The seven deadly sinners of the Scooter trial

Jury selection begins today in the case of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis Libby. But are any of the players in this scandal worth rooting for?

By Jonathan Turley

Read more: Bob Woodward, Opinion, Weapons of mass destruction, Seven Deadly Sins, Dick Cheney, John Dean, Judith Miller, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Patrick Fitzgerald, Scooter Libby

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

Jan. 16, 2007 | It is often said that a good trial is like a morality play in which the jury must find the true villain and the moral of the story. But what if all the actors are villains and there is no moral lesson? Well, then you have the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

This week, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney will stand trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. Some of Washington's biggest names in politics, government and journalism will parade before the jury either in person or by reference: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Judith Miller, conservative columnist Bob Novak and Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward. They will be joined by the victims in this story, former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

Unfortunately, the cast is better than the story, which has gone from a cancer on the presidency to more of a nosebleed. For two years, beginning with Patrick Fitzgerald's appointment as special counsel on Dec. 30, 2003, the public followed the investigation of who had leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Novak for one of his classic hatchet jobs. The career-ending outing of the covert CIA operative was retaliation for her husband's public rebuttal of the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction leading to the Iraq war. It became high drama as reporters were hunted down by Fitzgerald and threatened with jail if they did not disclose confidential sources. A steady stream of reporters and officials were led to the grand jury while one reporter, Judith Miller, was led to jail.

As with most Washington scandals, however, the eventual criminal charges concerned not the original offense (disclosing the classified identity of a covert operative) but the response to the investigation -- the coverup. No one has yet been indicted for the original leak, but Scooter Libby was charged with throwing sand in the umpire's eyes, in Fitzgerald's memorable (and quite lengthy) analogy. In talking to federal agents who were trying to determine how Plame's name had been made public, Libby allegedly made false statements about how he had learned what Plame did for a living and what he had said to reporters about it. He is charged with two counts of making false statements to FBI agents, two counts of perjury for making the same claims in front of a grand jury, and obstruction of justice for allegedly having said these things in order to hinder the investigation. Libby says that these were busy days on which details simply skipped his mind.

The main problem with this story, however, is the lack of a single completely unblemished character among the central cast. It is not that the case is devoid of sins and sinners. What is missing is a person of unalloyed virtue to serve as a standard for judging the rest. In fact, the case now reads like a political parable of the seven deadly sins, with each of the main characters being undone by a fundamental personality flaw.

For those without a pocket Dante, the seven deadly sins are pride (or hubris), sloth, gluttony, wrath, envy, lust and greed. Actually the original, biblical description of some of these sins in Proverbs 6:16-19 seems to read like a standard Beltway résumé: "A proud look, a lying tongue ... [a] heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, [a] false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

The seven main characters from the Libby trial seem created for this political parable. Each shows the dangers of succumbing to the cardinal sins of Washington's inferno.

Pride. The context for this drama was shaped in large part by the pride of President George W. Bush. Also called hubris, pride is a sin that many associate with Bush's famous cowboy strut and his "bring it on" taunts to terrorists. But the Libby trial will highlight Bush's most consequential sin of pride, his use of false intelligence to order the preemptive invasion of another country. According to various accounts from former Bush officials, Bush was obsessed with Saddam Hussein and determined to justify an invasion of Iraq after taking office. Intelligence officials complained that Bush only wanted to hear reports that supported such an attack. Ultimately, it was Bush who sold the war using the spurious WMD claims. When these claims began to unravel, Bush dug in deeper and his administration attacked critics like Wilson as unpatriotic or dishonest or both. Even today, Bush remains the poster child for the ravages of pride. Rather than admit that his single most important decision in office was an unmitigated disaster that has cost a projected half a trillion dollars and 3,000 U.S. lives and counting, he has decided to escalate the conflict further.

Next page: Will Fitzgerald do a real cross-examination of Cheney?