Libby pardon seen as risk for political grief

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Richard M. Nixon. Caspar Weinberger. Marc Rich.

Is President Bush willing to risk -- on behalf of ex-White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. -- the kind of political grief that pardons for those three men brought the presidents who granted them?

Mr. Nixon resigned the presidency over the Watergate scandal. Mr. Weinberger was the defense secretary charged in the Iran-Contra scandal. Mr. Rich was a fugitive financier and his ex-wife a major contributor to President Clinton.

All received presidential pardons processed outside normal channels. As in those cases, Mr. Bush would have to bypass the regular clemency process to pardon Libby for his four convictions last week for lying to investigators in the Valerie Plame CIA-leak case.

Such pardons historically have gotten presidents into political trouble.

A number of conservative politicians, bloggers and commentators, including National Review and Wall Street Journal editorial writers, want Libby pardoned -- preferably now. Top Democrats have demanded that Mr. Bush pledge not to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

William Jeffress, one of Libby's attorneys, said, "I believed a pardon for Scooter was appropriate last summer" when it came out that a State Department official, not Libby, was the initial source for a newspaper column disclosing Mrs. Plame's status as a CIA employee.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has tried to dampen speculation, saying Mr. Bush is "careful" about pardons and takes the process very seriously. "He wants to make sure that anybody who receives one -- that it's warranted," Mr. Snow said.

The Constitution grants the president absolute power to grant pardons, without approval by Congress or second-guessing by the courts. The only check on abuse is the risk of "the damnation of his fame to all future ages," as James Iredell, one of the original Supreme Court justices, once put it. Some have run that risk.