The shock in the US at the 30-month jail sentence and $250,000 fine on Vice President Dick Cheney’s former aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby is itself shocking. Sentencing Libby Tuesday, the judge revealed that no less than 168 of America’s great and good, by no means all of them neoconservatives, had written testifying to Libby’s good character and pleading for clemency.
Last March a federal jury convicted Libby on four charges including perjury and obstruction of justice. His crimes were committed in an attempt to deny and then cover up the fact that the administration had deliberately compromised the wife of a leading US critic of the belligerent Bush’s pre-invasion Iraq policy. Covert CIA officer Valerie Palme, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was unmasked in a briefing to journalists by several individuals in the White House. The most prominent was allegedly the then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has yet to be charged with what is the far more serious federal crime. Libby’s defenders have protested that he has effectively been convicted for outing Palme, not for lying about and covering up for the people who did. This is a deplorable double standard. A public servant, whose first duty was to the country he serves and to its laws, not the administration of which he was a member, has been convicted of flagrant dishonesty. Yet his supporters choose to ignore this and pretend he was being tried for another crime.
Libby’s fall may be tragic, as US commentators are saying, but his punishment is deserved. Indeed there will be some who feel that such a fundamental breach of public trust deserves a much stiffer penalty. However, the extraordinary way in which part of the US establishment has formed protectively around this former high-flying member suggests they believe that what he did to obstruct justice and the lies he told are in fact perfectly permissible at the top echelons of government. This is the sort of thinking that corrupts the high principles of public service. It may also explain why the eight years of George W. Bush’s White House administration will go down in history as one of the darkest and feeblest in US history.
The president’s own attitude to the Libby sentence has so far been muted, save for an expression of sadness. Bush has the power to pardon Libby but has said he will not consider such a move until the full appeal process has been launched. His view may change if the trial judge decides next week that Libby should start his jail term immediately while his appeals take place. If Bush does pardon a convicted liar, there will be understandable dismay among some Americans and many of America’s allies. But this lame-duck, moribund presidency has little left to lose in the way of reputation. The least Bush can do is save a fellow conspirator in the tissue of lies that has plunged the Middle East into chaos. Who knows, one day, he may need pardoning himself.
