Following up on the item below on Scooter Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, Judge Reggie Walton also released nearly 400 pages of letters sent to the court by Libby’s backers, all of whom asked for leniency.
It was quite a collection. Donald Rumsfeld talked about Libby’s “strong character and integrity,” John Bolton continued to suggest Libby was innocent, and pointed to the classified information Libby didn’t leak. Paul Wolfowitz talked about the impact Libby has had on his life. Henry Kissinger praised his “patriotism.”
In one of the stranger letters, Mary Matalin and James Carville wrote a letter together, on Matalin’s stationary, praising Libby’s “universal love of families,” and asking Walton to go easy on the man their kids call “Mr. Scooter.”
The Smoking Gun has lots of highlights from the correspondence, but there was one item that stood out for me: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace contributed a letter of his own. He wrote:
[Libby] impressed me as a team player when addressing issues and with his selfless approach to wide-ranging responsibilities. I especially recall from my meetings with Mr. Libby, that when considering options and courses of action, he always looked for not just what was in the best interests of the country, but also for the right way to proceed — both legally and morally. From my perspective dealing with Mr. Libby on national security issues, he served the United States Government extremely well.
On national security issues? We are talking about the guy who exposed the cover of a covert CIA agent during a time of war and then lied about it, right?
That said, Pace did get one thing right: Libby was the consummate “team player.” The problem, in this case, was that his team was going down some dangerous roads.