Scooter Libby
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (first name generally given as Irv, Irve or Irving; born August 22, 1950) is an American [1]lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. He became known as a high-ranking staff person to be indicted by a grand jury on charges related to an intelligence investigation. He was convicted but later granted clemency by one Republican president and pardoned by another. From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States,[2] and Assistant to the President during the administration of President George W. Bush. In October 2005,[3] Libby resigned from all three government positions after he was indicted on five counts by a federal grand jury concerning the investigation of the leak of the covert identity of Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson.[4] He was subsequently convicted of four counts (one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one count of making false statements),[5] making him the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan convicted in 1990 in the Iran–Contra affair.[6] After Libby's failed appeal and a high-pressure lobbying campaign for Libby's full pardon by Vice President Cheney, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence of 31 months in federal prison, leaving the other parts of his sentence intact.[7] As a consequence of his conviction in United States v. Libby, Libby's license to practice law was suspended in 2007, for a period of at least five years. He gained reinstatement in 2016.[8] President Donald Trump fully pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.[9] Personal historyBackground and educationLibby was born to an affluent Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irving Lewis Leibovitz, was an investment banker. His father changed his family's original surname from Leibovitz to Libby.[5][10][11][12][13][14] Libby graduated from the Eaglebrook School, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, a junior boarding school, in 1965.[13] The family lived in the Washington, D.C., region; Miami, Florida; and Connecticut prior to Libby's graduation from Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1968.[15] He and his elder brother, Hank, a tax lawyer (now retired) were the first in the family to graduate from college.[15] Libby attended Yale University in New Haven, graduating magna cum laude in 1972.[16][17] As Yale Daily News reporter Jack Mirkinson observes, "Even though he would eventually become a prominent Republican, Libby's political beginnings would not have pointed in that direction. He served as vice president of the Yale College Democrats and later campaigned for Michael Dukakis when he was running for governor of Massachusetts."[16][17] According to Mirkinson: "Two particular Yale courses helped guide Libby's future endeavors. One of these was a creative writing course, which started Libby on a 20-year mission to complete a novel ... [later published as] The Apprentice ... [and] a political science class with professor and future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In an interview with author James Mann, Libby said Wolfowitz was one of his favorite professors, and their professional relationship did not end with the class."[17] Wolfowitz became a significant mentor in his later professional life.[5][18][19][15][17] In 1975, as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Libby received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Columbia Law School.[20][21] Marriage and familyLibby is married to Harriet Grant, whom he met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1980s, while he was a partner and she an associate in the law firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin: "'When he and Harriet became serious,' Dickstein partner Kenneth Simon wrote, 'she chose to leave the firm rather than maintain the awkward situation of an associate dating a partner.'"[22][23] Libby and Grant married in the early 1990s, have a son and a daughter, and live in McLean, Virginia.[11][23][24] NameLibby has been secretive about his full name.[10][22] He was prosecuted as I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby". National Public Radio's Day to Day reported[10] that the 1972 Yale Banner (the yearbook of Yale) gave his name as Irve Lewis Libby Jr.; it is unclear if Irve is his given name, or if it is short for Irving, as it was for his father. CBS,[20] the BBC,[25] and The New York Times's John Tierney have all used this spelling of his first name. The Times's Eric Schmitt spelled it Irv,[22] though he cited a phone interview with Libby's brother, and did not clarify if he had asked for a spelling. At times, including in the Yale Banner, and as documented in a federal directory cited by Ron Kampeas and others, Libby has used the suffix Jr. after his name.[26][10][11] At other times, however, as listed in his federal indictment and United States v. Libby, which give his alias as Scooter Libby, there is no Jr. after Libby's name.[4] The Columbia Alumni Association online directory lists him as I. Lewis Libby, with a first name of "I." and birth first name of "Irve".[27] Libby has also been secretive about the origin of his nickname Scooter. The New York Times's Eric Schmitt, citing the aforementioned interview with Libby's brother, wrote that "His nickname 'Scooter' derives from the day [his] father watched him crawling in his crib and joked, 'He's a Scooter!'"[22] In a 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."[28] The ApprenticeLibby's only novel, The Apprentice, about a group of travelers stranded in northern Japan in the winter of 1903, during a smallpox epidemic in the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War, was first published in a hardback edition by Graywolf Press in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1996, and reprinted as a trade paperback by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books in 2002. After Libby's indictment in the Plame affair grand jury investigation in 2005, St. Martin's Press reissued The Apprentice as a mass market paperback (Griffin imprint).[29][30][31] The Apprentice has been described as "a thriller ... that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape."[31] Law careerAfter earning his J.D. from Columbia in 1975, Libby joined the firm of Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis LLP.[23] He was admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976,[32][33][34] and to the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on May 19, 1978.[35][36] Libby practiced law at Schnader for six years before joining the U.S. State Department policy planning staff, at the invitation of his former Yale professor, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1981.[23] In 1985, returning to private practice, he joined the firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin (now Dickstein Shapiro LLP), becoming a partner in 1986 and working there until 1989, when he left to work in the U.S. Defense Department, again under his former Yale professor Paul Wolfowitz, until January 1993.[23][32][34][37] In 1993, returning to private legal practice from government, Libby became the managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander & Ferdon (formerly Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander); in 1995, along with his Mudge Rose colleague, Leonard Garment––who had replaced John Dean as acting Special Counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon for the last two years of his presidency dominated by Watergate, and who had hired Libby at Mudge Rose twenty years later––and three other lawyers from that firm, Libby joined the Washington, D.C., office of Dechert Price & Rhoads (now part of Dechert LLP), where he was a managing partner, a member of its litigation department, and chaired its Public Policy Practice Group. His work there was well regarded, with President Clinton recognizing Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who worked on the Marc Rich pardon case.[38] In 2001 Libby left the firm to return to work again in government, as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.[34][37][39] Fugitive billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich, who, along with his business partner Pincus Green, had been indicted of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran, and who, with Green, was ultimately pardoned by President Bill Clinton, was a client whom Leonard Garment had hired Libby to help represent around the spring of 1985, after Rich and Green had first engaged Garment.[40] Libby stopped representing Rich in the spring of 2000; early in March 2001, at a "contentious" Congressional hearing to review Clinton's pardons, Libby testified that he thought the prosecution's case against Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law".[41] Jackson Hogen, Libby's roommate at Yale University, told U.S. News & World Report's Kenneth T. 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.'"[5] According to a House Committee on Government Reform report, however, "The arguments made by Garment, [William Bradford] Reynolds and Libby [in their testimony] focused on the claim that the SDNY was criminalizing what should have been a civil tax case. They did not make, compile, or in any other way lay the groundwork for, or make a case for a Presidential pardon. When former President Clinton stated that they 'reviewed and advocated' 'the case for the pardons,' he suggested that they were somehow involved in arguing that Rich and Green should receive pardons. This was completely untrue". (p. 162)[40] Bar suspension and disbarmentBefore his indictment in United States v. Libby, Libby had been a licensed lawyer, admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, although his Pennsylvania law license was inactive, and he had already been suspended from the Washington, D.C. Office of Bar Counsel (D.C. Bar) for non-payment of fees.[42] The Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals recommended disbarment upon confirmation of his conviction, which Libby had initially indicated that he would appeal.[43] Having suspended his license to practice law on April 3, 2007, the D.C. Bar "disbarred [him] pursuant to D.C. Code § 11-2503(a)" on legal grounds of "moral turpitude", effective April 11, 2007, and recommended to the D.C. Court of Appeals his disbarment if his conviction were not overturned on appeal.[35][36][43] On December 10, 2007, Libby's lawyers announced his decision "to drop his appeal of his conviction in the CIA leak case".[44] On March 20, 2008, following the dropping of his appeal of his conviction, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals disbarred Libby.[45] Libby also lost his license to practice or appear in court in Pennsylvania.[46] Government public service and political careerIn 1981, after working as a lawyer in the Philadelphia firm Schnader LLP, Libby accepted the invitation of his former Yale University political science professor and mentor Paul Wolfowitz to join the U.S. State Department's policy planning staff.[17][34] From 1982 to 1985, Libby served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.[39] In 1985 he received the Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service from the United States Department of Defense, and he resigned from government to enter private legal practice at Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin.[34] In 1989, he went to work at the Pentagon, again under Wolfowitz, as principal deputy under-secretary for strategy and resources at the U.S. Defense Department.[39] During the George H. W. Bush administration, Libby was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy under secretary of defense for policy, serving from 1992 to 1993.[39] In 1992 he also served as legal adviser for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China.[34] Libby co-authored the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–1999 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) with Wolfowitz for Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense. In 1993 Libby received the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Defense Department and the Distinguished Public Service Award from the U.S. State Department before resuming private legal practice first at Mudge Rose and then at Dechert. Libby was part of a network of neo-conservatives known as the "Vulcans"—its other members included Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld.[20] While he was still a managing partner of Dechert Price & Rhoads, he was a signatory to the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (a document dated June 3, 1997).[20][47] He joined Wolfowitz, PNAC co-founders William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and other "Project Participants" in developing the PNAC's September 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century".[20][34][48][49][50] After becoming Cheney's chief of staff in 2001, Libby was reportedly nicknamed "Germ Boy" at the White House, for insisting on universal smallpox vaccination.[51] He was also nicknamed "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney" for his close working relationship with the Vice President. Mary Matalin, who worked with Libby as an adviser to Cheney during Bush's first term, said of him "He is to the vice president what the vice president is to the president."[20][48] 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).[34] At various points in his career, Libby has also 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 adviser to the United States House of Representatives, as well as served as a consultant for the defense contractor Northrop Grumman.[34] 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 a meeting with two aides of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in mid April 2003, culminating in the Red Sea Summit on June 4, 2004.[52][53] In their highly controversial and widely contested "Working Paper" entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", University of Chicago political science professor John J. Mearsheimer and academic dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Stephen M. Walt argue that Libby was among the Bush administration's most "fervently pro-Israel ... officials" (20).[54] Awards for government service
Subsequent work experienceFrom January 2006 until March 7, 2007, the day after his conviction in United States v. Libby, when he resigned, Libby served as a "senior adviser" at the Hudson Institute, to "focus on issues relating to the War on Terror and the future of Asia ... offer research guidance and ... advise the institute in strategic planning."[18][55][56] His resignation was announced by the Hudson Institute in a press release dated March 8, 2007.[55] However, he has served as Senior Vice President of the Hudson Institute at least since 2010.[57] Libby also serves as a member of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, a group that encourages and advocates changes to government policy to strengthen national biodefense. In order to address biological threats facing the nation, the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense created a 33 step initiative for the U.S. Government to implement. Headed by former Senator Joe Lieberman and former governor Tom Ridge, the Study Panel assembled in Washington, D.C., for four meetings concerning current biodefense programs. The Study Panel concluded that the federal government had little to no defense mechanisms in case of a biological event. The Study Panel's final report, The National Blueprint for Biodefense, proposes a string of solutions and recommendations for the U.S. Government to take, including items such as giving the vice president authority over biodefense responsibilities and merging the entire biodefense budget. These solutions represent the panel's call to action in order to increase awareness and activity for pandemic-related issues. Involvement in the Plame affair Wikinews has news related to:
Between 2003 and 2005, intense speculation centered on the possibility that Libby may have been the administration official who had "leaked" classified employment information about Valerie Plame, a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent and the wife of Iraq War critic Joseph C. Wilson, to New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other reporters and later tried to hide his having done so.[58][59] In August 2005, as revealed in grand jury testimony audiotapes played during the trial and reported in many news accounts, Libby testified that he met with Judith Miller, a reporter with The New York Times, on July 8, 2003, and discussed Plame with her.[60] Although Libby signed a "blanket waiver" allowing journalists to discuss their conversations with him pursuant to the CIA leak grand jury investigation, Miller maintained that such a waiver did not serve to allow her to reveal her source to that grand jury; moreover, Miller argued that Libby's general waiver pertaining to all journalists could have been coerced and that she would only testify before that grand jury if given an individual waiver.[61] After refusing to testify about her July 2003 meeting with Libby, Judith Miller was jailed on July 7, 2005, for contempt of court. Months later, however, her new attorney, Robert Bennett, told her that she already had possessed a written, voluntary waiver from Libby all along.[62] After Miller had served most of her sentence, Libby reiterated that he had indeed given her a "waiver" both "voluntarily and personally." He attached the following letter, which, when released publicly, became the subject of further speculation about Libby's possible motives in sending it:
After agreeing to testify, Miller was released on September 29, 2005, appearing before the grand jury the next day, but the charge against her was rescinded only after she testified again on October 12, 2005.[65] For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously undisclosed meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003, two weeks before Wilson's New York Times op-ed was published.[65] In her account published in the Times on October 16, 2005, based on her notes, Miller reports:
Her notation on her July 8, 2003 meeting with Libby does contain the name "Valerie Flame [sic]", which she added retrospectively. While Miller reveals publicly that she herself had misidentified the last name of Wilson's wife (aka "Valerie Plame") in her own marginal notes on their interview as "Flame" instead of "Plame", in her grand jury (and later trial testimony), she remained uncertain when, how, and why she arrived at that name and did not attribute it to Libby:
A year and a half later, a jury convicted Libby of obstruction of justice and perjury in his grand jury testimony and making false statements to federal investigators about when and how he learned that Plame was a CIA agent.[26][61][66] On April 13, 2018, Libby was pardoned by President Donald Trump.[67] Indictment and resignationOn October 28, 2005, as a result of the CIA leak grand jury investigation, Special Counsel Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements when interviewed by agents of the FBI, and two counts of perjury in his testimony before the grand jury.[4][68][69][70] Pursuant to the grand jury investigation, Libby had told FBI investigators that he first heard of Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment from Cheney, and then later heard it from journalist Tim Russert, and acted as if he did not have that information.[71][72] The indictment alleges that statements to federal investigators and the grand jury were intentionally false, in that Libby had numerous conversations about Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment, including his conversations with Judith Miller (see above), before speaking to Russert; Russert did not tell Libby about Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment; prior to talking with such reporters, Libby knew with certainty that she was employed by the CIA; and Libby told reporters that she worked for the CIA without making any disclaimer that he was uncertain of that fact.[4][71][72] The false statements counts in the Libby indictment charge that he intentionally made those false statements to the FBI; the perjury counts charge that he intentionally lied to the grand jury in repeating those false statements; and the obstruction of justice count charges that Libby intentionally made those false statements in order to mislead the grand jury, thus impeding Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation of the truth about the leaking of Mrs. Wilson's then-classified, covert CIA identity.[4] Trial, conviction, and sentencingOn March 6, 2007, the jury convicted him on four of the five counts: obstruction of justice, one count of making false statements when interviewed by agents of the FBI, and two counts of perjury. They acquitted him on count three, the second charge of making false statements when interviewed by federal agents about his conversations with Time reporter Matthew Cooper.[26] Libby retained attorney Ted Wells of the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to represent him. Wells had successfully defended former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy against a 30-count indictment and had also participated in the successful defense of former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan.[73] After Judge Reggie Walton denied Libby's motion to dismiss, the press initially reported that Libby would testify at the trial.[74] Libby's criminal trial, United States v. Libby, began on January 16, 2007. A parade of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists testified, including Bob Woodward, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Judith Miller and David E. Sanger of The New York Times. Despite earlier press reports and widespread speculation, neither Libby nor Vice President Cheney testified.[61] The jury began deliberations on February 21, 2007. VerdictAfter deliberating for 10 days, the jury rendered its verdict on March 6, 2007.[75] It convicted Libby on four of the five counts against him: two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation, and one of the two counts of making false statements to federal investigators.[26][76] After the verdict, initially, Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and that, if that attempt were to fail, they would appeal Libby's conviction.[77][78] Libby did not speak to reporters.[66] Libby's defense team eventually decided against seeking a new trial.[79] Speaking to the media outside the courtroom after the verdict, Fitzgerald said that "The jury worked very long and hard and deliberated at length ... [and] was obviously convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had lied and obstructed justice in a serious manner ... I do not expect to file any further charges."[77][80][81] The trial confirmed that the leak came first from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; since Fitzgerald did not charge Armitage and did not charge anyone else, Libby's conviction effectively ended the investigation.[66] In his October 28, 2005, press conference about the grand jury's indictment, Fitzgerald had already explained that Libby's obstruction of justice through perjury and false statements had prevented the grand jury from determining whether the leak violated federal law.[82] During his media appearance outside the courtroom after the verdict in the Libby case, Fitzgerald fielded questions from the press about others involved in the Plame affair and in the CIA leak grand jury investigation, such as Armitage and Cheney, whom he had already described as under "a cloud", as already addressed in his conduct of the case and in his closing arguments in court.[81][82][83][84] SentencingGiven current federal sentencing guidelines, which are not mandatory, the conviction could have resulted in a sentence ranging from no imprisonment to imprisonment of up to 25 years and a fine of $1,000,000; yet, as Sniffen and Apuzzo observe, "federal sentencing guidelines will probably prescribe far less."[66] In practice, according to federal sentencing data, three-fourths of the 198 defendants found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2006 served jail time. The average length of jail time on this charge alone was 70 months.[85] On June 5, 2007, Judge Walton sentenced Libby to 30 months in prison and fined him $250,000,[86] clarifying that Libby would begin his sentence immediately.[87] According to Apuzzo and Yost, the judge also "placed him on two years probation after his prison sentence expires. There is no parole in the federal system, but Libby would be eligible for release after two years."[88][89] In addition, Judge Walton required Libby to provide "400 hours of community service" during his supervised release.[90] On June 5, 2007, after the announcement of Libby's sentencing, CNN reported that Libby still "plans to appeal the verdict".[86] That day, in | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
_(cropped).jpg)