Two HUGE revelations today out of Europe.
Revelation #1: The White House got the forged Niger documents through the Italians, who circumvented the CIA by going directly to the soon-to-be-indicted Hadley.
Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.
The second shocking revelation below the fold:
Revelation #2: The Italians were being used as a trojan horse by the . . . you guessed it . . . French!!
Holy shit, Batman!
His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.
Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.
Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy's secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.
Update: Egg all over my face. The second story is from 2004. Bad diarist. Bad.