corrente

The grand jury has transcripts!

A transcript subpoenaed in the CIA leak probe reveals the White House press operation began efforts to personally discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV days before a columnist blew the cover of his CIA-officer wife.

The efforts to discredit Wilson came after he went public July 6 with criticism of President George W. Bush for mentioning the uranium rumor in January 2003 in his State of the Union address which helped make a case for the Iraq war.

In the subpoenaed July 12 transcript of a briefing in Nigeria, then press secretary Ari Fleischer called Wilson a "lower-level official" and said Wilson had made flawed and incomplete statements. Fleischer did not return calls Friday.

One journalist, NBC reporter and "Meet the Press" host Andrea Mitchell, appears to have several connections of interest.

On July 6, she interviewed Wilson about his trip to Niger, and two days later she reported officials tried to cast Wilson as a Democratic "partisan."

And on July 16, [Andrea Mitchell's] husband, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, was honored at a White House reception held to celebrate former President Gerald Ford's 90th birthday. The grand jury subpoenaed the guest list, which has not been released.

"I shouldn't talk about it," Mitchell said Friday, declining to say if she attended the reception. Asked why the grand jury might be interested in it, she said, "I can't even imagine."

(Tom Brune Newsday)

Well, well, well. I wonder who was on that guest list? Besides Mitchell's thieving weasel of a husband, that is.

Pass the popcorn!