Treasongate: About those bogus Niger documents

by eriposte

An important revelation today by an Italian newspaper, confirmed by the NSC per Laura Rozen in The American Prospect. As Rozen's article leads, "Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced".

In this context, Josh Marshall has a couple of posts back to back that I'd like to help him out a bit on.

Post 1 (emphasis mine):

A number of you have written in with some version of the following question. If the Niger forgeries only surfaced in Rome in October 2002, what was the earlier information that prompted the CIA/Dick Cheney to dispatch Joe Wilson to Niger earlier that year?

It's a good question. And the good answer tells you some of how the US government and the Congress have gone about misleading the American public about what really happened.
...
When US government officials say we didn't have the documents until long after Wilson's trip, you need to treat it like a Scott McClellan non-denial denial. No, they didn't have the documents, only transcriptions of the documents.

The point being, it was all fruit of the same poison tree. The phony documents was all there ever was behind the Niger canard. There has just been a lot of effort to obscure that very significant fact.

Well, it's good to see that Josh has summarized what I have demonstrated through my analysis of the Senate (SSCI) Report. Josh, if you are looking for specific proof within the Senate Report for your conclusion, feel free to click here and here.

Post 2 (emphasis mine):

So, wait! Didn't the Brits have some other source of intelligence for the Iraq-Niger claim? Don't believe it. More coming on that this evening.

Actually, if it helps Josh, the fact that the British source was also just the forged Niger documents has been demonstrated. Click here and here.