Big Trouble?
An article in tomorrow's Newsday reports that the Plame grand jury has subpoenaed Air Force One's phone records for the week prior to July 14th, 2003, the day Robert Novak published his original column outing Plame as an undercover CIA operative.
That's the sizzle, certainly. And it's the headline of the piece.
More interesting, and I suspect ultimately more consequential, though, is the Newsday article's discussion of the subpoena's focus on something called the White House Iraq Group, something which -- as the article notes -- has only been discussed previously in an August 10th, 2003 article in the Washington Post.
The Post article describes the group thusly ...
The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
That's an interesting list of names. And, two of them, Hughes and Matalin, had already left the White House by last summer, when all the activities under investigation took place.
Now, another matter.
I've noted previously in TPM and on Thursday in my column in The Hill some key issues about the pressure the White House was facing in early October 2002 to come up with evidence about the alleged Iraqi nuclear threat and the timing of the appearance of the forged Niger uranium documents in Italy on October 7th.
This all gets rather deep into the arcana. But if you've already read either that post or that column, the Post article from August 10th provides some helpful context.
-- Josh Marshall
Copyright 2004 Joshua Micah Marshall
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