Will Bush pardon Libby?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON — Although it will be months before an appeal court rules on Lewis Libby’s conviction, the question of a pardon for Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff became a hot political topic in the hours after the verdict was announced Tuesday.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with President Bush. While he failed to keep his promise to fire the leaker (of the CIA employment of Valerie Plame), he should pledge not to pardon Scooter Libby,” said Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean after a jury in Washington found Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice.

“The president, if he dared to pardon Libby, would further marginalize himself as a leader in this country,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D- Conn.

Libby an issue in 2006 race
The revelation of Plame’s CIA employment was an issue in Courtney’s campaign last year against Republican Rep. Rob Simmons, himself a former CIA agent.

Courtney invited to campaign with him Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband and the man who wrote the now-famous opinion piece in the New York Times which disputed the evidence for invading Iraq

Courtney said if Bush were to pardon Libby “after the jury has entered a verdict and the prosecutor scrupulously followed the legal process, he would completely undermine his position as someone who took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution.”

Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “I don’t think that speculating on a wildly hypothetical situation at this time is appropriate.”

On Wednesday, the conservative editorial pages of both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post called on Bush to pardon Libby. "The time for a pardon is now," the Journal said, while the Post said the president "should make things right" with a pardon.

Of course a free pass for Libby would not be the first contentious pardon in American history.

A pardon 'inherently controversial'
As the last president, Bill Clinton, observed in 2001, “The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial…. Some of the uses of the (pardon) power have been extremely controversial.”

More on the Libby verdict The latest on the Libby verdict Libby prepares request for new trial Analysis: Verdict really about war, Cheney Juror calls on Bush to pardon Libby 'Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?'   Discuss the verdict | Vote: Is it fair? Fact file: List of charges and verdicts Fact file: Reactions to the verdict Fact file: Summary of witness testimony Hardblogger: CIA needs better protection NBC: How the CIA leak case began Newsweek: Everything you may have missed View documents from the trial Fact file: Who's who in the trial   Video: Juror speaks about decision

So said Clinton as he explained in February 2001 why he’d handed out a pardon on his last day in office to fugitive commodities investor Marc Rich.

Clinton said that he or any president had to “do what he deemed the right thing, regardless of how unpopular a decision might be.”

Clinton said “there can be no quid pro quo” when a president hands out a pardon “and there certainly was not in this or any of the other pardons and commutations I granted.”

In his New York Times op-ed piece justifying his pardon of Rich, whose ex-wife Denise had contributed to thousands of dollars to Clinton’s campaigns and to his presidential library, Clinton said that among the trio of Republican lawyers who “reviewed and advocated” the pardon of Rich was none other than Washington attorney Lewis Libby.

The next day the Times had to print a correction: Libby had served as one of Rich’s lawyers and, as such, had proclaimed Rich’s innocence of tax evasion and racketeering charges, but Libby had not asked the president to pardon Rich.

How would it play in 2008?
Now it is Libby himself who may be asking for a pardon.

What are the precedents for pardoning Libby? Would a pardon give the Democrats ammunition in the 2008 election to charge that Bush was trying to conceal actions by Cheney and others in the run-up to the Iraq war?

"Pressing Bush to exclude the possibility of a pardon for Libby is more than just a rhetorical point," said Jano Cabrera, a Democratic strategist. "If Bush's father could pardon Caspar Weinberger for his role in the Iran-Contra affair, it's a very real possibility that George W. Bush is considering pardoning Libby for his role in the lead up to the Iraq war. After all, Libby was a good soldier and that may matter in an administration that prides itself on loyalty.”

But Cabrera said if Bush does pardon Libby, “he may not have the last laugh. Pardons, often the last acts of outgoing Presidents, sometimes — fairly or unfairly — end up epitomizing the administrations themselves. Bush pardoning Libby would just serve as a living reminder that in his rush to war, his administration smeared those who would raise questions and placed more of an emphasis on PR than on actually securing the country.”

If Libby’s conviction were upheld on appeal, there’s precedent for Bush to wait until after the 2008 elections to pardon him.

He could do as Clinton did on Jan. 20 2001, wait until his last few hours as president.

Or he could give Libby a Christmas Eve 2008 pardon, as part of the “goodwill to all men” Yuletide spirit.

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