News came late yesterday that President Donald Trump is likely to pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. It’s years overdue.
Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was indicted in 2005 and convicted of “perjury,” “obstruction of justice,” and “making false statements” in 2007. Libby was the first and only victim of special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s mission—to find the source who had “outed” CIA officer Valerie Plame to journalists. Fitzgerald had been named special counsel by none other than Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
At the CIA, Plame had proposed that her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a diplomat and a fierce critic of the Iraq war, be sent to Niger to determine whether the central African nation had sent uranium to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Richard Armitage, then a deputy secretary of state—and similarly an opponent of the Iraq war—leaked Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak.
It was never entirely clear why the revelation of Plame’s identity as a CIA employee was such a consequential matter, as her employment status wasn’t classified, as she hadn’t been on a foreign assignment in five years. Revealing her status wouldn’t have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Nonetheless, Iraq War opponents and gullible journalists built the false narrative she was “outed” in retaliation for her husband’s vocal criticisms of the administration’s decision to go to war, and the FBI’s deputy AG appointed a special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, to determine if the disclosure of Plame’s job status to journalists constituted a crime.
The case would be have been long forgotten except for the thuggish prosecutorial conduct of Fitzgerald. He cornered officials in testimony from recollections, and pitted small, inconsequential timing differences against one another. At the outset, Fitzgerald interrogated Robert Novak, who at the time did not reveal his sources, of which one was Richard Armitage. Fitzgerald also put New York Times journalist Judith Miller behind bars for 85 days to ferret out her sources on stories related to national security. Among those she revealed, after weeks in confinement, was Libby. Miller hadn’t even written about Plame.
Libby was never even charged with leaking Plame’s identity or, indeed, leaking any classified information.
But during his trial, and based on conflicting testimony generated by Fitzgerald, Libby was ensnared. Fitzgerald caught him in conflicts over the timing of specific knowledge and the use of precise wording. Libby’s colleagues were instructed to give testimony about what he knew and when. With no evidence that he had anything to do with the underlying offense, Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000.
We hope the president follows through on his intention to pardon Libby. The president’s new National Security Adviser, John Bolton, knows a great deal about the Libby case and has no doubt capably apprised his boss of the details.
The president’s many critics will contend that this has less to do with Libby than with special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump, we’re certain to hear, is taking a shot at the credibility of special counsels by emphasizing their tendency to indict people not for committing the underlying crime but for false testimony. Certainly the fact that Comey appointed Fitzgerald is not unrelated to the president’s intention to pardon Libby. Trump may be hinting at his ability to pardon people he feels are wrongly prosecuted by the Mueller investigation.
We suspect these things are true. There’s plenty of room to debate the many differences between Fitzgerald’s methods and Mueller’s. Mueller in our view has so far conducted himself with fairness and admirable restraint, whereas Fitzgerald did not. For today, however, it’s sufficient to celebrate the impending exoneration of a good man sullied by injustice. May it happen soon.
