MAIN People in the News Lewis "Scooter" Libby

Born Irving Lewis Libby, Jr. on August 22, 1950 in Connecticut, "Scooter" Libby was the Chief of Staff to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, and also served as the Vice President's assistant for National Security Affairs.

Libby resigned from his top-level position after a five-count indictment was handed down charging him with obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury.

Before a pardon by President Bush on July 2, 2007 that effectively commuted his sentence, Libby would have faced 2 1/2 years in prison after having been found guilty of 4 out of the 5 charges leveled against him in the Valerie Plame case, in what is widely believed to be part of the Bush administration's push to silence critics of the Iraq war.

Libby has been most recently in the news in March 2008 for being disbarred from practicing law following the case by a local Washington DC court.

The Valeire Plame Affair

Throughout 2005, rumors in Washington had centered around the possibility that either Libby or Karl Rove, a trusted advisor to President George W. Bush, may have been the administration official who "outed" Valerie Plame.

Plame was an undercover CIA agent and wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who in 2003 wrote a New York Times guest editorial condemning false allegations by the administration in their bid to invade Iraq.

The Libby trial, begun in January 2007, included testimony by NBC commentator Tim Russert and former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in an effort to ascertain who was involved in the leak.

Libby's Republican base had initiated a defense fund at ScooterLibby.com as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald promised to introduce into evidence Libby's assertion to the grand jury that he made public Valerie Plame's undercover status under authorization by his superiors.

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Sometimes referred to as a Washington enigma for the few details known about his personal life, Libby earned his BA from Yale and took his law degree at New York's Columbia University.

He later practiced law in Philadelphia, and subsequently accepted a job offer from his Yale political science professor, Paul Wolfowitz, to work at the State Department from 1981 to 1985.

He then entered private practice for several years before returning to Washington to work again under Wolfowitz at the Pentagon as principal deputy under-secretary of defense for strategy and resources.

For his government service Libby was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award and the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. He also received the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Award for Public Service.

Libby stayed on in Washington in the early 90's to serve as legal advisor for the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China.

In 1995, he again left government service to become a managing partner at the the law firm of Dechert, Price and Rhoads, where he worked until 2001, when Vice President Cheney named him chief of staff and national security adviser.

In Washington circles, Libby is best known for his co-authoring the Project for the New American Century, promoting a more global role for the U.S. in the post-Cold War era stating that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world."

Libby is also the author of a successful novel, The Apprentice, published in 1996, about a group of strangers brought together inside a small inn while a blizzard rages outside.

He currently lives in McLean, Virginia with his two children and wife, Harriet Grant, a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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