The Full Niger Forgery Story?

Josh Marshall has posted the "first of a series of installments I'm going to publish here at TPM in which I will lay out the story as I understand it based on my own reporting and research."

Coincidentally (?), Philip Giraldi has written "Forging the Case for War: Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?" in The American Conservative, November 21.

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.

Giraldi is a former CIA Officer and "a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy."