Some perspective

As I expected when I heard the news, there has been great hue and cry about President Bush commuting part of Scooter Libby's sentence that was imposed after his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice. My goal at this time is not to show whether or not that act was justified, but to provide some perspective on the events and, in addition, some of those who are involved.

First of all, I do not know whether Libby deliberately lied before the grand jury or just misremembered events. The jury believed that he did and so I will accept their verdict as correct.

Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, one count of making false statements to agents of the FBI, and two counts of perjury in his testimony before the grand jury. The Wikipedia article on Libby states:

Pursuant to the grand jury investigation, Libby had told

FBI investigators that he first heard of Plame's CIA employment from journalist Tim Russert and that he had forgotten that Cheney had already told him that information. The indictment alleges that those statements to federal investigators and the grand jury were false, in that Libby had numerous conversations about Plame's CIA employment before speaking to Russert; Russert did not tell Libby about Plame's CIA employment; Libby knew with certainty that Plame was employed by the CIA; and Libby told reporters that Plame worked for the CIA without making any disclaimer that he was uncertain of that fact. The false statements counts in the Libby indictment charge that he made these claims to the FBI; the perjury counts charge that he repeated these claims to the grand jury; and the obstruction of justice count charges that Libby made these statements in order to impede the Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation.

( Click here for the rest )