Like so many articles in these final days before the story is told, or at least begun, Tuesday’s Post piece by VandeHei and Pincus suggests volumes but says frustratingly little.
Three points stand out.
First is the suggestion, noted several times through the piece, that Fitzgerald’s investigation reaches back into Cheney’s running battles with the CIA. Remember, Fitzgerald got two judges (Hogan and Tatel) to give him extraordinary latitude to pursue this case. To get that latitude he provided the appeals court with what the Times earlier called “secret evidence … that neither the reporters nor their lawyers were allowed to see.”
Agree with Fitzgerald’s zealousness or not, he seems to have persuaded those judges that he was after more than lawyerly dissections of who uttered which phrase when and why in the conversation between Karl Rove and Matt Cooper. This looks like the outlines of what he told them he was after. At least it’s our best hint so far.
Second point: Fitzgerald’s office, for the first time I can remember, made an on-the-record statement about the conclusion of the investigation. The detail was mundane — where the announcements would be made (in DC, not Chicago). But it’s hard to figure why you say something like that unless some announcement is imminent.
Third point: look at this graf from the piece …
The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.
This bucket of facts is dropped into the piece with no terribly clear explanation. And that’s a lot of information about Jennifer Millerwise, isn’t it?
She was Cheney’s Press Secretary from 2001 to 2003. She then went to work on Bush-Cheney 2004. Then in January 2005 she was appointed Director of Public Affairs for the CIA. She had apparently also worked for then-incoming CIA-Director Porter Goss on Capitol Hill. And her installation appears to have been part of Goss’s effort to install Republican operatives in key positions at the Agency. Douglas Jehl, in the Times last January, called her appointment “the latest in a series of former Republican aides to be installed by Mr. Goss in senior positions at the C.I.A.”
What it means I do not know. But, in articles like these, threads like those are usually meant to be pulled.
