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10/01/2005:

"Lewis 'Scooter' Libby"

Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been called Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney: a constant presence behind the scenes enforcing loyalty providing the means to meet his boss's ends.
Mr Libby (who earned his nickname as a hyperactive infant) played a central role in compiling the White House's allegations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, travelling with the vice-president to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, several times in 2002 to chivy sceptical agency analysts.

Before Colin Powell made his fateful presentation of the WMD case to the UN in February 2003, it was Mr Libby who tried to persuade the former secretary of state to include controversial reports that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague. Mr Powell rejected the claims but Mr Libby did not give up, telephoning him late into the night on the eve of the presentation, calling for the inclusion of other allegations.

Mr Libby also contacted the Pentagon before a substantial contract to repair Iraq's oil fields was awarded to Halliburton, Mr Cheney's old firm. And he talked to Time magazine's Matt Cooper and the New York Times's Judy Miller in July 2003 about the identity of a CIA undercover agent, Valerie Plame who was the wife of a prominent administration critic.

He joined the Bush administration along the same path followed by many influential officials. After taking a political science class at Yale given by Paul Wolfowitz, the current head of the World Bank, he became part of a network of neo-conservatives known as "the Vulcans". Mr Wolfowitz later persuaded him to drop his private law practice and join the Reagan administration.

He moved from the state department to the Pentagon under the first President Bush, where a policy paper he wrote calling for the US to build up its military strength to the point where it could not be challenged, caught the eye of the then defence secretary, Mr Cheney.
guardian.co.uk