Joe Wilson’s column in the New York Times disputing President Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger was published on Sunday, July 6, 2003.

Over the next 72 hours, the White House senior staff went into high gear deploying a well-orchestrated smear campaign against the Wilsons via the Washington press corps. The details of this whispering spinmeistering are just now leaking out.

Over this past weekend, we learned that the State Dept. drafted a memo about Wilson, which was circulated within the administration the next day, July 7.

Now we learn more about the activities of Ari Fleischer, who served as White House Press Secretary at the time:

On the same day the memo was prepared, White House phone logs show Novak placed a call to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to lawyers familiar with the case and a witness who has testified before the grand jury. Those people say it is not clear whether Fleischer returned the call, and Fleischer has refused to comment.

The Novak call may loom large in the investigation because Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip…

In addition, on July 8, 2003, the day after the memo was sent, Novak discussed Wilson and his wife with Rove, who had remained in Washington, according to the New York Times…

A key question will be which officials received the report and when. The special prosecutor has subpoenaed telephone and fax records from Air Force One and the White House.

Fleischer, who saw the July 7 memo, wasn’t part of Bush’s inner circle during his tenure as press secretary, while Rove was at the heart of it. Given those facts, it seems highly doubtful that Fleischer would have acted on the information in the memo without the knowledge or approval of Rove and other top-level White House officials.

The July 7 memo was largely a reproduction of an earlier State Department report prepared around June 12. Another key question that Fitzgerald is interested in, according to the grand jury witness and the lawyers familiar with the case, is whether Rove or Libby learned of this earlier report and, if so, shared its content with reporters.

Amid the spin from the other side, let’s remember that later that week in July 2003, while they were touring Africa, Bush and Condoleezza Rice, his National Security Adviser at the time, both retracted the claim that Niger had sold uranium to Saddam.

Connect: