He's not a guy to scoot easily to any prison

Ellis Henican

October 30, 2005

The new man on a cellblock should never have to introduce himself like this:

"Hi, I'm Scooter."

Not "Snake." Not "Killer." Not any of those other tough-guy prison monikers that can keep a fresh con safe as he settles nervously into his new life behind bars.

But it's way too late for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to change his name.

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His goofy boyhood nickname is all over the papers. His face is all over the TV. He's spent the past five years as a top White House official - chief of staff to the vice president of the United States. And his name is now at the top of a five-count indictment in the high-publicity CIA-leak case.

Honestly, the prison-movie dialogue almost writes itself: "Wha-cha in for, Scooter? Lyin'? Well, at least you're not a covert-agent leaker. You know what we do to leakers around here."

Yikes!

Legal experts were saying at week's end that if Libby is eventually convicted on all five felony counts of perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice, he could be sent off to federal prison for up to 30 years. But the legal eagles cautioned: Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Libby would be highly unlikely to get that much time. If he goes to trial and loses, 97 to 121 months is a more realistic figure, 21 to 27 months if he takes a guilty plea before trial in some kind of point-his-fingers-at-others deal.

And yes, there is quite a spread there, even between the last two ranges.

Which is all a very good argument for Scooter to flip.

Make a deal with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

Buy himself partly out of trouble by telling the special counsel everything he knows - about everyone.

The basic question will be the usual one for a man under felony indictment: What kind of dirt do you have to share - and about whom?

As Libby spends his first weekend as an ex-White House staffer, he will be forced to think about the very same questions that a million previous perps have wrestled with. What are my chances at trial? How much time am I prepared to do? Who can I rat out?

Certainly, it's hard to imagine a man less well-suited for prison life than Scooter Libby.

This 55-year-old son of Phillips Andover, Yale and Columbia Law was a Philadelphia lawyer before he was recruited into government service by fellow neoconservative Bushie Paul Wolfowitz. First as a speechwriter, then as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Libby was a full-fledged member of the go-to-war council that pushed America so intently into war in Iraq.

Libby has always been known for his intellectual intensity, but it's been a while since anyone called him a top physical specimen.

As a kid in New Haven, Conn., he played baseball. But in recent years, Libby's adult athleticism has tilted more toward downhill skiing and, until he broke his foot running up the stairs at home in McLean, Va., a weekly touch-football game back in the neighboring Washington suburb of Chevy Chase. That and the occasional late-night novel-writing binge.

Nothing wrong with any of it. But how much cred will any of it bring in a federal-prison yard?

"Don't mess with Scoot, if you know what's good for you. He might zing you in a chapter of his novel!"

There is still some confusion exactly where the "Scooter" comes from, confusion Irving Lewis Libby himself has helped to sow.

His investment-banker father coined it, watching his infant son crawl across his crib. That's what Libby told The New York Times in 2002. But then he went on CNN later that year and told Larry King the name was a childhood comparison to former New York Yankees shortstop Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto, who went on to become a beloved baseball announcer and "Money Store" pitchman.

"I had the range but not the arm," he told King, explaining why he became a Philadelphia lawyer and Washington aide instead of pursuing his long-ago baseball dreams.

Too bad.

Where he might be going next, this Scooter could use all the help he can get.