Commentary - Jules Witcover: The Scooter Libby rescue

It was, after all, Bush who had declassified or authorized Cheney to declassify National Intelligence Estimate information with which Libby conducted his campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson, husband of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The effort came in the wake of Wilson’s public challenge, after an official visit to Niger, to Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union message that Iraq had sought nuclear weapons material in Africa as a rationale for his subsequent invasion.

Wilson’s newspaper article saying he found no credible evidence that Iraq had tried to buy fissionable “yellowcake” in Niger triggered Libby’s attempt, with Cheney’s blessing, and likely Bush’s as well, to smear Wilson, a former American ambassador.

Part of the undertaking was disclosure of Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent amid allegations, denied by her, that it was her idea to recruit him for the fact-finding mission. Libby among others leaked her identity to reporters, in the obvious process of trying to discredit Wilson. But he made the mistake of lying about it to federal prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who thereupon nailed him for doing so.

The White House and supporters, somewhat successfully, painted the whole affair as a tempest in a teapot. They noted that the original allegation being investigated by Fitzgerald — that a breach of national security had been committed in outing Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent — was never charged, amid an argument about her covert status at the time.

Defenders of Libby also pointed out that he was not the only one to spill the beans about her. Indeed, the original source for the newspaper column in which Robert Novak named her was not Libby but former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

But it was hardly much ado about nothing that a Bush executive order empowering his vice president to declassify classified information (later cited by Cheney) was the mechanism whereby Libby went after Wilson. Little ever has been made of this detail in assessing responsibility for this whole “trivial” matter.

Bush’s tap-dance in which he commuted Libby’s sentence but let the conviction stand was a transparent effort to diminish the howls of anguish from Democrats, while seeking to placate the vocal conservative base in his own Republican Party. He failed in the first objective and succeeded only partially in the second, with many of the faithful disappointed that a full pardon wasn’t granted.

As for the timing of the commutation, it was an easy call. Bush had said at first he would await the outcome of an expected Libby appeal. But when the federal judge rejected Libby’s bid for a delay the start of his jail time, the president within hours stepped in for the man who had taken the bullet for the team.

Politically, Bush’s support in the country already was approaching rock-bottom because of his war in Iraq. He badly needed to do something to satisfy his Republican base, which had so recently been repulsed by his backing of an immigration reform bill and had been instrumental in killing it.

Bush tried to modulate his gift to Libby saying his reputation earned “for his years of public service” and legal work was “forever damaged,” and that the $250,000 fine imposed by the judge “will remain in effect.” But who believes that some party angel won’t descend on him, and that Libby won’t land on his feet?

In keeping his loyal aide out of prison garb, the chief executive’s intercession in the judicial process is yet another illustration of his contempt for the other government branches. He has already well-displayed it in his stonewalling of the oversight role of Congress on the war and other executive branch calamities.

With 19 months to go of competing responsibilities and powers between the executive and the legislative before the next national election, and with the 2008 campaign in prematurely full swing, the outlook for constructive governing by either branch is grim.

Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.