Libby’s guilty verdict has White House repercussions

WASHINGTON – The guilty verdicts Tuesday against former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby made him the highest level White House official convicted of a crime since the Iran-Contra scandal 20 years ago and marks the latest fallout from the administration’s handling of the run-up to the war in Iraq.

The verdicts undermine the Bush administration’s credibility at a time when the president is trying to build support for his Iraq war policy in the face of increasingly outspoken opposition from Democrats and deepening skepticism among voters.

After 10 days of deliberations, the 11 jurors found Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff guilty of four felony counts of making false statements to the FBI, lying to a grand jury and obstructing a probe into the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity. The jury acquitted him of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with a Time magazine reporter.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Libby faces a possible prison term of 1 1/2 to three years, but U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has wide latitude in imposing his sentence on June 5. Defense attorneys said they would ask the presiding judge for a new trial or would appeal the conviction.

Libby’s conviction raises another difficult issue as well, one the White House may find hard to shake as the 2008 political campaign gathers speed: the issue of a possible pardon.

The White House refused to comment on that possibility.

Libby, 56, was the only person charged in an unprecedented leak investigation that led to the questioning of both Cheney and President Bush, though neither testified at trial. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald set out to answer a central question in December 2003: Did anyone in the administration intentionally and illegally disclose Plame’s classified status during the late spring and early summer of that year? At that time, several top officials were speaking to reporters, trying to rebut potent accusations from Plame’s husband that the administration had twisted intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

Libby was not charged with the leak but with lying repeatedly to the FBI and a grand jury about how he learned about Plame’s identity and what he said about her to reporters that spring and summer.

Libby’s conviction hits the administration on several levels: In addition to eroding its already weak credibility on Iraq, it sullies the integrity of an administration that came into office with pledges of moral rectitude.

Getting past those problems will be harder because the question of whether Bush should or will use his pardon power on Libby’s behalf will likely dog the White House through the 2008 presidential campaign and into the last days of his administration. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., threw down the gauntlet just minutes after the verdict was read.

“Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President (Dick) Cheney’s role in this sordid affair. Now, Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct,” Reid said in a statement.

At the White House, deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush “respected the jury’s verdict and was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family.” Cheney said he was “very disappointed” with the verdict and lauded Libby’s “many years of public service.”

Libby’s expected appeals also will keep the case in the spotlight.

While many outside Washington saw the long trial as a political circus, the charges were some of the most serious to be prosecuted in Washington in many years. As a result, the conviction may turn out to be a more serious blow to the administration than many may have foreseen.

“This administration was very scandal-free in its early years,” said David Gergen, a Republican political strategist and expert in damage control. “Now, for the first time, they have a criminal taint at the highest reaches of the president’s circle. That’s something they are not going to be able to erase.”

The rough road ahead for the White House was signaled by the aggressive reactions of Democrats to news of the verdict – and by the effort of many prominent Republicans to sidestep the development rather than rush to the administration’s defense.

Democrats long have complained that Bush’s political aides have manipulated information and policy decisions – both at home and overseas – to a degree unprecedented in the recent past. They have blamed Cheney and his aides, as well as political strategist Karl Rove, for their highly political approach to such issues as the abortive campaign to overhaul Social Security and the decision to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq.

Tuesday’s verdict was hailed as a vindication of those views.

“The jury’s verdict confirms the lengths to which the White House – particularly the office of the vice president – was willing to go to conceal their effort to vilify anyone who spoke the truth about the flaws in their justification for war,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

For the most part, Republicans tried to dodge questions about the verdict.

“I’m not going to comment,” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said when confronted with a question during a news conference, “except I will say I know Scooter Libby, and I’ve always considered him to be a fine man and a dedicated public servant.”

The trial was the first of a senior White House official in more than a decade and the first conviction since the 1980s when former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North was convicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages affair; the verdict was thrown out on appeal.

Tom Griscom, whose job as White House communications director during the final two years of the Reagan administration put him at the center of the effort to rebuild Ronald Reagan’s image and political standing after the Iran-Contra scandal, said that Bush and Cheney and their neoconservative advisers might not pay a huge price for Libby’s conviction.

That’s because their credibility was already damaged, he said.

“It’s almost like this is just one more piece on … that pile of lost credibility,” he said.

Griscom said that, because Libby worked directly for Cheney, the conviction “taints the administration, but it doesn’t go directly into the Oval Office.”

“This is clearly aimed at the vice president’s office, not the Oval Office,” he said.

Gergen said Bush was unlikely to consider a pardon until after the 2008 presidential campaign, at the earliest. Even then it would be politically difficult, unless Libby’s expected appeal was past and he was already serving out his sentence.