Along Comes Mary

Sorry for the non-existent posting. Busy day. But here’s a little Rovegate nugget to ponder: Mary Matalin was called to the Grand Jury to testify. I think we all assumed it was because she worked for Cheney and was a member of the iraq Group. But Mary Matalin left the White House at the end of 2002, six months before the Wilson op-ed and all the hoopla. (And you’ll notice that Karen Hughes, also a member of the Iraq Group, was not, to my knowledge, called to testify. She left in 2002 also.)Matalin was hired back after Novak’s column broke, specifically to handle the media on the Wilson matter.

He also subpoenaed the guest list for a White House party for Gerald Ford that took place on July 16th, days after the Novak column ran. I would take a wild guess that someone had told the FBI that Plame was mentioned (maybe as “fair game”) at the party and Fitzgerald wanted to talk to others who had attended to see if it was being spread around.

He subpoenaed the records of the Iraq Group from July 7th to July 30th, which includes the two weeks after the leak had already been out there.

This brings up one of the questions I think is being overlooked in the Fitzgerald investigation. He seems to have been quite interested in how the White House behaved after Novak’s column ran, which makes the most sense if he thinks there was a cover-up or that continuing to spread the information (as Rove admits to doing) was a violation of the law in itself. And, of course, people may have lied to the FBI or before the Grand Jury about all this, which would be criminal, but we don’t know.

It’s just a curiosity that I have long wondered about. It sure looks like he was thinking, at one point anyway, that he had a potential conspiracy case of some kind. I wonder if he still thinks so?

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