Opinion: What would Reagan do for Libby?

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Listen to the Republican presidential candidates for more than a few minutes, and you’ll hear them boast of taking cues from Ronald Reagan.

So, what would Reagan do if faced with calls to pardon ‘Scooter’’ Libby, the former White House insider now sentenced to 30 months for lying to investigators in the CIA leak case?

Two candidates -- Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson -- have suggested they’d opt for a pardon, with Thompson saying he would ‘absolutely’’ grant one. But Reagan might not have agreed.

As it happens, Reagan faced something akin to the Libby situation: In 1983, he denied a pardon for Jeb Magruder, a Nixon aide convicted in the Watergate scandal.

Why no pardon? Apparently, Magruder’s crime of lying was considered too serious to warrant one.

‘Perjury is pretty close to an unpardonable offense if the criminal justice system is going to work,’’ a Justice Department official said in 1983 to the New York Times, which did not quote the official by name.

By contrast, Reagan agreed to pardon one of the men involved in the actual Watergate break-in, because nonviolent burglary ‘is not as serious as testifying falsely,’’ the official was quoted as saying.

At the time, Giuliani was the No. 3 official in the Justice Department.

-- Don Frederick