"SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt."

That's what "a U.S. intelligence official who's closely followed the matter" told Knight-Ridder newspapers' Jonathan Landay for this article out this evening about the Niger forgeries.

Italian intelligence officials and parliamentarians put on a dog and pony show yesterday in Rome claiming that the Italian intelligence agency SISMI had no connection to the forgeries and did not pass on any of the bogus information contained in them to any other countries, including the United States.

But that's simply not true. Landay confirms what we first reported more than a year ago: that in late 2001 and early 2002 Italian intelligence sent reports to the US alleging that Niger was selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Those reports were based on the notorious forged documents, in some cases they were text transcriptions of the documents.

What does that mean? That the whole Niger-Iraq uranium fairy tale started with bogus intelligence from Italy.

The Italian governmnet is spinning like crazy on this one. But the real story seems ready to bubble out.