Instead of “I did not have sex with that woman” suppose President WC had said: “I feel for your curiosity but I cannot tell a lie.  You can take these inquiries and shove them into that unlit crevice where they belong. I have some work to do.”

JBG

* POTUS – President Of The United States