Whigs in the News | The Mahablog

Per Josh Marshall (see also Raw Story) a Wall Street Journal article provides tantalizing hints that Patrick Fitzgerald is after a much broader conspiracy than just the leaking of one agent’s name. Josh says,

“Mr. Fitzgerald’s pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent’s name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.”

And then further down there’s this: “Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson’s claims.”

Josh explains the significance of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).

This group was the organizational team, the core group behind all the shameless crap that went down in the lead up to the Iraq war — the lies about the cooked up Niger story, everything. If Fitzgerald has lassoed this operation into a criminal conspiracy, the veil of protective secrecy in which the whole operation is still shrouded will be pulled back. Depositions and sworn statements in on-going investigations have a way of doing that. Ask Bill Clinton. Every key person in the White House will be touched by it. And all sorts of ugly tales could spill out.

Kevin Drum reminds us of earlier indicators:

… keep in mind that Fitzgerald has been investigating the WHIG all along, ever since the first big batch of subpoenas were delivered to the White House last year. Here’s the Washington Post in March 2004:

Aides to President Bush agreed to turn over a log of a week’s worth of telephone calls from Air Force One and other records to satisfy subpoenas from a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, White House officials said Friday.

….The subpoenas also seek documents from July 6 to July 30 relating to the White House Iraq Group, a group of communications, political, national security and legislative aides who met weekly in the Situation Room.

… Fitzgerald has been well aware of the importance of WHIG for a long time, which is the reason such a broad group of people have been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury already. As near as I can tell, pretty much every single person associated with WHIG has already either testified or given a deposition.

Digby links to a pdf report called “Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II,” which identifies “50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus.” The author of this report, Col. Sam Gardiner, argues that it was not “bad intelligence” that got us into Iraq, Rather, the White House orchestrated a propaganda campaign to deceive the public into supporting the war.

Yeah, I know you know this already, but it’s still a big mystery to most Americans.

Digby quotes an August 10, 2003, article from the Washington Post by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus:

This article is based on interviews with analysts and policymakers inside and outside the U.S. government, and access to internal documents and technical evidence not previously made public.

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates — in public and behind the scenes — made allegations depicting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied

Again, none of this is news if you’re a news junkie. But most Americans remain utterly unaware of how they’ve been played. And the reason for this, as Digby says, is that news media are complicit. From the cable television bobbleheads who helped squelch meaningful debate to reporters like Judy Miller who acted as conduits for White House disinformation, the media aided and abetted the propaganda effort. Willingly? Willfully? Knowingly?

(Speaking of Baghdad Judy, Steve Soto at The Left Coaster reports that Judy Miller testified to Fitzgerald’s grand jury for just over an hour, and left all smiles. She was there “just long enough to hang someone else,” Steve says.)

Gene Lyons writes,

The indictments of several name-brand White House aides, should they materialize, would mark the effective end of the Bush administrationâ€™s ability to govern in anything but the narrowest formal sense .

Whatâ€™s more , if ABC Newsâ€™ George Stephanopoulosâ€™ unnamed source is correct, and President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were directly involved in conversations about how to neutralize Plameâ€™s husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, after he went public about false claims regarding Iraqâ€™s nonexistent nukes, thereâ€™s no telling where things could end .

Where, indeed. AfterDowningStreet reports that “By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq.”