Interested in the Niger forgeries?

Then if you're not already reading Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, you should be. Josh is the Go To Guy on the story.

Most recent developments are perplexing and/or telling, to say the least. As I understand his reporting, the forgeries were being touted to US Intelligence by Italian intelligence. The one dead give-away that the package was bogus was that the names of Nigerian officials being cited were people who had been out of power for some time - ten years, in one case, I believe. Yet in the first transcript seen by US Intelligence, from Italian intelligence, the officials' names had all been updated to names of current officials.

Yes, they altered the transcript to make the transcript appear to reflect a less bogus original.

What do you suppose US Intel said to Italian Intel when they saw the original (or a facsimile of the original)? Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall during those conversations?