President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative’s identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.
Bush commuted the prison term, but left the fine of $250k, and two year probationary period intact. In addition, Mr. Libby will forever forfeit the ability to practice the law, not that he wasn't already rusty as a senior member of the Bush administration, he was most likely spending the majority of his time figuring out how to get around the law.
"The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting," Bush said. He said Libby was given "a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury." Bush had considered harsher penalties for Mr. Libby, but at the very last minute, decided not to ground him and to allow him his customary milk and cookies before bedtime.
A commutation is a reduction of the penalties, while leaving the crime and conviction on the books, as opposed to a full blown pardon, which permanently strikes the crime and conviction from the record.
Libby was convicted as part of the disclosure of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative in retribution for her husband Joe Wilson's failure to participate in an attempt to wrongfully convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellow cake nuclear materials from the African country of Niger.
Wilson was quoted as saying "This demonstrates that this administration is corrupt from top to bottom."
Other quotes include....
Melanie Sloan, legal counsel to Joe and Valerie Wilson... “First, President Bush said any person who leaked would no longer work in his administration. Nonetheless, Scooter Libby didn’t leave office until he was indicted and Karl Rove works in the White House even today. More recently, the vice president ignored an executive order protecting classified information, claiming he isn’t really part of the executive branch. Clearly, this is an administration that believes leaking classified information for political ends is justified and that the law is what applies to other people"
John Edwards, presidential candidate..."In George Bush’s America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. "
One thing is for certain, Libby lied under oath about a despicable deed. For him to receive no sentence and Paris Hilton to do 28 days is undeniably wrong. And what kind of message does this send out to the nation? Cronyism? A reward for protecting the ultimate puppeteer, his boss the Vice President? What message does this send to all those dirty members of the administration, waiting to see if King George II can fight off the subpoena onslaught so they can avoid lying under oath (or incriminating themselves)? Just how many pardons and orders of commutation will the King hand down? What the hell, George, its not like you have more than 10 friends in the beltway anyway, and even less throughout the nation. Crash and burn, baby...crash and burn. Your legacy is sealed any ways.
9 comments:
Just a few points.
Hussein's people were trying to buy yellow cake uranium. What else were they doing in Niger? Looking for the vast supply of orange juice to make sure their people had enough vitamin C I am sure.
When you say, "Libby was convicted as part of the disclosure of Valerie Plame...", what do you mean? We know he wasn't the leak nor did he pass any info to anyone about Valerie or her husband. Right? I mean, even the prosecutor has said that, that isn't an opinion, that's a fact.
US and England assertions that Iraq had attempted to secure 500 tons of yellow cake from Niger were complete falsehoods, blown up to justify an invasion of Iraq.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency told the UN security council the "documents were fakes"
The yellow cake comes out of two French controlled mines in Niger with their entire output sold to France, Spain and Japan.
Iraq has no known facilities to process or enrich yellow cake.
French Director General, Nov. 2001: "There is no possibility of Niger diverting any of the 3000 tons of yellow cake produced"
Feb 2002: the US embassy "The uranium continues and remains in "safe hands"
Feb 2002 CIA report: "previous reports lack crucial details.....the government maintains complete control over its uranium mining..."
March 2002: Prime Minister of Niger: "The structure of Nigerian mines would make it difficult, if not impossible for Niger to sell yellow cake to roque states.."
Oct 4, 2002, prior to President Bush speech: The CIA strongly objected, saying..."The evidence is weak ...The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory ... and we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them the Africa story is overblown and telling them this one of the two issues where we differed with the British."
Besides this, Mr. Wilson was one of three inspections which bore these assertions out.
As a result of Mr. Wilson's unwillingness to "go along" with the Bush administration, his wife, Valerie Plame was outed. Of course all GOP fingers point to Armatage rather than Libby (Cheney's main man, and carpool to work buddy) as to who leaked the info to Novak, who is the culprit in this entire affair.
I realize that Scooter Libby was not officially charged with criminally leaking Valerie Plame's name to the press (although evidence presented at the trial shows that he did leak her identity to reporters). Libby was charged with -- and convicted of -- lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
It remains unclear if Libby knew that Plame was a covert CIA agent at the time he talked about her with reporters -- which was at the direction of Vice President Cheney, according to his defense. In my mind this is an absurd assumption, for the VP chief of staff to not have confirmed her status prior to talking about her to reporters.
The President's public pronouncements on the penalty for leaking the name of a covert CIA employee have changed, although only slightly, some might argue, over time.
2003, Bush: "If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is... And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of... This is a serious charge, by the way. We're talking about a criminal action."
2003, Scott McClellan - "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."
2004, Bush: "June 2004, Bush was asked whether he would fire anyone who was involved in leaking Plame's name -- which might or might not violate the law, depending on the circumstances. Without hesitation, Bush said 'yes.'"
2005, Bush: "If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."
Both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby admitted to talking with reporters about Valerie Plame; both contend that they did know she was covert.
This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.
A very serious crime indeed.
Stay focused Kimba, I have posted this before, I will once again post it here. Please pay close attention:
A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”
A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger .
Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.
You keep arguing about the false documents... no one is arguing for them. Also, Iraq doesn't have to process the yellow cake, they can sell it to other terrorists regimes.
Iraq was however continuing their nuclear programs. So all they would have to do is wait for an Edwards (liberal democrat) to get in office and shift their nuclear and biological programs into high gear. Which Saddam's main nuclear scientist says Saddam wanted.
I am focused. We just believe different reporting, and there are many different versions out there. Wilson says catagorically that there is no way, no possible way, they, or anyone could mistake his findings for confirmations of what the Bush administrations sent him there to find, and confirm. The fact that he is a Democrat would only serve to convince everyone that the war / occupation in Iraq was justifiable. This did not happen, and you see the result. Punitive damages assessed his wife.
There is one unmistakeable fact, Bush heard many voices of warning and advice not to include this in his State of the Union speech. He did it anyway.
Papa, the ship is sinking. I respect you for staying with the ship. All I ask is you stand next to the lifeboats. You will like it there...you will find Novak, O'Reilly, Lugar, Voinovich, Warner and others standing there just in case. AND Anne Coulter is on the other side of the ship looking for whats left of her career.
Greetings from the left, Kimba
Kimba,
the ship is sinking, as do most late term presidencies. It isn't who is on-board or who is off. When you criticize Bush, as do I for expanding the Dept. of Education rather than shutting it down for instance, you should use the salient facts. And you used in your blog documents that everyone knows were fakes and were NOT, let men repeat, were not used for the basis of the "sixteen-words" in the State of the union.
You are setting up straw-men Kimba and then tearing them down.
Again, Libby was found guilty only of lying about how he learned Valerie Plame's identity. Armitage had turned himself into the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case. he was the leak, right Kimba? Fitzgerald says so, Armitage says so, Novack says so.
You don't?
I think there are so many cover-ups, and surprizingly so many people coming out of the woodwork to "take the bullet" so to speak, that we will never know who did what.
What is the real issue, the untold issue, is Bush acting like it is his last days in office (granting clemancy, considering full pardons). I really do not see any point in him worrying about his legacy or the polls (or his approval ratings). I think we are about to see Bush and Cheney, prime time. Gloves off, swinging away.
Quit with the conspiracies and come down to earth Kimba. You need to listen to Michael Medved's show the day of the full moon. It is once a month (obviously - the full moon) and it is called "conspiracy day." Three-hours dedicated to all the conspiracy nuts out there. Plus, it is the funnest show of the month.
I need a lot of things. I don't think Medved is it. Besides, I am on an "all-Obermann" diet.
I don't think being open to the fact that the Bush / Cheney administration (along with Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Kristol, et al) are capable of anything (short of the 911 conspiracy nut jobs) makes me a conspiracy idiot.
I got it...a conspiriot. A conspiracy idiot. I said it first. Bound to be all over the media in no time. Is this my ticket to fame and wealth? I still haven't had my 15 minutes of fame yet.
That diet is about as healthy as a vegan diet!
:D
A lunch time greeting from the extreme right.
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