Let me be absolutely clear. Scooter perjured himself and obstructed justice to protect his boss, Dick Cheney, from prosecution under the Espionage Act . The underlying crime, that of outing a covert CIA operative, working on Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferation for both (pre-war) Iraq and Iran is serious and warrants cries of treason, however, we will never know this with any certainty, thanks to Scooter's "fawlty memory".
There's a tendency amongst the blogosphere's rhetorical bomb throwers to talk in absolutes – everyone is "like Hitler", a fascists, socialist, communist, or terrorists. Those labels don't necessarily fit, and although they are convenient, they are seldom complete enough to draw an accurate picture of the character of a man.
Based on some rumbling of tension between the OVP and the EOP (such as Rove angling to drop Cheney from the ticket in 2004 to the sudden "discovery" of 250 emails that Rove had stated were missing which were delivered by the Office of the Vice President ), I suspect that the guy who "stuck his neck in the meat grinder" may have been thrown under the bus to protect Turdblossom (Karl Rove). In his final grand jury performance, Rove narrowly ducked his own indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice by changing his story and implicating Libby. But again, Scooter could have come clean, were that the case. And he didn't.
Based on his circle of (notorious) friends, such as Perle, Kisinger, Wolfowitz, and the like, and his being described as Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney, one must assume that he must have gotten his hands dirty doing his master's bidding. At the same time, there are scores of others, well outside the oublic sphere, who speak warmly of Scooter as a loving family man, who loved his kids, and was generous and compassionate. I have to hedge this to say that most of them, based on the paragraph or two of their credentials that they include prior to their plea leads me to believe that the share ideology and party affiliation with Scooter – therefore, the values that they bestow on Scooter have to be evaluated within a certain value framework.
In thinking about these letters, there is an outstanding opportunity for datamining. In the details of these letters, you have a timeline and placeline of Scooter for where he was, what he was doing, and who he was doing it with, as well as those he associated with. This is the kind of ancillary research which can give you great insight as to who the Neocon and Conservative cultures operate. But that's neither here nor there.
There was one letter (all of them are here) that gave me pause, just for something mentioned in passing in the letter from Stan Crock – page 63 of 373 in this PDF :
When he again left private practice for public service during the George H. W. Bush Administration, he did not want a post that required Senate confirmation. He is intensely private and didn't want to be in the limelight. He was especially concerned that someone may look at his record and in hindsight consider something untoward that was perfectly acceptable at the time. Eventually, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney thought Scooter was at a disadvantage at the table when meeting with counterparts from other agencies who had been confirmed. Mr. Cheney created a confirmable post at the Pentagon for Scooter. The confirmation hearing was uneventful. I had the priviledge of attending his swearing in.
Now, Cheney's protege would certainly be a shadow operator, but to what exactly does "being especially concerned that someone may look into his record and in hindsight consider something untoward that was perfectly acceptable at the time" refer? What made the position that he eventually took "confirmable"? And how exactly did Dick Cheney "create" a post for him? Perhaps, embedded within this story, is the tale of how the namesake of Irving Lewis Leibowitz became Scooter Libby, Jr.? [Updated: I got nothing to support this except crackpot websites.]
