Libby verdict shows need for skepticism of the White House

THE ISSUE A jury has convicted former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby of perjury, lying and obstructing justice.

THE perjury conviction of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has cast a pall over the White House and the decision to invade Iraq four years ago. The federal trial revealed a deliberate effort by the Bush administration to manipulate prewar information, journalists' willingness to spread it under the banner of exclusivity and a Republican Congress that was complacent.

Libby's convictions of perjury, lying to the FBI and obstructing justice culminate a three-year investigation into the release of classified information from the White House aimed at countering criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq. He faces a probable prison term of up to three years, and conservatives already are calling for his presidential pardon.

The investigation was aimed at finding who revealed the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame as the wife of retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, who was sent to Africa by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium there. When Bush referred to the uranium reports in 2003, Wilson wrote in a New York Times op-ed column that they were "highly doubtful."

Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald found that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had identified Wilson's wife to reporters. But the leak that prompted the investigation went to syndicated columnist Robert Novak from Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state and a skeptic of the Iraq war plans, and Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.

Rove and Armitage admitted to the leak, but Libby denied it. No one was charged with leaking the information, and the question of whether the leaks were illegal, or whether leakers might not have realized the illegality, is in dispute.

The trial showed that President Bush had declassified prewar intelligence that Libby leaked to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Information that Iraq possessed large stocks of weapons of mass destruction now is known to have been false.

Cheney directed Libby to spread the word to reporters about Plame, suggesting that her husband's trip to Africa was attributed to nepotism. Neither Cheney nor Libby testified in the trial, and the verdict tarnishes Cheney, widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in U.S. history.

"There is a cloud over what the vice president did," Fitzgerald, a Republican U.S. attorney from Chicago, told jurors in closing arguments. "That's not something we put there. That cloud is not something you can pretend is not there."

The cloud is likely to hover above the White House for the duration of the Bush administration. Bush promised when campaigning for president in 2000 that he would give the White House "one heck of a scrubbing," but removal of the stain will come only from a more skeptical media and a more vigilant Congress.