Jeff Lomonaco, Please Report to the Department of Pre-Crime

Jeff Lomonaco called the Libby pardon half a month ago, in an op-ed he submitted to the Los Angeles Times but that it did not take:

Why Bush will Commute Libby's Sentence - but Not Pardon Him

With Judge Reggie Walton's ruling that Scooter Libby must begin serving his prison sentence before the appeal of his convictions has run its course, the pressure from Libby's supporters on President Bush to keep Libby out of prison is certain to intensify. President Bush, however, is unlikely to outright pardon Libby for a simple reason: to protect himself and Vice President Cheney.

If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Vice President Cheney would give up the rationale they have used successfully for four years to avoid addressing their own roles in the case. And Libby's trial made very clear that the President and Vice President played significant and troubling roles at the very heart of the case. It is for the very same reason that Bush is more likely to follow the advice some have offered him and commute Libby's prison sentence, allowing Libby to remain free while he pursues legal vindication.

Libby was convicted on four counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements in connection with the account he gave to investigators of how he learned the identify of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and whether and how he disclosed that information to the press.

At the trial, the event that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said was at the heart of the case was Libby's July 8, 2003 conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel.

Both prosecution and defense agreed that this interview was of unusual, even singular nature and importance. Kept secret from others in the Office of the Vice President, most notably Cheney's chief press aide Cathie Martin, who would normally handle interview logistics with reporters, both sides also agreed that Libby was acting at Cheney's direction in talking with Miller. There was no dispute that, after Libby expressed reservations about leaking classified information to Miller, Cheney went to President Bush to get his authorization to leak information to the press to answer the searing criticisms Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, had made of the administration's case for war.

There was dispute, however, over the distinct purpose of what the defense called the "secret mission" Libby undertook at the behest of the President and Vice President. Libby and his defense team contended that it was to leak Miller portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi WMD to bolster the administration's case. And Libby categorically denied to the grand jury that the meeting had anything to do with Plame and her CIA identity.

However, the trial (and pretrial wrangling) revealed two problems with the defense's depiction of Libby's "NIE secret mission.". First, the prosecution showed at trial, principally through Judith Miller's testimony about the July 8 meeting backed up by her contemporaneous notes of it, that Libby did indeed disclose Plame's CIA identity to her. It was also demonstrated that Cheney himself was focused on the idea that Wilson's wife had sent him on his mission for the CIA at that very moment.

Second, it turns out that Libby was leaking portions of the NIE to other reporters, and doing so without the secrecy that surrounded his meeting with Miller, both before and after he leaked that information to Miller on July 8. Libby leaked the NIE to Bob Woodward in June, and - in press aide Cathie Martin's presence - to David Sanger and Andrea Martin in July.

Together, those revelations undercut the notion that the NIE leak was the distinctive purpose of Libby's secret mission, and instead make clear that at least part of the distinctive purpose was to leak Plame's CIA identity to Miller in an effort to get the Times to publish that information.

That in turn raises troubling questions about Cheney and Bush's role in sending Libby on his secret mission. Cheney's hand-written notes on Wilson's op-ed from two days earlier showed that he was focused on Wilson's wife's alleged role in her husband's mission. Libby was acting at Cheney's direction. How likely is it that Cheney did not direct Libby to disclose information about Plame to Miller?

And what was the substance of Cheney and Bush's discussion shortly before Libby went on his secret mission to disclose previously-classified information to the press with the President's permission? Published reports have indicated that Bush told Cheney something to the effect of "Get it out," or "Let's get this out," referring to information that would damage the case Joe Wilson was making against the administration. Libby himself testified before the grand jury that Cheney told him something strikingly similar. That means that if Bush and Cheney discussed Wilson's wife before the direction was given, the President was effectively authorizing his subordinate to disclose Plame's CIA identity to the press.

It is precisely out of the desire to avoid such uncomfortable questions for himself and his vice president that President Bush is likely not to pardon Libby but to commute his sentence, or otherwise keep him out of prison without fully clearing him. That would enable Libby to remain free while he seeks legal vindication through the appeals process. But more importantly, it would enable Bush and Cheney to continue the strategy they have successfully pursued in deterring journalists seeking their explanations with claims that they shouldn't comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Cheney would no longer have such a rationale for evading the press' questions - nor would Libby be able to claim the right against self-incrimination to resist testifying before Congress about the role that Cheney and Bush played in directing his conduct.

But if Bush simply commutes Libby's prison sentence without effectively vacating Libby's conviction, the appeals process goes forward and Bush and Cheney continue to have their rationale for not answering the press' questions. This strategy would also have the added benefit for Bush of eliminating the chance, however remote, that under the pressure of prison time away from his family and abandoned by the White House he served loyally, Libby himself would tell the true story of his own and others' conduct.

However, in one sense, all of this is beside the point. There is no reason why the press and Congress should rest content with Bush and Cheney's refusal to answer questions about their own role in what turned out to be an important episode in the history of the Bush administration. Regardless of what he does, the President should not be allowed to complete the cover up of his and Cheney's role that Libby successfully conducted for four years, and for which he is now on the verge of being punished.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Comments

[esb]

All one needs to know regarding the grant of clemency...

He knew it was wrong.

But his Dick insisted.

So what choice did he have?

And from the historical record of this "administration" you can apply the above to just about everything.

[paul]

A few years ago I supported impeaching Bush and company, but not now.

Why now? It's too late.

The emphases should be on stopping Bush, on destroying Bush's approval ratings, not impeaching him.

He only has 18 or so months left.

It is best if he is left in place and used as a tool to destroy his ideology and party.

At this point, keeping Bush is of more use to the left than getting rid of him.

Bush tends to destroy everything he touches. That may include the Republican party.

At this point, the best course of action for the left may be to leave him there and let him destroy his party.

[bystander]

Only 18 months... Unless, as the war drums suggest, our next target is Iran. In which case, Bush and Cheney's removal from office yesterday wouldn't be too soon. See Jeff Greenwald at Salon.

[Llelldorin]

I've actually gone the other way. Given that we can't convict in any case, it's better to impeach at this point, if only to make it more politically difficult for Bush to get us into a third simultaneous war.

[Dennis Szilak Sohar, Oman]

"Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,’ … is killing … and sickening people."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,952130.story

From the headline, I thought this was about the venomous Bush-Cheney and its mutations, but it works as analogy.

[Kate G.]

I was for impeachment before and I'm for it now. And I think the texts just write itself. President(s) (sic) Bush and Cheney think they are above the law. The Republican party thinks its above the law. A double impeachment, simultaneous, is the only thing that will keep this circle jerk from a double, simultaneous, self pardon for serious crimes against the country. A double impeachment can't and shouldn't be conducted while our troops are in harms way so they need to be pulled out. The next president can decide to put them back in.

I know, I know, this is exactly what the Democrats are afraid to do--and for good reason. Bush and Cheney *will do ten times the harm* they are doing now as they flail around during an impeachment and the right wing will beat the drums accusing the entire country of losing the war in Iraq over "petty politics" but the war is being lost anyway, people are dying anyway, and I think the constitution has to be vindicated.

At the very least I'd like to see Fitzgerald decide to go after everyone and libby again, depose everyone, and work on a perjury trap for everyone. Because Bush can't pardon everyone.

Kate G.

[kharris]

I knew Al Gonzalez wasn't smart enough to think of this himself. Darn that Lomonaco!

[save_the_rustbelt]

[I had thought that Clinton had granted Ehud Barak a favor in return for Barak's taking more steps toward peace in the Middle East, and that Barak cashed the favor in by asking for a pardon for Marc Rich? That it was part of our Middle Eastern policy?]

In the irony department, when Bill Clinton defended selling a pardon to Marc Rich he cited some prominent GOP lawyers as his cover, one of whom was Lewis "Scooter" Libbey.

[christofay]

Stonehedged on the Potamic, a modeled village

[jeff hoffman]

If there's a betting line on impeachment, I'm just about ready to pony up.

[Lee A. Arnold]

They should be impeached immediately. The health of the republic is in mortal danger. Leaving these people is office is the worst possible thing to do. There will be no stopping the next crooks who take power. There will be no democracy. Draw the line now!

[christofay]

Hey, Bush has had a terrible week, can we show him some compassion?

First the Forth of July week festivities started off with a working week-end with Putin and Dad. Dad had to be there as a Cheney stand-in, as if. Still some adult supervision was needed.

Then he couldn't stay up in Maine, Monday he had to fly down to DC to show he meant what he said back 2003 when he said he'd immunitize anyone who leaked classified information from his White House. Lost the double ender long weekend with the Forth on a Wednesday. A double ender long weekend is when the holiday falls in the middle of the week, that is a Tuesday, Wedneday, or Thursday, and you take all the workdays that occur before or after the holiday off. It's American style productivity in re-creation.

[pstanmt]

I think the deal was made right after the opening statement in which Libby's attorney told the jury that his client was being scapegoated for the White House. No attorney makes a claim in opening statement that he doesn't intend to back up during trial. This element of the defense was then completely ignored by his attorneys at the trial itself. No one who followed the trial would think it was abandoned because the trial was going so well that it was not needed. There was a reason and the only reason that makes sense is that a deal for no jail time was struck as long as Libby would not testify, would not call Cheney and would not point the finger at the White House.

[Robert Stein]

That is exactly why, despite my abhorrence of what Libby did, I felt there would be more of a gain for decent public behavior by government officials if he were pardoned:

http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-i-hope-bush-pardons-libby.html

[Bruce Webb]

"In the irony department, when Bill Clinton defended selling a pardon to Marc Rich he cited some prominent GOP lawyers as his cover, one of whom was Lewis "Scooter" Libbey."

Rusty the 'Selling the pardon' narrative has no more objective proof than the 'murder of Vince Foster' one does. The notion that campaign donations from Rich's ex-wife were the proximate cause of the pardon are simply a standard right-wing talking point. Limbaugh and Hannity repeating something ad nauseum does not make it true.

The fact that the President of Israel and Scooter Libby were both urging that Rich be pardoned should in itself undermine the RW story line, as should the fact that the key crime of which Rich was convicted was no longer a crime at the time of the pardon.

It is ridiculous as 'Travelgate' or the 'trashing of the White House'. At both the bookends of the Clinton Presidency and at every point between the Right Wing Noise Machine simply whipped up hysteria out of what turned out time and again to be whole cloth.

Can you point to a single piece of substantive evidence outside some Republican operatives imagination to support that Rich's pardon was bought by a campaign contribution? And by his ex-wife at that?

All the evidence I see is that Clinton pardoned Rich as a favor to AIPAC and in recognition of Rich's large charitable contributions to Israel over the year's between his fleeing the country and getting the pardon. The rest is just smoke and smear.

[Bruce Wilder]

I think impeachment is clearly impossible. The corporate Media is serving up plenty of brain-dead punditry to give the Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress the cover they need to treat Bush's crimes as just trivial, dark arts of politics. You wouldn't want to "criminalize" politics by actually prosecuting the criminals in politics (unless, of course, they are Democrats).

Bush is almost criminally stupid, and Cheney is crazy, but their sponsors in the would-be plutocracy are neither. The fight going forward is with that shadowy, would-be plutocracy, the powers-that-be in the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

The powers-that-be in the Republican Party are actively intervening to make Hillary the Democratic nominee. Why? It is a low-risk gamble for them. Pretty close to half the electorate says they will not vote for her, under any circumstances -- lots of low information "independents" hate her -- so it is conceivable that a Republican candidate could beat her. And, she has no coattails in Red America, so she will do nothing to increase the Democratic majorities in Congress. She's very pro-business in her politics, so there's little danger that she will abandon America's imperial foreign policy on behalf of corrupt multinational corporations, or tax the very rich. And, it will be easy, the Republicans think, to ruin her Presidency and finally destroy the brand of the Democratic Party in the process. And, Hillary is going along with this, because she thinks she can win and govern, despite the vast right-wing conspiracy. Rupert Murdoch wants to host a fund-raiser for her; she's there. Frank Luntz shows up analyzing the Democratic debate for Travis Smiley; big surprise: Hillary is the overwhelming winner!

I am not saying that Hillary is the wrong choice for Democrats. Hillary may be right; she might win, and she might govern sensibly and successfully as did her husband, and the country would benefit. What I am saying, is that the corruption of the Media into a propaganda machine for the corporate right-wing makes the manipulation of the political process far easier for the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and Rupert Murdoch, than for its for the 5 million or so of us, whose anger and outrage has been successfully channelled, and isolated, on the internets.

[esb]

Bruce Wilder...

If the respective tickets are Clinton/Richardson and Thompson/Giuliani (and I anticipate exactly that) I do not see how we avoid another extrmely close election with a slight advantage to Thompson/Giuliani.

The Clinton negatives are higher, I believe, than for any winning candidate for this office post WWII. Even if told that she cannot win her ego will not let her step aside.

Strange that the Demos want to run the gender or racial experiment the very year that a "standard normal" campaign would almost certainly cruise to victory.

The old "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" thing I guess.

[andres]

I sympathize with Brad, Lee Arnold, and others calling for impeachment, but in addition to Kate G.'s fear of a backlash, the simple arithmetic of the House and Senate indicates that it cannot be done. An impeachment in the House would require at minimum a party-line vote in which few or none of the Democrats defected, difficult since many are from southern and western district. And in addition to holding all their own votes (including Lieberman's), the Senate Democrats would need 15 Republican senators to defect in order to effect a removal.

For the Congressional Republicans to vote for impeachment and removal after a full six years of loyally supporting both the administration and its march to war would be political suicide--it's not going to happen. At least with Nixon they could claim that he was never a full-time part of the Republican Establishment (eg feud with Goldwater, detente with China, etc), but Bush is their own baby, and to drown him in the bathtub while the police is watching is psychologically beyond them.

[BroD]

As an aside, think about how really vulnerable and impotent the U.S. is at this point in history.

We've still got some air and naval capacity but our ground forces are totally committed and frayed.

As important, we've got incompetent leadership with no credibility at home or abroad which now has little or no political capital.

Vladimir, for one, understands this.