Curiouser and curiouser and

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Curiouser and curiouser and curiouser and …

Remember how early today an Italian parliamentarian said that in January 2003 the Italian government had warned the US that the Niger docs were forgeries. Well, just out from AP

Commission member Sen. Massimo Brutti told reporters after the closed-door session that that the commission was told that the Italian secret services warned the United States in January 2003 that the dossier was fake.

But later, the senator called The Associated Press to retract that statement. He said that the commission was not told that the Italians had warned the Americans.

Brutti said he was confused by the barrage of reporters’ questions when the lawmakers emerged from the briefing. He said when he had the opportunity later to check his briefing notes, he realized he had misspoke.

Brutti said what he meant to say was that the commission was told that a SISMI official, contacted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, about the dossier, told the U.N. agency that “those documents didn’t come from Sismi, they weren’t produced nor supplied by Sismi.”

“Our (intelligence services) were not involved,” Brutti said the briefing was told. The Italian news agency ANSA quoted Brutti as saying that the commission was told that the U.N. agency queried Sismi about the dossier in January 2003.

And from Reuters

Sen. Massimo Brutti initially told reporters that Sismi had warned the United States about the bogus documents around the same time as U.S. President George W. Bush gave his 2003 State of the Union address, making the case for war.

“At around that time, they (Sismi) said that the dossier did not correspond to the truth,” Brutti said. He later backtracked, telling Reuters that since Sismi never had the documents, it could not comment on their merit.

Your guess is as good as mine.

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