WASHINGTON — With the Bush administration taking a pounding over erroneous prewar claims about Iraq in the summer of 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff consulted his office's top communications advisor on how to strike back.
As they talked by phone, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby scribbled down a series of Machiavellian suggestions from Cheney's then-communications guru, Mary Matalin: What to do about MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews and his steady barrage of Iraq war criticism? "Call Tim," Libby wrote, referring to Tim Russert of NBC News. "He hates Chris."
What to make of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had emerged that summer to challenge the veracity of one of the administration's most alarming claims about Saddam Hussein's regime? "Wilson is a snake," Libby transcribed.
And how best to use the power of the White House to beat back the attacks? The president "should wave his wand," Matalin advised, and quickly declassify portions of intelligence reports that backed up the White House case for war.
Libby is the defendant in the case that brought this page of notes to light Wednesday -- a case that centers on whether he lied to federal investigators looking into the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name.
But in many respects, it is the ugly mutual exploitation that goes on every day in Washington between powerful government officials and influential members of the media that is on trial in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Five days in, the trial has been dominated by testimony from two of the Bush administration's top media handlers -- former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and former Cheney communications director Catherine J. Martin -- as well as two prominent Washington journalists.
Martin, in particular, offered in her testimony last week an unusually detailed description of how the White House seeks to manipulate the news media.
She described plans to leak stories to certain reporters, including the New York Times' David E. Sanger and the Washington Post's Walter Pincus; freeze out others, such as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof; book administration officials on talk shows such as Russert's "Meet the Press"; and release bad news on weekends, when it was more likely to be ignored.
Neither side has fared well, with prosecutors accusing the administration of carrying out a smear campaign against Wilson, and defense attorneys scrutinizing everything from the sloppy note-taking practices to the murky ethical terrain of members of the media.
