A TPM Café blogger put some facets of the Plame story together to suggest that Condoleezza Rice may have a larger role in this than has generally been reported. It’s pretty interesting.
First, there’s the point that Rice was the initial White House source pushing reporters to investigate why Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger in the first place. From the July 11, 2003 press gaggle:
Q: Dr. Rice, when did you all find out that the documents were forged?
Rice: Sometime in March, I believe. Is that right?
Fleischer: The IAEA reported it.
Rice: The IAEA reported it I believe in March. But I will tell you that, for instance, on Ambassador Wilson’s going out to Niger, I learned of that when I was sitting on whatever TV show it was, because that mission was not known to anybody in the White House. And you should ask the Agency at what level it was known in the Agency.
In context, this was odd. No one had mentioned Wilson; Rice brought him up independently, just before encouraging reporters to contact the CIA about his mission. Like I said, interesting.
The TPM Café’s daxman wasn’t sure if Rice has chatted with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald yet, so I wanted to add that she has, in fact, been questioned as part of the criminal investigation. The Reuters article is no longer online, but in August 2004, we learned:
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was interviewed as part of an investigation into whether an administration official leaked a covert CIA officer’s identity to retaliate for her husband’s criticism of the Iraq war, a U.S. official said Friday.
Rice was not under oath during the interview, which, a senior administration official said, took place “early on” in the investigation.
The official, who spoke to reporters traveling with President Bush to Ireland, would not say when the interview took place, but it appears to have been several months ago and had not been previously disclosed.
Hmm, Rice spoke with the special prosecutor but didn’t want others to learn about her “interview.” Maybe now that reporters are engaged on this story — none of the papers even blinked when we learned about Rice talking to Fitzgerald last August — we can get a little follow-up. Did Rice bring outside counsel to her “interview”? Has she appeared before the grand jury? Has she ever answered questions under oath? When did she first see the State Department memo with information on Plame?