Niger redux

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo has a somewhat complex but important tale of the origin of the forged documents linking Iraq to an attempt to purchase uranium ore from Niger.

I'd urge you to follow the link to read the full account, but in essence the story is this:

The documents came into the hands of the US Embassy in Rome through an Italian journalist who had gotten them from an as-yet unnamed "security consultant." That much was pretty well known.

It develops that the "security consultant" had received them in with a bunch of other documents from a source in the Embassy of Niger in Rome. What he didn't know was that his source was also an asset of the Italian military intelligence service known as SISMI. SISMI, it turns out, had instructed their asset to include the forged documents along with real documents she was supplying to the "security consultant."

That is, it appears right now not only that the documents were part of a disinformation campaign by Italian intelligence but that SISMI may well have been the actual source of the forgeries.

If that's true, and right now it appears to be, a good question is why they did it. I'd suggest that one good answer is that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was not shy about his support for Shrub's intent to attack Iraq. Could he have been trying to do Bushleague a favor?

Here's a bigger question: If that's true, whose idea was it?