Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment
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WASHINGTON—Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted Friday on charges that he lied and obstructed justice in a federal criminal investigation of the leak of the identity of a CIA operative.
A grand jury that has been investigating the leak for nearly two years returned the five-count indictment just after noon on the same day the jury’s two-year term was scheduled to expire.
Mr. Libby, the first senior White House official to be indicted in more than a century, immediately tendered his resignation.
In a brief statement to reporters Friday afternoon, President Bush said he was “saddened” by the charges and offered praise for Mr. Libby, 55, who is often called Scooter.
“Scooter has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country. He served the Vice President and me through extraordinary times in our nation’s history,” Mr. Bush said. The president called the investigation and ensuing legal proceedings “serious,” but he vowed that the administration would not be distracted.
Mr. Bush, who spoke from a lectern on the White House’s South Lawn, ignored reporter’s shouted questions about the indictment.
Another top White House aide who had been advised he could face charges in the investigation, Karl Rove, was not indicted yesterday. While prosecutors have informed Mr. Rove that he remains under investigation, it seems unlikely he will be prosecuted.
The special prosecutor who led the leak investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald, did not bring any criminal charge for the leak that triggered the probe, the appearance in the press in July 2003 of the name of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame. The identification of Ms. Plame came soon after her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, publicly attacked the validity of Mr. Bush’s public assertions about Iraqi nuclear efforts.
At a press conference, the prosecutor dismissed suggestions from some Republicans that the obstruction, perjury, and false statement charges leveled at Mr. Libby were trivial.
“I’ll be blunt. That talking point won’t fly,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter, but the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security information was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness, is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.”
Asked to describe the significance of Mr. Libby’s alleged crimes, Mr. Fitzgerald used a baseball analogy. “What we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He’s trying to figure out what happened and somebody blocked their view,” the prosecutor said.
The charges carry a maximum possible penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $1.25 million. However, due to sentencing procedures, if Mr. Libby is convicted on some or even all counts, he is likely to receive far less than the maximum sentence.
In a statement released by his attorney, Mr. Libby denied any wrongdoing. “I am confident that at the end of this process I will be completely and totally exonerated,” the former White House aide said.
Mr. Fitzgerald said Mr. Libby would be permitted to appear voluntarily for arraignment and would not be arrested.
The case was assigned to Judge Reggie Walton, who is an appointee of Mr. Bush. No date has been set for the entry of a plea.
The indictment alleges that Mr. Libby essentially concocted a story that he heard from reporters that Ms. Plame worked at the CIA, when in fact he was told earlier about the connection by a state department official, a CIA official, and Vice President Cheney.
“At the end of the day, what appears is that Mr. Libby’s story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter and then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.”
The indictment was another blow to the White House, which was already reeling from a failed Supreme Court nomination and other difficulties, but Mr. Fitzgerald denied any political motivation and said no political pressure had been exerted on his inquiry.
While the prosecutor dismissed Republican critics of his tactics, he may also have disappointed liberal activists who hoped his investigation might snowball into a broad probe of alleged lies by the Bush administration in connection with the war in Iraq.
“This indictment is not about the war,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in response to a reporter’s question. “This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.”
The prosecutor acknowledged that the leak and the alleged obstruction by Mr. Libby “may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war.” However, he said his investigation and the likely trial of Mr. Libby should not be seen as a referendum on the war in Iraq. “This is stripped of that debate,” he insisted.