|
Libby: Bush refuses to explain
12/07/2007 08:44 - (SA)
Washington - President George W Bush has refused to explain to Congress why he commuted the prison sentence of former White House aide I Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The husband of the CIA agent outed in the case testified during a House hearing that the clemency grant had cast a pall of suspicion over the presidency.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairperson John Conyers, Bush counsel Fred Fielding said Congress had no authority to review a presidential clemency decision.
"To allow such an inquiry would chill the complete and candid advice that President Bush, and future presidents, must be able to rely upon in discharging their constitutional responsibilities," he wrote on Wednesday.
The letter came in the middle of a politically charged hearing by the Judiciary panel on Bush's move last week to erase Libby's two-and-a-half year prison sentence.
Libby, a former top aide to vice-president Dick Cheney, was convicted of obstructing justice in a federal probe of the leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity.
When he issued the commutation on July 2, Bush said in a statement that he respected the jury's verdict but thought the prison term was too harsh.
Bush owes a 'full and honest explanation'
The hearing's star witness was her husband Joseph C Wilson IV, a former diplomat whose 2003 newspaper column challenging Bush's case for the Iraq war precipitated Plame's unmasking and the resulting investigation that ensnared Libby.
"In commuting Mr Libby's sentence, the president has removed any incentive for Mr Libby to co-operate with the prosecutor. The obstruction of justice is ongoing, and now the president has emerged as its greatest protector," Wilson testified.
Wilson said Bush "at the very least owes the American people a full and honest explanation of his actions and those of other senior administration officials in this matter, including but not limited to the vice president".
Conyers said he recognised Bush's constitutional right to grant clemency, but he argued that using the power to benefit a former aide who was in a position to incriminate other administration officials was suspect.
|
News
