American lawyer and political advisor
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (first name generally given as Irv, Irve or Irving; born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney known for his high-profile indictment and clemency.
From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, and Assistant to the President during the administration of President George W. Bush.
In October 2005, Libby resigned from all three government positions after he was indicted on five counts by a federal grand jury concerning the investigation of the leak of the covert identity of Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson. He was subsequently convicted of four counts (one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one count of making false statements), making him the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan in the Iran–Contra affair.
After Libby's failed appeal and a high-pressure lobbying campaign for Libby's full pardon by Vice President Cheney, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence of 31 months in federal prison, leaving the other parts of his sentence intact. As a consequence of his conviction in "United States v. Libby", Libby's license to practice law was suspended until being reinstated in 2016. President Donald Trump fully pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.
Personal history.
Background and education.
Libby was born to an affluent Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irving Lewis Leibovitz, was an investment banker. His father changed his family original surname from Leibovitz to Libby.
Libby graduated from the Eaglebrook School, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, a junior boarding school, in 1965. The family lived in the Washington, D.C., region; Miami, Florida; and Connecticut prior to Libby's graduation from Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1968.
He and his elder brother, Hank, a tax lawyer (now retired) were the first in the family to graduate from college. Libby attended Yale University in New Haven, graduating "magna cum laude" in 1972. As "Yale Daily News" reporter Jack Mirkinson observes, "Even though he would eventually become a prominent Republican, Libby's political beginnings would not have pointed in that direction. He served as vice president of the Yale College Democrats and later campaigned for Michael Dukakis when he was running for governor of Massachusetts." According to Mirkinson: "Two particular Yale courses helped guide Libby's future endeavors. One of these was a creative writing course, which started Libby on a 20-year mission to complete a novel ... [later published as] "The Apprentice" ... [and] a political science class with professor and future Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In an interview with author James Mann, Libby said Wolfowitz was one of his favorite professors, and their professional relationship did not end with the class." Wolfowitz became a significant mentor in his later professional life.
In 1975, as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Libby received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Columbia Law School.
Marriage and family.
Libby is married to Harriet Grant, whom he met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1980s, while he was a partner and she an associate in the law firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro &amp; Morin: "'When he and Harriet became serious,' Dickstein partner Kenneth Simon wrote, 'she chose to leave the firm rather than maintain the awkward situation of an associate dating a partner.'" Libby and Grant married in the early 1990s, have a son and a daughter, and live in McLean, Virginia.
Name.
Libby has been secretive about his full name. He was prosecuted as "I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby"." National Public Radio's "Day to Day" reported that the 1972 "Yale Banner" (the yearbook of Yale) gave his name as "Irve Lewis Libby Jr."; it is unclear if "Irve" is his given name, or if it is short for "Irving", as it was for his father. CBS, the BBC, and "The New York Times"'s John Tierney have all used this spelling of his first name. The "Times"'s Eric Schmitt spelled it "Irv", though he cited a phone interview with Libby's brother, and did not clarify if he had asked for a spelling.
At times, including in the "Yale Banner", and as documented in a federal directory cited by Ron Kampeas and others, Libby has used the suffix "Jr." after his name. At other times, however, as listed in his federal indictment and "United States v. Libby", which give his alias as "Scooter Libby", there is no "Jr." after Libby's name. The Columbia Alumni Association online directory lists him as I. Lewis Libby, with a first name of "I." and birth first name of "Irve".
Libby has also been secretive about the origin of his nickname "Scooter". The "New York Times"'s Eric Schmitt, citing the aforementioned interview with Libby's brother, wrote that "His nickname 'Scooter' derives from the day [his] father watched him crawling in his crib and joked, 'He's a Scooter!'" In a February 2002 interview on "Larry King Live", King asked Libby specifically, "Where did 'Scooter' come from?"; Libby replied: "Oh, it goes way back to when I was a kid. Some people ask me if ... [crosstalk] ... as you did earlier, if it's related to Phil Rizzuto [nicknamed 'The Scooter']. I had the range but not the arm."
"The Apprentice".
Libby's only novel, "The Apprentice", about a group of travelers stranded in northern Japan in the winter of 1903, during a smallpox epidemic in the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War, was first published in a hardback edition by Graywolf Press in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1996, and reprinted as a trade paperback by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books in 2002. After Libby's indictment in the Plame affair grand jury investigation in 2005, St. Martin's Press reissued "The Apprentice" as a mass market paperback (Griffin imprint). "The Apprentice" has been described as "a thriller ... that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape."
Law career.
After earning his J.D. from Columbia in 1975, Libby joined the firm of Schnader, Harrison, Segal &amp; Lewis LLP. He was admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976, and to the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on May 19, 1978.
Libby practiced law at Schnader for six years before joining the U.S. State Department policy planning staff, at the invitation of his former Yale professor, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1981. In 1985, returning to private practice, he joined the firm then known as Dickstein, Shapiro &amp; Morin (now Dickstein Shapiro LLP), becoming a partner in 1986 and working there until 1989, when he left to work in the U.S. Defense Department, again under his former Yale professor Paul Wolfowitz, until January 1993.
In 1993, returning to private legal practice from government, Libby became the managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander &amp; Ferdon (formerly Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander); in 1995, along with his Mudge Rose colleague, Leonard Garment––who had replaced John Dean as acting Special Counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon for the last two years of his presidency dominated by Watergate, and who had hired Libby at Mudge Rose twenty years later––and three other lawyers from that firm, Libby joined the Washington, D.C., office of Dechert Price &amp; Rhoads (now part of Dechert LLP), where he was a managing partner, a member of its litigation department, and chaired its Public Policy Practice Group. His work there was well regarded, with President Clinton recognizing Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who worked on the Marc Rich pardon case.
In 2001 Libby left the firm to return to work again in government, as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
Fugitive billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich, who, along with his business partner Pincus Green, had been indicted of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran, and who, with Green, was ultimately pardoned by President Bill Clinton, was a client whom Leonard Garment had hired Libby to help represent around the spring of 1985, after Rich and Green had first engaged Garment. Libby stopped representing Rich in the spring of 2000; early in March 2001, at a "contentious" Congressional hearing to review Clinton's pardons, Libby testified that he thought the prosecution's case against Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law". Jackson Hogan, Libby's roommate at Yale University, told "U.S. News &amp; World Report"'s Kenneth T. Walsh, "'He is intensely partisan ... in that if he is your counsel, he'll embrace your case and try to figure a way out of whatever noose you are ensnared in.'" According to a House Committee on Government Reform report, however, "The arguments made by Garment, [William Bradford] Reynolds and Libby [in their testimony] focused on the claim that the SDNY was criminalizing what should have been a civil tax case. They did not make, compile, or in any other way lay the groundwork for, or make a case for a Presidential pardon. When former President Clinton stated that they 'reviewed and advocated' 'the case for the pardons,' he suggested that they were somehow involved in arguing that Rich and Green should receive pardons. This was completely untrue". (p. 162)
Bar suspension and disbarment.
Before his indictment in "United States v. Libby", Libby had been a licensed lawyer, admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, although his Pennsylvania law license was inactive, and he had already been suspended from the Washington, D.C. Office of Bar Counsel (D.C. Bar) for non-payment of fees. The Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals recommended disbarment upon confirmation of his conviction, which Libby had initially indicated that he would appeal. Having suspended his license to practice law on April 3, 2007, the D.C. Bar "disbarred [him] pursuant to D.C. Code § 11-2503(a)" on legal grounds of "moral turpitude", effective April 11, 2007, and recommended to the D.C. Court of Appeals his disbarment if his conviction were not overturned on appeal. On December 10, 2007, Libby's lawyers announced his decision "to drop his appeal of his conviction in the CIA leak case". On March 20, 2008, following the dropping of his appeal of his conviction, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals disbarred Libby.
Libby also lost his license to practice or appear in court in Pennsylvania.
Government public service and political career.
In 1981, after working as a lawyer in the Philadelphia firm Schnader LLP, Libby accepted the invitation of his former Yale University political science professor and mentor Paul Wolfowitz to join the U.S. State Department's policy planning staff. From 1982 to 1985, Libby served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In 1985 he received the Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service from the United States Department of Defense, and he resigned from government to enter private legal practice at Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin. In 1989, he went to work at the Pentagon, again under Wolfowitz, as principal deputy under-secretary for strategy and resources at the U.S. Defense Department.
During the George H. W. Bush administration, Libby was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy under secretary of defense for policy, serving from 1992 to 1993. In 1992 he also served as legal adviser for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. Libby co-authored the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–1999 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) with Wolfowitz for Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense. In 1993 Libby received the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Defense Department and the Distinguished Public Service Award from the U.S. State Department before resuming private legal practice first at Mudge Rose and then at Dechert.
Libby was part of a network of neo-conservatives known as the "Vulcans"—its other members included Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. While he was still a managing partner of Dechert Price &amp; Rhoads, he was a signatory to the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (a document dated June 3, 1997). He joined Wolfowitz, PNAC co-founders William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and other "Project Participants" in developing the PNAC's September 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century".
After becoming Cheney's chief of staff in