WAPO : Burglary, Forgery, Delivery :

[tocqueville]

The chain of events that led to Friday's indictment can be traced as far back as 1991, when an unremarkable burglary took place at the embassy of Niger in Rome. All that turned up missing was a quantity of official letterhead with "Republique du Niger" at its top.

More than 10 years later, according to a retired high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, a businessman named Rocco Martino approached the CIA station chief in Rome. An occasional informant for U.S., British, French and Italian intelligence services, Martino brought documents on Niger government letterhead describing secret plans for the sale of uranium to Iraq.

The station chief "saw they were fakes and threw out," the former CIA official said. But Italy shared a similar report with the Americans in October 2001, he said, and the CIA gave it circulation because it did not know the Italians relied on the same source.

On Feb. 12, 2002, Cheney received an expanded version of the unconfirmed Italian report. It said Iraq's then-ambassador to the Vatican had led a mission to Niger in 1999 and sealed a deal for the purchase of 500 tons of uranium in July 2000. Cheney asked for more information.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478.html?sub=AR

[Hekate]

1. It started with a two-bit burglary, did it? Shades of Nixon

Hekate

[ClintonTyree]

2. The CIA station chief, with one glance, could tell they were fakes.

Yet when this already discredited document somehow :eyes: got reintroduced as solid evidence to the Vice President, it became the cornerstone of the bush march to war.
How anyone cannot say that intelligence was cherry-picked to support the bushista's thirst for war is beyond me. Only people without a trace of critical thinking skills (freeps and other neo-con-men) could believe the bushies were totally above board on this issue.

[jamesinca]

3. And in '91 we were just getting done with a war in Iraq

Bush I was in office and he was trying to piss of the Middle East in his own way. He lost the election to Clinton so they kept this stuff on ice for 8 years. Bush II comes along and they bring out the unfinished work of '91. BushII has stated that he would not waste the political capital that his dad had at the time, he would have finished Hussein.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Ultimately shows how ideologues even bigger suckers than their followers.