Scooter Can't Skate Out of this One

Of course, this item is on all the news, Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial, so there's no real point in my mentioning it, other than to add a final post-script to my various posts on the Plame leak. See, e.g., What's It All About, Alfie? and Waas is All That. As the Huffington Post reports:

Once the closest adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.

He is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago.

In the end, jurors said did not believe Libby's main defense: that he hadn't lied but merely had a bad memory.

See also, Talk Left, Libby Verdict : Guilty of Four Counts.

What a shame. Not the verdict, but the fact that one of the Ladies Who Lunch (a/k/a my office mates) dated Scooter when he was a young lawyer in Philly, so she is going to be subjected to serious ribbing for having dated a convicted felon.

In fact, as Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake (the source for all Plame related news) noted that the Jurors in the Libby case thought that Libby was the fall guy for Cheney and Rove, see We Can Be Heroes…. After the verdict, she spoke with the former Washington Post reporter who was on the jury, Dennis Colins, who said:

He eventually got dragged before the cameras and said that there was a lot of compassion on the jury for Libby, that they felt he was the"fallguy," and they wanted to know where Karl Rove was in all of this. He was loathe to answer questions about Dick Cheney beyond the fact that Libby was obviously doing whatever he did at Cheney's behest, and the Cheney notes on the Wilson July 6 article seemed especially damning. He wouldn't say whether testimony by Cheney would have helped Libby or not, and seemed unwilling to discuss anything that they were not tasked with deliberating.

See also More for more on the post-trial interviews and for video, see Crooks and Liars, Juror Speaks Out: Libby is guilty, but he’s the fall guy.

So now, the next question is: will he or won't he? That is, will Bush pardon Libby. I'm not a betting woman, but if I were, I'd put my money on YES. In my view, it's not a question of if, but when.

UPDATE (3/7/07): Will Bunch of the Philly Daily News provides a very good summary of the case & verdict, LIBBY TAKES A BIG FALL.

Tags: News, Politics, Plame case, Libby