Passing the hat for Libby: The Tucker Connection

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/02/26/passing_the_hat_for_libby/

The legal defense fund for I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's ousted chief of staff, unofficially kicked off on the October morning of his perjury indictment. That's when Richard Carlson -- former US ambassador, one-time president of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and bow-tied father of bow-tied television pundit Tucker Carlson -- sent a courier with a check to Libby's Virginia home.

''He spent years in government service," the elder Carlson says of his friend Libby, who resigned from Cheney's office after being charged with obstructing a special prosecutor's investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name. Libby, he added, ''hasn't made a lot of dough."

Since his indictment, Libby supporters have collected $2 million for his legal bills. That may sound substantial, but special prosecutor cases are notoriously expensive to defend: According to published reports, friends of President Clinton had to come up with $8 million to pay his lawyers, while supporters of Oliver North -- the retired Marine officer at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administratrion -- raised $13 million for his legal bills.