Monday, July 02, 2007

Why the Commutation Makes Sense   [John Podhoretz]

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice — but even if you accept that these convictions were just, what Fitzgerald did not demonstrate was that any kind of harm was done.

Whatever Libby did was unrelated to the the publication of Valerie Plame Wilson's name in Robert Novak's column. We know of a certainty that it was Richard Armitage who retailed her name, first to Bob Woodward before Libby ever heard of her, and then to Novak. Armitage, a State Department official, did this independently of any actions taken at the White House or anywhere else.

Therefore, even if the publication of her name had been a violation of her covert status — which is still at issue, for even though the CIA has declared her "covert," its definition of the word might not rise to the level required by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 — Libby had nothing to do with it.

What we're left with, then, is the argument that high-ranking government officials shouldn't lie to grand juries. Fair enough. Nobody should lie to a grand jury. But it's simple logic that there should be some relationship to the purpose of the lie and the effect of the lie and the punishment meted out for the lie.

Patrick Fitzgerald points out that the sentence follows federal guidelines. Right there you have the grounds for commutation. If it's true that Judge Reggie Walton had no standing to sentence Libby more lightly when no harm was done by the lies in question, then commutation makes all the sense in the world — unless you view his prison time as a proxy for the supposedly bad and noxious and evil behavior of the Bush White House.

For personal reasons, I will confess I wish Bush had pardoned Libby. I think there are good legal arguments for it as well, and I speak as someone who has read every scrap of paper related to the case.

I can see, however, how that would have been a nearly impossible call for Bush. For one thing, Patrick Fitzgerald is currently serving as a U.S. attorney in his administration. Were Bush to find that Fitzgerald had conducted a runaway investigation trampling on Scooter Libby, he would not be able to answer the question of why he would allow such a prosecutor to remain the U.S. attorney in Chicago. And if he fired Fitzgerald, as logic would dictate a pardon would require him to do, the storm would be unimaginable. There would be talk about impeachment — serious talk, and not so easily dismissed with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. 

07/02 09:14 PMShare