http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/enti ... el_semblerAugust 2002 Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. forms the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, which aims to ?educate the public? about the alleged threat from Iraq. A senior official involved with the group later describes it as ?an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.? Members of the group include Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, and policy advisers led by Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, and I. Lewis Libby. They meet weekly in the White House Situation Room. A ?strategic communications? task force under the WHIG is charged with planning speeches and writing white papers. [Washington Post, 8/10/2003] According to an intelligence source interviewed by the New York Daily News in October 2005, the group, on ?a number of occasions,? will attempt ?to push the envelope on things,???The [CIA] would say, ?We just don't have the intelligence to substantiate that.?? [New York Daily News, 10/19/2005] An important part of the WHIG strategy is to feed their messages to friendly reporters such as New York Times reporter Judith Miller. James Bamford, in his book A Pretext for War, writes: ?First OSP [Office of Special Plans] supplies false or exaggerated intelligence; then members of the WHIG leak it to friendly reporters, complete with prepackaged vivid imagery; finally, when the story breaks, senior officials point to it as proof and parrot the unnamed quotes they or their colleagues previously supplied.? [Bamford, 2004, pp 325]
People and organizations involved: Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Andrew Card, White House Iraq Group, Stephen Hadley, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Mel Sembler
