TPM: Italian daily La Repubblica has an article on Niger forgeries.

Talking Points Memo:

(October 24, 2005 -- 03:55 PM EDT)

Interesting news out of Italy.

I'm told Monday's edition of the Italian daily La Repubblica has an article on Niger forgeries. And this one says the culprits are Rocco Martino, the Italian woman who works in the Niger embassy in Rome and the SISMI operative Martino named as his ultimate source. The motive, says Repubblica, was money.

I've never named the SISMI colonel whom Martino said he (indirectly) got the documents from. But now Repubblica has. So I will too: his name is Antonio Nucera.

(You see I've linked the story above. I haven't read the Italian original. I've only had the contents related to me. So let me put that small caveat to the entire post.)

My experience with this case, going back almost two years now, is that whenever damaging new information was about to come out on the forgery mystery, the Italian government-cum-intelligence agencies put out substantial new information about what happened mixed with disinformation aimed at throwing people off their trail. And when I say 'their trail', I mean the complicity of Italian intelligence in the documents hoax itself............