Is this an OMG moment? Bigger than plame?

[trof]

It didn't dawn on me (until I read this) to ask "OK, who forged the Niger docs and why?"
I know, I'm a litttle slow on the uptake.

I don't know anything about James Moore's credibility.
Here's a short bio:

James Moore is an Emmy-winning former television news correspondent and the co-author of the bestselling, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. He has been writing and reporting from Texas for the past 25 years on the rise of Rove and Bush and has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976. He is currently writing a book on the long term consequences for America of Bush and Rove policies, which will be published next year.

From the Huffington Post blog:

Patrick Fitzgerald has before him the most important criminal case in American history. Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence. The investigator’s prosecutorial authority in this present case is not constrained by any regulation. If he finds a thread connecting the leak to something greater, Fitzgerald has the legal power to follow it to the web in search of the spider. It seems unlikely, then, that he would simply go after the leakers and the people who sought to cover up the leak when it was merely a secondary consequence of the much greater crime of forging evidence to foment war. Fitzgerald did not earn his reputation as an Irish alligator by going after the little guy. Presumably, he is trying to find evidence that Karl Rove launched a covert operation to create the forged documents and then conspired to out Valerie Plame when he learned the fraud was being uncovered by Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. As much as this sounds like the plot of a John le Carre novel, it also comports with the profile of the Karl Rove I have known, watched, traveled with and written about for the past 25 years.
<snip>

Fortunately, there are good signs. Fitzgerald has reportedly asked for a copy of the Italian government’s investigation into the break-in of the Niger embassy in Rome and the source of the forged documents. The blatantly fake papers, which purported to show that Saddam Hussein had cut a deal to get yellowcake uranium from Niger, turned up after a December 2001 meeting in Rome involving neo-con Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin, Harold Rhodes, and Niccolo Pollari, the head of Italy’s intelligence agency SISMI, and Antonio Martino, the Italian defense minister.
<snip>

The federal grand jury has to at least consider whether Ledeen called Rove with an idea to use his contacts with the Italian CIA to hatch a plan to create the rationale for war. Ledeen told radio interviewer Ian Masters and his producer Louis Vandenberg, “I have absolutely no connection to the Niger documents, have never even seen them. I did not work on them, never handled them, know virtually nothing about them, don't think I ever wrote or said anything about the subject.” It is strictly coincidence then that some months after he and his neo-con consorts and Italian intelligence officers met in Rome that the Niger embassy was illegally entered and nothing was stolen other than letterhead and seals. And equally coincident that forged papers under those letterheads were slipped to Elisabetta Burba, a writer for an Italian glossy owned by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, and a backer of the Bush invasion scheme. Unfortunately for the pro-war neo-cons, even an Italian tabloid would not publish the fake documents and turned them over to the CIA and US government in Rome.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-most-important-crimin_b_9183.html

[crispini]

1. Here ya go.

"American Judas"

Why Cheney Exposed Plame

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2191498

[corky44]

2. The Italian forged doc is the key because

the tactic used to create it is an old Rove trick (stolen letterhead etc.)
I knew about this when Fitz first got on the case 2 years ago. In the back of my mind
I had always wondered why nobody went after that angle-no journos- nobody.
When I heard on Tuesday that Fitz may be looking at it I got shivers.
When I read Moore's post today I broke down crying.
Think of all the grieving mothers and fathers and sons and daughters all over the world
because of the lie.

I want blood- I can't help myself

[trof]

4. Blood? YES! And I think (hope?) it's in the water.

I'm ready for the repug feeding frenzy to begin.
And yes, the mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.
can't type any more.

[Donna Zen]

7. And...why did the FBI never investigate this?

There were bloggers (maybe someone can remember which ones) who interviewed the man who received the papers. The interview was in the U.S. The man said that after two years, he had never been contacted by the FBI. And yes, the FBI knew his name.

Now why was that?

This story, which has stayed filed away in my brain, has always intrigued me. I wish this was a memory with greater clarity. Does anyone else remember this?

[corky44]

8. Two Words:

Alberto Gonzales

[Delphinus]

9. I can tell you why nobody went after it ...

we don't have JOURNALISTS in this country anymore. We have newscasters and entertainers. Journalists are a dead or dying breed.

[hiabrill]

3. It's get bigger and bigger by the hour....

I'm starting to get a continuous non-stop orgasm... and we haven't yet got to the climax..!! ;)

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. "Patrick Fitzgerald has before him....

..the most important criminal case in American history. Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence."

The very thing the neocon operatives have been trying to downplay! "It's jist politikking yer know!"

[trof]

6. Whew. Thanks.

I'll try and wade through all of that later.