Joe Wilson is angry, and, he believes, rightly so. He sees the decision by President Donald Trump to pardon the man who destroyed the career of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a threat to U.S. national security.
“If you can get away with betraying the identity of a covert operations officer and take a pardon,” Wilson tells The Progressive, “the signal to others who might for political reasons decide they would tamper with, somehow weaken, or release classified information related to American national security––it sends exactly the wrong signal to those who might be contemplating it.”
Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat, is referring to the President’s April 13 decision to grant a full pardon to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr., formerly chief of staff for then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in 2007 convicted of lying to investigators about disclosing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, to at least one journalist.
Joe Wilson
The pardon, coming as federal investigators zero in on evidence of criminality in the Trump Administration, came the same day that the President launched air attacks on Syria. The pardon was widely seen as meant to assure others who may be charged with crimes for actions on behalf of Trump that the President is willing to use his vast power to protect them.
Trump’s pardon of Libby comes as the President is in a state of “all-caps” agitation over a new book by fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he branded in a recent tweet as “a proven LEAKER & LIAR”—precisely the two offenses for which Libby was convicted.
Wilson, in comments to The Progressive, underscores the political nature of the pardon. The message, he says, is that “there is no longer any shame to be had by the neoconservatives for the acts that they wrought upon Iraq and the damage they caused to our country and our foreign policy.”
The pardon, Wilson says, might also mute criticism from members of the far right, who have long urged that Libby be pardoned for his crimes. “One of the tactical benefits of this for [Trump] is that the archest of neoconservative critics will be quiet or they will come to support him because he has pardoned one of their leaders.”
U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, also believes Trump is trying to send a message to current targets of the Mueller probe that he has their back. Pocan told The Progressive, “this President knows he’s in trouble and this is just one of those things he’s doing to send signals to others that there’s some safety he can provide to people if they choose to not talk, not say things, and also to say that somehow that behavior is acceptable for himself.”
It is not unusual for a President to issue a pardon. Jimmy Carter pardoned, commuted, or rescinded the convictions of 566 people, including Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. Bill Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of 459, including pardoning his own brother, Roger for a drug conviction. Among the more controversial pardons were Carter’s 1978 pardon of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States from 1861-1865 (perhaps an attempt secure the Southern vote) and Gerald Ford’s 1975 posthumous restoration of citizenship rights to Confederate General Robert E. Lee (perhaps with a similar intent).
President Trump has so far pardoned three people, two of those have been quite controversial–– including a full pardon to Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of criminal contempt for ignoring federal court directives in his eagerness to punish immigrants.
President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s thirty-month jail sentence, but Trump’s full pardon reaches much farther. In an official White House release, Trump is quoted as saying, “for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”
The leaking of the name of a CIA operative is a federal crime. In December 2003, the disclosure of Plame’s identity led to the appointment of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Ironically, Fitzgerald was appointed by James B. Comey, then an Assistant Attorney General under John Ashcroft, who had recused himself from the investigation. In October 2005, Fitzgerald brought an indictment against Libby, who was convicted in 2007.
But the story behind the leak goes back to an attempt by Bush Administration officials to undercut the impact of public statements by Wilson.
Joseph C. Wilson IV, was U.S. Ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995 and served in numerous other diplomatic postings in Africa and Iraq under five U.S. Presidents. But he is perhaps best known for his 2003 op-ed in The New York Times, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” about a fact-finding trip he took to Niger on behalf of President George W. Bush. Wilson revealed that he found no evidence to substantiate claims about yellowcake uranium being obtained by Saddam Hussein for use in Iraq.
Libby revealed Plame’s identity, putting her life at risk and ending her career as a covert operator, in apparent retaliation for Wilson’s op-ed, which undercut one of the Bush Administration’s main rationales for going to war against Iraq.
The story of Wilson and Plame is told in the 2010 feature film, Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, based on two autobiographical books, Wilson’s 2005 The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, and Plame’s 2007 book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.
“By pardoning Libby,” Wilson tells The Progressive, “what [Trump] is basically doing is issuing a blanket pardon to the entire neoconservative movement that was the architect of the 2003 war, and the architects of the torture policies and Guantanamo and every other human rights abuse and war crime that somebody might be able to prosecute.”
Trump is basically issuing a blanket pardon to the entire neoconservative movement that was the architect of the Iraq war and torture policies and Guantanamo.
One of those “architects” that Wilson cites is John Bolton, who was recently appointed to be National Security Advisor by Donald Trump, and began his first day in the White House responding to alleged chemical weapons use by Syria. Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under George W. Bush and was a key proponent of the notion that Iraq was assembling “weapons of mass destruction.” It was also Bolton, in a 2002 speech, who added Syria to a list of “rogue states” that should be included in the “axis of evil.”
For Wilson, a career public servant, Trump’s pardon sets a very bad precedent. “My concern is less about who’s pardoned, who isn’t pardoned, who’s convicted, and who isn’t convicted, and more about the impact that this pardon has on how we think about law and order and criminal activity, particularly as it relates to national security in this country.”
Wilson added that, while he has never met Trump, “I don’t believe he has any regard for anything other than himself and how many dollars he can pile from floor to ceiling. . . . I think he is a vile and despicable human being and he doesn’t represent any value that I represent or that I believe the majority of the country represents.”
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive.