Phraseology

Joe Conason's Salon piece on how "Jeff Gannon" was involved in the take-down of former Senatre Majority Leader Tom Daschle is interesting enough for its main content. But a phrase he cites particularly caught my eye:

Yet to understand who "Gannon" really was -- and why he obtained such special treatment from Karl Rove's White House communications operation -- one useful exercise may be what intelligence analysts call "walking back the cat." In essence, this means running the movie in reverse slow-motion to see where the suspect came from and what he did along the way.

Walking back the cat. Nice. Link thanks to Robert Stribley.