Well! Today, for the first time, America's Greatest Newspaper (not!) mentions the WHIG. Curiously, the Grey Lady chooses to lose her cherry on this story with Frank Rich behind the green door of Times Select, and not in the news section. Gosh, the news section is where the "Flame"-broiling of what remains of the Time's reputation for journalism is taking place, isn't it? It's almost like they want to build a Chinese wall between Miller and WHIG, isn't it?

Anyhow, Frank Rich does do a modified limited hangout.And the fact that this is a modified limited hangout shows just how bad things are. But, as in all coverups, watch for what is  not said. Do a gap analysis!

What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that is not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick ["Dick"] Cheney.

Mr. Wilson and his wife were trashed to protect that larger plot. ... Deep in a Wall Street Journal account [Low blow, there, Frank] was this crucial sentence: "Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG.... It's eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condaleezza Ric and the spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. It's mission: To market the war in Iraq.

On July 23, 2002 -- a weeek before WHIG first convened in earnest -- a British official told his peers, as now recorded in the famous Downing Street memo, that the Bush administration was ensuring that the "intelligence and facts" about Iraq's WMDs "were being fixed around the policy" of going to war.

Throughout those crucial seven months between the creation of WHIG and the start of the American invasion of Iraw there were indications that evidence of a Saddam nuclear program was fraudulent or non-existent. ...

It was not until after the war was supposedly over -- with "Mission Accomplished" in 2003 -- that Mr. Wilson started to add his voice to those who were disputing the administration's uranium hype. Members of WHIG had a compelling motive to shut him down. [In contrast to other critics, Mr. Wilson was an American diplomat; he had reported his findings in Niger to our own government. He was a dagger aimed straight at the heart of the WHIG and its disinformation campaign. Exactly who tried to silence him and how is what Mr. Fitzgerald will presumably tell us.

[Mr. Rove is less his boss's brain than another alliterative organ (or organs), that which provides testesterone. As we learn in "Bush's Brain," bad things (usually character assassination) often happen to Bush foes... On such occasions, Mr. Bush stats compassionately above the fray while the ruthless Mr. Rove operates below the radar, always separated by "a layer of operatives" from any ill behavior that might implicate him.

This modus operandi was foolproof, shielding the president as well as Mr. Rove from culpability, as long as it was about winning an election. The attack on Mr Wilson left them and the Cheney-Libby tag team vulnerable because its about something far bigger: protecting the lies that took the country into [Iraq].
(from Izvestia on the Hudson's print version)

All well and good, so far as it goes.

Here are the gaps:

1. Curiously, although Rich mentions a "disinformation campaign," he doesn't mention who the consumers of the disinformation were. Was the disinformation mysteriously wafted directly to the American people from the WHIG bunker at the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda? Or was the press somehow involved? Was the Times involved?

2. Curiously, though Rich mentions "fraudulent" stories about WMDs, he doesn't mention any of the writers or editors who perpetrated the frauds by ushering those stories into print. Are we to infer that the [WHIG]->Chalabi->Miller stories were not fraudulent? If these were not the fraudulent stories, which ones were, and who wrote and edited them?

3. Curiously, though Rich mentions WMDs, he nowhere mentions the Times own WMD expert, Judy Miller, who is today so prominent elsewhere in the paper.

4. Curiously, although Rich mentions the "layer of operatives" (cutouts) that Rove uses, there is no mention of who, exactly, those operatives might be in the case of WHIG.

5. Curiously, Rich mentions nothing to do with planted stories--and what would a disinformation campaign be without them?

In summary, if you believe the following:

Times management--Keller, Sulzberger--was embedded in the disinformation campaign run by the White House Iraq Group, that Miller was their operative, and Libby was their handler. Of course, their White House handler wouldn't have been crass enough to offer them money; the access to power, and the promise of scoops, would have been enough. The scoops were to come from Chalabi. (It doesn't matter whether the White House still had faith in Chalabi; what matters is that the Times did).

Rich does nothing to disprove it. Just like Miller (The Shorter Judy), he points the finger at someone else.

It's a modified, limited hangout. For this, I spend $4.50?

UPDATE Corrente exclusive! Rush transcript of conversation between Bill Keller and Judy Miller

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.