Tuesday March 6, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The downfall of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, one of the leading figures in the Bush administration, was complete today.The man who had swaggered around the White House as chief of staff to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, was today subdued as he listened to the verdict in Courtroom 17 of the US district court, on Constitution Avenue, within walking distance of his former office.
Libby had appeared confident when he appeared in court to hear the verdict. But as he was found guilty on the first of five charges he blinked and appeared surprised. As each verdict was announced, the blinking became more pronounced.
And so ended the political career of one of the Bush ideologues, part of the original neo-conservative group, known as the Vulcans, who advocated an aggressive foreign policy, in particular the invasion of Iraq.
The six-week trial, which began in January, has been one of the main topics around the dinner tables and bars where Washington's political and media elite meet. The trial, with its parade of witnesses from the administration, offered a rare insight into the workings of the obsessively secretive White House.
It also provided more than a glimpse into the often-unsavoury relationship between the administration and the media insiders. But the real importance of the trial was the insight it offered into the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The case coincided with a shift in US public opinion from support for the war to scepticism and outright hostility, and confirmed the growing suspicion that the public had been misled.
The case was complex but it began simply enough with 16 words uttered by Mr Bush in his state of the union speech two months before the invasion almost four years ago. He said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
That statement was untrue. The CIA advised the president that it was sceptical about the claim - advice which Mr Bush ignored. British intelligence, however, insisted the information was accurate and the president preferred its assessment, which fitted the case he was making for war.
Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador opposed to war, went to Niger to check the claim. It is still not clear whether his visit was at the request of the US government or whether he went on his own. He concluded the claim was nonsense, and said so in an opinion page article in the New York Times soon after the invasion.
This appears to have enraged both Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, according to witnesses during the trial. In what could have been an act of retribution, there was a leak to the press that Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was apparently a CIA covert agent. As a result of her identity being made public, she was out of a job.
Disclosing the identity of CIA agents is a criminal offence and the FBI and a grand jury conducted investigations. In speculation about who might have leaked Ms Plame's identity, Libby's name regularly came up.
The 56-year-old lawyer had long been involved with many of the individuals who would become key figures in the Bush adminstration. He been taught at Yale by Paul Wolfowitz, who would later become the intellectual powerhouse of the neoconservatives. Mr Wolfowitz later invited Libby to join him at the state department in the 1980s.
In 1997, Libby became a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative team that sought to reshape US policy in the Middle East, and he contributed to its now infamous 2000 report, Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century.
He joined Mr Cheney, the most hawkish member of the Bush administration, as chief of staff in 2001. As well as his duties in that role, he was also his national security adviser, shaping policy on Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and other hotspots.
Libby was not the first official to leak Valerie Plame's name - that turned out to be Richard Armitage, the undersecretary of state, who was not being prosecuted, apparently because he was unaware Ms Plame's identity had been a secret. But, as with the Watergate hearing, it was not the original offence that created the problem. Libby told the investigators under oath that, far from leaking Ms Plame's identity, he learned it from a reporter, Tim Russert. The television presenter denied this.
Another reporter, Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times, spent three months in jail for refusing to disclose her sources for Plame's identity. She was freed after Libby allowed her to name him as the source.
Libby was indicted on charges of perjury in 2005 and resigned as chief of staff.
During the trial, the prosecution built the case that Libby had lied. The defence claimed he had been a busy man at the White House and only suffered from the human frailty of a memory lapse. The jury today refused to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He faces up to 25 years in jail but he may never go to prison. His defence team can string out the appeal long enough for Mr Bush, before he leaves office in January 2009, to grant a pardon to his loyal follower. But his time as one of the leading advocates of the neoconservative revolution and a leading player at the White House are long over.
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