It is clear to the EYE why I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, apparently lied to President George Bush and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate whether the law prohibiting the deliberate outing of an undercover CIA agent (in this case, Valerie Plame) was violated by one or more members of the Bush administration.
Good old Scooter was trying to obscure his boss Cheney’s involvement in the effort to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson’s claim that the Bush administration was grossly exaggerating or fabricating evidence that Iraq President Saddam Hussein was well on his way to building an atomic bomb.
If it became clear that the Bush administration had made an orchestrated effort to silence anyone who was critical of their false claims that Hussein was close to possessing weapons of mass destruction, it might have created a serious political problem for them in the presidential election of 2004. Libby’s alleged perjury before the Grand Jury regarding what he knew when about Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, and her role as an undercover CIA agent was his way of falling on the sword for Cheney and other neo-cons who pushed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He may also be taking a fall for Karl Rove, who is also threatened to get burned by this scandal.
Everyone impressed by Fitzgerald for the evident intelligence and apparent forthrightness he showed in his recent press conference about the Libby affair had better wait and see where the buck stops in his investigation. There may be a bigger story. Nailing Scooter Libby means one thing for the Bush administration; nailing Karl Rove means something far worse for them. Conspiracy theorists, who always find plenty of grist for their mill in the Bush camp, have been speculating that the thoroughness of Fitzgerald’s presentation of the case against Libby was meant to overcompensate for a soft approach to Rove coming down the line. We’ll see.
As for Scooter, despite GOP efforts to trivialize the five felony charges against him, he would face 30 years in prison if found guilty of all charges.