Less than a month after leaving the presidency and amid nationwide anger over his last minute pardons, Bill Clinton tried to excuse, in a New York Times op ed article, his pardon of Clinton donor Marc Rich and his partner by claiming, among other things, three “distinguished Republican attorneys” had “reviewed and advocated” the pardons.

One of the three was the then little known I. Lewis Libby, who, Clinton wrote, to emphasize his legitimacy, was the new vice president’s chief of staff.

Clinton claimed the Republicans agreed he had substantial “legal and foreign policy reasons” for pardoning the millionaire who fled to Switzerland to avoid a prison term for making illegal oil deals with Iran while Americans were being held hostage there and for evading more than $48 million in taxes. But he didn’t make the charges sound quite that lurid, saying only Rich and a colleague had been indicted “on charges of racketeering and mail and wire fraud, arising out of their oil business.”

Then, to show that Republicans also felt Rich had been wrongly prosecuted, Clinton named three alleged Republican advocates, Libby, Leonard Garment and William Bradford Reynolds. Garment had been a well known lawyer for President Richard Nixon and Reynolds was a top Justice Department official under Ronald Reagan.

All three had also been lawyers for Rich for years, a little fact omitted by Clinton.

A few days later, the Times reported all three had vigorously denied any involvement in the pardon and also noted Clinton’s office had altered the article as the first copies of that Sunday edition of the Times were being printed. A sentence reading, “applications were reviewed and advocated” by Libby and the others, was changed to “the case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated.” In the same story, the paper said Clinton had later agreed with the three lawyers that none of them had reviewed his pardon applications or lobbied for pardons.

Among the well known critics of the pardon was the mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who said Clinton “talked just to one side, got their view and totally ignored the view of even his own Justice Department.”

But regarding Libby, he praised Bush, saying that “after evaluating the facts, (Bush) came to a reasonable decision and I believe the decision was correct.” Bush did not get “the view of even his own Justice Department” either but I guess things change.

The former president, campaigning with his wife in Iowa, said nothing about the commutation but candidate Hillary Clinton was righteously indignant, saying “this commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.”

And so the same I. Lewis Libby, a bit player in the Rich pardon, is back in the pardon news, this time costarring with a president who found Libby’s 30-month prison sentence excessive and no months just right.

How small — in every sense — is the world of presidential pardons.