Newsday, which has done a solid job investigating the Plame Game scandal from the beginning, reported today that investigators subpoenaed a variety of White House documents in January as part of their ongoing probe.
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.
This is a major development. First, it’s obvious (if it wasn’t already) that the White House is the central focus of this investigation. We’ve heard from a few places that the probe was looking at lower-level administration officials who may have been involved, but this report makes clear that those who were responsible for the leaks are (or were) White House employees, not lowly staffers. Sure, this was pretty clear before, but it’s always nice to see it reinforced.
Second, and far more importantly, is the information investigators are requesting about the White House Iraq Group.
As Newsday reported:
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.
As Josh Marshall noted, this is a pretty diverse group featuring two Bush aides — Hughes and Matalin — who had already left the White House when the leaking began.
Of course, there’s also that Libby name again.