[From the diaries by susanhu. You put Nancy Drew to shame, Man Eegee!] No wonder everyone is suffering from Pre-Indictment Stress Syndrome, new details emerge each day on the tangled and incestuous relationships that exist between the various government agencies in the D.C. Beltway.
Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article that gave us some new players from Dick Cheney’s office who are under investigation from Fitzgerald. Susanhu has a frontpage story on two of them–David Wurmser and Catherine/Cathie/Kathy Martin; catnip also did some sleuthing on John Hannah, who has apparently flipped and is now aiding the investigation.
This diary will be a springboard of information regarding a new cast-member, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, who has served in several PR positions that are key to unraveling the Aspens. (picture taken from pbs.org archives)
More below…
[editor’s note, by Man Eegee] I corrected the spelling of her married last name. Mea culpa.
From yesterday’s WaPo:
The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.
Gotta love those anonymous sources.
Here is a spotlight on her biography, taken from the Government Executive website. Millerwise is listed as one of “The Decision Makers: Intelligence Agencies” alongside John Negroponte and Porter Goss.
Millerwise has a strong work pedigree for the Bush administration and its loyalists: She has been deputy communications director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign; Vice President Cheney’s press secretary; assistant press secretary in the Bush White House; and a regional press coordinator for the Republican National Committee’s “Victory 2000” campaign. Millerwise has also worked for Ari Fleischer (at the House Ways and Means Committee); for Spencer Abraham (while he was a senator for Michigan); and for her current boss, CIA Director Goss, when he was a member of Congress. Millerwise, who was Rep. Goss’s press secretary, became the CIA’s director of public affairs in January. “She is loyal, patriotic, and dedicated to our mission,” Goss says. “Her experience and relationships with the media bring a unique asset to the CIA.” Millerwise, 29, is from Pinconning, Mich. She has a degree in business administration and political science from Western Michigan University. (all emphasis mine)
I couldn’t put my finger on the reason this person peaked my interest until I did some googling and came across this AP article from Monday:
A New York Times reporter’s accounts of her private conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff capture a behind-the-scenes blame game between the White House and the CIA over the war in Iraq.
Cheney’s top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, complained that the CIA and other agencies were trying to shift responsibility to the White House over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction after the U.S.-led invasion, reporter Judith Miller wrote in a first-person story in Sunday’s editions.
[snip]
“I recall that Mr. Libby was displeased with what he described as `selective leaking’ by the CIA,” Miller wrote. “He told me that the agency was engaged in a ‘hedging strategy’ to protect itself in case no weapons were found in Iraq.”
Amid the ultimately futile hunt for the banned weapons, Libby told Miller that the CIA’s strategy was, “If we find it, fine, if not, we hedged,” the reporter recounted.
Libby’s “frustration and anger” spilled over into their conversations, Miller wrote, with the Cheney aide describing leaking by the CIA as part of a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq.
So let me get this straight.
Jennifer Millerwise Dyck was
- at the White House serving as an Assistant Press Secretary to Ari Fleischer for the first 10 months of the Bush Administration (which included 9/11 and subsequent Iraq spin)
- then she was Dick Cheney’s press secretary during the period of CIA tension mentioned in the AP article above
- now she is serving as the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs.
Confused and intrigued? Me too. Let’s see what the power of Google can bring us in the comments below, please help if you can.
