Fred Thompson doesn't know what he's talking about.

The about-to-enter Republican presidential hopeful was in the middle of a softball interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last night--following the GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire (in which Thompson did not participate)--when the conservative talker asked the former Tennessee senator and current Law & Order star about the 30-month jail sentence Scooter Libby had received that afternoon.

Minutes earlier, the question had been put to the ten Republicans at the debate. "Do you think it would be appropriate for President Bush to pardon Lewis 'Scooter' Libby," CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked the GOP gaggle.

Representative Duncan Hunter said, "To make a determination on that, you'd have to look at the transcript." Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore replied, "I'm steeped in the law. I wouldn't do that." Senator Sam Brownback responded, "No, not without reading the transcript." Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee echoed, "Not without reading the transcript." Senator John McCain took a dive: "He's going through an appeal process. We've got to see what happens here." Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani said the "sentence was grossly excessive," but that he "would see if it fit the criteria for pardon. I'd wait for the appeal." former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney claimed that special prosecutor had "clearly abused his prosecutorial discretion" and had mounted "a political vendetta." As for a pardon, Romney hedged: "It's worth looking at that....I'd keep that option open." Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson said the sentence was "not fair" and that he would "examine the record." Only Representative Tom Tancredo said "yes" to a pardon.

On Fox News, Fred Thompson showed no reticence. He called the sentence a shocking injustice. And he went on a tear:

You got a situation here where they knew shortly after they started this fiasco that no crime had been committed. What they were looking at didn't constitute a crime, because of the status of Valerie Plame. She wasn't a covered person under the statute. Then they found out that he didn't -- Scooter Libby didn't leak her name. Richard Armitage over at the State Department did that, but they still kept digging and digging, because the press expected the special prosecutor to come up with somebody in the Bush administration.

They picked him out to bring the burden of this entire political witch hunt on him, this single individual, and prosecuted him.

Where to begin? Thompson's thumbnail description is completely cracked. He repeated the rightwing mantra that Valerie Wilson was not covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. That's not true. I've argued this point over and over with conservatives who refuse to listen. As Michael Isikoff and I disclosed in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Valerie Wilson was the operations chief of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit within the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA's clandestine operations directorate. She was working undercover, trying to collect intelligence on Iraq's suspected WMD programs, and she had traveled abroad on undercover missions in the five years before she was outed in a Robert Novak column. Under the terms of the IIPA, she qualified as a covert officer. As Fitzgerald declared in a recent court filing, "It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute [the Intelligence Identities Protection Act] as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press."

On that last point, yes, Libby had indeed leaked Wilson's CIA identity to reporters. Not to Novak. But to Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. And Fitzgerald's investigation was not confined to discovering only Novak's leakers (who turned out to be Richard Armitage and Karl Rove). So Thompson is also wrong when he says the case should have been closed once Novak's sources were identified. Moreover, there was also the critical issue of how Armitage and Rove came to learn about Valerie Wilson. Fitzgerald and the FBI had to pursue that, and Libby was of interest to them on that point, for Vice President Dick Cheney had early on passed information about Valerie Wilson to Libby.

Thompson, mouthing the rhetoric of the Libby Lobby, accused Fitzgerald of engaging in a "political witchhunt." But Fitzgerald decided not to indict Rove for making false statements (even though some of his investigators believed an indictment was justifiable). Fitzgerald did not overreach and use the Espionage Act to indict Armitage, Rove, or Libby for leaking classified information (an option chosen by prosecutors in the AIPAC case). And Fitzgerald never leaked himself--when doing so could have inflicted political damage on the White House. Fitzgerald conducted his investigation in an apolitical manner.

Would Thompson pardon Libby, Hannity asked. The near-candidate said,

I would, absolutely....It's a gross injustice perpetuated in large part by this CIA, and this Justice Department, and this special counsel, who they appointed, and it ought to be rectified.

No waffling there. That's because Thompson is a member of the Libby Defense Trust Fund and has raised money for Libby. He's been drinking the neocon Kool-aid, for neocons have long depicted the Libby case as some sort of CIA conspiracy against Libby. Their reasoning is convoluted, but basically they believe the CIA ramped up the Libby case as payback after the White House tried to blame the messy Iraq war on lousy CIA intelligence. The problem with this theory is that after Valerie Wilson's name appeared in the Novak column all the CIA did was send a pro forma request to the Justice Department for a leak investigation. As CIA officers have said, this was a routine action--and one that occurs almost on a weekly basis. The CIA lawyers who sent Justice the referral could hardly have envisioned what would come of it, and it's highly unlikely they were hatching a scheme to snag Scooter Libby. Thompson has watched too many spy movies. Seriously, it's shocking that after his years in Washington Thompson doesn't better understand how Washington bureaucracies function.

If Thompson does join the crowd of Republican presidential wannabes, he undoubtedly will have the support of the Libby partisans. Of the major candidates, he's the only one pushing for a pardon. But he does not have his facts straight. He's merely reading the script of the Libby Lobby. A leading man who wants to be president ought to be able to come up with his own (factually correct) material.

Posted by David Corn at June 6, 2007 11:10 AM