November 7, 2005: Newsweek Paints Libby as Misguided Idealist, Writes Cheney and Libby Believed They Were ‘Safeguarding’ US by Outing Plame Wilson

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas writes a profile of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who is now suspected of leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Thomas writes that he doubts either Cheney or Libby were “conspiring to trash” former ambassador Joseph Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA officer. Instead, Thomas writes, “it is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic. It’s also a good bet that they did not foresee the disastrous consequences of their conversation (see (June 12, 2003)), as well as a series of others between Libby and government officials and several reporters in the summer of 2003. Libby, as well as his boss, operated, at least in their own minds, on a higher plane.” Thomas paints Libby as committed to “duty and honor,” and identifying with “Roman centurions and Plato’s Men of Silver, idealized guardians who cared nothing for celebrity or money but lived only to serve.” Libby idealizes former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and has compared Cheney to Churchill, who defied English politicians in the 1930s to agitate against the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler. So, too, is Cheney taking definitive action against the rising threat of Islamist terrorism, Thomas writes, and Libby is determined to assist him. Outing Plame Wilson was “foolish” and centered in “hubris,” Thomas notes, but puts it down to Libby’s “heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history,” and his going over the line in service to his country. “[I]t is… likely that Libby was caught up in an ancient trap of the best and the brightest,” Thomas writes, “the belief that they do not have to play by normal rules when they serve a higher calling, and that small lies can be told to protect higher truths.” [Newsweek, 11/7/2005]