Dick Cheney

Tuesday, Jun 5, 2007 10:00 PDT

The Libby letters

Read letters sent to a judge on behalf of Scooter Libby by some of his most prominent defenders, including Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and Henry Kissinger.

Before I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday, his supporters -- and detractors -- had a chance to write to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, the presiding judge in the case, and express their thoughts on Libby's potential sentence. More than 150 people wrote to Walton, including some prominent current and former government officials, like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Also among the writers were many of the leading lights of the neoconservative movement, like Norman Podhoretz, editor at large of Commentary, and his wife, Midge Decter, a neoconservative author in her own right, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Some letter writers served in Democratic administrations, including former Ambassador Dennis Ross, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and James Carville, a key strategist in the Clinton White House, who signed a letter written by his wife, Mary Matalin, a Republican strategist. Other letter writers include former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, former Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

On this page is a screen shot of the letter from Kissinger; on the next are screen shots of Rumsfeld's letter. The third page contains screen shots of Perle's letter and the last screenshots of the letter from Matalin and Carville. The full 373-page PDF released by the court, which contains all the letters written to Walton, is available for download here.

Primary Sources