October 12, 2005

More digging in the WHIG archives. This from Dan Froomkin's White House briefing in February 2004:

...Plame Watch

Tom Brune of Newsday has gotten a hold of the subpoenas issued in January as part of the probe over who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer.

"The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

"Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

"And the subpoenas asked for a transcript of a White House spokesman's press briefing in Nigeria, a list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president, and, casting a much wider net than previously reported, records of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets."

I wonder, by the way, if the Justice Department should consider Googling before it subpoenas. The subpoenaed press gaggle transcript alleged to be "missing" from the White House Web site may not show up on the White House Web site's own (sometimes flaky) search. But, thanks to Google, I found it right here, sitting on the White House servers after all.

Brune points out, by the way, that the only previous account of the mysterious White House Iraq Group's existence came in a story by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post last August...

Posted by Laura at October 12, 2005 11:17 AM