Vice President Richard Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby watches during a photo opportunity in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, October 24, 2005. (Larry Downing/Reuters)
Posted on 10/28/2005 1:39:43 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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, indicted on Friday on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice, has a scholar's demeanor and is known among colleagues for his analytical approach honed during years of work as an attorney.
Toiling long hours in his office in the building next to the West Wing of the White House, Libby steeps himself in subjects like counterterrorism, bioweapons defense and energy.
But the vice president's chief of staff also 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, 55, 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.
Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary, said a major issue that Libby has focused on the past four years is the threat of a biological or chemical attack on the United States, a risk Cheney has often warned about in speeches.
REPORTER'S SOURCE
Libby is known for a reluctance to being quoted in the press, but his private conversations with reporters caught the interest of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, lead investigator of the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
Plame's diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of outing his wife to discredit him for accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.
Times reporter Judith Miller, who recently testified in the leak investigation, spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her source, who turned out to be Libby.
In the Iraq 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 was given his nickname Scooter as a child after the Yankees baseball player Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto.
Born in Connecticut, Libby attended Phillips Academy, an elite private school in Massachusetts. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1972 and got a law degree from Columbia University three years later.
At Yale, Libby took a political-science course with Wolfowitz, who tapped him in 1981 to serve in the State Department in Reagan administration. Libby later served in the Pentagon under former President George Bush.
Wilson has said he believes Libby may have been part of a White House campaign to "smear" him.
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.
Among Libby's more controversial clients was Marc Rich, the wealthy financier and fugitive who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.
In addition to his interest in creative writing, Libby, who is married and has two children, is also an avid skier.
A September letter sent to Miller in jail, which played a role in her decision to testify, showed Libby's literary side.
"You went to jail in summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover ...," 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."
Vice President Richard Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby watches during a photo opportunity in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, October 24, 2005. (Larry Downing/Reuters)
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (R) and FBI Special Agent in Charge John Eckenrode, the lead agent in the CIA leak case for the FBI, arrive to speak to the media about the indictments that a federal grand jury have brought against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis 'Scooter' Libby during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington October 28, 2005. Libby, who immediately resigned his position at the White House, was indicted on five criminal counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements after a two-year investigation into the leak of a covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. REUTERS/Jim Young
Feith is gone, Rumsfeld is muted and now Libby is gone.
How to combine being discreet from "gives "discreet advice." " with ever talking to the press, on or off record?
MSM trying to make of the best of things by claiming Libby is the real power behind the throne.
He's Cheney's Cheney!
He's Bush's brain's brain!
Don't know enough about this guy other than his nickname is the same as this weird dog I once knew.
Jeeze I thought Cheney was really the president and Bush was the puppet. (/sarcasm) Isn't that what the MSM has been saying for years now? Now it's Libby. Make up your ugly minds Media People!! Anything to spin this like a top. I guess this weekend will be spin spin spin spin! Not looking forward to it!
No such attack on the US has come to fruition in the same time period. Is it possible Libby had something to do with this fortunate outcome? And his reward is to be indicted for something that wasn't even a crime in the first place.
Wishful Thinking Alert!
Oh brother. The spin is making me dizzy.
Rumsfeld is muted? There's a difference between not having your press conferences carried live and being muted.
"Rumsfeld is muted? There's a difference between not having your press conferences carried live and being muted."
I don't know the how and why but earlier in the war he seemed to be everywhere and now I never hear or see him. I figure if the administratrion still wanted him front and center he would be.
You know, our side better wise up and start being more street tough, vile, and destructive as we are routinely accuesed of being.
It won't matter - that innuendo will be there consistently. Maybe we should earn it. ;-)
He's doing the same things now as he was then. He seemed to be everywhere because the media gave him more attention, even carried his appearances live. They don't do that anymore, but he still does the same things.
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