Have we all read
TPM this morning? Marshall returns to the intriguing and underexamined question of who faked the Niger documents. Points out that it was
Cheney who originally brought the story to his regular CIA briefing, not the other way around. Then looks at Sy Hersh's recent account of the story, and the Italian intel connection:
Elisabetta Burba, a reporter for Panorama, a glossy Italian weekly owned by the publishing empire of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, received a telephone call from an Italian businessman and security consultant whom she believed to have once been connected to Italian intelligence. He told her that he had information connecting Saddam Hussein to the purchase of uranium in Africa. She considered the informant credible. In 1995, when she worked for the magazine Epoca, he had provided her with detailed information, apparently from Western intelligence sources, for articles she published dealing with the peace process in Bosnia and with an Islamic charity that was linked to international terrorism. The information, some of it in English, proved to be accurate.
He then winds up with this enticing teaser:
Who’s this “Italian businessman and security consultant”? Who’s he do his security consulting for? Any associations to any folks with names we know? Any connections to noteworthy figures in the United States?
More on this to come.
So here's the posish, I think: Josh has got a name in mind--he's come across something, or figured out enough to ask somebody, whatever, but he's got a name in mind. He just doesn't have the goods yet to go public--that's a serious matter for a pro journalist. BUT...
Can WE figure it out? I think we're looking for someone who's name would already be in the BFEE research archives. I'm not intimately familiar enough with them to have any initial traction here. But I bet there are some dedicated BFEE sleuths here who might get a tingle. The only breath of a clue I've got is my reason for thinking it's someone who's trail will turn up in the BFEE realm, to wit: Sy Hersh's
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact">article touches on the persistent rumor within CIA circles that the documents were a CIA plant, one intended to appeal to Cheney while being easily debunked by anyone with even a rudimentary clue in genuine intel analysis--i.e., it was an attempt by CIA to discredit Cheney. This could be a red herring, of course, and the ramifications are complicated to say the least. N.b., e.g. the persistent indications that Poppy and his circle (wh/obviously includes lots of CIA/BFEE types) are adamantly opposed to the neocon Iraq policy.
But anyway, such speculation aside, who is this guy? I bet we could turn up a name to fit the profile before Marshall goes public. Be fun to try, anyway....