oh, the tangled webs we weave

There's much more to the Valerie Plame story than who is getting indicted (at this point, it appears that Libby wins the prize). Lost in the noise about the Plame investigation is this news about the source of the forged yellowcake documents.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, go take a gander at this summary. Here's the short version:

The term yellowcake forgery refers to falsified documents which appeared to depict an attempt by Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime to purchase yellowcake uranium from the country of Niger, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

The reference in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech (in which he made a case for war with Iraq) Of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa was thought by many to be a reference to these documents. Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents, and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Days later, in a column by Robert Novak, the covert identity of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame was exposed. The ensuing Plame affair" (aka. "CIA leak scandal") is an ongoing political scandal and criminal investigation into the source of the leak which "outed" Plame.

This whole mess got started when the CIA set out to confirm the reliability of these documents which claimed Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger. We have long known that they were forgeries, but who forged them?

From Austin Bay, the answer to that question is the big news that nobody in the media is paying attention to--from the Daily Telegraph:

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.

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.

Why would France want to stop the war? Maybe because Saddam was such a nice guy. Or perhaps their motivation was a bit more crass:

More than 4,500 companies took part in the United Nations oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, according to the independent committee investigating the program.

The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday.

The findings are in the committee's fifth and final report, a document of more than 500 pages that will detail how outside companies from more than 60 countries were able to evade United Nations controls and make money for themselves as well as for the Hussein government.

Was France just trying to protect their own business interests in Iraq?

UPDATE:
It appears that my conspiracy theories are bogus:

The FBI has determined that financial gain, not an effort to influence U.S. policy, was behind the forged documents that the Bush administration used to bolster its prewar claim that Iraq sought uranium ore in Niger.

The FBI had refused comment on the matter until Italian news sources reported this week that FBI Director Robert Mueller sent the Italian government a letter in July with the results of the bureau's two-year investigation.

The investigation "confirmed the documents to be fraudulent and concluded they were more likely part of a criminal scheme for financial gain," FBI spokesman John Miller said Friday, describing the contents of the letter.

Miller did not say what led the FBI to its conclusion or identify the perpetrators of the hoax.

So, France wasn't behind the fraudulent documents. My bad.