Who is Scooter Libby? The Guy Behind the Guy Behind the GuySun Oct 2, 2005 14:5064.140.158.186
Who is Scooter Libby? The Guy Behind the Guy Behind the Guy
By John Lyman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10485.htm
07/08/04 "Center for American Progress" -- -- When historians
finally lift the curtain on the Bush administration, they will
discover that Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby was one of the most
important men pulling the levers. Libby, Vice President Dick
Cheney's chief of staff, has been center stage for every one of the
administration's national security scandals – the Iraq intelligence
debacle, secret meetings about Halliburton contracts in Iraq, and
the leaking of a CIA's agent's identity to the press – and doubtless
others we have not heard of yet.
Such a role is not unusual for Libby, who has more titles in the
Bush White House than can fit on a business card. Essentially Libby
is Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney – an odd combination of H.R Haldeman
and Harry Hopkins, seemingly managing every detail of the vice
president's professional life.
For the past three years, that has meant scooting from scandal to
scandal.
It was Libby – along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and a handful
of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House – who convinced
the President that we should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who
pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al
Qaeda and 9/11.
It was also Libby who pleaded and prodded for Secretary of State
Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting
between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence
official in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations. Libby
and his staff reportedly badgered Powell's speechwriters for weeks,
culminating in a meeting where Libby presented information that,
according to those who were there, was over the top and too
aggressive.
The so-called evidence unraveled when intelligence analysts examined
it later. As one official told the Washington Post, "After one day
of hearing screams about who put this together. . . we essentially
threw it out." Undeterred, Libby continued to try to press his
agenda – going so far as calling and demanding Powell's staff
include new information late in the evening the night before the
secretary was scheduled to give his speech.
A junior member of "The Vulcans" – the name Bush's core national
security team of Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz et al. have come up with
for themselves – Libby is an aging star and an ideological soulmate
of the group. Still known to friends and colleagues as Scooter (his
father watched him crawling across his crib as a baby one day and
exclaimed "He's a Scooter") he first came in contact with the group
as an undergraduate at Yale when he took a political science class
from Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense.
>From Yale, Libby went on to Columbia Law School and then settled
down to practice law in Philadelphia. His most famous client was
Marc Rich, the fugitive financier and alleged tax evader who was
pardoned by President Clinton during the last days of his
administration. Clinton's pardon, which at the time drew heavy
criticism from Republicans, was largely the result of legal
arguments Libby had been making for 15 years.
Libby's Washington career began when Wolfowitz called his former
student and asked him to give up his law practice to go to work in
the Reagan administration. Libby immediately jumped at the
opportunity and went to work in the state department. Later, under
the first George Bush, he moved to the defense department.
It was there that he wrote a sweeping new Defense Planning Guidance
document that attempted to reorient U.S. global military policy. The
paper – highly praised by neocons at the time – called for the
United States to build up its military capabilities to the point
where no other country could ever rival them. Cheney, who was then
Secretary of Defense, liked the document so much that he ordered
parts of the usually secret plan declassified and made them public.
The Planning Guidance document went a long way toward endearing
Libby to Cheney.
Today what touches Cheney reaches Libby and vice-versa. Libby's role
in the awarding of at least one multi-million dollar no-bid contract
to Halliburton is a case in point.
For months, the vice president's office denied that it played any
role in the selection of the company once headed by Cheney to repair
Iraq's oil fields. But, as the Washington Post recently reported, it
turns out that Libby had been briefed by Pentagon officials before
the contract was awarded – raising questions of impropriety at best,
and corruption at worst. The man best able to answer the questions
about what went on, according to the Post, is none other than Libby.
There is speculation that Libby has already faced questioning by a
special prosecutor in what may turn out to be the most damaging Bush
scandal – the White House's leaking of a CIA operative's name. The
operative – the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador and Bush
administration critic – was outed to journalists in an attempt to
intimidate her husband, who had offered proof that the President was
inflating evidence about Iraq search for nuclear materials.
Numerous press reports hold that Libby was closely involved in the
incident (either as the leaker or someone who knew about and
authorized the leak). And the New York Times has revealed that
Cheney was specifically asked about Libby when prosecutors grilled
him. A grand jury is currently investigating the case, which could
carry a prison sentence of 10 years.
Libby may eventually be cleared in the CIA leak probe. But the fact
that he is in the midst of investigations surrounding it surprises
no one. What should cause real alarm is another rumor circulating in
the West Wing: that Libby will replace national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice should George Bush win a second term.
© Center for American Progress
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Who is Scooter Libby? - Center for American Progress
When historians finally lift the curtain on the Bush administration, they will
discover that Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby was one of the most important men ...
HTTP://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=109719
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Suspicion centers on Lewis Libby
Dick Cheney's chief of staff helped hype the Iraq threat and discredit Joe Wilson. But while the White House has denied Karl Rove is the leaker, so far it's left Libby twisting slowly in the wind.
Oct. 3, 2003 | Criminal leak investigations are notoriously futile, and the identity of the administration officials who illegally blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame may never be known. But one name keeps coming up, and so far it hasn't provoked a specific, emphatic White House denial: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, assistant to the president and Vice President Dick Cheney's powerful chief of staff.
On Wednesday the New York Daily News reported that "Democratic congressional sources said they would like to hear from Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby." On MSNBC's "Buchanan and Press" on Wednesday, Pat Buchanan asked an administration critic who claims to know the leaker's name point blank if "Scooter Libby" was the culprit (the critic wouldn't answer). And Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, made a veiled reference on CNBC this week, suggesting that President Bush could better manage the current crisis by, "sitting down with [his] vice president and asking what he knows about it."
But below the surface there's even more chatter. Says one former senior CIA officer who served under President Bush's father, "Libby is certainly suspect No. 1."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/10/03/libby/index_np.html
LEAK - GATE:
This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/leakgate.htm
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