In some Oct. 23 editions, an article about I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby incorrectly reported that he has two sons. He has a son and a daughter. Also, the law firm of Dechert, Price and Rhoads, where Libby once worked, was misidentified.
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In the Spotlight And on the Spot
I. Lewis Libby, right, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is driven from his home in McLean earlier this month. Among vice-presidential aides throughout history, Libby is distinctive for the power and authority he wields.
(By Win Mcnamee -- Getty Images)
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The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks confirmed Libby's long-held view that Islamic terrorism was the foremost threat of the post-Cold War era. He had studied the topic for years and had spoken often of its horrific perils to the United States. "I was hounded by Scooter about what we were doing about things like anthrax," Wolfowitz says, referring to 2002. "He was very concerned about what he saw as a general lack of preparedness."
Libby greatly admires the work of Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian who posits that warfare is an inevitable part of civilization, evil is a basic condition of humanity, and tyrants must be confronted by the harshest possible means. (In late 2002, a few months before the Iraq invasion, Cheney -- also a Hanson devotee -- invited the historian to the vice president's mansion for a small dinner gathering that included Libby.)
Hanson's stark perspective comports with Libby's view on Iraq. He was among the administration's fiercest proponents of the invasion, and his office prepared a 48-page document of intelligence on Iraq WMDs for Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003. (Powell couldn't confirm a lot of the data and wound up not using much of it.)
In his office in the Old Executive Office Building -- once occupied by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt during their respective stints as assistant secretaries of the Navy -- Libby keeps a photograph of Winston Churchill. Like Wolfowitz, Cheney and many of the Bush administration's Iraq hawks, Libby reveres Churchill for his willingness to confront evil boldly and his unwillingness to compromise. In a December 2001 interview with James Mann, Libby read from "The Gathering Storm," Churchill's memoir of the years preceding World War II. "I felt as though I were walking with destiny," Churchill wrote of the moment he became the British prime minister, "and that all my past life had been a preparation for the hour and for this trial."
That passage, Libby told Mann, could also have applied to his boss, Cheney, on Sept. 11.
In this context of urgency, Libby can be impatient. And, associates say, he could become infuriated over discordant views over Iraq, both from within and outside the administration. On Friday the Los Angeles Times -- quoting former aides -- reported that Libby became so enraged about Wilson's public statements that he monitored all of the former ambassador's television appearances and urged the administration to wage an aggressive campaign against him. (Cheney's office declined to comment on the report.)
Friends and associates say Libby remains unbowed about the U.S. action in Iraq, and despite the setbacks of recent months has shown no hint of doubt. In times of travail, Libby recalls the excitement of his job and the grandeur of his mission.
"Cheney and Scooter play chess on several different levels," Matalin says. "That's how their minds work. It's not about what's right in front of him. They look at things in the sweep of history.
"The Wilson thing was almost mosquitoesque."
Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
