Time for 'Scooter' to Scoot (An oldie - on Libby's Marc Rich connection)

It'll hurt like cutting off his right arm, but Dick Cheney has a duty to the presidency to fire his own trusted chief of staff. Here's what's happened that brought about this sad state:

Late last Thursday, March 1 (2001), there appeared yet another witness before the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.

He came on after the press had tired of listening to former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former Bill Clinton close confidant Bruce Lindsey and former presidential counsel Beth Nolan tell how they tried to argue Clinton out of pardoning fugitive billionaire Marc Rich.

The name of this witness is I. Lewis Libby, who answers to the nickname "Scooter."

A man of no small stature in Washington, he is chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

...Over a period of 17 years, when he would weave out of government, Libby represented Rich.

It would be fair to say, as was said of him during the committee hearing, that Libby probably knows more about that tangled case than any man alive.

On Jan. 22, two days after George W. Bush was sworn in as president, Libby did something quite wrong. He placed an overseas phone call, to Switzerland, to Marc Rich.

He phoned his old client and obvious friend, to offer congratulations on having been pardoned by Clinton – arguably the most-damned pardon ever granted by a president in the nation's history.

Libby's congratulations, as his testimony in the committee-hearing transcript reveals, were offered to a man he considered to be both a traitor and a fugitive from justice.

This isn't roundball. This has to do with the proper stewardship of the presidency, the delicacy and transcending importance of which this nation is just now, after eight awful years of Clintonism, only beginning to appreciate.

What's wrong, what's harmful is that if you are entrusted with public office, whether on the local school-board staff or as chief of staff of the vice president of the United States of America, you simply do not do what Libby did.

Libby testified that Michael Green, one of Rich's defense counsels, told him that right after the pardon he had taken a thank-you call from the fugitive, who expressed reluctance to phone Libby to state his appreciation for all he had done for him over the years because, as Libby put it, Rich "did not want to get me into any trouble by calling me."

So Libby was obviously aware of the impropriety, now that he was on Cheney's staff, of having any truck with Rich. Yet he walked right over it as if it wasn't even there. He had no hesitancy in placing a return call to Rich.

In Libby's own words to the committee: "I congratulated him on having reached a result that he had sought for a long time."

That's not the character of judgment this nation requires in the running of the office of vice president.

Anyone at his level in the White House hierarchy is provided by the government a dedicated, secure "hard line" phone – for official domestic or overseas calls.

If Libby used that line, he was doing something he should not have been doing at taxpayers' expense, thereby making it an implicit official governmental action.

Assume he had the sense of propriety to make the call to Rich in Switzerland on his personal phone line, on his own nickel. In a sense that's even worse.

It's even worse because it would document that he knew what he was doing was not what he should have been doing now that he was the vice president's chief of staff.

He can rationalize, as he tried to do before the committee, that he was just being his own personal, non-governmental self. He would be engaging in self-deception. When you hold that position you forfeit all license to bifurcate yourself. You are, around the clock, the vice president's chief of staff. Period.

None of that was lost on the Democrats on the committee, who are no doubt already busy compiling talking points for the 2002 congressional elections. Their reaction was but a sample of what Republicans may expect to come.

When Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Pa., tried to get Libby to say whether he regarded the man who was his client, off and on over a period of 17 years, as a traitor for having traded with Iran during the hostage crisis, Libby fish-tailed.

The exasperated Democrat pinned him down: "You can't be half-pregnant, Mr. Libby. Is he or isn't he? . . . Do you consider him a traitor?"

Kanjorski: "How many traitors to this country do you call up in your official capacity?"

Kanjorski: "You did on Jan. 22 when the new administration took office and you were chief of staff to the vice president of the United States."

Kanjorski: "Why would you call a traitor, someone you consider a traitor, after he got a pardon that was a hullabaloo in this country? You can't tell me you didn't know about the reaction to the pardon. . . . Why did you call him?"

Libby: ". . . I had always taken his calls when he was a client of mine. He had been pardoned by the president for those very trades [with Iran, on the basis of which, Libby had just testified, he regarded him as a traitor]. And so I called him."

Kanjorski: "Would you call another traitor in the country again? Would you ever do that?"

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Henry Waxman of California, couldn't resist getting his oar in the water. He told Libby:

"I don't know what the legal ethics are for representing people you consider to be traitors for 17 years. It's a little puzzling you would call a traitor up and congratulate him on a pardon."

Painful as it is to have to say, Waxman got that right. No chief of staff to any vice president has good cause to be phoning congratulations to traitors, pardoned or not.

And Republicans thought the Clinton pardon issue was theirs to use against Democrats. With friends like Libby, Republicans don't need Democrats for enemies.

Rich can be properly assailed for having trafficked with the enemy. Then why not also the vice president's chief of staff for having trafficked with the trafficker?

Is an attorney who avidly represents over nearly two decades – and then calls up to congratulate – a man he acknowledges to Congress he regards as a fugitive and a traitor of any nobler stature than a fugitive traitor?

What lawyers do when not working in government is represent clients – guilty, innocent or in-between. Without that the justice system wouldn't function.

But Libby's ties over the years to this particular client had become so tight they impaired his judgment. They were high in his mind when he phoned Rich. Who's to believe they won't always be, during his membership in the top management of the Bush-Cheney administration and after?

In attempting to excuse his congratulatory call to Rich, Libby said he always took his former client's calls, so it was OK. Does Rich now feel entitled to resume calling? Does Libby still feel obligated to keep on answering?

The vice president does not need diluted loyalty, distracted attention on his staff.

The country does not need any more Clinton-like carbuncles on the neck of its body politic.

Libby belongs out of public service and back in private practice, where he is clearly more comfortable.

Cheney must have come over the years to depend mightily on Libby. Their working relationship may be so accustomed, so easy as to be shorthand. Libby may have become almost a member of the Cheney family. No doubt "Scooter" is a most-likeable chap.

Libby told the committee he has recused himself from this issue, to the point of ordering the staff to shield him from the very sight of any paperwork related to Rich.

Trouble is, Libby cannot un-recuse himself from what he has recused himself, as when he phoned Rich, and then re-recuse himself again at will or on whim.

No, because once he did what he did there was no way he could undo it, not even by resigning.

The only appropriate remedy, for the good of the vice president, for the good of the presidency, is for the vice president to discharge him.

The fact that it would be so painful for Cheney to do is no acceptable reason for not doing it. Indeed, that is all the more reason why he must.

Granted Libby's inexcusable judgment is as nothing compared with the ethical violations so characteristic of Bill Clinton and his flock. But does this president want his administration held to such a low-bar standard as that?

The fact that what Libby has done will invite Clinton-comparison each time it is dredged up in the press is yet further reason not to have that happen.

Is the reason to let Libby go that he is now a political liability rather than a political plus? No, not the overriding reason, though it is undeniably a legitimate factor.

It is the right thing to do simply because it was the wrong thing for Libby to have done.

Does Cheney have to fire Libby? Of course he doesn't. He can, to mix a couple of biblical metaphors, let the cup pass, wash his hands of the whole thing – if that's what he thinks is the right thing to do.

But if he does that, he will be saying to the world he thinks it is the right thing because what Libby did was the right thing.

Dick Cheney has been around government too long to kid himself into believing that.

Who will even notice if he doesn't fire Libby? Undeniably, not a grand assembly of Americans will know, or care.

But the issue's rightness or wrongness, and the degree, will remain unaffected, whether everyone or no one notices, or cares.

The political reality that Cheney must calculate, however, is the savvy knowledge there is always the chance this may at any time down the road pop up as his worst nightmare come to life.

If Cheney needs no other reason, dismissing Libby will send a clear and certain message to every occupant of an appointed position in this new administration. Better early in an administration than too late.

As Bush himself stated it, when asked by the press for his advice to relatives who might entertain the notion of influence-peddling a pardon: "Behave yourself."

Had the identical thing occurred during the Clinton presidency, who would like to argue it should have been ignored?

This miserable mess surpasses partisanship, Republican or Democratic. It's to do with America.

Like it or not, this is one of the built-in guarantees of the balancing act that two competing political parties bring to the healthy functioning of the democratic process in this Republic.

Dick Cheney is a decent, honest, dedicated public servant of the highest caliber.

There is only one way he can avoid ever having to wake up to the nightmare: Do the right thing, and do it now.

Not for diminutive half-reasons, but for the only reason that matters: In politics, as in everyday personal life, the right thing to do is always the right thing to do.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is senior editor and a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

The story of Clinton's
Marc Rich pardon
Co-conspirators serve time while multimillionaire enjoys clemency

By Timothy P. Carney
© 2001 Human Events

He wasn't born Rich. No, he was born Marc David Reich in Belgium in 1934 to a working-class Jewish father. Fearing the Nazis, his family fled to America in 1942, changed their name to Rich and tried to start life all over again.

Forty-one years later, Marc Rich was fleeing again, but this time the feared authority was not Adolph Hitler, but the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Morris (Sandy) Weinberg. Rich's crimes included tax evasion, fraud and "trading with the enemy" -- Iran, during the hostage crisis.

Rich, by now a multimillionaire, was in Switzerland on the day his indictment came down and decided to stay. Once again, Rich started his life afresh, leaving his old wife Denise for a young blond model, changing the name of one of his Swiss firms and starting a new business.

On Jan. 20, President Clinton gave Rich a chance for a third "do-over." Clinton wiped all the criminal charges off of Rich's record with a presidential pardon on his last day in power. The Rich pardon has received special attention because Denise Rich raised and donated more than $1 million to the Democratic Party in recent years and also provided the Clintons directly with a $10,000 contribution to their legal defense fund and $7,300 worth of furniture.

Even left-wing newspapers and columnists have rebuked Clinton for pardoning Rich. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., declared himself "troubled." Bush White House lawyers looked into overturning the pardon, and House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., has launched an investigation.

The strange case started with the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973, which established a system of price controls on crude oil produced in or imported to the United States. In 1980 and '81, the Energy Department classified oil that came from wells that produce 10 barrels a day or less as "stripper" oil and exempted it from the price caps.

According to his 1983 indictment, Rich saw this regulation as a potential gold mine, setting up a scam to have his company's oil relabeled "stripper" oil by a reseller, and thus seemingly exempted from the price controls.

To hide this activity and the illegal profits it produced, says Sandy Weinberg, the lead prosecutor in the case, Rich allegedly had a reseller claim Rich's profits were really its own and then hand over the money through sham transactions to companies Rich controlled in Panama.

This led the government to charge Rich and his partner Pincus Green with fraud and the evasion of $42 million in taxes.

On top of that, Weinberg alleges, Rich bought crude oil from the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran while Iran was holding U.S. citizens hostage. This was in direct violation of a U.S. trade embargo -- and, in effect, helped to arm the Iranians by giving them needed cash.

Bring all of these activities together into a concerted effort to make illegal profits, and you've got what the prosecutor called racketeering -- violating federal criminal statutes designed for busting the Mafia.

Rich's attorneys -- at the time of the investigation as well as in the consideration of the pardon -- uttered cries of "over-prosecution." They hoped an agreement could be reached. Rich's and Green's attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, met with Weinberg a few times in 1983 to offer a deal: The companies would pay $100 million if all charges were dropped.

This was on top of the $50,000 per day that Marc Rich was paying in contempt-of-court fines for not turning over certain documents. Every Friday, Rich paid $200,000, and every Monday, $150,000. The payments eventually equaled $21 million.

Rich started paying the fines only after the feds, following an anonymous tip, "reeled in a plane on the runway at JFK" (Weinberg's words) and found it was carrying a paralegal from a New York law firm who had checked on board with two steamer trunks full of subpoenaed documents.

The plane was on its way to Europe.

Weinberg recounts a June 1983 meeting with Williams, in which Williams put his feet up on the prosecutor's desk and made the pitch. In Weinberg's view, and in the view of his boss, then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, Rich and Green deserved nothing short of jail time. If wealthy criminals could buy their way out of their misdeeds, the prosecutors felt, then they were effectively above the law.

Rich and Green, according to a few sources, were in Europe at the time of the negotiation. When Weinberg told Bennett, "No deal," the two businessmen decided not to come back. Three months later, a federal grand jury handed down an indictment for fraud, tax evasion and trading with the enemy.

The resellers who were the main co-conspirators in the "stripper oil" fraud were convicted and served 12 months in jail. Rich's companies pleaded guilty to 78 counts and paid over $150 million, while Rich and Green remained fugitives. Attempts at extradition failed.

That did not mean that they could not profit off the U.S. government. As then-Rep. Bob Wise, D-W.Va, unearthed in hearings in the early 1990s, while Rich was a fugitive the U.S. mint was contracting to buy metal from one of his companies.

Between fiscal years 1989 and 1992, the mint issued at least 21 separate contracts for nickel, zinc and copper to the company. Also, in 1988, the Defense Logistics Agency lifted its bar on contracting with the same company.

Wise characterized the scandal of dealing with the fugitive Rich this way: "I wonder how the average American taxpayer feels when they go to the shopping center and they reach into their pockets to pull out some change, some coins to pay the sales tax, which they are obligated to pay. And as they pull out that change and put those coins on the desk, they find that the person who provided the metal to the mint and is benefiting is accused of evading the very taxes that the citizen is paying. I don't think that sits very well with the American taxpayer."

But President Clinton completely ignored standard procedures in finally pardoning Rich. His action bypassed the Justice Department and blindsided Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney who serves in the district formerly presided over by Giuliani.

Various lawyers had tried to get White to accept a plea-bargain from Rich for years. One of these lawyers, according to the New Yorker, was Lewis Libby, now chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. (Cheney's office did not return calls on the matter.)

But when Jack Quinn, Clinton's former White House counsel, took Rich as a client, things changed. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the Anti-Defamation League and, of course, mega-fundraiser Denise Rich all submitted letters directly to Clinton, through Quinn, requesting a pardon.

Burton and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., now intend to investigate how the pardon came about. Did Clinton do it out of the kindness of his heart, or was there another consideration?

The Rich pardon
by Joe Farah

© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Some people in Congress are shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to find out that money may have been buying personal favors in the Clinton White House.

Therefore, Congress is set to hold investigative hearings this week into the possibility of Clinton administration corruption.

I know what you are thinking. Where were these guys when we needed them? Well, it gets worse.

The hearings to be held in the House and Senate are to focus on Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

There's no doubt Rich is a scoundrel. He fled the country and renounced his citizenship when faced with a 65-count indictment for conspiracy, tax evasion and trading with the enemy. He was convicted in absentia on 51 counts.

It also appears obvious that Clinton pardoned Rich as a quid pro quo for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions funneled to Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and other Democratic Party candidates.

I suppose I should be thankful that some members of Congress have awakened finally to the depths of blatant Clinton administration corruption. But I can't help feeling that these inquiries are way too little, way too late.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is leading one of the probes. Think about that irony. Specter bent over backwards, citing Scottish law, in his intellectual and legal gymnastics attempting to explain why he was voting against convicting Clinton during the impeachment trial.

His vote came after his wife got an appointment to the Clinton administration. And he's going to judge whether Clinton took a bribe to pardon Rich?

Many of us out here in America -- outside of Washington, D.C. -- couldn't understand why the Congress failed to investigate Clinton administration corruption adequately during the last eight years. It was as if Congress had abdicated its oversight role and forgotten that it represented, at least, a co-equal branch of government with the executive -- and, more importantly, the people's voice in the federal system.

It seems like odd timing to begin worrying about Clinton now that he's gone.

And bribery will be a tough case to make -- no matter how obvious it appears to any of us. If Congress couldn't convict Clinton on perjury during impeachment, does anyone really expect anything but some hot air from these hearings?

Furthermore, as much as I hate to say it, the Constitution does give the president wide berth on the issue of pardons. There's no need for approval by Congress or anyone else.

You see, Congress had its chance. Most members -- even in the Senate -- knew what Clinton was when they voted on impeachment. They knew he was corrupt. They knew he was a criminal. They knew he had repeatedly broken the public trust. They knew he had no respect for the law. They knew he believed only in himself and what was good for Bill Clinton. They knew he had no scruples, no conscience, no ethics, no morality. They knew if he got away with perjury and much more serious crimes for which he wasn't impeached, that he would continue his criminal escapades.

Well, guess what? Clinton did just that. And the Rich pardon was only the latest insult added to many injuries Bill Clinton inflicted on America's body politic.

I wish Congress well in investigating the Rich affair. The American public does deserve to know the truth. The problem is that Congress has been woefully ineffective in such half-hearted investigations during the Clinton years. So, my hopes that justice will be served and that the public will be informed are somewhat dim, to say the least.

I'm just trying to figure out where all this outrage is coming from at this late date. Where was the outrage when Clinton was selling national security down the drain for Chinese political campaign contributions? Don't they get it? After eight years, don't these people understand Clinton would sell anything that wasn't nailed down to anyone with money in his hand?

Like any other red-blooded American, I'd like to see Marc Rich pay for his crimes. But that's not going to happen. More importantly, I'd like to see Bill Clinton -- and all those around him who were complicit in their guilt -- pay for the pattern of official criminal activity of the last eight years.

Too bad, but I just don't think Congress has the stomach for it.

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