As the clock was running out on George W. Bush’s presidency in late 2008, the president and the vice president edged closer to a showdown.
A year earlier, a Washington jury had delivered a guilty verdict in a case against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s former chief of staff and one of the architects of the Iraq War, Libby was convicted of lying to a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
While his White House was being packed up in boxes, Bush mulled candidates for presidential pardons. Cheney personally pushed for Libby. To the vice president and others in his orbit, Libby’s conviction was the product of an overzealous special prosecutor and a liberal Washington jury — a “witch-hunt,” as numerous conservative commentators wrote.
The vice president pushed hard.
“Cheney really got in the President’s face,” a source told Time Magazine. “He just wouldn’t give it up.”
But Bush was leery of lifting the felony convictions from the former White House official. The issue finally climaxed in a meeting in the final days of the presidency. The relationship between Bush and Cheney — two allies who had piloted the country through the rubble of the 9/11 attacks, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — reportedly never recovered.
Now President Trump may have decided to do what Bush would not.
On Thursday night, The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker reported the president is planning to pardon Libby. “It is unclear why Trump is making the move, but the pardon has been under consideration for several months,” The Post reported.
The unfinished business of the Libby conviction has been a longtime rallying point for conservatives, including current members of Trump’s administration. The right’s narrative about Libby — that he was railroaded by an overreaching, politically-driven special prosecutor — syncs with Trump’s view of his own predicament, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s continues to dig into Trump’s world. “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!” the president has tweeted about the Mueller investigation.
Libby was a prominent Washington lawyer with blue-chip credentials — Phillips Academy, Yale University, Columbia University’s law school. According to the Post, his former political science teacher, the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, urged Libby to work in government. During the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Libby served in both the state and defense departments on foreign policy issues.
In the George W. Bush White House, Libby was a close confidante of Cheney. Along with Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and others, he was a key member of the neoconservative clique within the administration pushing for an aggressive expansion of American interests abroad. They were called “the Vulcans.” The brainy and brawny ideology was the architecture behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Libby’s trouble began with the drumbeat leading up to the invasion of Iraq. As the Post previously reported, in January 2003, President Bush used his State of the Union address to justify military action against Saddam Hussain’s regime. The president told the country Iraq officials had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Niger.
Six months later, the New York Times published an opinion piece by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. In the article, Wilson recounted a 2002 trip he made to Niger to substantiate the allegations, later finding them to be false, the Post reported.
On July 14, syndicated columnist Robert Novak penned a column outing Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA “operative.” The CIA requested a Department of Justice investigation into the naming of Plame as an agent — a breach of classified information. An FBI investigation started into whether Plame’s identity was leaked to reporters as political payback for her husband’s public challenge to the administration.
“My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department,” Plame would later say before Congress.
By the end of 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case.
That left the decision on how to proceed to the deputy attorney general — a man named James B. Comey.
The future-FBI director appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney from Chicago, as special counsel.
The grand jury investigated the leaks. Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were interviewed by Fitzgerald. No one was ever charged for outing Plame, but Libby was charged with federal obstruction of justice and perjury charges for lying to investigators.
In March 2007, Libby was found guilty on four felony counts, becoming the highest-ranking White House official convicted since the Iran-contra scandal in the 1980s. He lost his appeal that summer, and a judge sentenced Libby to a 30-month sentence and fined him $250,000.
In July 2007, President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, saying in a statement he had “respect” for the jury’s verdict but found the prison sentence “excessive.” The commutation, however, left Libby with the large fine and two-years of probation — a teed up the conflict between Bush and Cheney in the last days of the administration.
As the Bush team prepared to exit the White House, Cheney continued to urge for a full pardon for his former staffer, giving the cause an “extraordinary level of attention,” an insider told Time.
Bush was cautious about pardons an administration official told Time, and Libby failed to meet the president’s own criteria. “Pardons tend to be for the repentant . . . not for those who think the system was politicized or they were unfairly targeted.”
In an Oval Office meeting, Cheney tried once more to pursued the president. According to Time, he argued Libby was a loyal team player who had been made into a political fall guy. Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, argued against the pardon. Bush eventually sided with Fielding.
Only months after leaving the White House, Cheney expressed his frustration with Bush’s decision. “I was clearly not happy that we, in effect, left Scooter sort of hanging in the wind, which I didn’t think was appropriate,” he told CNN.
Other Bush loyalists also expressed their frustration — including a number who are now in Trump’s orbit.
“Somebody’s going to have to ask President Bush why he went out of his way to say he respected the jury’s verdict,” John R. Bolton, Bush’s UN ambassador and Trump’s new national security adviser, said at the time. “If you think it was a miscarriage of justice, then you think it shouldn’t have gone to a jury to begin with.”
Alan Dershowitz, a vocal Trump defender on cable television, also pushed Libby’s appellate cause, calling his appeals “serious and substantial” and filing a brief in 2007 asking for Libby to be granted bail pending his appeal.
Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, the husband and wife attorney team Trump considered hiring earlier this year, are also vocal Libby backers.
When Libby got his law license back in 2016, DiGenova told the Daily Caller: “Comey and Fitzgerald tried to frame Scooter Libby, and they did, but then they didn’t get it done. And then of course that idiot George W. Bush didn’t give him a pardon he only commuted his sentence.”
Hours later, after Mr. Mattis detailed his concerns at the White House, the president’s top national security advisers ended an afternoon meeting without a decision to attack, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary.
Diplomatic efforts continued deep into the evening, with Mr. Trump agreeing in a phone call with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain that “it was vital that the use of chemical weapons did not go unchallenged,” Downing Street said in a statement. The two leaders committed to “keep working closely together on the international response,” the statement said.
Mr. Trump was also expected to speak on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, the other key ally weighing military action.
Defense Department officials said Mr. Mattis urged consideration of a wider strategy. They said he sought to persuade allies to commit to immediate help after striking Mr. Assad’s government in response to Saturday’s suspected chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Damascus, the capital.
Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said that “we definitely have enough proof” of a chemical weapons attack.
“But now, we just have to be thoughtful in our action,” Ms. Haley told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.
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In the White House meeting, according to three administration officials, Mr. Mattis said the United States, Britain and France must provide convincing proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack the rebel-held town of Douma, where more than 40 people died and hundreds were sickened.
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It was an acknowledgment of a lesson from the Iraq war about what can go wrong after a military assault without a plan, one senior Defense Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive plans. It also sought to ensure that the United States and European allies could justify the strike to the world in the face of withering criticism by Russia — Mr. Assad’s most powerful partner.
“Defense officials are right to worry about escalation,” said Kori Schake, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and author of a book with Mr. Mattis.
“The Russians are heavily invested in sustaining Bashar Assad in power, have made their case as the essential power in the Middle East, and a U.S. or allied strike would be a reminder of how much stronger the West is than Russia,” Ms. Schake said.
Mr. Mattis also assured House lawmakers that they would be notified before any strikes against Syrian weapons facilities and airfields. The Pentagon alerted lawmakers before an April 2017 cruise missile attack on Shayrat air base after a similar chemical attack on Syrian civilians.
Before the White House meeting, Mr. Trump told reporters he would make a decision “fairly soon” about a strike. Earlier, in a tweet, he insisted that he had never telegraphed the timing of an attack on Syria, which “could be very soon or not so soon at all!”
“We’re looking very, very seriously, very closely at that whole situation and we’ll see what happens, folks, we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters at the White House.
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“It’s too bad that the world puts us in a position like that,” he said. “But you know, as I said this morning, we’ve done a great job with ISIS,” Mr. Trump added. “We have just absolutely decimated ISIS. But now we have to make some further decisions. So they’ll be made fairly soon.”
In Paris, Mr. Macron cited unspecified proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Douma, and said that France was working in close coordination with the Trump administration on the issue.
“We have proof that last week, 10 days ago even, chemical weapons were used — at least chlorine — and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Macron said in an interview on TF1, a French television station.
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But time may be of the essence in London, where Britain’s Parliament will return from its Easter vacation on Monday. Although Mrs. May is under no legal obligation to consult Parliament before ordering any military action, her predecessors have done so in recent years.
Lawmakers from both Mrs. May’s Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party have demanded to be consulted before strikes.
PhotoPresident Trump during a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Thursday. Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Germany announced that it would not be part of any coordinated military action in Syria, even as Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the importance of a message from the West that using chemical weapons “is unacceptable.”
“Germany will not take part in possible military action — I want to make clear again that there are no decisions,” Ms. Merkel said in Berlin.
The White House meeting included John R. Bolton, the new national security adviser, who favored strikes against Mr. Assad when ordered last year by Mr. Trump but opposed them in 2013 when considered by President Barack Obama.
Even with Mr. Mattis’s urging of caution, administration officials said it was hard to envision that Mr. Trump would not move ahead with strikes, given that he has promised retaliation.
“In my view, the train has left the station,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting and advisory firm. “If Trump now decides not to strike, he’s Obama 2.0 from 2013. That’s the ultimate anathema to President Trump, and I expect him to hit Syria in the next few days.”
Mr. Trump has previously belittled American leaders for giving the enemy advance warning of a strike. Heeding Mr. Trump’s warning on Wednesday about an American response, Syria has moved military aircraft to the Russian base near Latakia, and is working to protect important weapons systems.
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Russian and Iranian forces are stationed in Syria, ostensibly to support Mr. Assad’s fight against Islamic State extremists whom he considers part of the rebellion that has sought to oust him in the country’s seven-year war.
The Trump administration’s delay in acting has given the Russians and Iranians more time to prepare for an American strike.
This month, Mr. Trump surprised even his own advisers when he said he wanted to immediately withdraw the estimated 2,000 American troops that are currently in Syria, where they are focused on fighting the Islamic State. He softened that demand hours later after a National Security Council meeting, setting a goal of bringing the troops home within a few months.
Saturday’s attack, however, enraged the president, and he promised a decision on a response this week.
Mr. Macron also said France would continue to push for a cease-fire at the United Nations and for humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians to avoid what he described as “the terrible images of crimes that we saw, with children and women who were dying by suffocation, because they were subjected to chlorine.”
The French have warplanes equipped with cruise missiles in Jordan and in the United Arab Emirates, which are within striking range of Syria.
