Former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby, who was found guilty in 2007 on four charges of essentially lying about his role in the campaign to disclose the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, appeared on Fox News last night for a typical softball interview.

Recall, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pinned blame on Libby for being Dick Cheney’s fall guy. “There is a cloud over the vice president. … And that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice,” Fitzgerald said of Libby. Even after President Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence, Libby is still complaining that “the world’s not just,” but in doing so, claims he doesn’t want to “whine”:

CROWLEY: Scooter, a final question for you. That absurd political witch-hunt that you were subjected to during the Valerie Plame case, your sentence was commuted, but you never did, in fact, get a pardon. Are you still hopeful that eventually you might get a pardon?

LIBBY: […] I learned two things from this. One is the world’s not just. And the second is it doesn’t do a lot of good to whine.

CROWLEY: You’re a class act, Scooter Libby. And had Monica Crowley been president of the United States, you would have gotten that pardon.

Watch it:

Libby, an architect of the Iraq war who spent much of his time propagating false intelligence, is now engaged in a campaign to urge military action against Iran. He argued last night that sanctions aren’t working and that “we have a problem.” When Crowley asked Libby if there was anything more that the Bush administration could have done against Iran, he responded, “I would say that back in 2003 or so, there was more that might have been done with the Iranian opposition, for example. At that point, they were seven years away from a nuclear weapon.”

At the time she was outed by Libby and his White House colleagues in 2003, Valerie Plame was “involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.” Firedoglake’s Marcy Wheeler notes the irony: “You know. 2003. The year he outed a CIA spy trying to prevent Iran from getting nukes? Maybe the thing to do in 2003 would have been not outing one of the woman hunting down those nukes?”

Time Magazine reports today on the “final and painful piece of business” President Bush and Vice President Cheney debated in the waning days of the Bush administration: whether or not Bush would pardon Cheney’s top aide Scooter Libby, who had lied to prosecutors in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. For over a month, Cheney “had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush” to pardon Libby. Aides said Cheney “seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate” of Libby. In the end, he wasn’t pleased with the result:

Cheney’s persistence became nearly as big an issue as the pardon itself. “Cheney really got in the President’s face,” says a longtime Bush-family source. “He just wouldn’t give it up.” [...]

Bush would decide alone. In private, he was bothered by Libby’s lack of repentance. … A few days later, about a week before they would become private citizens, Bush pulled Cheney aside after a morning meeting and told him there would be no pardon. Cheney looked stricken. Most officials respond to a presidential rebuff with a polite thanks for considering the request in the first place. But Cheney, an observer says, “expressed his disappointment and disagreement with the decision … He didn’t take it well.”

Some Bush aides suspected there was “darker possibility” for his motives than simply wanting to save an old friend. As a former Bush senior aide explained, “I’m sure the President and [chief of staff] Josh [Bolten] and Fred had a concern that somewhere, deep in there, there was a cover-up.”

After Bush informed Cheney of his decision, Libby then asked to plead his case to Bush himself, but was directed to White House Counsel Fred Fielding. Three days before Bush’s presidency was to expire, Libby met with Fielding, who “kept listening for signs of remorse. But none came.” Bush finally met with his personal lawyer and trusted adviser Jim Sharp:

If the presidential staff were polled, the result would be 100 to 1 against a pardon, Bush joked. Then he turned to Sharp. “What’s the bottom line here? Did this guy lie or not?”

The lawyer, who had followed the case very closely, replied affirmatively. Bush indicated that he had already come to that conclusion too. “O.K., that’s it,” Bush said.

With just one day left in the Bush administration, Bush again informed Cheney that Libby would get no pardon. In an interview with the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes shortly after leaving office, Cheney expressed his dismay at the decision. “[Libby] was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice,” Cheney complained, “and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision.”

Last night, The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss appeared as a guest on The Rachel Maddow show to discuss the emergence of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the neo-neocon think tank (aka PNAC 2.0). Yesterday, Duss attended FPI’s inaugural conference on Afghanistan, commenting that he was “struck by how very little that was said was controversial.” Last night, Maddow noted that Bill Kristol, one of the FPI’s founders, famously declared in Nov. 2001 that the “end game seems to be in sight” in Afghanistan. Duss revealed that yesterday’s neocon gathering was highlighted by one particular attendee:

MADDOW: Did you have any neocon celebrity sightings today?

DUSS: Oh yeah. It was kind of a reunion of John McCain’s presidential campaign. But I also saw Scooter Libby.

MADDOW: Oh, no way!

DUSS: Yeah, he came out for that to shake hands and see the people.

MADDOW: Yeah, I forget he’s not in prison.

Watch it:

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Ruthie Liebowitz reports on an interview she did with her brother-in-law, Elliott Abrams — Bush’s former Deputy National Security Adviser. Abrams, a leading neoconservative, pled guilty for illegally withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran-Contra affair, but was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. In the interview, Abrams said President George W. Bush made a serious mistake in failing to pardon Scooter Libby:

As for Scooter, I really don’t know. I think it was a serious mistake on the president’s part not to have pardoned him.

Abrams is the second figure from Bush’s inner circle to criticize him over Libby. Vice President Cheney disclosed last month that he “strong believe[d]” Libby deserved a pardon, and “obviously disagree[d]” with Bush’s decision. (HT: Steve Clemons)

In an interview with his biographer, Stephen Hayes, former vice president Dick Cheney said he strongly disagreed with President Bush’s decision not to pardon Scooter Libby. Libby, Cheney said, was a “victim of a serious miscarriage of justice“:

Asked for his reaction to Bush’s decision Cheney said: “Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and honorable men I’ve ever known. He’s been an outstanding public servant throughout his career. He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision.”

Hayes notes that Cheney publicly disagreed with Bush only four other times: “on a gay marriage ban; on firing Donald Rumsfeld; on Washington, D.C.’s gun ban; and on North Korea.”

This item originally published in yesterday’s Progress Report. To receive The Progress Report in your email inbox everyday, click here.

Next week, “change is coming to America,” as President George W. Bush wraps up his tenure as one of the worst American presidents ever. He wasn’t able to accomplish such an ignominious feat all by himself, however; he had a great deal of help along the way. The ThinkProgress team heralds the conclusion of the Bush 43 presidency by bringing you our list of the top 43 worst Bush appointees. Did we miss anyone? Who should have been ranked higher? Let us know what you think.

1. Dick Cheney — The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who shot his friend while in office. The “most powerful and controversial vice president.” Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS’s Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, “I don’t buy that.” His top placement in our survey says otherwise.

2. Karl Rove — There wasn’t a scandal in the Bush administration that Rove didn’t have his fingerprints all over — see Plame, Iraq war deception, Gov. Don Siegelman, U.S. Attorney firings, missing e-mails, and more. As senior political adviser and later as deputy chief of staff, “The Architect” was responsible for politicizing nearly every agency of the federal government.

3. Alberto Gonzales — Fundamentally dishonest and woefully incompetent, Gonzales was involved in a series of scandals, first as White House counsel and then as Attorney General. Some of the most notable: pressuring a “feeble” and “barely articulate” Attorney General Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to sign off on Bush’s illegal wiretapping program; approving waterboarding and other torture techniques to be used against detainees; and leading the firing of U.S. Attorneys deemed not sufficiently loyal to Bush.

4. Donald Rumsfeld — After winning praise for leading the U.S. effort in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, the former Defense Secretary strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq and then grossly misjudged and mishandled its aftermath. Rumsfeld is also responsible for authorizing the use of torture against terror detainees in U.S. custody; according to a bipartisan Senate report, Rumsfeld “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees.”

5. Michael Brown — This former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association was appointed by Bush to head FEMA in 2003. After Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Brownie promptly did a “heck of a job” bungling the government’s relief efforts, and was sent back to Washington a few days later. He was forced to resign shortly thereafter.

6. Paul Wolfowitz — As Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Wolfowitz was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war, arguing for the invasion as early as Sept. 15, 2001. Testifying before Congress in February 2003, Wolfowitz said that it was “hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.” Wolfowitz eventually admitted that “for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,” as a justification for war, “because it was the one reason everyone [in the administration] could agree on.”

7. David Addington — “Cheney’s Cheney” was the “most powerful man you’ve never heard of.” As the leader of Bush’s legal team and Cheney’s chief of staff, Addington was the biggest proponent of some of Bush’s most notorious legal abuses, such as torture and warrantless surveillance, and is a loyal follower of the so-called unitary executive theory.

8. Stephen Johnson — The “Alberto Gonzales of the environment,” EPA Administrator Johnson subverted the agency’s mission at the behest of the White House and corporate interests, suppressing staff recommendations on pesticides, mercury, lead paint, smog, and global warming.

9. Douglas Feith — Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, Feith headed up the notorious Office of Special Plans, an in-house Pentagon intelligence shop devised by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to produce intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon’s Inspector General found the OSP’s work produced “conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.”

10. John Bolton — As Undersecretary of State, Bolton offered a strong voice in favor of invading Iraq and pushed for the U.S. to disengage from the International Criminal Court and key international arms control agreements. A recess appointment landed Bolton the job of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, despite his stringent animosity toward the world body. Today, he spends his time calling for war with Iran. Read more

As President Bush enters his final months in office, a record number of felons are seeking presidential pardons or commutations from him, causing “one of the largest backlogs in clemency applications in recent history”:

A number of high-profile felons have already sought clemency, among them Michael Milken, the junk-bond king and financier convicted of securities fraud in 1990; John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban; Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the former California congressman who was convicted of tax evasion; and Edwin Edwards, the former governor of Louisiana convicted in 2000 of racketeering, according to the Justice Department.

In his presidency thus far, Bush has “taken a stingy stand on pardons,” granting fewer of them than any president in modern history. But Bush’s use of his clemency powers has not been without controversy. In 2007, Bush commuted former vice-presidential assistant Scooter Libby’s 2 1/2 years prison sentence for lying to federal prosecutors. Libby has not submitted a pardon request to Justice.

Last year, President Bush infamously commuted the prison sentence of former Vice President Cheney aide Scooter Libby, who was convicted in the CIA leak scandal. “As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out,” Bush said afterwards, referring to a future pardon. Testifying before Congress today, Scott McClellan said Bush should not pardon Libby:

Mr. Chairman, I believe that it would signal a special treatment, the same thing that happened with the commutation. And the President has always held a certain standard for a granting pardons, even going back to when he was governor, and I worked for him then. And that is, that the person must first repay his debt to his society, and second, must express remorse for the crimes which he committed. And we have seen neither of that from Scooter Libby at this point.

Watch it:

Earlier this month, McClellan said Bush should have fired Karl Rove for his involvement in exposing an undercover CIA agent. “He said we were going to set the highest of standards, we didn’t live up to that,” said McClellan.

Digg It!

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, calls on the Justice Department to turn over FBI interviews of President Bush and Vice President Cheney taken during the course of the Libby investigation. From Waxman’s letter:

The interviews with senior White House officials also raise other questions about the involvement of the Vice President. It appears from the interview reports that Vice President Cheney personally may have been the source of the information that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA. Mr. Libby specifically identified the Vice President as the source of his information about Ms. Wilson. None of the other White House officials could remember how they learned this information.

New revelations by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan raise additional questions about the actions of the President and the Vice President. Mr. McClellan has stated that “[t]he President and Vice President directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby.” He has also asserted that “the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.” It would be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public.

Waxman requests that Mukasey provide the FBI interviews to the committee by June 10. Read the full letter here.

Yesterday, baseball home run king Barry Bonds was indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for his testimony about his use of steroids. He faces up to 30 years in prison. White House spokesman Tony Fratto immediately rushed out this statement:

“The president is very disappointed to hear this,” Bush spokesman Tony Fratto said. “As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball.”

The White House response to Bonds’ case recalls their reaction to the indictment of Scooter Libby. Libby too was charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. Bush said, “We’re all saddened by today’s news.” Cheney expressed his “deep regret” that Libby had to resign.

Libby was of course found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 30 months in jail, but before he served a day in prison, Bush commuted his sentence. Tony Snow claimed that Bush’s commutation order was issued on the “basis of principle.” So will the White House now operate on that same principle and also consider commuting Bonds’ sentence if he is convicted? And if not, why should he be treated differently?

Rick Mease writes in the Baltimore Sun:

So what makes Bonds different? … His biggest mistake? Breaking a record. And maybe not looking quite enough like Scooter Libby.

If Bush — who has excused steroids use in the past — wants to practice “Scooter Libby justice,” let him explain why Bonds doesn’t deserve the same treatment.