March 7, 2007
Eager Deavers Posted by Alexander Burns at 06:10 PM EST Given the discussion that’s occurred on this blog regarding the Valerie Wilson/Lewis Libby affair, it seems appropriate to comment on the guilty verdict issued against Libby yesterday afternoon. The whole CIA leak investigation has taken an excruciatingly long time—it was well over a year ago that Patrick Fitzgerald announced his indictment against Libby—and this verdict is welcome as a kind of short-term closure. There will be appeals, of course, and Libby’s Legal Defense Trust has already announced a new fundraising push for the next round of litigation. Trial watchers on the left have sometimes compared this to the Watergate investigation, Vice President Cheney to Nixon, and Libby to Howard Hunt, Bob Haldeman, or Charles Colson. I think it’s fair to say, though, that the charges against Libby and the allegations of misconduct on the part of the Vice President’s office really do not measure up to the wrongdoings of Watergate. If they did, I trust Mr. Fitzgerald would have issued additional indictments accordingly. As it is, his investigation has been declared inactive. There’s also far less public awareness of the Libby prosecution than there was of Watergate, and less consensus on its advisability. By the time Nixon resigned, mainstream Republicans had abandoned him. Today the White House and its allies can still defensibly maintain their support for the Vice President’s downed aide. It seems to me that a far better analogue for the Libby scandal would be the prosecution of Ronald Reagan’s former deputy chief of staff, Michael Deaver, during the twilight years of the Reagan administration. Deaver, after leaving the White House, became a powerful lobbyist. Throughout his time in the West Wing, he had been dogged by accusations of influence peddling and self-interested political horse-trading. William Safire alleged multiple times that Deaver’s actions in the White House were at least partly motivated by the aide’s desire to set up a cushy gig for himself after leaving Reagan’s side. When Deaver’s post–White House activities were investigated by Congress and a federal prosecutor, he ended up being charged with multiple counts of perjury. Like Libby, he was not charged with an additional criminal offense. His conviction on three counts of lying under oath, however, was enough to complete his fall from grace. Lewis Libby’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for later this spring. Given that his offenses can carry a sentence of up to 30 years, I am curious to see whether his judge follows the example of Deaver’s. In Deaver’s case, the defense lawyers convinced the court that the Reagan aide’s alcoholism had hampered his testimony on the stand. Consequently Deaver avoided prison time altogether, escaping with a $100,000 fine and 1,500 hours of community service. Some saw this as an appropriately light punishment for an inoffensive transgression. Some even saw it as excessive, given that Deaver was not charged with an active crime, and only with lying about apparently legal, albeit unethical, actions. Still others, though, saw Deaver’s light sentence as an insult to the idea of public ethics and to the system of criminal justice. The reasoning went that unless unethical actions carried stiff punishments, which could function as deterrents, Washington would continue to be populated by hordes of eager potential Deavers. Thirty years would clearly be an excessive sentence for Libby, but I hope Judge Walton, in sentencing Libby, does not totally repeat the reasoning of the court that sentenced Deaver. Even if perjury was Libby’s only offense, such carelessness, evasiveness, and arrogance should carry a stiff price for the country’s most powerful government agents. “Eager Libbys” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Eager Deavers.” But if the former Cheney aide escapes with a slap on the wrist, a new generation of imprudent presidential aides might deserve his name as a title.
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