with friends like these

conservative group blog american thinker relays a uk telegraph story of italian businessman Rocco Martino passing along french fake documents to undercut its 'allies' the US and Britain

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.
[snip]
He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000.

funny this didn't make the newyorktimeswashingtonpostlatimescnn media. the latest gossip/illegally obtained grand jury leak from the cia leak case took too much space i guess

¶ - nitish @ 9:11 AM