The Plot Thickens…

by hilzoy

I can’t wait until the Plame story is over. Not only will I be able to stop wondering what will happen next, but Patrick Fitzgerald might actually tell his story to someone, and then I can learn the answer to the question: what, exactly, accounts for everyone so helpfully remembering conversations, emails, notes, and other things that had mysteriously slipped their minds until now? It’s all very interesting — and not just to me, but, apparently, to Fitzgerald. The WSJ reports that he is widening his investigation:

“There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame. (…)

Mr. Fitzgerald’s pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent’s name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

Mr. Wilson’s initial complaints were made privately to reporters. He went public in a July 6 op-ed in the New York Times and in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” After that, White House officials, who were attempting to discredit Mr. Wilson’s claims, confirmed to some reporters that Mr. Wilson was married to a CIA official. Columnist Robert Novak published Mr. Wilson’s wife’s name and association with the agency in a column that suggested she had played a role in having him sent on a mission to Niger to investigate the administration’s claims.

Until now, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be focusing on conversations between White House officials such as Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political adviser, after Mr. Wilson wrote his op-ed. The defense by Republican operatives has been that White House officials didn’t name Ms. Plame, and that any discussion of her was in response to reporters’ questions about Mr. Wilson, the kind of casual banter that occurs between sources and reporters. (…)

Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson’s claims.”

And what, you might ask, was the White House Iraq Group?

Well:

“Systematic coordination began in August [2002], when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it “an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.” (…)

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.”

As the rest of the Post story makes clear, they were heavily involved in hyping the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and many of the Bush administration’s exaggerations made their first known appearance in draft White Papers from the group, one of which was leaked to the Post. (Example: “The draft said, for example, that “since the beginning of the nineties, Saddam has launched a crash program to divert nuclear reactor fuel for . . . nuclear weapons.” The crash program began in late 1990 and ended with the war in January 1991. The reactor fuel, save for waste products, is gone.”) They were specifically involved in pushing the claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, and that its aluminum tubes were intended for use in centrifuges.

On another front, Murray Waas reports that Scooter Libby failed to mention his June 23 meeting with Miller in either of his two sessions with the grand jury or in two interviews with the FBI, and adds this intriguing bit:

“Meanwhile, in recent days Fitzgerald has also expressed significant interest in whether Libby may have sought to discourage Miller — either directly or indirectly through her attorney — from testifying before the grand jury, or cooperating in other ways with the criminal probe, according to attorneys familiar with Miller’s discussions with prosecutors.”

Now why would anyone suspect sweet Scooter Libby of discouraging Miller? Or, for that manner, of interfering with her testimony in any way — say, for instance, by writing her letters that he believed (pdf) only she and her lawyer would see, in which he said things like: like (pdf): “as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Plame’s name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call”, not to mention that strange bit about the aspens that “turn together, because their roots connect them.” Could a man with such fine poetic sensibilities possibly seek to affect a witness’ sworn testimony?

That would be a ‘yes.’

And on yet another front, in yet another story, Waas has this, which Newsweek confirms:

“White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.”

And then, of course, there’s this tantalizing possibility …

If Fitzgerald doesn’t announce what he’s doing very soon, my nerves may never recover. And I am not a particularly nervous person. If I were, I would probably have spontaneously combusted long ago.

(For the record, I put the phrase ‘fine poetic sensibilities’ in the paragraph about Libby as part of my continuing campaign to drive rilkefan insane.)

Update: While I was writing this, reddhedd at firedoglake put up a truly great post about this story. It’s here. Go read.