Dartblog

The Libby Trial—dubbed the “CIA Leak Trial” even though it had nothing substantively to do with the leak—ended yesterday with a whimper: Libby guilty on four counts. The verdict didn’t surprise many people, although some sympathetic to Libby counted it a shame because, had Libby never been falsely accused of outing former CIA employee Valerie Plame, he would never have had a chance to lie. That’s an argument that perhaps recommends lenient sentencing, but certainly not a finding of innocence.

Acolytes of the Bush White House who believe Libby was wrongly convicted are just wrong on the facts. Bending the truth just as much, though, has been the mass media, which as an institution has been rooting for conviction. They’ve got their ‘guilty’—but on weakly tangential charges. And certainly not on outing a CIA agent who was, on beams of sunlight and glory, about to tell the truth about the Administration’s war spin, as they so fervently want folks to believe. Each of the major news outlets went out of their way to headline the word “guilty” without including the charges. Here’s CBS, ABC, and NBC. Since the Plamegate scandal was such a let down—turns out it was one of Powell’s men, in the State Department, who leaked—the mass media has had no choice but to equate the Libby case with the Plame case. A shame.

But, finalement, let’s also look at The Wall Street Journal’s word. The editorial board there argues that the President should pardon Scooter Libby. The board has two reasons: First, the trial “was always a political fight over Iraq,” so President Bush ought to overturn a conviction not delivered on the merits. Second, the President “bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible.” Both reasons strike me as correct but not convincing. Mr. Libby lied about telling the truth to a news reporter. Give him charity, and he lied because his memory is imperfect. Condemn him, and he lied because he was covering up…precisely nothing. Either way, he forgot the words “I do not recall,” which are important words when politicians are brought before Grand Juries. For that forgetfulness, he’ll spend many years in jail.