Perhaps this is too obvious to bother pointing out, but then maybe sometimes it's important to point out the obvious.
The following claim is almost certainly not true. I say "almost certainly" merely for the sake of form.
Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on Decision
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: July 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 3 — Before commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., President Bush and a small circle of advisers delved deeply into the evidence in the case, debating Mr. Libby’s guilt or innocence and whether he had in fact lied to investigators, people familiar with the deliberations said.
That's almost certainly false. Not factually correct. Reality and the above paragraph surely fail to correspond. And that creates a little problem for the White House.
Because the deliberations were so closely held, those who spoke about them agreed to do so only anonymously. But by several different accounts, Mr. Bush spent weeks thinking about the case against Mr. Libby and consulting closely with senior officials, including Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel; and Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s departing counselor.
"They were digging deeply into the substance of the charges against him, and the defense for him," one of the Republicans close to the White House said.
The second Republican said the overarching question was "did he lie?"
This morning's New York Times relays a claim similar to one we've heard elsewhere in the past couple of days. The claim is that Bush spent several weeks recently trying to figure out whether or not Scooter Libby lied; whether he is guilty of lying to the FBI and a grand jury.
Specifically, Libby told the FBI and the grand jury that he learned about Valerie Plame from Tim Russert. Specifically, the White House claim is that Bush spent weeks trying to figure out whether Libby lied when he said that.
To remind ourselves of this, let's look an editorial from March 7, in WaPo:
THE CONVICTION of I. Lewis Libby on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice was grounded in strong evidence and what appeared to be careful deliberation by a jury. The former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists but rather had learned it from them. But abundant testimony at his trial showed that he had found out about Ms. Plame from official sources and was dedicated to discrediting her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Particularly for a senior government official, lying under oath is a serious offense. Mr. Libby's conviction should send a message to this and future administrations about the dangers of attempting to block official investigations.
Okay?
Now, I have a simple claim of my own. I claim that President George Bush, counsel Fred Fielding, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, and outgoing counselor Dan Bartlett, did not, in fact, spend weeks pouring over court documents trying to figure out whether or not Tim Russert told Libby about Plame.
I submit that the reason President Bush did not bring DOJ into that deliberative process, in which they tried so ardently to figure out whether or not Russert told Libby about Plame, is simply that no such deliberative process ever actually took place.
So, keeping in mind that President Bush almost certainly did not at any point don his reading spectacles and ruffle through milk-crates of legal documents, trying his mightiest to determine what Russert told Libby, or whether Libby actually said Russert told him anything, we can conclude that the following does not mean precisely what it says:
A Decision Made Largely Alone
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 3, 2007; Page A01
President Bush limited his deliberations over commuting the prison term of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to a few close aides, opting not to consult with the Justice Department and rebuffing efforts by friends to lobby on Libby's behalf, administration officials and people close to Bush said yesterday.
"We were all told to stay away from it," said an old Bush friend from Texas who is close to Libby and would not speak for attribution. "When we called over there, they said the president is well aware of the situation, so don't raise it. None of us lobbied him because they told us not to."
We can be sure -- no doubt it is completely true -- that those "close to Libby" were told to "stay away from it" . . . "it" being Bush's month-long-give-or-take painstaking review of the law, the facts, and Scooter's heart, in Bush's Herculean attempts to grasp the brass ring of truth at the bottom of it all, whether or not Libby was told by someone other than "journalists" about Valerie Plame, in trying to answer "the overarching question," as the Times described a Republican ally to the White House putting it, the overarching question, "Did Libby lie?"
We can be sure that those "close to Libby" were told to "stay away from it" because "it" never actually occured.
Bush didn't do that. He did not spend weeks on this. Let me put this bluntly: Bush knew Libby lied. Of course he did. Again, perhaps this is too obvious to mention.
But I'll mention it anyway, because the ramifications are not trivial.
[Under Secretary of State Marc] Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby's inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.
The two articles reported on a trip by a former ambassador to Africa sponsored by the C.I.A. to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms program.
Marcy Wheeler, in the Guardian:
On June 9, 2003, just one day after his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, got beaten up on the Sunday shows for claiming no one in the administration knew that the Niger intelligence was bunk, George Bush expressed concern about the allegations. Scooter Libby passed on that concern to vice president Cheney. Bush's concern set off a chain of events that ended up in the outing of a CIA spy, Valerie Plame, and the indictment and conviction of Scooter Libby.
-- snip --
Cheney's involvement in the CIA leak case is central. He personally undertook research on Joe Wilson and his trip; while doing that research, Cheney learned that Wilson's wife worked in the counter-proliferation division of the CIA, the part of the clandestine services that fights the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Cheney then passed on the news of Plame's CIA identity to Libby.
Now here's why the current White House fairy tale is not trivial; why it's not trivial that the current spin out of the White House is not merely false but outrageously, downright hilariously false. It's not trivial because it is causing Bush's protectors to say contradictory things as they struggle to spin tales consistent with the picture of Professor Bush spending weeks with a few close advisors, struggling in darkness and ignorance to learn whether Libby lied about Russert.
Here, for example, is one such contradiction:
Republican ally: the overarching question was "did he lie?"
On the other hand, Tony Snow is saying that Bush didn't ask whether Libby lied.
Let me repeat that. Tony Snow said in the July 3 press conference that the President, in his weeks of deliberations, did not address the question of whether Libby lied. Snow said that Bush did not attempt to decide on fact in the Libby case. This directly contradicts what Bush's allies said in the NYT story.
Q Tony, does the President think that Scooter Libby did, in fact, lie; that a member of the White House staff was, in fact, guilty of these crimes?
MR. SNOW: What he believes is that he was convicted of a jury of his peers. The President was not sitting in as a fact witness on a very long case, and he does think that it's important to respect what the jury concluded, because the jury really is the group that counts here.
And, again, later, a reporter asks Snow if Bush agrees with Giulliani that there was no crime:
Q So he doesn't agree that it's a non-crime, as the mayor said?
MR. SNOW: Again, I'm not going to try to get into parsing all the particulars. The President is not trying to serve as a fact witness in this case, or even one who is trying to analyze the virtues or defects of the case that were presented to the court. What he does know is that a jury reached this verdict. And he is intent on honoring --
Again, from the NYT:
"They were digging deeply into the substance of the charges against him, and the defense for him," one of the Republicans close to the White House said.
The second Republican said the overarching question was "did he lie?"
And Snow's July 3 press conference:
Q But doesn't he have to decide that in order to exercise that constitutional authority, just in his own mind to have a view of whether a crime was committed or not?
MR. SNOW: Again, I think what he does is, he understands that he's been convicted, and that to him is sufficient.
This is all bullshit.
So what really happened?
Q Tony, did the Vice President weigh in?
MR. SNOW: My guess is that -- I don't have direct knowledge, Ed. But on the other hand, the President did consult with most senior officials and I'm sure that everybody had an opportunity to share their views.
-- snip --
Q Was it appropriate for the Vice President to weigh in about the fate of his own friend, and someone who had served him for years --
MR. SNOW: I'm sure that the Vice President may have expressed an opinion, but the fact is, the President understands the -- and he may have recused himself; I honestly don't know.
Q Did he ask for the President to spare his friend?
MR. SNOW: We'd never -- as you know, Kelly -- talk about internal deliberations. Nice try. This is exactly what we're talking about right now before the House and Senate, and we're not going to characterize specifically any kind of advice or plea that somebody may make.
One's head begins to spin. Cheney "may have recused himself". But Snow is "sure that the Vice President may have expressed an opinion."
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Look, this is crazy. The idea that Cheney "may have recused himself" from Bush's alleged weeks of investigations is crazy. It hardly merits comment, it's so crazy. Lest we forget:
As the Bush administration prepared to take office, "I remember at the outset, during the transition, thinking, 'What do vice presidents do?' " said White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who was then the Bush team's policy director. Bolten joined Libby, his counterpart in Cheney's office, to compile a list of "portfolios we thought might be appropriate." Their models, Bolten said, were Quayle's Council on Competitiveness and Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
"The vice president didn't particularly warm to that," Bolten recalled dryly.
Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access to "every table and every meeting," making his voice heard in "whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in," Bolten said.
Okay. You get the idea. I submit that Professor FooledByLockedDoors didn't make the decision to commute Libby's sentence at all. Cheney did. Cheney just heard that Libby would not get bail and immediately commuted his sentence, sending the White House into a panic of damage control. They constructed a script in which Bush apparently spent damn near a year, got hisself a law degree, personally reviewed fact, and also didn't personally review fact, got Cheney's advice and didn't get Cheney's advice, let allies outside the White House know some details and also didn't let allies outside the White House know some details . . . all to give the appearance that for the first time in the past six and a half years the Vice President was not the most important voice in the room.
So what? You might want to ask. Well, maybe, so a lot.
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As pontificator points out to us the Judge in the Libby case, Judge Walton, wants both parties back in court to figure out what "Bush's" unexecutable Executive decision is supposed to mean. "Bush"'s commuatation, the decision Cheney, I claim, actually made without much thought at all, simply cannot be carried out under the law as written.
Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left quotes the important part of Walton's order:
Section 3583 does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervissd release without first completing a term of incarceration. . . .
[fn 1] If either party believes that it would be helpful to seek clarification from the White House regarding the President's position on the proper interpretation of Section 3583 . . . they are encouraged to do so
But how could anyone clarify the President's position if the President does not, in fact, have a position? Never made one, never deliberated on one, never did more than clear brush and make fart jokes?
How on Earth is the White House going to explain itself without letting slip the truth? That this stupid, stupid mistake was Cheney's fault? Might be interesting.
All of the above, of course, is my speculation. It's possible that Cheney had nothing to do with any of this. And it's possible that President Bush really didn't know if Libby lied. It's possible that Bush thought Libby got Plame's name from Tim Russert. Sure it is.
On July 6, 2003, former diplomat Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, disputing administration arguments that Iraq had sought to buy uranium ore from Africa to make nuclear weapons. The following day, President Bush and top cabinet officials left for Africa, and the memo was aboard Air Force One.
The paragraph in the memo discussing Ms. Wilson's involvement in her husband's trip is marked at the beginning with a letter designation in brackets to indicate the information shouldn't be shared, according to the person familiar with the memo. Such a designation would indicate to a reader that the information was sensitive. The memo, though, doesn't specifically describe Ms. Wilson as an undercover agent, the person familiar with the memo said.
After all, anything's possible.