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I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. (born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and former senior White House official who was convicted of four felony charges relating to the Plame affair. Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and, if that attempt fails, they will appeal Libby's conviction.[1][2] Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "said he didn't expect anyone else to be charged in the case."[2][3] He noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby.[4] Before being indicted, he was the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs, and an assistant to President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2005.[5][6] Libby is "the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra Affair."[7]
On Friday, October 28, 2005, Libby was indicted on five felony counts (one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of perjury) by a U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel as part of the CIA leak grand jury investigation, a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity," a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.[8] Libby was not charged with violating those particular statutes. He resigned his government position on the same day that he was indicted.[9]
Libby's criminal trial, United States v. Libby, began on January 16, 2007. On March 6, 2007, Libby was found guilty on four of the five counts with which he was charged: two counts of perjury, one of obstruction of justice, and one of making false statements to federal investigators. Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and, if that attempt fails, they will appeal Libby's conviction.[1][2] Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "said he didn't expect anyone else to be charged in the case."[2][3] He noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby.[4] Calls for Libby to be pardoned by President George W. Bush appeared in some newspapers; some of them are posted online by the Libby Legal Defense Trust.[10][11] U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a press release about the verdict, urging President Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby, and other Democratic politicians followed his lead.[12]
Libby is also named as a party in an on-going civil suit that Valerie E. Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, have brought against Libby, Vice President Cheney, President Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.[13][14]
Libby was born to "a prosperous family" in New Haven, Connecticut; his father was "an investment banker."[15] Various sources report that he has been rather secretive about his actual first name, and that the initial "I." stands for Irving (or, alternatively, for the abbreviations "Irv" or "Irve").[16][17][18] According to news accounts and interviews, he first acquired his nickname "Scooter" as an infant, when his father, after seeing him move quickly across his crib, described him as "a scooter."[5][19] In their February 2002 interview on Larry King Live, King asked Libby specifically: "Where did "Scooter" come from?"; Libby replied: "Oh, it goes way back to when I was a kid. Some people ask me if ... [crosstalk] ... as you did earlier, if it's related to Phil Rizzuto [nicknamed "The Scooter"]. I had the range but not the arm."[20][17] The Libby family lived in the Washington region, Miami, and Connecticut before Scooter graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[5] In 1972 he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, where, reportedly, he was intensely influenced in his political thinking by Paul Wolfowitz, a professor who became his mentor.[5][15][21] In 1975 he received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Columbia Law School.[19]
Libby is married to Harriet Grant, a former staff lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 1990s. Libby and Grant have two children ("a son and a daughter") and live in McLean, Virginia.[17][22]
After graduating from Columbia, Libby was admitted to practice to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976, and he practiced law in Philadelphia.[23] He was admitted to practice before the Bar of the District of Columbia on May 19, 1978.
One of Libby's clients in his work as a private lawyer was fugitive billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich, who had been convicted of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran, and who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton: Libby "represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000"; early in March 2001, at a "contentious" Congressional hearing to review Clinton's pardons, Libby "testified...[that] he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich 'misconstrued the facts and the law' when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges."[24] According to Jackson Hogan, Libby's roommate at Yale University, as quoted in the already-cited U.S. News & World Report article by Walsh, "'He is intensely partisan...in that if he is your counsel, he'll embrace your case and try to figure a way out of whatever noose you are ensnared in.'" Walsh adds: "That might help explain Libby's aggressive representation" of Rich.[15]
Libby has also, at various times in his career, held positions with the American Bar Association, been on the advisory board of the RAND Corporation's Center for Russia and Eurasia, and been a legal advisor to the United States House of Representatives, as well as served as a consultant for the defense contractor Northrop Grumman.[23]
After working as a lawyer in Philadelphia, Libby "accepted a job offer from his old Yale political science professor, Paul Wolfowitz, and went to work for Wolfowitz at the State Department, from 1981 to 1985," as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff.[23] From 1982 to 1985, according to his official U.S. State Department biography, Libby served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.[6] Although in 1985 "he left the government to enter private legal practice.... By 1989 he was working again for Wolfowitz, this time at the Pentagon, as principal deputy under-secretary of defense for strategy and resources....For his government service [in 1993] Libby was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award and the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. He also received the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service [1985]."[23][6] During the George H. W. Bush administration, Libby was also confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy under secretary of defense for policy.[6] According to Curtiss, "When the Democrats took over in 1992, Libby crossed the Potomac to serve as legal adviser for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China."[23] Libby co-authored the draft of the "Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-99 fiscal years" (dated February 18, 1992) with Wolfowitz for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
In 1995, as recounted by Curtiss, Libby "became managing partner at the Washington office of the Dechert, Price and Rhoads law firm, where he worked until 2001, when Vice President Cheney named him chief of staff and national security adviser."[23]
According to Stephen Smith, in the previously-cited CBS News report of October 28, 2005, "Along with Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Wolfowitz, Libby became part of a network of neo-conservatives who[m] many know as the 'Vulcans' – Mr. Bush's core national security team."[19] In 1997 Libby became a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, and, while he was still a partner at Dechert Price, and Rhoads, he joined Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and others in writing its 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century".[19][23][25][26][27]
After becoming Vice President Cheney's chief of staff in 2001, Libby was reportedly nicknamed "Germ Boy" at the White House, for insisting on universal smallpox vaccination.[28] His "constant presence behind the scenes in the Bush administration" reportedly also led to his nickname "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney": "'He is to the vice president what the vice president is to the president,' said Mary Matalin, who worked with Libby as an adviser to Cheney during Bush's first term....Speaking before the indictments, she described Libby as a deep thinker and problem-solver who gives 'discreet advice.'"[19][25]
Libby was active in the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee of the Pentagon when it was chaired by Richard Perle during the early years of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2003).[23]
Libby was also actively involved in the Bush administration's efforts to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace; for example, he participated in a series of "meetings... [with] Jewish leaders" in early December 2002 and "an unusual meeting" with two aides of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in mid-April 2003, culminating in the Red Sea Summit, held in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2004.[29][30]
On October 28, 2005, after his indictment by Fitzgerald's grand jury, Libby resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, as assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs, and as assistant to President Bush.[9]
In January 2006, after his resignation from the Bush administration, Libby joined the Hudson Institute as a senior advisor, with a focus on "issues relating to the War on Terror and the future of Asia."[21]
In 1996 Libby published a novel entitled The Apprentice. It concerns a group of travelers stranded in northern Japan in the winter of 1903 during a smallpox epidemic.[31] After Libby's grand jury indictment, his publisher (St. Martin's Press [Griffin]) reprinted the novel, described as "an everyday tale of bestiality and paedophilia in 1903 Japan...[and] packed with sexual perversion, dwelling on prepubescent girls and their training as prostitutes": "One passage describes a girl being thrown into a cage 'with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons....They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch.'"[32] In an interview, after telling Larry King a more general account of the plot and describing how he turned a college project into this novel, he enthusiastically endorsed King's suggestion that one day it might become a "movie": <blockquote>KING: This sounds like a movie.<br> LIBBY: Well, you know, say it louder.<br> KING: Your lips to God, right?<br> LIBBY: Right.[20]</blockquote>
In 2003 and 2004, intense speculation about Libby centered on the possibility that he may have been the administration official who "leaked" the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA employee whose identity was classified.
The American Prospect revealed in August 2005 that Libby testified that he met with Judith Miller, a newspaper journalist, on July 8, 2003, and discussed Wilson's wife with Miller at that time, but later revealed to be misidentified in Miller's notes as "Valerie Flame".
Before that, Miller was jailed on July 7, 2005, for contempt of court after refusing to testify to the grand jury about this meeting despite a signed blanket waiver from Libby allowing journalists to discuss their conversations. Miller has argued that Libby's waiver to all journalists could have been coerced and that she would only testify if given an individual waiver, which Miller received after serving most of her sentence. The waiver was offered "voluntarily and personally" by Libby, accompanied by a letter which has been the subject of much speculation: <blockquote>As noted above, my lawyer confirmed my waiver to other reporters in just the way he did with your lawyer. Why? Because as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call.<br> . . . .<br> You went to jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats, bird flu and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—-and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.<br><br> With admiration, Scooter Libby."[33]</blockquote>
After agreeing to testify, Miller was released on September 29, 2005. She appeared before the grand jury the next day, on September 30, 2005, but was not relieved of contempt until she testified again on 12 October 2005. For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously-undisclosed meeting with Libby on 23 June 2003, several weeks before Wilson's ''New York Times'' editorial was published. According to Miller's notes from that earlier meeting, Libby disclosed that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA employee involved in her husband's trip to Niger. Miller's notebook from her July 8, 2003 meeting with Libby contains the name "Valerie Flame." (sic)[34]
On August 30, 2006, The New York Times reported that Deputy Secretary of State Department Richard Armitage was the "initial and primary source" for columnist Robert Novak's article of July 14, 2003, which named Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative."[35] CNN reported also that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as disclosing Mrs. Wilson's CIA role in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak.[36][37]
According to lawyers close to Libby, "the information about Mr. Armitage’s role may help Mr. Libby convince a jury that his actions were relatively inconsequential."[38]
Fitzgerald has issued no statement about Armitage's involvement, and, as of February 2007, the CIA leak investigation remains open.
Main article: United States v. Libby Libby resigned from his position in the White House on 28 October 2005, immediately after being indicted on criminal felony charges by a grand jury. He was charged with five felonies:
Each count in the five-count indictment against Libby in United States v. Libby carries a fine of up to $250,000. Having been convicted of four felonies, Libby could thus be fined up to $1 million. The charges also carry a maximum prison term of thirty years. Neither Libby nor any other Bush Administration officials have to date been charged with the federal crime of revealing the identity of a CIA agent, the original focus of the investigation. The charges against Libby specifically concerned his obstruction of justice, making false statements when interviewed by federal investigators, and perjury in his testimony before the grand jury - on four of the five charges he was convicted. Libby was acquitted on count three, the second charge of his making false statements, concerning statements that he made about his conversations with Time reporter Matthew Cooper during his interviews by agents of the FBI.[39]
Libby told investigators that he first heard of Plame's CIA employment from journalist Tim Russert and that he had forgotten that Vice President Dick Cheney had already told him that information.[40] The indictments charge that all of these alleged statements of Libby's were false, in that Libby had numerous conversations about Plame's CIA employment before speaking to Russert; Russert did not tell Libby about Plame's CIA employment; Libby knew for a certainty that Plame was employed by the CIA; and Libby told reporters that Plame worked for the CIA without any disclaimer that he did not know whether this was true or not.[41] The "false statements" charges in the Libby indictment stem from its allegation that he made these claims to the FBI; the "perjury" charges, from the allegation that he repeated these claims to the grand jury; and the "obstruction" charge, from the allegation that Libby made these statements in an effort to prevent Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation from uncovering the truth.[8]
Libby, who was questioned by the FBI in the fall of 2003 and testified before a Federal grand jury on March 5, 2004, and again on March 24, 2004, pled not guilty to all charges. David Addington, Cheney's legal counsel during the CIA leak scandal, testified in January 2007 that Libby bluntly told him, "I just want to tell you, I didn't do it."[42]
Libby retained attorney Ted Wells of the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to represent him in the case. Wells is known for successfully defending Clinton Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy against a 30-count indictment and participating in the successful defense of former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan.
On January 23, 2007, the Associated Press reported that Wells alleged "that administration officials sought to blame Libby for the leak to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures."[43]
After Libby's motion to dismiss was denied, the press initially reported that he would testify at the trial.[44] In February 2007, during the trial, however, numerous press reports stressed that whether or not he would testify was still uncertain, and, ultimately, he did not testify at trial.
The jury received the case for their deliberation on 21 February, 2007.
After deliberating for ten days, the jury rendered its verdict at noon on March 6, 2007.[45] It convicted Libby on four of the five counts against him—two counts of perjury, one count of obstructing justice in a grand jury investigation, and one of the two counts of making false statements to federal investigators—and acquitted him on one count of making false statements.[46] Given current federal sentencing guidelines, which are not mandatory, the convictions could result in a sentence ranging from no imprisonment to imprisonment of up to 25 years and a fine of one million US dollars.[1] Given those non-binding guidelines, according to lawyer, author, New Yorker staff writer, and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Anderson Cooper 360°, such a sentence could likely be between "one and a half to three years."[47] Sentencing is scheduled for June 2007.[3][4][46][48] His lawyers have announced their intention to seek a new trial and, if that attempt fails, to appeal Libby's conviction.[1][2]
As reported in CNN Newsroom, and subsequently on Larry King Live on CNN and by various other television networks, including MSNBC (on Scarborough Country), one juror––"Denis Collins, a Washington resident and self-described registered Democrat," who is a journalist and former reporter at The Washington Post and the author of a book on espionage and a novel––"said he and fellow jurors found that passing judgment on Libby was 'unpleasant.' But in the final analysis, he said jurors found Libby's story just too hard to believe: 'We're not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but it seemed like ... he was the fall guy'. Collins said the jury believed Libby was 'tasked by the vice president to go and talk to reporters.'"[1][49][50][51] Collins offers a day-by-day account of his experience as Juror #9 at the Libby trial in an "Exclusive" at The Huffington Post.[52]
Blogs have played a prominent role in the press coverage of this trial. Scott Shane, in his article "For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder", published in The New York Times on February 15, 2007, quotes Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, who observes that United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby is "the first federal case for which independent bloggers have been given official credentials along with reporters from the traditional news media."[53]
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