Who is Scooter Libby? The Guy Behind the Guy Behind the Guy

When historians finally lift the curtain on the Bush administration, they will discover that Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby was one of the most important men pulling the levers. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, has been center stage for every one of the administration's national security scandals - the Iraq intelligence debacle, secret meetings about Halliburton contracts in Iraq, and the leaking of a CIA's agent's identity to the press - and doubtless others we have not heard of yet.

Such a role is not unusual for Libby, who has more titles in the Bush White House than can fit on a business card. Essentially Libby is Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney - an odd combination of H.R Haldeman and Harry Hopkins, seemingly managing every detail of the vice president's professional life.

For the past three years, that has meant scooting from scandal to scandal.

It was Libby - along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House - who convinced the President that we should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11.