Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2004, on the three subpoenas issued to the White House:
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.
It met weekly, The Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; policy advisers led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley; and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The WaPo article, the only article to mention the White House Iraq Group at the time.
Agence France Presse -- June 5, 2004
US Vice President Richard Cheney has been interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover CIA officer, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing unnamed people involved in the case, the newspaper said Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, Lewis Libby. Cheney was also asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer, according to the report.
Associated Press Online July 11, 2003
One of the mysteries congressional investigators seem intent to explore is how much Cheney knew. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that Cheney was not informed nor aware of the CIA report casting doubt on the British allegations. But Wilson, the former envoy who helped the CIA write the report, said in an NBC-TV interview last Sunday that Cheney's office requested and received from the CIA a report on Wilson's mission.
And this transcript of a Senate Policy Committee hearing, in which Vince Cannistraro, Former Chief of Operations and Analysis for the CIA Counterterrorism Center charged that most unusually, Libby and Cheney visited desk-level policy analysts at the CIA.
The vice president and his chief of staff went out to CIA headquarters on a number of occasions -- at least on two occasions -- specifically to address the questions of weapons of mass destruction and the attempt to acquire a nuclear capability. These meetings, I'm told secondhand, were contentious, but the vice president insisted that there must be some support for this reporting of the yellow cake acquisition attempt. CIA analysts, I'm told, didn't have any independent data to verify that, but as a result of the insistent pressure being applied to the analysts and particularly to the nonproliferation center, the CIA did send, as they've said publicly, Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger.
My question: Has Rove thrown Libby (and possibly Cheney) into the lion's den?
Note: Non-linked sources are available on Lexis.com.