Seems like Fitzgerald is taking a close look at the White House Iraq Group, according to Raw Story:

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the Iraq group was under scrutiny.

“Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. [Karl] Rove and [Lewis] 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 Journal reported. “The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's claims” that the Bush administration twisted intelligence when it said Iraq tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium from Africa.

Rove's "strategic communications" task force operating inside the group was instrumental in writing and coordinating speeches by senior Bush administration officials, highlighting in September 2002 that Iraq was a nuclear threat.

"Strategic Commmunication," eh? Not a lie?

Here's my picture:

The speeches were the above-ground part of this operation. The 50 planted stories were the underground part.

One Rovian hand washes the other, right? A story gets planted in the media, then an official cites it in a speech. Kinda like an echo chamber, isn't it?

Or do you think these guys leave "intelligence and facts" to chance?

So, will Fitzgerald expose the underground work done by the W.H.I.G.? Unknown. But that's why the WhiteWash House is desperate to claim that the leak was to themfrom the press.

Because if the leak was from them to the press, then the channels through which the stories were planted, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, would be exposed.

NOTE I remember playing whack-a-mole on the shifting reasons for the war, and ever-changing stories. The tubes, the drones, the gas, the this, the that. I remember thinking at the time it was almost as if they were throwing any story out there they could, hoping one would stick. Silly me. What was I thiking, "as if"? As usual with these guys, no matter how cynical I am, it's never enough. Je repete:

this whole thing reminds of that great old Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express.
The whodunnit is totally confusing, clues pointing every which way and
cancelling each other out, until Hercule Poirot figures out that the
reason the clues could only make sense if they were all in on it, is
that, indeed, they were all in on it.

UPDATE I've organized this series of posts into a book. Click on the "Previous" and "Next" buttons to follow the story as it unfolds for us.