Libby pushed case for war

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick
Cheney’s top aide, has been a quiet yet powerful force in
shaping the Bush administration’s policies and helped build the
case for the Iraq invasion.

Libby, 55, resigned on Friday after he was indicted on
charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of
justice in the probe of the leak of covert CIA operative
Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters.

Cheney said in a statement that he felt “deep regret” in
accepting the resignation of Libby, a former attorney known by
colleagues for his analytical mind and loyalty to his boss.

A specialist in national security, Libby had logged long
hours in his office near the West Wing of the White House,
steeping himself in subjects like counterterrorism, bioweapons
defense and energy policy.

Libby held three titles: chief of staff and national
security adviser to the vice president and assistant to
President George W. Bush — a sign of his broad influence.

But outside the halls of power, Libby has a literary side
– he published a mystery novel, “The Apprentice,” in 1996.

Set in rural Japan in 1903, the book was praised by
Publishers Weekly for achieving “a sense of mystery and
claustrophobia through pared-down prose and minimalist
characterization.”

Libby goes by his nickname, “Scooter,” but many people also
refer to him as Dick Cheney’s Dick Cheney.

“He is to the vice president what the vice president is to
the president,” said Mary Matalin, who worked with Libby as an
adviser to Cheney during Bush’s first term.

She described Libby as a deep thinker and problem-solver
who gives “discreet advice.”

Libby shares the vice president’s hawkish views on national
security and his penchant for operating behind the scenes.

“He doesn’t grandstand,” said World Bank President Paul
Wolfowitz, Libby’s friend and mentor.

REPORTER’S SOURCE

While Libby is rarely quoted in the press, his private
conversations with reporters became a focus of prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Plame case.

Among those he spoke to was New York Times reporter Judith
Miller, who testified in the case and spent 85 days in jail for
initially refusing to reveal her source.

Central to the five-count indictment against Libby is his
involvement in the response to diplomat Joseph Wilson’s
accusation that the administration twisted the facts to justify
the Iraq war. Wilson is Plame’s husband.

In the war’s run-up, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s
book “Plan of Attack,” Libby presented a document to top
officials citing evidence of weapons of mass destruction and
possible contacts between Iraqi officials and a ringleader of
the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The weapons were never found and the administration has
since backed away from the idea of a connection between
Saddam’s government and the September 11 attacks.

Libby got his nickname Scooter as a child after the Yankees
baseball player Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto. Born in Connecticut, he
attended Phillips Academy, a private school in Massachusetts.

He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and has a
law degree from Columbia University.

At Yale, Libby took a political science course with
Wolfowitz, who tapped him to serve in the State Department in
the Reagan administration and later in the Pentagon.

Wilson has said he believed Libby was part of a White House
campaign to “smear” him. But Wolfowitz said Libby has never
been “a rabidly partisan political type.”

“There is a difference between people who focus on policy
and people who believe it’s my party right or wrong — that’s
not Scooter,” he said.

Before he worked for Cheney, Libby was a managing partner
at the international law firm Dechert, Price and Rhoads.

One of his clients was Marc Rich, the billionaire fugitive
pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

Libby has two children with his wife, Harriet Grant, a
former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary
Committee. In addition to writing, he likes to ski.

A September letter that Libby sent to Miller in jail showed
his literary side. Urging her to testify, he wrote: “Out West,
where you vacation, the aspens will be turning. They turn in
clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work
– and life.”