Ledeen! Ledeen! Ledeen!

From The Raw Story:

A controversial neoconservative who occasionally consulted for the Bush Defense Department has confirmed that he was a contributor to the Italian magazine Panorama, whose reporter first came across forged documents which purported that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Niger...

Panorama has been in the crosshairs since late 2002, when one of its journalists, Elisabetta Burba, was handed a set of documents -- including contracts -- purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had purchased 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger...

While Ledeen admits to writing for Panorama, he explained that the work had been in the past, saying, "That would be a couple of years ago."

But "a couple of years ago" would be right around the time when the forgeries were delivered to Burba or sent from the U.S. embassy in Rome via backchannels to the U.S. State Department, bypassing the CIA and other intelligence agencies...

Questions also surround Burba's attempts to authenticate the documents.

Speaking to RAW STORY, foreign intelligence sources say they wonder why she delivered documents she felt to be bogus to the U.S. embassy. These sources say there are two questions surrounding Burba's account: If she did indeed find the documents to be forgeries, why did she take them to an embassy as opposed to her own authorities -- and why did she deliver them to the U.S. embassy specifically?

It was Burba's editor at Panorama, Carlo Rossella, who allegedly told her to take the documents to the U.S. embassy, despite her own requests to travel to Niger to further investigate the claims.

It was also Rosella who intervened when Burba requested to contact the White House after hearing the infamous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, dissuading her from contacting U.S. officials.

Rosella, intelligence sources say, could have been acting on the orders of Panorama's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's equivalent of Rupert Murdoch. Berlusconi - who also happens to be the current Prime Minister - was a supporter of President Bush leading up to the war.