The Bush White House announced in early July its decision to commute the jail sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby had been sentenced to 30 months in prison after being convicted of lying both to the FBI and a federal grand jury.
Libby was attempting to conceal his role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media. In addition
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Leaders of the Democratic Party issued angry statements. Hillary Clinton said that the commutation showed that in the Bush administration “cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.” Barack Obama said it “cements the legacy of an administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division.”
Libby’s case can prove a bit confounding. He was convicted for his role in revealing the name of a covert CIA agent. Outside of open military invasion and occupation, the CIA is the central agent of enforcement of U.S. imperialism.
The CIA has a brutal anti-democratic history of destabilizing and overthrowing sovereign governments, organizing torture and death squads, assassinating foreign leaders, as well as being the leading organ of outrageously false imperialist propaganda. Its agents are criminals and should be unmasked.
But Libby did not reveal Plame’s identity because of democratic qualms. Her name was leaked to right-wing columnist Robert Novak in an attempt to punish and intimidate her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who exposed some of the false evidence about weapons of mass destruction that was used to justify the Iraq war. Wilson was tactically opposed to the Bush administration’s war policy.
The class character of Libby’s treatment is patently obvious. The U.S. prison population is the largest in the world, now numbering more than 2.2 million. This vast population suffers harsh oppression, coming from the poorest communities and virtually defenseless in the present legal system.
Meanwhile, defended by an army of powerful lawyers, Libby won’t serve a day in jail. Wealthy supporters have already raised millions more than the cost of the fine. Nonetheless, the Bush administration refuses to rule out a full presidential pardon.
Use of the presidential pardon has frequently created controversy. Barely a month of assuming office, Gerald Ford pardoned a disgraced President Nixon. It is worth noting that Nixon wasn’t facing charges for his role in the criminal wars against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia—wars that killed millions of people—but rather for this role in the Watergate break-in. Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich was likewise highly criticized.
Perhaps the most egregious recent presidential pardon was issued by the first President Bush on behalf of the “Iran-Contra six.” Six Reagan administration officials, including Elliot Abrams, and former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, were facing conviction or trial for lying about their roles in financing and directing the illegal contra war against Nicaragua. The openly terrorist war killed and maimed thousands, and ultimately destroyed the Nicaraguan revolution.
There should not be any hand-wringing over the plight of Valerie Plame. But the “Scooter” Libby case nonetheless affirms a basic point: presidential discretion to commute prison sentences and to pardon is used routinely as an instrument of class domination.
While millions of U.S. workers suffer in prisons, and leftist political prisoners—Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Cuban Five to name a few—languish without reprieve, government officials and allies operate outside the law with absolute impunity.
