Jail-bound 'hired help' Libby is 'thrown overboard' by Bush

US:Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice-president Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, is heading for prison in the next four to six weeks after he was denied bail pending an appeal against his two and a half year sentence for perjury and obstructing an investigation, writes Denis Staunton

Judge Reggie Walton said he saw no reason to delay the start of Libby's jail term, despite a loud campaign that included personal threats against the judge.

"I have received a number of angry, harassing, mean-spirited phone calls and messages, some wishing bad things on me and my family. Those types of things will have no impact," Walton said.

As the only administration official to be prosecuted in connection with the 2003 leaking of a CIA operative's identity, Libby has good reason to feel harshly treated. Libby was not responsible for identifying Valerie Plame, although her husband Joseph Wilson had annoyed Cheney by questioning the administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons materials.

Libby's crime was to lie under oath about when and how he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA. He told investigators that he had first received the information from journalists, but admitted later that it was, in fact, Cheney who told him where Plame worked. He claimed that, as a workaholic preoccupied with more important matters of national security, his memory had simply failed him and that he did not intentionally mislead the investigation.

Libby's sentence was twice as long as that represented by probation officers and he has also been ordered to pay a $250,000 fine, on top of legal fees Washington lawyers estimate to be running at $2,000 an hour.

Libby's lawyers plan to ask the US court of appeals for an emergency order delaying the sentence, but although the panel that would hear such an appeal is likely to be dominated by Republican appointees, legal experts say his chances of success are meagre.

As the father of two school-age children, Libby is reported to be desperate to avoid going to jail and his best hope may lie in a presidential pardon from George Bush. Bush has said he "feels terrible" for Libby's family, but has indicated that he will not intervene in the case until the appeals process runs its course.

Conservatives are outraged by the president's apparent indifference to his former loyal retainer and Bill Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, this week described Bush's approach to the case as "a bit chilling".

"Bush doesn't seem to have much sympathy for Libby himself - he was just hired help, and hired help sometimes gets thrown overboard. Normally, though, staff who get thrown overboard simply lose their government job. They don't go to jail," he wrote.

At a debate in New Hampshire last week, all but one of the Republican presidential candidates said they would seriously consider pardoning Libby if elected and frontrunner Rudy Giuliani said he would certainly set him free. Mitt Romney, who as Massachusetts governor refused every single request for a pardon, said this week that the Libby case deserves careful review. "I took a careful review during my term as governor of the people that were brought forward. That doesn't mean I pardoned them, but I took a careful review. I think this deserves a very careful review."

Presidential pardons are not uncommon - Bush has granted 113 of them - but allowing Libby to go free would spark a firestorm of protest and attract more attention to the CIA leak case, from which the president has sought to distance himself for more than three years.

Libby continues to protest his innocence and Bush's dilemma is made more painful by the fact that he himself made Walton a federal judge in 2001, declaring: "I want people to know that I appoint tough guys to the bench".

Kristol warns, however, that conservatives will view the president's failure to pardon Libby as a deliberate and dishonourable decision rooted in selfishness and fear.

"One could only interpret such a choice as driven by vanity and fastidiousness - the president's desire to separate himself from someone who has gotten into trouble, a desire not to tarnish his own legacy by pardoning the top staffer of his unpopular vice-president.

"One might add that Libby's 'crime' came about as he tried to defend the Bush administration from the charge that it knowingly - that the president knowingly - lied us into a difficult and unpopular war," Kristol wrote.