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[....]
The following second paragraph is factually incorrect and citations need to be updated. "Libby is the first sitting White House official to be indicted in 130 years[8] and "the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair" in 1990.[9]" In fact many sitting White house officials have been indicted in the last 130 years - Source - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-26-white-house_x.htm
Nick Bromell, Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, is an "old friend of Scooter Libby's" from boarding school, "deeply opposed to the Bush administration, which [he] regards as dishonest and dangerous," who "believes that Scooter and his neoconservative colleagues have not only set the nation on a disasterous course, they have also destroyed my father's lifelong effort to make U.S. policy in the Middle East more responsive to the realities on the ground": "I went away to boarding schools in the early 1960s, and at one of these [Eaglebrook] my best friend was a boy named Scooter -- Lewis 'Scooter' Libby -- who grew up to become Paul Wolfowitz's protégé, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and one of the Bush administration's strongest advocates for the war in Iraq...."
Another profile by Nick Bromell, "someone who's an old friend of Scooter Libby's and at the same time a frustrated critic of the Bush administration," who has "known Scooter since we were both 11-year-old 'new boys' at a boarding school [Eaglebrook] in New England....Later we were roommates, co-captains of the debating team, and later still we both went to Andover. We had the same teachers, read the same books, and played hundreds of hours of touch football together. We were close friends, drawn to each other not just by shared interests but by a shared position on the cruel status ladder of these elite prep schools. In a world dominated by rich WASP jocks, we were both too small to play varsity sports. Scooter was a Jew. I was a scholarship boy whose family never owned a car. ... [added passage found in open-access version later.] As Scooter's friend, I was always puzzled by how he managed to reconcile his exceptional intelligence with an unquestioning allegiance to these schools' absurd values and hypocritical institutions. Perhaps as a Jewish boy, Scooter simply felt more pressure than I did to submit to the system in which we were placed." [updated. --NYScholar 11:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
[The above passage relates to the dispute in arbitration pertaining to Lewis Libby's ethnic and/or religious public self-identification as a Jewish person. Clearly, from the age of eleven years on, according to Bromell (his "best friend" at the time), he had identified himself publicly as being Jewish. [It is highly unlikely that his family was not "Jewish" if he himself was at age eleven.] I add the passage only because it pertains to various disputes about categories pertaining to public self-identification of religious belief that editors from time to time have been adding and deleting from this article about a public figure whose later high-level U.S. government political policy-making position involved meetings with officials of the Israeli government at the highest level. The passage is simply offered as more reliably and verifiably-sourced evidence of that public self-identification. Nowhere in his two articles does Bromell say that Libby did not identify himself publicly as being Jewish. (Though, as a public figure, "use of categories" does not pertain in the same way as it would if Libby were a "private figure," not a high-profile public official convicted of federal felonies, losing his law licenses as a result of that conviction, and being sentenced to federal prison and fined substantially.) (Bromell offers his own points of view on the biographical fact of Libby's being Jewish and, like himself but for different reasons, being a kind of social outcast in the "WASP" (Bromell's word) environment of prep school.) From Brommel's point of view (as a source) these are just biographical facts about Libby's life that later might (or might not) be relevant to understanding his role in "neoconservative" U.S.-Israeli policy-making, Middle East political affairs, his strong role in advocating the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and later strong support that he has and is still receiving from members of the Jewish community both in the U.S. and abroad, including Israel. All of this mitigates against the argument that Libby has not publicly identified himself as being Jewish (having a belief in Judaism and/or being an ethnic Jewish person). The BLP category issue pertains only to the matter of "belief" not to the matter of ethnicity: WP:BLP#Public figures and WP:BLP#Use of categories. Whether or not the fact of Libby's being Jewish (his so-called "Jewishness" according to Kampeas and Kampeas' evidence of his Temple membership, as cited earlier) and the controversy raised about it as reported by Kampeas is relevant enough to mention in the article is still subject to discussion and debate and disputed by some editors. I simply offer the information in the passage quoted as further evidence to consider. At this point, I myself [given the arbitration matter] don't know what to do with it and would not take a chance of adding it to the article; but here the information is as quoted above and present in full in the source by Bromell cited. (Though I have listed it as "premium content" restricted to subscribers only, today I was able to access the article fully without being a subscriber by just clicking on the link. --NYScholar 11:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
These are recently-published, detailed profiles by an authoritative reliable source (published originally in reliable and verifiable sources) who had been a close friend of Lewis "Scooter" Libby; they may provide additional biographical information and insights about Scooter Libby; despite their differences in political points of view, Bromell and Libby were friends at least until the writing of these essays: In the earlier one, Bromell writes:
"In my hotter moments—I have fewer and fewer cool moments these days—I ask Scooter whether his political identification with homophobia is distinguishable from a political identification with racism or anti-Semitism. And convinced that it is not, I sit down at my desk to do it: to write the letter telling Scooter that I can no longer be his friend, not even in the rather distant way we have been friends for all these years.
Today, my old friend is under indictment for obstructing justice by lying about his knowledge of the Valerie Plame affair. Unless his lawyers manage to engineer a miracle, he will be tried in court early in 2007. There he will face the distinct possibility of public disgrace and a career-terminating jail sentence. So what should I hope for, I ask myself: my old friend’s acquittal or his conviction?"
Bromell ends the essay saying that he hopes for his friend's acquittal for personal reasons and his conviction for political ones, it seems. He seems still in a quandary, torn between his own political views and his personal feelings for Scooter his boyhood friend of old and longstanding adult friend, able to "see both ways at once" (11). --NYScholar 23:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Like many other sites, the antiwar.com notice of the interview also links to the profile of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby at Right Web: Exposing the architecture of power that's changing our world:
article says Patrick Fitzgerald "noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby."[emph mine] is sourced to 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for March 6. i was unable to find a quote in the article clearly substantiating this statement. Doldrums 13:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
No more charges:“The results are actually sad,” Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said. “It’s sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did.”
Fitzgerald said the CIA leak investigation was now inactive. “I do not expect to file any additional charges,” he said. “We’re all going back to our day jobs.”
[Note well: The citation to the source is not to merely one transcript as the above comment says; it's to "video clips," which are several on the MSNBC Hardball webpage linked in the citation note. See Editing history to note. There are various video clips on the site, including video footage from Fitzgerald's comments to the media.]
The key point is that because of Libby's obstruction of justice and the lies, Fitzgerald has said, as documented in his news conference re: the indictment of Libby (in 2005), that there was a "cloud" (see next sentence; Chris Mathews' source) over the investigation, and it was not possible for investigators and the grand jury thus to identify who else [Fitzgerald] might needed to have "charged" ("additional charges"); that was Fitzgerald's original claim about the effects of the obstruction of justice in his grand jury testimony and lies in Libby's interviews with the FBI, which led to his convictions in United States v. Libby: that the investigation was "impeded" by [because of] Libby's obstruction of it [cf. active voice used by Media Matters as cited below: Libby's obstruction impeded the investigation]:
Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge? I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.
If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, "I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can."
You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between.
You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.
FITZGERALD: And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.
And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, "Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it."
In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.
And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?
FITZGERALD: Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?
And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.
As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it.
So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make.
I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge.
This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.
Please see the citations to Fitzgerald's post-conviction comments to the media (in various articles cited) [here's another source for the video of the remarks-- WMV at crooks and liars which could be an additional source given] and click also on the video link to the Chris Mathews program: Hardball video: "The Cloud Over Dick Cheney"; there are other links provided in the webpage for the Hardball (printed) source citation, where that link is also listed. [An article by Neil Lewis quoting Fitzgerald's comments to the press was published by the New York Times on March 7, 2007: "THE LIBBY VERDICT; Libby, Ex-Cheney Aide, Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case" (requires log in; possibly TimesSelect subscr.; I've read and verified this article via mine). A possible additional sentence to quote from this NYT article by Lewis is: "In remarks to reporters outside the courthouse, Mr. Fitzgerald also addressed at length the criticism of his decision to prosecute Mr. Libby on charges of lying to investigators while not charging anybody with leaking Ms. Wilson's name to reporters." See the WMV (or QuickTime) video for those remarks.]
[Perhaps after (a) subsequent editor(s) deleted that sentence, when (a) later editor(s) restored the sentence, s/he or they placed it after the note number instead of before it and perhaps it now needs an additional source. Originally, it had verified sources (deleted along with it earlier), and its original source substantiates the statement]. It also refers to his original news conference [about] the "cloud" over the CIA leak grand jury investigation cast by Libby's obstruction of justice [a key part of his closing arguments], [which] is what he said initially (using his baseball metaphor): see the longer discussion and the sources in the cross-linked articles in "See also"; espec. the Plame affair--recently renamed CIA leak scandal (2003)--(cross-linked articles there--e.g., Valerie Plame), and United States v. Libby). When the protection is lifted, perhaps editors will try to correct any typographical errors remaining in this article and restore any additional missing sources. Thanks for your observation. [I and others reading these comments duly note it and will rectify it when possible.] (I may look for the exact source later, if it got deleted by accident or somehow confused throughout earlier edits.) --NYScholar 15:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
For further documented reliable sources, see also all the coverage in the articles listed in "Related external links": the sources are listed so that one can consult them for the news of the day: there are also video clips linked in a variety of them and other news sites, such as PBS (The News Hour with Jim Lehrer): e.g., news clips of juror Denis Collins and of Patrick Fitzgerald's and others' comments to the media are provided throughout the news sites: e.g, Denis Collins: March 6. Reading documented reliable news sources and clicking on links provided in them is not "original research"; the sources are documented: Wikipedia:Citing sources; Wikipedia:Attribution, etc. Scroll through them. As I've already said, I'm sure that if there are some actual mistakes in language of a sentence or in placement of a note, it can be fixed. WP:AGF. --NYScholar 17:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
--NYScholar 17:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[links embedded in source] No underlying crime was committed. Since a federal grand jury indicted Libby in October 2005, numerous media figures have stated that the nature of the charges against him prove that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of the CIA leak case found that no underlying crime had been committed. But this assertion ignores Fitzgerald's explanation that Libby's obstructions prevented him -- and the grand jury -- from determining whether the alleged leak violated federal law.
He noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby. [1]
He noted also earlier (in his news conference announcing the indictment of Libby on 28 Oct. 2005 and in his closing arguments in United States v. Libby) that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of Libby's obstruction of justice. [1] [2] [3] [4]
... --NYScholar 17:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC) [[tc; added links. --NYScholar 15:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)] [refactored Notes sec. below ---NYScholar 22:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)]
Speaking to the media after the verdict, Fitzgerald reiterated his earlier claims that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby."(followed by the same citation to the video clips presented on MSNBC's Hardball).
Due to the incivility that I have encountered from some others (not Wassermann) regarding Lewis Libby (scroll up and see the talk page archives), and my disinclination to waste any more of my time with this matter, I will not be replying further on this talk page. These matters are currently in arbitration. I suggest that other "interested parties" also indicate their awareness of the formal arbitration request on the RFA [5] and contribute their requested "statements" about this long-standing editing content dispute (not me) there, following the recommended Wikipedia "procedure"; scroll up to #Resolving disputes for more information. --NYScholar 17:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC) [Updated the link; I do not wish to devote any further time to this matter. --NYScholar 20:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)]
This sentence is repeated twice in the introduction and one copy should be removed. "Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and, if that attempt fails, they will appeal Libby's conviction." Rob944s2 18:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
am requesting unprotection of this article. it was protected for "edit-warring" more than a month ago (April 19). Doldrums 13:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
It is exceedingly annoying that anyone is saying that the name Irve is "up in the air." THAT IS HIS NAME. IRVE!!! His father was Irve and he is Irve, Jr. It is not a nickname!!! It is a name!! IRVE!!! That's how public records list his father!! That's how public records list him!! IRVE!!! That's his given name, from birth! Who cares if a childhood friend hems and haws about the name behind the "I." and then suggests "Irv[e]" and then "Irving"? He doesn't know! He doesn't have a clue! Because the name is "Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr." Go through the public records (AGAIN) and you will see (AGAIN) the guy's correct name!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zxdfgzsegzsrr ( talk • contribs)
--NYScholar 02:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)In his NPR report, Pesca (observing that Libby's late father was "I. Lewis Libby, Sr." preceding Libby's "I. Lewis Libby, Jr.") cites the father's using the names "Irving" and "Irve" (in documents accessed via Lexis-Nexis), and he plays his telephone interview with a Yale University librarian who, in consulting someone else regarding a yearbook entry for Libby (third-hand), vouches to Pesca that Libby's name is therein listed as "Irve Lewis Libby, Jr." Despite Pesca's "there you have it" claim of conclusiveness (which to me in tone sounds rather ironic or "tongue in cheek"), this presentation of evidence for precisely which name the "I." in "I. Lewis Libby" stands for––whether it is "Irving" or "Irve" (as for his late father "I. Lewis Libby, Sr."); or "Irve" in the Yale yearbook entry via the telephone interview; or "Irv" (in various newspaper and magazine reports)––ultimately still seems ambiguous, speculative, based on verbal hearsay, and thus neither entirely reliable nor factually definitive (and thus not really "proof" for a statement of fact in a Wikipedia encyclopedia article. Therefore, it is still safest to list only the "I." in the name in line 1, in my view. Actually reliable and verifiable court documents in USA v. LIBBY refer to Libby's name in the case name: United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby" (no "Irve," no "Irving," no "Irv," and no "Jr.")
An early and (at least in this Wikipedia article thus far) overlooked source for "Irv" as Libby's given name (marked by initial "I."):
. LEWIS LIBBY just will not talk about it. And do not bother asking his friends or colleagues because he has not told them either. ... He will not say what his initial I stands for. And Mr. Libby, 50, a lawyer, who is chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, will not divulge how he got the nickname by which he is universally known, Scooter. ... "Unfortunately, you're not cleared for that," said Mr. Libby, using Pentagon parlance with obvious relish as an excuse to keep mum about what he calls his two personal secrets. ... Perhaps it is not surprising that Mr. Cheney's top aide shares not only his boss's low-key demeanor and circumspection but also his penchant for keeping tight-lipped when it comes to some biographical details as well as matters of state and country. [rather ironic in retrospect] ... "He's Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney," said Mary Matalin, a counselor to the vice president.
(It takes a phone call to Mr. Libby's older brother, Hank, to learn that the I stands for Irv. His nickname derives from the day Mr. Libby's father watched him crawling in his crib and joked, He's a Scooter!)
- Eric Schmitt, " "Public Lives: Cheney Aide Will Eat Horse Guts Before He'll Spill Beans", The New York Times, 30 April, 2001, accessed 30 June, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
I suggest citing this specific article by Schmitt, quoting Libby's older brother, Hank, as source for "Irv." Followed by Pesca source. --NYScholar 16:54, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick.
I. Lewis Libby is the top aide to Vice President Cheney. He may have broken the law by leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent. Mr. Libby's nickname is Scooter; everyone seems to call him that. The initial `I' stands in for his actual first name, which is, well, the subject of this report from NPR's Mike Pesca.
MIKE PESCA reporting:
When I. Lewis Libby was named deputy undersecretary for Defense, here's what Pentagon briefer Bob Hall said. Quote: "I. Lewis Libby--I being his first initial, not referring to myself here--I. Lewis Libby is the deputy undersecretary for Defense for policy.'
Libby's office will not tell reporters what the `I' stands for. He did not divulge the meaning of `I' when confirmed in the Defense Department in the early '90s or in the State Department in the '80s. He wrote a generally well-received novel only as Lewis Libby, and this is the masterstroke: He goes by Scooter.
Think about how this works. If you introduce yourself as C. Everett Koop, everyone will ask, `What's the C for?' You'll have to say, `It's Charles.' But if you say, `Hi, I'm C. Everett Koop, but all my friends call me Lightning,' everyone will say, `Lightning?'
So here we have I. Lewis Libby, the most powerful adviser to the second-most powerful man in the world and no one knows his actual name, until now. Libby was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale there. I called the New Haven library and talked to a librarian named Brad Bullis. Bullis is a member of the National Guard who spent time fighting in Afghanistan, is not one to shrink from a challenge. Bullis called the librarian at Libby's alma mater.
Mr. BRAD BULLIS (Librarian): And she invited me to come over and take a look at some yearbooks, so I looked at the Yale Banner for 1972 and we found that his name is Irve--I-R-V-E--Lewis Libby Jr.
PESCA: Time magazine and the Web site Wikipedia had it as Irving; USA Today and The New York Times had it as Irv without the E. No one noted the Junior, although Libby's father's name was also Irving, spelled as I-R-V-E in two references found for him in the LexisNexis database. So there you have it. I. Lewis Libby may or may not have been Robert Novak's unnamed source, but I. Lewis Libby is unnamed no more. Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.
HE USED TO GIVE HIS NAME AS IRVE LEWIS LIBBY, JR, NOW HE JUST USES I. LEWIS LIBBY. WHAT IS THE (F[RIVOLOUS]) PROBLEM HERE?
[Please post new comments at the end of comments; see talk page guidelines. Thanks. --21:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)] The "Calls for Pardon" part needs an addition: Alan Dershowitz (along with other legal scholars) filed a brief on behalf of Lewis Libby "Professors Back Libby on Appeal Group Includes Dershowitz, Bork". illusionvi 13:34, 15 June 2007 (PST)
this article is acquiring an increasing amount of text quoted varbatim from sources, mainly news articles. much of this text reports straightforward facts, for which quotations are not appropriate. Wikipedia:Non-free content says, "In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not "fair use" and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy." Doldrums 08:49, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Inclusion of brief attributed quotations of copyrighted text, used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea is acceptable under "fair use". Text must be used verbatim: any alterations must be clearly marked. Removed text is marked by an ellipsis (...), insertions or alterations are put in brackets ([added text]). A change of emphasis is noted after the quotation with (emphasis added), while if the emphasis was in the original, it may be noted by (emphasis in original). All copyrighted text must be attributed.
In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not "fair use" and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy.
Please do not delete properly- and accurately-punctuated (verbatim) quotations from the article. The quoted phrases come from the sources as cited; those sources document the quotations. These phrases do not orginate with Wikipedia users/editors and to leave off the quotation marks is a form of plagiarism from the sources. If statements are missing sources, on the other hand, please provide the sources to document them. Undocumented statements in biographies of living persons, including those who are public figures, are removed on sight, as are clear-cut instances of vandalism. (See WP:BLP links in the notices above and the various Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace#Usual_warnings Vandalism warnings in Wikipedia for more information. Thank you.) --NYScholar 00:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
prosperous family
25) On March 1, 2007 NYScholar changes the language "Jewish family" to 'Libby was born to a "prosperous family" in New Haven, Connecticut––his father was an "investment banker"––and "raised in Florida."' [6].
- [adding the passage, which is hard to link to; it's from an arbitration workshop item; if there's a way to link to this sub-sub-section, I may come back to provide the link; in the meantime, I'm just quoting the passage because it relates directly to these exact quotations: --NYScholar 03:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)][Here's the link: Scroll to Item 25: Prosperous family. --NYScholar 05:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
- Comment by Arbitrators:
- I have seen no source to the "Jewish family" information. The U.S. News & World Report contains the quoted language. Proposed Fred Bauder 19:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
[updated. --NYScholar 02:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
[Later, I found additional biographical articles that I cited in the main article (... added as sources now) for the other places where Libby was raised; not just "raised in Florida" anymore; he was raised in multiple locations (as listed now). --NYScholar 02:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC); (updated. --NYScholar 09:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC))]
*Geoffrey Wheatcroft. "A State Like No Other: Israel, Once Seen As a Refuge, Has Become One of the Few Places Where Jews Are Attacked Simply for Being Jews". ("Geoffrey Wheatcroft on the troubled history of a homeland.") The New Statesman. April 25, 2005. Accessed May 7, 2007. Revs. of Jacob's Gift: a journey into the heart of belonging, by Jonathan Freedland Hamish (Hamilton, 2005), 395pp, £16.99 ISBN 0241142431; The Question of Zion, by Jacqueline Rose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 208pp, £12.95; The Return of Anti-Semitism, by Gabriel Schoenfeld (Politico's, 2005), 186pp, £14.99.
[The full review from which the following passage comes is worth reading for Wheatcroft's complete point of view:]
....neoconservatism is an episode, an important and interesting one, in the intellectual and political history of Jewish America, and it is impudent to call anyone who mentions this a bigot. Schoenfeld suggests that only racist crackpots ever query the commitment of senior Washington officials, but it was Jack Straw, himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants, who said of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: "It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day...." Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book The Controversy of Zion won an American National Jewish Book Award. His latest book is The Strange Death of Tory England (Allen Lane, the Penguin Press).
[updated. --NYScholar 03:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)]
Libby was also actively involved in the Bush administration's efforts to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace; for example, he participated in a series of "meetings ... [with] Jewish leaders" in early December 2002 and "an unusual meeting" with two aides of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in mid-April 2003, culminating in the Red Sea Summit, held in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2004. [5] [6]
Former British Foreign Secretary (2001-2006), current Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw, "himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants ... said of Lewis Libby, [then] Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: 'It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day.'" [7]
[Update: I added the sentence and supporting source citation; it is significant, pertinent, and reliably- and verifiably-sourced. Going back offline; late here; end of work for me. --NYScholar 06:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)][updated after working offline and finding some more re: citation; made verifiable changes in text and note. --NYScholar 08:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)]
[ ... Notes sec. at end. --NYScholar 22:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)]
With regard (once again, sigh) to the factual matter of Lewis Libby's being Jewish: I suggest incorporating the reliably- and verifiably-sourced phrase "who is Jewish" from several articles published via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by its Washington, D.C. bureau chief Ron Kampeas into the following sentence already in the article:
On June 5, 2007, after Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Libby in United States v. Libby, citing sentencing letters that Libby's supporters had previously sent Judge Walton [and reiterating that Libby "is Jewish,"] Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington, D.C. bureau chief Ron Kampeas, observed that former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician and writer " Natan Sharansky was one of many Jews pleading for leniency for Lewis Libby -- to no avail" and that " Arye Genger, a New York businessman who served as a liaison between former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Bush administration, credited Libby with trying to reduce civilian casualties among Israelis and Palestinians during second intifada: 'His meticulous efforts with regard to issues concerning the prevention of loss of innocent lives and human suffering on both sides were remarkable,' Genger said." [Proposed additional content within brackets and bold typefont for consideration.]
Proposed additional phrase is in brackets and bold print in the above block quotation. The cited source is already in the text. It is:
Kampeas' full sentence containing the phrase is: "Libby, who is Jewish, was the top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney." The same or similar sentence (with "who is Jewish") appears in many of his other articles mentioning Lewis Libby.
One can add citations to the pertinent earlier and later Kampeas' JTA article(s) if deemed necessary. In many articles Kampeas uses the same phrase after Lewis Libby's name "who is Jewish"--a fact that would be of considerable interest to the readership of articles originating with the JTA and the The Jerusalem Post, including large numbers of Jewish newspapers published in the United States which publish information distributed by the JTA; any one of those articles is a reliable and verifiable source acc. to guidelines in Wikipedia:Reliable sources and core Wikipedia policies referring to those guidelines, such as: Wikipedia:Verifiability; WP:Neutral point of view; WP:POV; WP:BLP; WP:BLP#Well known public figures, etc. --NYScholar 21:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC) [Corrected inadvertent typo. errors; updated. --NYScholar 21:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
Reread the July 2 entries on Libby and fix. They are littered with typo and grammar errors. mpirages
Re: Lewis Libby#Law Career: The name of his Philadelphia (first) law firm-- Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis--documented during "Senate Armed Services Committeee nomination hearings" according to original research into those transcripts provided in "I. Lewis Libby in Philly and Beyond" by "Above average jane" (personal blog) on 13 October 2005. To avoid depending on such "original research"-- WP:NOR--and use of a potentially-unreliable source (personal blog post) as only source, one would have to search the Armed Services Committee nomination hearings transcripts (which she says took her "a week and a half").
Also some more additional content info: While Deane repeats Leibovich's later published account saying that Libby's wife Harriet Grant is "a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee"--material once in this Wikipedia article (perhaps w/o attributing either Schmitt or Deane--, Schmitt (article cited above re: "Irv") points out: "Not unlike other neoconservatives, Libby started his adult political life as an antiwar Democrat. At Yale he was vice president of the student Democrats, according to reports" [doesn't identify what these "reports" are]. [I added this material to the article on Libby later. --NYScholar 06:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)]
Update: Later I found a published reliable and verifiable source for the law firm info. and added that source to this article's citations. --NYScholar 01:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I have added pertinent quotations from and citations to reliable and verifiable sources documenting highly-controversial and widely-contested points of view relating to Libby's work in developing U.S. foreign policy pertaining to Israel; please see the text and the citations. These matters pertain to issues being disputed in current arbitration. The quotations are documented with sources and feature Wikified links to related articles for further consultation and verification. These are all good faith edits of the content of this article consistent with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, WP:POV, and WP:BLP#Well known public figures. --NYScholar 00:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 07:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
I propose adding to the end of the current section called Lewis Libby#Resignation from government either a precis of the following block quotation or the full block quotation--introduced by a proper transition identifying its source as Ron Kampeas (a reliable and verifiable source)--and the appropriate citation (already in archived talk pages and this talk page): For example:
After Libby resigned, Ron Kampeas reports,
Across the blogosphere, anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel conspiracy theories were quick to tie Libby’s Jewishness to his role in selling the Iraq war, imagining once again a neo-con cabal that has a singular agenda: promoting Israel at all costs.
"One more Jewish Neocon Traitor," headlined the White Civil Rights Web site, which features the writings of David Duke.
Yet the fact that many people in Washington — including neo-conservatives — had no idea that Libby was Jewish [until Kampeas discussed "Libby's Jewishness" in his JTA press releases, the subject of his current article] underscores how tenuous the Jewish-neo-con link actually is, said Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Jewish himself.
"One key measure of the falsity of the argument is that the non-Jewish neo-cons are equally pro-Israel as Jewish neo-cons," he said.*
Given the development currently in the previous section on Libby's government employment, Lewis Libby#Government public service and political career, I think that the passage above is useful and "encyclopedic" development. I think that it is better for this encyclopedia article to take account of these issues discussed in such reliable and verifiable sources pertaining to Libby than to hide from (censor) them. The hyperlinks to pertinent Wikipedia articles provide current Wikipedia information re: the phrases in the quotation. Please consider this proposal vis-a-vis all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, most particularly: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view; WP:BLP, specifically WP:BLP#Well known Public figures; WP:POV; and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. --NYScholar [18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
To shorten this article (currently 90K) and to avoid redundancy with other articles already well developed in Wikipedia, I suggest that after that section on his resignation, one simply have cross-references to the related articles pertaining to the Plame affair, United States v. Libby, and Valerie Plame#The Wilsons' civil suit and not repeat the information (not "reinvent the wheel"); these sections are: Lewis Libby#Libby's involvement in the Plame affair; Lewis Libby#Indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing; and Lewis Libby#The Wilsons' civil suit (inclusive of any and all subsections in them). (In the course of such shortening of this article's redundant sections, if it appears that useful content in this article pertaining to the others needs to be moved to them, one can incorporate it in those already-existing articles expeditiously.) All one needs to leave are the cross-reference templates to the other main articles and pertinent Wikisource and Wikiquote etc. templates.
Both in general due to the ongoing arbitration request and particularly out of courtesy to the other parties involved in it, I myself will not currently make these particular changes, but I do want to say that I think that doing so will improve this article. (See WP:Be bold for related guidelines.) This "biography" of Lewis Libby does not need to re-hash the details already covered in the other articles. With all that material excised, it will be much more concise and focused on the biography (notable aspects of the life) of Lewis Libby. Even though I have spent a lot of my own time attempting to improve the content of those sections containing content often originally provided by others, I still would favor this method of shortening this article. Doing so will make it more consistent with other biographical articles about such notable and well-known public figures (former and current public officials) in Wikipedia. (There are other articles that I've worked on in which similar changes of form/content could be just as useful methods of shortening them; e.g., Paul Wolfowitz, but I can't take the time to propose such changes to them now. Perhaps others will do so.) Thanks very much for considering these proposals. --NYScholar 18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
....neoconservatism is an episode, an important and interesting one, in the intellectual and political history of Jewish America, and it is impudent to call anyone who mentions this a bigot. Schoenfeld suggests that only racist crackpots ever query the commitment of senior Washington officials, but it was Jack Straw, himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants, who said of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: "It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day...."
Wheatcroft's book The Controversy of Zion won an [American] National Jewish Book Award; he is also the author of The Strange Death of Tory England (London: Allen Lane, 2005); ISBN 0713998016 (10); ISBN 978-0713998016 (13).
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
[....]
The following second paragraph is factually incorrect and citations need to be updated. "Libby is the first sitting White House official to be indicted in 130 years[8] and "the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair" in 1990.[9]" In fact many sitting White house officials have been indicted in the last 130 years - Source - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-26-white-house_x.htm
Nick Bromell, Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, is an "old friend of Scooter Libby's" from boarding school, "deeply opposed to the Bush administration, which [he] regards as dishonest and dangerous," who "believes that Scooter and his neoconservative colleagues have not only set the nation on a disasterous course, they have also destroyed my father's lifelong effort to make U.S. policy in the Middle East more responsive to the realities on the ground": "I went away to boarding schools in the early 1960s, and at one of these [Eaglebrook] my best friend was a boy named Scooter -- Lewis 'Scooter' Libby -- who grew up to become Paul Wolfowitz's protégé, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and one of the Bush administration's strongest advocates for the war in Iraq...."
Another profile by Nick Bromell, "someone who's an old friend of Scooter Libby's and at the same time a frustrated critic of the Bush administration," who has "known Scooter since we were both 11-year-old 'new boys' at a boarding school [Eaglebrook] in New England....Later we were roommates, co-captains of the debating team, and later still we both went to Andover. We had the same teachers, read the same books, and played hundreds of hours of touch football together. We were close friends, drawn to each other not just by shared interests but by a shared position on the cruel status ladder of these elite prep schools. In a world dominated by rich WASP jocks, we were both too small to play varsity sports. Scooter was a Jew. I was a scholarship boy whose family never owned a car. ... [added passage found in open-access version later.] As Scooter's friend, I was always puzzled by how he managed to reconcile his exceptional intelligence with an unquestioning allegiance to these schools' absurd values and hypocritical institutions. Perhaps as a Jewish boy, Scooter simply felt more pressure than I did to submit to the system in which we were placed." [updated. --NYScholar 11:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
[The above passage relates to the dispute in arbitration pertaining to Lewis Libby's ethnic and/or religious public self-identification as a Jewish person. Clearly, from the age of eleven years on, according to Bromell (his "best friend" at the time), he had identified himself publicly as being Jewish. [It is highly unlikely that his family was not "Jewish" if he himself was at age eleven.] I add the passage only because it pertains to various disputes about categories pertaining to public self-identification of religious belief that editors from time to time have been adding and deleting from this article about a public figure whose later high-level U.S. government political policy-making position involved meetings with officials of the Israeli government at the highest level. The passage is simply offered as more reliably and verifiably-sourced evidence of that public self-identification. Nowhere in his two articles does Bromell say that Libby did not identify himself publicly as being Jewish. (Though, as a public figure, "use of categories" does not pertain in the same way as it would if Libby were a "private figure," not a high-profile public official convicted of federal felonies, losing his law licenses as a result of that conviction, and being sentenced to federal prison and fined substantially.) (Bromell offers his own points of view on the biographical fact of Libby's being Jewish and, like himself but for different reasons, being a kind of social outcast in the "WASP" (Bromell's word) environment of prep school.) From Brommel's point of view (as a source) these are just biographical facts about Libby's life that later might (or might not) be relevant to understanding his role in "neoconservative" U.S.-Israeli policy-making, Middle East political affairs, his strong role in advocating the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and later strong support that he has and is still receiving from members of the Jewish community both in the U.S. and abroad, including Israel. All of this mitigates against the argument that Libby has not publicly identified himself as being Jewish (having a belief in Judaism and/or being an ethnic Jewish person). The BLP category issue pertains only to the matter of "belief" not to the matter of ethnicity: WP:BLP#Public figures and WP:BLP#Use of categories. Whether or not the fact of Libby's being Jewish (his so-called "Jewishness" according to Kampeas and Kampeas' evidence of his Temple membership, as cited earlier) and the controversy raised about it as reported by Kampeas is relevant enough to mention in the article is still subject to discussion and debate and disputed by some editors. I simply offer the information in the passage quoted as further evidence to consider. At this point, I myself [given the arbitration matter] don't know what to do with it and would not take a chance of adding it to the article; but here the information is as quoted above and present in full in the source by Bromell cited. (Though I have listed it as "premium content" restricted to subscribers only, today I was able to access the article fully without being a subscriber by just clicking on the link. --NYScholar 11:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
These are recently-published, detailed profiles by an authoritative reliable source (published originally in reliable and verifiable sources) who had been a close friend of Lewis "Scooter" Libby; they may provide additional biographical information and insights about Scooter Libby; despite their differences in political points of view, Bromell and Libby were friends at least until the writing of these essays: In the earlier one, Bromell writes:
"In my hotter moments—I have fewer and fewer cool moments these days—I ask Scooter whether his political identification with homophobia is distinguishable from a political identification with racism or anti-Semitism. And convinced that it is not, I sit down at my desk to do it: to write the letter telling Scooter that I can no longer be his friend, not even in the rather distant way we have been friends for all these years.
Today, my old friend is under indictment for obstructing justice by lying about his knowledge of the Valerie Plame affair. Unless his lawyers manage to engineer a miracle, he will be tried in court early in 2007. There he will face the distinct possibility of public disgrace and a career-terminating jail sentence. So what should I hope for, I ask myself: my old friend’s acquittal or his conviction?"
Bromell ends the essay saying that he hopes for his friend's acquittal for personal reasons and his conviction for political ones, it seems. He seems still in a quandary, torn between his own political views and his personal feelings for Scooter his boyhood friend of old and longstanding adult friend, able to "see both ways at once" (11). --NYScholar 23:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Like many other sites, the antiwar.com notice of the interview also links to the profile of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby at Right Web: Exposing the architecture of power that's changing our world:
article says Patrick Fitzgerald "noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby."[emph mine] is sourced to 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for March 6. i was unable to find a quote in the article clearly substantiating this statement. Doldrums 13:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
No more charges:“The results are actually sad,” Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said. “It’s sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did.”
Fitzgerald said the CIA leak investigation was now inactive. “I do not expect to file any additional charges,” he said. “We’re all going back to our day jobs.”
[Note well: The citation to the source is not to merely one transcript as the above comment says; it's to "video clips," which are several on the MSNBC Hardball webpage linked in the citation note. See Editing history to note. There are various video clips on the site, including video footage from Fitzgerald's comments to the media.]
The key point is that because of Libby's obstruction of justice and the lies, Fitzgerald has said, as documented in his news conference re: the indictment of Libby (in 2005), that there was a "cloud" (see next sentence; Chris Mathews' source) over the investigation, and it was not possible for investigators and the grand jury thus to identify who else [Fitzgerald] might needed to have "charged" ("additional charges"); that was Fitzgerald's original claim about the effects of the obstruction of justice in his grand jury testimony and lies in Libby's interviews with the FBI, which led to his convictions in United States v. Libby: that the investigation was "impeded" by [because of] Libby's obstruction of it [cf. active voice used by Media Matters as cited below: Libby's obstruction impeded the investigation]:
Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge? I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.
If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, "I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can."
You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between.
You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.
FITZGERALD: And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.
And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, "Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it."
In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.
And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?
FITZGERALD: Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?
And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.
As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it.
So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make.
I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge.
This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.
Please see the citations to Fitzgerald's post-conviction comments to the media (in various articles cited) [here's another source for the video of the remarks-- WMV at crooks and liars which could be an additional source given] and click also on the video link to the Chris Mathews program: Hardball video: "The Cloud Over Dick Cheney"; there are other links provided in the webpage for the Hardball (printed) source citation, where that link is also listed. [An article by Neil Lewis quoting Fitzgerald's comments to the press was published by the New York Times on March 7, 2007: "THE LIBBY VERDICT; Libby, Ex-Cheney Aide, Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case" (requires log in; possibly TimesSelect subscr.; I've read and verified this article via mine). A possible additional sentence to quote from this NYT article by Lewis is: "In remarks to reporters outside the courthouse, Mr. Fitzgerald also addressed at length the criticism of his decision to prosecute Mr. Libby on charges of lying to investigators while not charging anybody with leaking Ms. Wilson's name to reporters." See the WMV (or QuickTime) video for those remarks.]
[Perhaps after (a) subsequent editor(s) deleted that sentence, when (a) later editor(s) restored the sentence, s/he or they placed it after the note number instead of before it and perhaps it now needs an additional source. Originally, it had verified sources (deleted along with it earlier), and its original source substantiates the statement]. It also refers to his original news conference [about] the "cloud" over the CIA leak grand jury investigation cast by Libby's obstruction of justice [a key part of his closing arguments], [which] is what he said initially (using his baseball metaphor): see the longer discussion and the sources in the cross-linked articles in "See also"; espec. the Plame affair--recently renamed CIA leak scandal (2003)--(cross-linked articles there--e.g., Valerie Plame), and United States v. Libby). When the protection is lifted, perhaps editors will try to correct any typographical errors remaining in this article and restore any additional missing sources. Thanks for your observation. [I and others reading these comments duly note it and will rectify it when possible.] (I may look for the exact source later, if it got deleted by accident or somehow confused throughout earlier edits.) --NYScholar 15:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
For further documented reliable sources, see also all the coverage in the articles listed in "Related external links": the sources are listed so that one can consult them for the news of the day: there are also video clips linked in a variety of them and other news sites, such as PBS (The News Hour with Jim Lehrer): e.g., news clips of juror Denis Collins and of Patrick Fitzgerald's and others' comments to the media are provided throughout the news sites: e.g, Denis Collins: March 6. Reading documented reliable news sources and clicking on links provided in them is not "original research"; the sources are documented: Wikipedia:Citing sources; Wikipedia:Attribution, etc. Scroll through them. As I've already said, I'm sure that if there are some actual mistakes in language of a sentence or in placement of a note, it can be fixed. WP:AGF. --NYScholar 17:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
--NYScholar 17:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[links embedded in source] No underlying crime was committed. Since a federal grand jury indicted Libby in October 2005, numerous media figures have stated that the nature of the charges against him prove that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of the CIA leak case found that no underlying crime had been committed. But this assertion ignores Fitzgerald's explanation that Libby's obstructions prevented him -- and the grand jury -- from determining whether the alleged leak violated federal law.
He noted also that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby. [1]
He noted also earlier (in his news conference announcing the indictment of Libby on 28 Oct. 2005 and in his closing arguments in United States v. Libby) that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone else in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of Libby's obstruction of justice. [1] [2] [3] [4]
... --NYScholar 17:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC) [[tc; added links. --NYScholar 15:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)] [refactored Notes sec. below ---NYScholar 22:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)]
Speaking to the media after the verdict, Fitzgerald reiterated his earlier claims that he had been unable to formulate charges against anyone in the CIA leak grand jury investigation because of the obstruction of justice by Libby."(followed by the same citation to the video clips presented on MSNBC's Hardball).
Due to the incivility that I have encountered from some others (not Wassermann) regarding Lewis Libby (scroll up and see the talk page archives), and my disinclination to waste any more of my time with this matter, I will not be replying further on this talk page. These matters are currently in arbitration. I suggest that other "interested parties" also indicate their awareness of the formal arbitration request on the RFA [5] and contribute their requested "statements" about this long-standing editing content dispute (not me) there, following the recommended Wikipedia "procedure"; scroll up to #Resolving disputes for more information. --NYScholar 17:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC) [Updated the link; I do not wish to devote any further time to this matter. --NYScholar 20:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)]
This sentence is repeated twice in the introduction and one copy should be removed. "Libby's lawyers announced that he would seek a new trial, and, if that attempt fails, they will appeal Libby's conviction." Rob944s2 18:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
am requesting unprotection of this article. it was protected for "edit-warring" more than a month ago (April 19). Doldrums 13:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
It is exceedingly annoying that anyone is saying that the name Irve is "up in the air." THAT IS HIS NAME. IRVE!!! His father was Irve and he is Irve, Jr. It is not a nickname!!! It is a name!! IRVE!!! That's how public records list his father!! That's how public records list him!! IRVE!!! That's his given name, from birth! Who cares if a childhood friend hems and haws about the name behind the "I." and then suggests "Irv[e]" and then "Irving"? He doesn't know! He doesn't have a clue! Because the name is "Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr." Go through the public records (AGAIN) and you will see (AGAIN) the guy's correct name!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zxdfgzsegzsrr ( talk • contribs)
--NYScholar 02:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)In his NPR report, Pesca (observing that Libby's late father was "I. Lewis Libby, Sr." preceding Libby's "I. Lewis Libby, Jr.") cites the father's using the names "Irving" and "Irve" (in documents accessed via Lexis-Nexis), and he plays his telephone interview with a Yale University librarian who, in consulting someone else regarding a yearbook entry for Libby (third-hand), vouches to Pesca that Libby's name is therein listed as "Irve Lewis Libby, Jr." Despite Pesca's "there you have it" claim of conclusiveness (which to me in tone sounds rather ironic or "tongue in cheek"), this presentation of evidence for precisely which name the "I." in "I. Lewis Libby" stands for––whether it is "Irving" or "Irve" (as for his late father "I. Lewis Libby, Sr."); or "Irve" in the Yale yearbook entry via the telephone interview; or "Irv" (in various newspaper and magazine reports)––ultimately still seems ambiguous, speculative, based on verbal hearsay, and thus neither entirely reliable nor factually definitive (and thus not really "proof" for a statement of fact in a Wikipedia encyclopedia article. Therefore, it is still safest to list only the "I." in the name in line 1, in my view. Actually reliable and verifiable court documents in USA v. LIBBY refer to Libby's name in the case name: United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby" (no "Irve," no "Irving," no "Irv," and no "Jr.")
An early and (at least in this Wikipedia article thus far) overlooked source for "Irv" as Libby's given name (marked by initial "I."):
. LEWIS LIBBY just will not talk about it. And do not bother asking his friends or colleagues because he has not told them either. ... He will not say what his initial I stands for. And Mr. Libby, 50, a lawyer, who is chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, will not divulge how he got the nickname by which he is universally known, Scooter. ... "Unfortunately, you're not cleared for that," said Mr. Libby, using Pentagon parlance with obvious relish as an excuse to keep mum about what he calls his two personal secrets. ... Perhaps it is not surprising that Mr. Cheney's top aide shares not only his boss's low-key demeanor and circumspection but also his penchant for keeping tight-lipped when it comes to some biographical details as well as matters of state and country. [rather ironic in retrospect] ... "He's Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney," said Mary Matalin, a counselor to the vice president.
(It takes a phone call to Mr. Libby's older brother, Hank, to learn that the I stands for Irv. His nickname derives from the day Mr. Libby's father watched him crawling in his crib and joked, He's a Scooter!)
- Eric Schmitt, " "Public Lives: Cheney Aide Will Eat Horse Guts Before He'll Spill Beans", The New York Times, 30 April, 2001, accessed 30 June, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
I suggest citing this specific article by Schmitt, quoting Libby's older brother, Hank, as source for "Irv." Followed by Pesca source. --NYScholar 16:54, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick.
I. Lewis Libby is the top aide to Vice President Cheney. He may have broken the law by leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent. Mr. Libby's nickname is Scooter; everyone seems to call him that. The initial `I' stands in for his actual first name, which is, well, the subject of this report from NPR's Mike Pesca.
MIKE PESCA reporting:
When I. Lewis Libby was named deputy undersecretary for Defense, here's what Pentagon briefer Bob Hall said. Quote: "I. Lewis Libby--I being his first initial, not referring to myself here--I. Lewis Libby is the deputy undersecretary for Defense for policy.'
Libby's office will not tell reporters what the `I' stands for. He did not divulge the meaning of `I' when confirmed in the Defense Department in the early '90s or in the State Department in the '80s. He wrote a generally well-received novel only as Lewis Libby, and this is the masterstroke: He goes by Scooter.
Think about how this works. If you introduce yourself as C. Everett Koop, everyone will ask, `What's the C for?' You'll have to say, `It's Charles.' But if you say, `Hi, I'm C. Everett Koop, but all my friends call me Lightning,' everyone will say, `Lightning?'
So here we have I. Lewis Libby, the most powerful adviser to the second-most powerful man in the world and no one knows his actual name, until now. Libby was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Yale there. I called the New Haven library and talked to a librarian named Brad Bullis. Bullis is a member of the National Guard who spent time fighting in Afghanistan, is not one to shrink from a challenge. Bullis called the librarian at Libby's alma mater.
Mr. BRAD BULLIS (Librarian): And she invited me to come over and take a look at some yearbooks, so I looked at the Yale Banner for 1972 and we found that his name is Irve--I-R-V-E--Lewis Libby Jr.
PESCA: Time magazine and the Web site Wikipedia had it as Irving; USA Today and The New York Times had it as Irv without the E. No one noted the Junior, although Libby's father's name was also Irving, spelled as I-R-V-E in two references found for him in the LexisNexis database. So there you have it. I. Lewis Libby may or may not have been Robert Novak's unnamed source, but I. Lewis Libby is unnamed no more. Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.
HE USED TO GIVE HIS NAME AS IRVE LEWIS LIBBY, JR, NOW HE JUST USES I. LEWIS LIBBY. WHAT IS THE (F[RIVOLOUS]) PROBLEM HERE?
[Please post new comments at the end of comments; see talk page guidelines. Thanks. --21:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)] The "Calls for Pardon" part needs an addition: Alan Dershowitz (along with other legal scholars) filed a brief on behalf of Lewis Libby "Professors Back Libby on Appeal Group Includes Dershowitz, Bork". illusionvi 13:34, 15 June 2007 (PST)
this article is acquiring an increasing amount of text quoted varbatim from sources, mainly news articles. much of this text reports straightforward facts, for which quotations are not appropriate. Wikipedia:Non-free content says, "In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not "fair use" and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy." Doldrums 08:49, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Inclusion of brief attributed quotations of copyrighted text, used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea is acceptable under "fair use". Text must be used verbatim: any alterations must be clearly marked. Removed text is marked by an ellipsis (...), insertions or alterations are put in brackets ([added text]). A change of emphasis is noted after the quotation with (emphasis added), while if the emphasis was in the original, it may be noted by (emphasis in original). All copyrighted text must be attributed.
In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not "fair use" and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy.
Please do not delete properly- and accurately-punctuated (verbatim) quotations from the article. The quoted phrases come from the sources as cited; those sources document the quotations. These phrases do not orginate with Wikipedia users/editors and to leave off the quotation marks is a form of plagiarism from the sources. If statements are missing sources, on the other hand, please provide the sources to document them. Undocumented statements in biographies of living persons, including those who are public figures, are removed on sight, as are clear-cut instances of vandalism. (See WP:BLP links in the notices above and the various Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace#Usual_warnings Vandalism warnings in Wikipedia for more information. Thank you.) --NYScholar 00:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
prosperous family
25) On March 1, 2007 NYScholar changes the language "Jewish family" to 'Libby was born to a "prosperous family" in New Haven, Connecticut––his father was an "investment banker"––and "raised in Florida."' [6].
- [adding the passage, which is hard to link to; it's from an arbitration workshop item; if there's a way to link to this sub-sub-section, I may come back to provide the link; in the meantime, I'm just quoting the passage because it relates directly to these exact quotations: --NYScholar 03:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)][Here's the link: Scroll to Item 25: Prosperous family. --NYScholar 05:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
- Comment by Arbitrators:
- I have seen no source to the "Jewish family" information. The U.S. News & World Report contains the quoted language. Proposed Fred Bauder 19:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
[updated. --NYScholar 02:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)]
[Later, I found additional biographical articles that I cited in the main article (... added as sources now) for the other places where Libby was raised; not just "raised in Florida" anymore; he was raised in multiple locations (as listed now). --NYScholar 02:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC); (updated. --NYScholar 09:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC))]
*Geoffrey Wheatcroft. "A State Like No Other: Israel, Once Seen As a Refuge, Has Become One of the Few Places Where Jews Are Attacked Simply for Being Jews". ("Geoffrey Wheatcroft on the troubled history of a homeland.") The New Statesman. April 25, 2005. Accessed May 7, 2007. Revs. of Jacob's Gift: a journey into the heart of belonging, by Jonathan Freedland Hamish (Hamilton, 2005), 395pp, £16.99 ISBN 0241142431; The Question of Zion, by Jacqueline Rose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 208pp, £12.95; The Return of Anti-Semitism, by Gabriel Schoenfeld (Politico's, 2005), 186pp, £14.99.
[The full review from which the following passage comes is worth reading for Wheatcroft's complete point of view:]
....neoconservatism is an episode, an important and interesting one, in the intellectual and political history of Jewish America, and it is impudent to call anyone who mentions this a bigot. Schoenfeld suggests that only racist crackpots ever query the commitment of senior Washington officials, but it was Jack Straw, himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants, who said of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: "It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day...." Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book The Controversy of Zion won an American National Jewish Book Award. His latest book is The Strange Death of Tory England (Allen Lane, the Penguin Press).
[updated. --NYScholar 03:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)]
Libby was also actively involved in the Bush administration's efforts to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace; for example, he participated in a series of "meetings ... [with] Jewish leaders" in early December 2002 and "an unusual meeting" with two aides of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in mid-April 2003, culminating in the Red Sea Summit, held in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2004. [5] [6]
Former British Foreign Secretary (2001-2006), current Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw, "himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants ... said of Lewis Libby, [then] Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: 'It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day.'" [7]
[Update: I added the sentence and supporting source citation; it is significant, pertinent, and reliably- and verifiably-sourced. Going back offline; late here; end of work for me. --NYScholar 06:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)][updated after working offline and finding some more re: citation; made verifiable changes in text and note. --NYScholar 08:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)]
[ ... Notes sec. at end. --NYScholar 22:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)]
With regard (once again, sigh) to the factual matter of Lewis Libby's being Jewish: I suggest incorporating the reliably- and verifiably-sourced phrase "who is Jewish" from several articles published via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by its Washington, D.C. bureau chief Ron Kampeas into the following sentence already in the article:
On June 5, 2007, after Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Libby in United States v. Libby, citing sentencing letters that Libby's supporters had previously sent Judge Walton [and reiterating that Libby "is Jewish,"] Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington, D.C. bureau chief Ron Kampeas, observed that former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician and writer " Natan Sharansky was one of many Jews pleading for leniency for Lewis Libby -- to no avail" and that " Arye Genger, a New York businessman who served as a liaison between former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Bush administration, credited Libby with trying to reduce civilian casualties among Israelis and Palestinians during second intifada: 'His meticulous efforts with regard to issues concerning the prevention of loss of innocent lives and human suffering on both sides were remarkable,' Genger said." [Proposed additional content within brackets and bold typefont for consideration.]
Proposed additional phrase is in brackets and bold print in the above block quotation. The cited source is already in the text. It is:
Kampeas' full sentence containing the phrase is: "Libby, who is Jewish, was the top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney." The same or similar sentence (with "who is Jewish") appears in many of his other articles mentioning Lewis Libby.
One can add citations to the pertinent earlier and later Kampeas' JTA article(s) if deemed necessary. In many articles Kampeas uses the same phrase after Lewis Libby's name "who is Jewish"--a fact that would be of considerable interest to the readership of articles originating with the JTA and the The Jerusalem Post, including large numbers of Jewish newspapers published in the United States which publish information distributed by the JTA; any one of those articles is a reliable and verifiable source acc. to guidelines in Wikipedia:Reliable sources and core Wikipedia policies referring to those guidelines, such as: Wikipedia:Verifiability; WP:Neutral point of view; WP:POV; WP:BLP; WP:BLP#Well known public figures, etc. --NYScholar 21:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC) [Corrected inadvertent typo. errors; updated. --NYScholar 21:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
Reread the July 2 entries on Libby and fix. They are littered with typo and grammar errors. mpirages
Re: Lewis Libby#Law Career: The name of his Philadelphia (first) law firm-- Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis--documented during "Senate Armed Services Committeee nomination hearings" according to original research into those transcripts provided in "I. Lewis Libby in Philly and Beyond" by "Above average jane" (personal blog) on 13 October 2005. To avoid depending on such "original research"-- WP:NOR--and use of a potentially-unreliable source (personal blog post) as only source, one would have to search the Armed Services Committee nomination hearings transcripts (which she says took her "a week and a half").
Also some more additional content info: While Deane repeats Leibovich's later published account saying that Libby's wife Harriet Grant is "a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee"--material once in this Wikipedia article (perhaps w/o attributing either Schmitt or Deane--, Schmitt (article cited above re: "Irv") points out: "Not unlike other neoconservatives, Libby started his adult political life as an antiwar Democrat. At Yale he was vice president of the student Democrats, according to reports" [doesn't identify what these "reports" are]. [I added this material to the article on Libby later. --NYScholar 06:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)]
Update: Later I found a published reliable and verifiable source for the law firm info. and added that source to this article's citations. --NYScholar 01:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I have added pertinent quotations from and citations to reliable and verifiable sources documenting highly-controversial and widely-contested points of view relating to Libby's work in developing U.S. foreign policy pertaining to Israel; please see the text and the citations. These matters pertain to issues being disputed in current arbitration. The quotations are documented with sources and feature Wikified links to related articles for further consultation and verification. These are all good faith edits of the content of this article consistent with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, WP:POV, and WP:BLP#Well known public figures. --NYScholar 00:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 07:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
I propose adding to the end of the current section called Lewis Libby#Resignation from government either a precis of the following block quotation or the full block quotation--introduced by a proper transition identifying its source as Ron Kampeas (a reliable and verifiable source)--and the appropriate citation (already in archived talk pages and this talk page): For example:
After Libby resigned, Ron Kampeas reports,
Across the blogosphere, anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel conspiracy theories were quick to tie Libby’s Jewishness to his role in selling the Iraq war, imagining once again a neo-con cabal that has a singular agenda: promoting Israel at all costs.
"One more Jewish Neocon Traitor," headlined the White Civil Rights Web site, which features the writings of David Duke.
Yet the fact that many people in Washington — including neo-conservatives — had no idea that Libby was Jewish [until Kampeas discussed "Libby's Jewishness" in his JTA press releases, the subject of his current article] underscores how tenuous the Jewish-neo-con link actually is, said Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Jewish himself.
"One key measure of the falsity of the argument is that the non-Jewish neo-cons are equally pro-Israel as Jewish neo-cons," he said.*
Given the development currently in the previous section on Libby's government employment, Lewis Libby#Government public service and political career, I think that the passage above is useful and "encyclopedic" development. I think that it is better for this encyclopedia article to take account of these issues discussed in such reliable and verifiable sources pertaining to Libby than to hide from (censor) them. The hyperlinks to pertinent Wikipedia articles provide current Wikipedia information re: the phrases in the quotation. Please consider this proposal vis-a-vis all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, most particularly: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view; WP:BLP, specifically WP:BLP#Well known Public figures; WP:POV; and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. --NYScholar [18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)]
To shorten this article (currently 90K) and to avoid redundancy with other articles already well developed in Wikipedia, I suggest that after that section on his resignation, one simply have cross-references to the related articles pertaining to the Plame affair, United States v. Libby, and Valerie Plame#The Wilsons' civil suit and not repeat the information (not "reinvent the wheel"); these sections are: Lewis Libby#Libby's involvement in the Plame affair; Lewis Libby#Indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing; and Lewis Libby#The Wilsons' civil suit (inclusive of any and all subsections in them). (In the course of such shortening of this article's redundant sections, if it appears that useful content in this article pertaining to the others needs to be moved to them, one can incorporate it in those already-existing articles expeditiously.) All one needs to leave are the cross-reference templates to the other main articles and pertinent Wikisource and Wikiquote etc. templates.
Both in general due to the ongoing arbitration request and particularly out of courtesy to the other parties involved in it, I myself will not currently make these particular changes, but I do want to say that I think that doing so will improve this article. (See WP:Be bold for related guidelines.) This "biography" of Lewis Libby does not need to re-hash the details already covered in the other articles. With all that material excised, it will be much more concise and focused on the biography (notable aspects of the life) of Lewis Libby. Even though I have spent a lot of my own time attempting to improve the content of those sections containing content often originally provided by others, I still would favor this method of shortening this article. Doing so will make it more consistent with other biographical articles about such notable and well-known public figures (former and current public officials) in Wikipedia. (There are other articles that I've worked on in which similar changes of form/content could be just as useful methods of shortening them; e.g., Paul Wolfowitz, but I can't take the time to propose such changes to them now. Perhaps others will do so.) Thanks very much for considering these proposals. --NYScholar 18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
....neoconservatism is an episode, an important and interesting one, in the intellectual and political history of Jewish America, and it is impudent to call anyone who mentions this a bigot. Schoenfeld suggests that only racist crackpots ever query the commitment of senior Washington officials, but it was Jack Straw, himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants, who said of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: "It's a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day...."
Wheatcroft's book The Controversy of Zion won an [American] National Jewish Book Award; he is also the author of The Strange Death of Tory England (London: Allen Lane, 2005); ISBN 0713998016 (10); ISBN 978-0713998016 (13).
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