NYT op-ed, "A High Price for Freedom": If Libby accepts a pardon, he (and Bush) admit his guilt

Op-Ed Contributor
A High Price for Freedom
By GEORGE LARDNER JR.
Published: March 26, 2007

ALL the talk about a potential presidential pardon for I. Lewis Libby Jr. has infuriated critics of the Bush administration; many feel that a Libby pardon would amount to a whitewashing of the White House’s actions relating to Valerie Plame’s identity.

Perhaps they should take heart: Mr. Libby may escape prison time, but if he accepted a pardon, he (and Mr. Bush) would have a hard time continuing to insist that he was an innocent victim of a vengeful prosecutor. It would also undermine the claim that the Plame investigation was a partisan ploy to discredit the White House, and leave another stain on Mr. Bush’s legacy.

Here’s why: If Mr. Libby were to accept a traditional presidential pardon — a “full and unconditional” grant of clemency — he would be admitting that he was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted: obstructing justice, perjury and lying to the F.B.I. Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but it is — no ifs, ands or buts about it. So, while many who have been pardoned like to claim they have been “exonerated,” that simply isn’t so.

The Supreme Court laid down the law in 1915 in a case that, paradoxically, grew out of a debate over the sanctity of a newspaperman’s sources. Six decades later, President Gerald Ford relied heavily on the court’s decision — in his own mind, though not publicly — in justifying his pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford would have preferred an open confession of guilt by Nixon instead of the grudging statement that confessed nothing, but Ford consoled himself with the doctrine that acceptance of a pardon is, legally and ethically, an admission of guilt....

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If (Bush) gives Mr. Libby a traditional pardon, one of his administration’s most powerful officials has to admit to wrongdoing — a remarkable event for an administration that seems pathologically averse to apologizing or even admitting mistakes....

(George Lardner Jr., an associate at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and a former reporter for The Washington Post, is writing a history of presidential pardons.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/opinion/26lardner.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin