Heavy imprint of Libby verdict

The felony conviction of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is now history, but the aftereffects – and the issues that undergirded the case – will linger until the last day of George W. Bush's presidency.

On its own, the case of Vice President Dick Cheney's onetime chief of staff seemed a sideshow to weightier issues. No one, including Mr. Libby, was charged with the core offense under investigation: whether a CIA operative's identity was illegally leaked to the press.

But Libby's conviction Tuesday for lying under oath and obstructing a federal investigation will go down as a signal moment in President Bush's tenure. To critics of the Bush administration, the case became a stand-in for the Iraq war itself and shed light on the aggressive manner in which the usually secretive office of the vice president sought to discredit its opponents. To supporters of the administration and the Iraq war, the case was a waste of time and money, pursued by an overly zealous special prosecutor.

For Libby himself, the stakes are enormous. If his conviction stands, after asking for a retrial and the promised appeals, he is likely to face 1-1/2 to 3 years in prison, under federal sentencing guidelines. He also faces a lawsuit filed by the former CIA employee, Valerie Plame, and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who claim that the vice president and other officials, including Libby, conspired against him and his wife.

Looking at the modern history of scandal trials, analysts see the Libby case as the latest in a pattern.

"It reaffirms the age-old adage that it's not the crime, it's the coverup," says Michael Levy, a former federal prosecutor. "We saw it in Watergate, we saw it more recently in the corporate context with Arthur Andersen and Martha Stewart, and now we've seen it again in the political context with Scooter Libby."

Already, political players from various corners are anticipating a possible presidential pardon of Libby, with conservative editorial pages calling for it and Democrats calling on Mr. Bush not to do it.

The Libby conviction comes at a difficult time for the Bush White House. In poll after poll, a majority of Americans express unhappiness with the Iraq war, and now the administration is grappling with the exposure of appalling conditions faced by war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"If [the Libby conviction] were alone, it wouldn't amount to that much," says Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "But it comes with circumstances in Iraq, and the Walter Reed [situation] feeding into the Katrina sense of an administration not caring."

Second-guessing of the major players in the Libby case is likely to continue for some time. When it was revealed that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had learned early in the investigation who the original leaker was – former top State Department official Richard Armitage – Libby defenders cried foul. The case should not have gone forward, they argue.

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