After first reading today’s Washington Post VandeHei/Pincus piece I saw nothing new in there. But firedoglade had better eyes and found these bits:
Senior administration officials said there was a document circulated at the State Department — before Libby talked to Miller — that mentioned Plame. It was drafted in June as an administrative letter and addressed to then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was acting secretary at the time since Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage were out of the country.
As a former State Department official involved in the process recalled it, Grossman wanted the letter as background for a meeting at the White House, where the discussion was focused on then growing criticism of Bush’s inclusion in his January State of the Union speech of the allegation that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Niger.
…
Grossman has refused to answer questions about the letter, and it is not clear whether he talked about it at the White House meeting he was said to have attended, according to the former State official.
So far we only knew that this June 10 document was printed out and send to Powell on board of Air Force One on July 6. It was speculated that it was from there (through Ari Fleischer?) that the name Plame/Wilson moved to Novak, who then was the first to put it into the public.
We are now told, that this letter reached the White House much earlier through Grossman who requested it as background for a meeting at the White House. That meeting was about a counterstrategy to the Niger criticism. Who might have attended that meeting?
RawStory has something on that:
Two officials close to Fitzgerald told RAW STORY they have seen documents obtained from the White House Iraq Group which state that Cheney was present at several of the group’s meetings. They say Cheney personally discussed with individuals in attendance at least two interviews in May and June of 2003 Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, in which he claimed the administration ‘twisted’ prewar intelligence and what the response from the administration should be.
Was it one of these meetings and discussion with Cheney that Grossman did attend? With the Plame/Wilson information in his pocket? I hope Fitzgerald has answers to these questions.
Some other loose ends:
– AP reports that Plame was NOT part of the CIA WINPAC analyst group as Libby told Miller, but:
[Plame] worked on the CIA’s secret side, the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.
– It is often said that the NY Times OpEd’s, first by Kristof and then by Wilson himself, triggered the White House response. But as Wilson says in his book, the first time he was used as an anonymous source disputing the Niger documents was earlier, on March 14 2003 in a CNN report. (Unfortunately the video is not online anymore.) Wilson also alleges that White House interest in him started just after that CNN report.
– As Laura Rozen points out Judy Miller had just written a book about biological weapons and Washington was her beat when someone killed five people by sending Anthrax around. Judy Miller never really explored the Anthrax story in an article. Her beat, her expertise – why no reporting?
– What are the connections to the deaths of State Department WMD expert John J. Kokal and David Kelly?
– And the ultimate question: Who gave the order to spread the Anthrax?