Oval Office Felon Spared Prison by Bush

President George Bush commuted on Monday the 30-month sentence of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby, who had been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to the FBI and a grand jury. They were probing who outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative who worked on preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The leak was intended to tarnish Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Administration's war which was sold to the public under the false pretenses of preventing Iraq from sharing WMDs with terrorists, though none were ever found in Iraq. Wilson, a former diplomat in Iraq and Niger, had been dispatched to Niger to investigate if the African nation knew anything about sketchy intelligence that Iraq had attempted to buy yellowcake ore. He found nothing and months after the "intelligence" was used to justify an invasion of Iraq, Wilson went to the press. The Administration turned on him and his wife.

In 2003, Bush told the press that he wanted to know the truth about the leak:

I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information. And I want to know, I want to know the truth. I want to see to it that the truth prevail. And I hope we can get this investigation done in a thorough way, as quickly as possible.

But the Justice Department will conduct this investigation. The professionals in the Justice Department will be involved in ferreting out the truth. These are citizens who will – were here before this administration arrived and will be here after this administration leaves. And they'll come to the bottom of this, and we'll find out the truth. And that will be – that's a good thing for this administration.

Full Washington Post story.