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.

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york030201.shtml

Bad Night for the GOP Lewis Libby comes to Marc Rich’s defense. by Byron York

March 2, 2001 8:55 a.m. Lewis Libby, a top Republican lawyer who is now vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told the House Government Reform Committee last night that he agreed with much of Bill Clinton's widely discredited op-ed article outlining the former president's reasons for pardoning fugitive tax evader Marc Rich.

In a session that stretched late into the evening, Libby, who represented Rich for several years ending in the spring of 2000, told the committee he believes Rich is not guilty of the tax and racketeering charges filed by federal prosecutors in 1983. Libby also said he "quite possibly" would have considered applying for a pardon for Rich had Rich asked him to do so.

Libby, who said his law firms collected as much as $2 million for representing Rich, testified he had nothing to do with the application that led to clemency for Rich. He declined to say whether he approved of the decision to pardon Rich, but he conceded that he called Rich on January 22, two days after the pardon, to "congratulate him on having reached a result that he had sought for a long time." Libby testified he made the call from his home to make clear that he was calling in a personal capacity, and not as a representative of the Bush administration.

In a particularly damaging exchange with Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski , Libby agreed that Rich might be characterized as a traitor for fleeing the country and renouncing his American citizenship. Kanjorski asked Libby why he would call a traitor to congratulate him on his good fortune in winning a pardon. Visibly uncomfortable, Libby had no answer.

For Republicans, Libby's testimony was a sour endnote to what had been a long day of revelations that made President Clinton's decision to pardon Rich seem even more inexplicable than previously thought.

Early in the day, Republicans revealed that former deputy White House counsel Cheryl Mills, who played a prominent role in Clinton's impeachment defense and now serves as a trustee for the Clinton-library foundation, took part in a discussion with the president about the Rich pardon the night Clinton made his last-minute decision. Mills left White House employment in the fall of 1999. Several witnesses at the hearing — former White House chief of staff John Podesta, former White House counsel Beth Nolan, and former top Clinton adviser Bruce Lindsey — testified that Mills was often at the White House in the year and a half after she left to become a senior vice president at Oxygen Media, a television and internet firm devoted to women's programming.

"She continued to be a trusted adviser to the president," Nolan told the committee. Nolan said that in the last weeks of the administration, Mills was at the White House frequently for end-of-term parties and other events. On the chaotic evening of January 19, Clinton called several advisers to the Oval Office to discuss his plans to pardon a number of people who had been convicted or pled guilty in the Whitewater, Mike Espy, and Henry Cisneros independent-counsel investigations.

"I invited Ms. Mills to join that conversation," said Bruce Lindsey, former close adviser to the president, citing Mills's expertise on independent-counsel issues. Lindsey testified that at the meeting, Clinton raised the Rich pardon issue and that Mills took part in that discussion, too. "I do not believe she took a position on it," Lindsey said, referring to the Rich case.

But it appears that Mills's involvement was greater than simply participating in one meeting. Republicans on the committee also revealed that Roger Adams, the pardons attorney in the Justice Department, has told the committee he called the White House to discuss the Rich matter and ended up discussing it with Mills, who spoke authoritatively on the matter. Adams was apparently somewhat bewildered that a former White House employee would be involved in pardon discussions.

In addition, the committee released a January 5, 2001 e-mail from Robert Fink, a lawyer for Marc Rich in New York, to two other members of the Rich team. "Here is the letter Jack [former White House counsel Jack Quinn] just sent to the White House," Fink wrote. "As you may notice his secretary said that Jack sent copies to Beth Nolan, Bruce Lindsey and Cheryl Mills. April said they have clearance to deliver it to the WH [White House], so it will get there this evening, presumably before POTUS leaves for Camp David." Quinn told the committee that he brought Mills into the case in an effort to help convince Clinton to pardon Rich.

Earlier in the hearing, former Democratic National Committee finance chair Beth Dozoretz appeared briefly before the committee. Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays read to her from a January 10, 2001 e-mail from an associate of Rich's to Quinn. "DR [Rich's former wife Denise] called from Aspen," the e-mail began. "Her friend B [Dozoretz] — who is with her — got a call today from potus — who said he was impressed by JQ's [Quinn's] last letter and that he wants to do it and is doing all possible to turn around the WH counsels."

Shays asked Dozoretz why she discussed the Rich case with the president. "Upon the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer that question," Dozoretz said, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Shays asked whether she would refuse to answer all questions on those grounds. She said yes.

Georgia Republican Bob Barr asked Dozoretz whether she would at least tell the committee whether she intends to cooperate with the criminal investigation being conducted by federal prosecutors in New York. She declined to answer that, too.

On another topic, the committee released information casting doubt on one of Quinn's main arguments in favor of the Rich pardon. On February 8, Quinn testified that he was frustrated at the "intransigence" of federal prosecutors in New York who, Quinn said, were unwilling to discuss the case with Rich. Quinn also testified that the prosecutors' use of RICO, the racketeering statute, was the "sledgehammer" that resulted in Rich's decision not to return to the United States to face charges.

Now it appears that prosecutors were not as inflexible as Quinn contended. In his opening statement, committee chairman Dan Burton announced that in 1999 the government offered to drop the RICO charges against Rich if he would return to the U.S. to face trial. E-mails between members of the Rich team indicate that prosecutors also agreed to set a bail for Rich in advance so he would not have to worry about being incarcerated before trial. Rich refused the government's offer.

The committee also released information suggesting that the campaign to win a pardon for Rich began significantly earlier than was previously known. The idea was referred to in a February 10, 2000 e-mail from Avner Azulay, one of Rich's top advisers to Robert Fink, the New York lawyer. The e-mail discussed strategies to follow in the case and concluded, "The present impasse leaves us with only one other option: the unconventional approach which has not yet been tried and which I have been proposing all along." That "unconventional approach" was apparently the pardon initiative.

The next month, on March 18, 2000, Azulay again e-mailed Fink. "We are reverting to the idea discussed with Abe [Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman]," the e-mail said, "which is to send DR [Denise Rich] on a 'personal' mission to NO1. with a well-prepared script." Congressional investigators believe "NO1." refers to the president.

Quinn testified that he had no recollection of any such discussion, but he did not rule out the idea of early pardon discussions. "It is entirely possible that…everyone of us involved in this thought out loud with each other," Quinn testified. "It is possible that we were involved in a conversation where someone said, 'You know, we're going to have to try a pardon one of these days.'"

Finally, committee lawyers are preparing to examine the donor records of the Clinton library. On Wednesday, Burton's lawyers saw a list of approximately 150 people and companies who have given or pledged at least $5,000 to the library. The next step, which will take place today, will be for them to see the amounts of those donations and the dates they were given.

Because of their long and painstakingly detailed investigation of the campaign finance scandal, experts on Burton's staff are familiar with the names of most people who have given large sums of money to the Democratic party and Clinton-related causes over the years. Congressional sources say there are some unfamiliar names on the library donor list. Investigators will want to find out who those people are and whether they gave their own money to the library — or whether they served as fronts for the donations of others.

From this article, it sounds like Libby started representing Rich AFTER Rich 9treasonously in my personal opinion) traded with Iran during the hostage crisis

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff testified Thursday he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law" when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges.

The testimony from Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000, came during a contentious, hours-long House committee hearing into former President Bill Clinton's eleventh-hour pardons.

Earlier in the day, three former White House advisers all said they recommended that the Rich pardon be denied, but that they supported Clinton's decision-making process.

Facing intense questioning from Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pennsylvania, Libby hedged on whether he thought Clinton's pardon was justified, infuriating the congressman.

"Did you represent a crook who stole money from the United States government, was a fugitive and should never have been given or granted a pardon by the facts that you know?" snapped Kanjorski.

"No, sir," Libby responded. "There are no facts that I know of that support the criminality of the client based on the tax returns."

Libby then said prosecutors from the Southern District of New York "misconstrued the facts and the law" when they prosecuted Rich.

"(Rich) had not violated the tax laws," said Libby.

At a later point, Libby said he thought Rich was a traitor for his company engaging in trades with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages. "I did not condone it, I didn't advise it, I don't admire it," he said.

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