Looks like the kooks have flown the nest again. Today the tin-hatters are going back to the debunked Niger forgery conspiracy theory. This from Counterbalance (do I need to point out that the need for a counterbalance means there is a severe imbalance present?):

Over the past few months, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been questioning witnesses in the CIA leak case about the origins of the disputed Niger documents referenced in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address, according to several current and former State Department officials who have testified in the case.

The State Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the information they discussed is still classified, indicated that the White House had substantial motive for revealing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters.

They said the questions Fitzgerald asked them about the Niger documents suggested to them that the special prosecutor was putting together a timeline. They said they believe Fitzgerald wants to show the grand jury how some people in the Bush administration may have conspired to retaliate against former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence.

We all know that the forgeries were held in a safe in the CIA by Valerie’s own little group, hidden from the rest of the intelligence community until right before the SOTU. I am sure Fitz is grasping for a timeline: of who had the documents and why they sat on them for three months. Of course, he could also be wondering how the Niger forgeries were part and parcel of the Pincus and Kristof articles of Wilson’s Niger trip – when the documents were not in US hands until 6 months after his trip!

But what is scary is some of the nutcases who work for the US government and how media hungry they get in their Don Quixote fits of hero-dom:

“We already expressed our opinion about the intelligence the vice president was asking about. We thought it had no merit,” one former senior State Department official said. “We resented that they didn’t trust what we said.”

Got that? They ‘resented’ being challenged with conflicting information. They resented it! How dare anyone challenge these paragons of wisdom!

Many career State Department officials were also livid that the so-called “16 words” made its way into the State of the Union address, the current and former department officials who commented for this story said.

“To me it showed a total disregard for the truth, plain and simple,” said one former State Department official who had worked closely with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, referring to the administration’s use of the flawed intelligence.

“I refuse to believe that the findings of a four-star general and an envoy the CIA sent to Niger to personally investigate the accuracy of the intelligence, as well as our own research at the State Department, never got into the hands of President Bush or Vice President Cheney. I don’t buy it. Saying that Iraq sought uranium from Niger was all it took, as far as I’m concerned, to convince the House to support the war. The American people too. I believe removing Saddam Hussein was right and just. But the intelligence that was used to state the case wasn’t.”

Oh please, if these are career intelligence people then they know intelligence can many times be wrong and misleading, if not always conflicting. I have a feeling I know who this idiot is.

At this time, Wilson was also unconvinced that the White House did not see his report. In private conversations with a State Department official and a few reporters, he accused the White House of twisting the intelligence to fuel the administration’s war machine. He let it be known that he had personally investigated the allegations on behalf of the CIA.

Hmmm. A State Department official leads Wilson to reporters? Most likely. In fact I would bet you that State Department official has ties to Pincus and Kristof and possibly Kerry.

By May 2003, Wilson had made enough noise in Washington, DC, political circles about the veracity of pre-war Iraq intelligence to attract the attention of Libby and Hadley. Wilson had been a source for Nicholas Kristoff’s New York Times column that suggested the administration knowingly used the phony Niger documents to win support for the war.

Yes, and it is why we know for sure Valerie and Joe peddled the story because only they would be so dumb as to link the Niger forgeries to a trip which happened well before the forgeries surfaced. And only an imbalanced site like this would be so stupid as to repeat the same mistake.