According to United Press International, Patrick Fitzgerald’s inquiry is now pushing beyond the Joe Wilson smear, and the ensuing perjury, and into the forged document that got the whole ball of shit rolling. Here’s a clip:

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources…

Fitzgerald’s team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House…

Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and almost certainly criminal.

The letterheads and official seals that appeared to authenticate the documents apparently came from a burglary at the Niger Embassy in Rome in 2001. At this point, the facts start dribbling away into conspiracy theories that involve membership of shadowy Masonic lodges, Iranian go-betweens, right-wing cabals inside Italian Intelligence and so on. It is not yet known how far Fitzgerald, in his two years of inquiries, has fished in these murky waters.

There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.

So, Fitzgerald could be looking into the possibility not only that the administration built its case for war on documents that it knew to be forged, but that they may have even had a hand in creating the documents in the first place… Next, they’ll probably open up the files on the plane crash that claimed the life of Senator Paul Wellstone, a vocal Bush critic, in the run-up to the war. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Meanwhile, at the White House, it looks as though Dear Leader might be losing his shit.” Here’s a clip from the New York Daily News (thanks to Arun):

“This is not some manager at McDonald’s chewing out the help,” said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. “This is the President of the United States, and it’s not a pleasant sight.”

If this were a novel, I’d have jumped to the end by now. I can’t take the suspense.