Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed
By Tom Brune for Newsday.
The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer’s name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.
Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
And the subpoenas asked for a transcript of a White House spokesman’s press briefing in Nigeria, a list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president, and, casting a much wider net than previously reported, records of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets.
The three subpoenas were issued to the White House on Jan. 22, three weeks after Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed special counsel in the probe and during the first wave of appearances by White House staffers before the grand jury.
The investigation seeks to determine if anyone violated federal law that prohibits officials with security clearances from intentionally or knowingly disclosing the identity of an undercover agent…
White House implicated
The subpoenas underscore indications that the initial stages of the investigation have focused largely on the White House staff members most involved in shaping the administration’s message on Iraq, and appear to be based in part on specific information already gathered by investigators, attorneys said Thursday.
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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak0305,0,3272655,print.story?coll=ny-top-span-headlines
Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed
By Tom Brune
Newsday
Friday 05 March 2004
Grand jury to review call logs from Bush