Fitz NOT exploring Italian connection

(First, quick apologies if this has already been diaried... Didn't see it.)

In the fast and furious days leading up to the Libby indictments, when many of us were frantically hoping for signs that this would be a very merry Fitzmas, indeed, a story came out in UPI claiming that Fitzgerald had widened his investigation to look into the Niger forgeries.

Apparently, that aint true.  More below the fold.

First, the UPI claim:

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration...

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium.

And here's what Laura Rozen had to say:

Not only has Fitzgerald not received such a report or even indicated he has any interest in one. There is no Italian parliamentary report, published or unpublished, on the Niger forgeries. In fact, until today, there has been no Italian parliamentary investigation of the Niger forgeries, or the claim promoted by the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi to the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Iraq was seeking vast quantities of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

"There is no parliamentary report," Michaela Panella, spokeswoman for Italian member of parliament Enzo Bianco, told this reporter on Monday, in a telephone interview from Rome. Sen. Bianco presides over the Italian parliamentary committee that oversees the Italian secret services, known as Copaco.

Josh Marshall has been all over the story of the forgeries and the Italian connection, which, as he describes, just get s curiouser and curiouser.

Seems that there's a lot behind this story, including some serious obfuscation and backpedaling by the Italians, but we should all be very cautious in expecting Fitzgerald to be the man who unravels it all for the world to see,