I LOVE NEW JERSEY! From the Star Ledger:

Easy to see why Bush threw the fall guy a bone

Friday, July 06, 2007

The furor over President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's 30-month jail sentence is premature, even a little overheated. The real test is whether Bush pardons the little liar.

You don't have to be a nutty neocon to feel some sympathy for Libby. He is, after all, the fall guy in this sorry soap opera, and Bush's decision to spare him jail time is not altogether inappropriate. Lib by's other punishments remain in force. His felony conviction stands, he's been assessed $250,000 in fines (look for his pals to pay that tab with appreciation dinners and such) and he's lost his license to practice law.

Unless, of course, Bush ultimately pardons him. Then it would be as if the trial and conviction never happened and all punishments would be wiped out. Libby would be rendered clean as a hound's tooth. Some would say a law-and-order president would never do that. Don't bet against it.

Libby's apologists argue that the whole affair is the product of overheated politics. And besides, the conviction was just about perjury -- a slap-on-the-wrist kind of offense, they imply. Lots of ordinary Americans seem to believe that, too. But it's not true.

The political atmosphere in Washington at the time of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's probe and the resultant trial was poisonous, no doubt. But Libby's lies to the FBI and Fitzgerald were perjury with a purpose -- to keep Fitzgerald away from the White House, specifically from Dick Cheney. It's called obstruction of justice, and that's an offense that strikes at the heart of our justice system.

As Fitzgerald said in the trial's closing argument, noting that Che ney had dispatched Libby to meet with Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, "there is a cloud over what the vice president did ... That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed jus tice and lied about what happened."

In any serious crime, a first-rate prosecutor -- which Fitzgerald is, as Bush conceded in his commuta tion statement -- is interested not only in who pulled the trigger but who ordered the hit. It's a matter of getting the small fish (Libby) to roll over on higher-ups. In a formal filing with the court, Fitzgerald made it clear that this was his goal -- to find out who, if anyone, Libby was protecting.

It was necessary, Fitzgerald wrote, "to determine whether there was any concerted action" to ex pose Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA connection and thus kill her career. "This was particularly important," Fitzgerald continued, "in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Mrs. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the vice president."

Fitzgerald also took note of ar guments by Libby supporters that his investigation should have been shut down once it became clear that at least three other "high- ranking government officials" -- none of whom lied about it, as Libby did -- had discussed Wilson with reporters. But that argument, Fitzgerald insisted, requires overlooking Libby's statement that his contacts with the press "may have been personally sanctioned by the vice president" and ignoring signs that some of the activity involving Wilson "may have been coordinated."

In short, Fitzgerald wanted to unravel any conspiracy within the administration if there was one. Libby, as Fitzgerald and everyone else knew, lacked the clout to out Wilson on his own and, in the process, intimidate her husband, Jo seph, an outspoken critic of the Iraq misadventure. But Cheney had the clout in spades.

It's well to remember how this all began. Joseph Wilson was among the first to publicly blow the whistle on the Bushies' fraudulent claim that Saddam Hussein was looking to buy uranium from Niger. Suspicion was strong that the administration's claims that Saddam was up to his mustache in weapons of mass destruction were bogus. The sham story was beginning to unravel. Wilson's article in the New York Times gave war critics just the kind of ammunition they needed.

Cheney, who has been the principal proponent of the war and the purveyor of most of the misleading information justifying it, was described in news accounts as apoplectic about Joseph Wilson's criticism. With that as background and Libby's lies, Fitzgerald had little choice as a responsible prosecutor but to pursue his probe as far as it would go -- even into the White House. Libby's lies stopped him at the White House door.

Bush is taking lots of heat over Libby -- he'll take more if he pardons him -- but it's not hard to understand why he'd do it.

He must know that Libby is very likely taking the rap for Che ney and that the veep was apt to worry that as the days and months went by in the slammer, with no White House action to spring him, Libby might decide to drop a dime on Cheney -- to call Fitzgerald, offer to talk and win a get-out-of- jail card. It's possible.

But I like to think the commu tation is more personal for Bush, a more human kind of thing. He knows that Libby is a fall guy, that he's suffering now, in all likelihood, for having done Cheney's bidding. And after six years of having done the same thing, Bush must know just how Libby feels.

John Farmer may be reached at jfarmer@starledger.com.

"Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not." - Frank Zappa 


"I believe in everything - nothing is sacred; I believe in nothing - everything is sacred." - Tom Robbins