By Staff
No sooner was former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 than came conservative cries to pardon him.
Libby, once the closest adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since the Iran-Contra arms and money deal two decades ago during the Reagan administration.
The president's father in 1992 pardoned those officials for peddling arms to Iran and diverting the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels.
Libby's perjury trial illuminated Cheney's eagerness to discredit war critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson – Plame's husband – and the Bush administration's crisis management tactics.
Defense attorneys didn't send Cheney or Libby to the witness stand, however, nor was the actual leaker, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, ever charged.
Libby faces up to 25 years in prison at sentencing June 5, but his lawyers vow to seek a new trial.
Libby is "totally innocent and did not do anything wrong," defense attorney Theodore Wells insisted.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said, "It's sad we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did."
Libby conveniently forgot nine conversations about Plame when Wilson began speaking out publicly and contradicting the rationale the Bush administration relied on to justify invading Iraq.
Rather than own up to mishandling classified information, Libby maintained that he learned Plame worked for the CIA from NBC newsman Tim Russert.
Russert testified they never discussed Plame.
Jurors spent 10 days deliberating before finding Libby guilty of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury to the grand jury and one count of lying to the FBI.
He was acquitted of a fifth count, lying to the FBI.
As Fitzgerald explained, "We cannot tolerate perjury. Truth is what drives our judicial system. If people don't tell the truth, the system cannot work."
Libby is a sympathetic figure to those who believe he was made a fall guy for Cheney and Karl Rove.
"It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove?' " juror Denis Collins said.
In that case, we need more trials rather than new ones.