Subpoenas for White House

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak053695946mar05,0,4860143.story

Subpoenas for White House
Tom Brune

March 5, 2004

WASHINGTON -- 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.

The three subpoenas were issued to the White House on Jan. 22, three weeks
after Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed special
counsel in the probe and during the first wave of appearances by White House
staffers before the grand jury.

The investigation seeks to determine if anyone violated federal law that
prohibits officials with security clearances from intentionally or knowingly
disclosing the identity of an undercover agent.

The subpoenas underscore indications that the initial stages of the
investigation have focused largely on the White House staff members most
involved in shaping the administration's message on Iraq, and appear to be
based in part on specific information already gathered by investigators,
attorneys said yesterday.

Fitzgerald's spokesman declined to comment.

Report on Iraq, uranium

The investigation arose in part out of concerns that Bush administration
officials had called reporters to circulate the name of the CIA officer,
Valerie Plame, in an attempt to discredit the criticism of the
administration's Iraq policy by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C.
Wilson IV.

In 2002, Wilson went to Niger at the behest of the CIA to check out reports
that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium "yellow cake" to develop nuclear weapons.
He reported that Iraq sought commercial ties but that businessmen said the
Iraqis didn't try to buy uranium.

All three subpoenas were sent to employees of the Executive Office of the
President under a Jan. 26 memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez saying
production of the documents, which include phone messages, e-mails and
handwritten notes, was "mandatory" and setting a Jan. 29 deadline.

"The president has always said we would fully comply with the investigation,
and the White House counsel's office has directed the staff to fully comply,"
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said yesterday.

The Novak column

Two of the subpoenas focus mainly on White House records, events and contacts
in July, both before and after the July 14 column by Robert Novak that said
"two senior administration officials" told him Plame was a CIA officer.

The third subpoena repeats an informal Justice Department document request to
the White House last fall seeking records about staff contacts with Novak and
two Newsday reporters, Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps, who reported on July 22
that Plame was a covert agent and Novak had blown her cover.

The subpoena added journalists including Mike Allen and Dana Priest of the
Washington Post, Michael Duffy of Time magazine, Andrea Mitchell of NBC's
"Meet the Press," Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball," and reporters from The
New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. There have been no
reports of journalists being subpoeaned.

The subpoenas required the White House to produce the documents in three
stages - the first on Jan. 30, a second on Feb. 4 and the third on Feb. 6 -
even as White House aides began appearing before the grand jury sitting in
Washington, D.C.

The subpoena with the first production deadline sought three sets of documents.

Requests for records

It requested records of telephone calls to and from Air Force One from July 7
to 12, while Bush was visting several nations in Africa. The White House
declined yesterday to release a list of those on the trip.

That subpoena also sought a complete transcript of a July 12 press "gaggle,"
or informal briefing, by then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer while
at the National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria. That transcript is missing from
the White House Web site containing transcripts of other press briefings. In a
transcript the White House released at the time to Federal News Service,
Fleischer discusses Wilson and his CIA report.

Finally, the subpoena requested a list of those in attendance at the White
House reception on July 16 for former President Gerald Ford's 90th birthday.
The White House at the time announced the reception would honor Federal
Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, but said the event was closed to the
press. The White House yesterday declined to release the list and the Gerald
R. Ford Foundation, which paid for the event, did not return phone calls. The
subpoena with the second production deadline sought all documents from July 6
to July 30 of the White House Iraq Group. In August, the Washington Post
published the only account of the group's existence.

A little-known group

It met weekly in the Situation Room, the Post said, and its regular
participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication
strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative
liaison Nicholas E. Calio; policy advisers led by National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen J. Hadley; and I. Lewis Libby, chief
of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Wilson alleged in September that Rove was involved in the leak but a day later
pulled back from that, asserting that Rove had "condoned" it.

Hughes left the White House in the summer of 2002. Matalin, who left at the
end of 2002, did not return a call for comment. Matalin appeared before the
grand jury Jan. 23, the day after the subpoenas were issued.

The subpoena with the last production date repeated the Justice Department's
informal request to the White House last fall for documents from Feb. 1, 2002,
through 2003 related to Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger, to Plame and to
contacts with journalists.

Current White House press secretary Scott McClellan, press aide Claire Buchan
and former press aide Adam Levine have told reporters they appeared before the
grand jury Feb. 6. At least five others have reportedly been questioned.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.


_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/