If I were a betting woman (and I am, occasionally), my money would be on the guess that Patrick Fitzgerald has uncovered something much more complex and important to national security than the unmasking of Valerie Plame (as important as that is).

Like Duncan, I think it has something to do with the Niger yellowcake forgeries.

Josh Marshall points out the FBI investigation into the documents was a sham.

Billmon reminded us there were earlier forged Niger yellowcake documents, and that Sy Hersh thought the entire operation was a CIA sting to get back at Cheney:

Sure. Why not. I long ago accepted the fact that we’re all living in a bad sequel to the Bourne Identity. But what about the original Niger documents — the ones the CIA and the DIA found so credible? Who created them? And what was their exact relationship to the SISMI, or MI6, or the CIA, or the Cheney White House?

Josh thinks John Bolton may be connected to this, while conservative reporter and blogger Steve Sailer fingered neocon Michael Ledeen as “the obvious usual suspect in any dubious activities involving both Italian intelligence and the Middle East”:

When I posted a rumor pointing in the direction of the best-known SISMI-connected neocon player, Michael Ledeen, who was a big wheel in Iran-contra, Ledeen emailed me to deny that he had any involvement with the forgeries. But when I asked Ledeen if he was going to use his extensive SISMI contacts to search for the Real Forgers, that International Man of Mystery didn’t reply.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica published their own investigation into the story; here’s blogger Nur al-Cubicle’s summation in English:

With the Joe Wilson story hitting the news again, I ask you to read the following article by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D’Avanzo published in the Rome newspaper, La Repubblica, on July 16, 2003. It’s long, but do it*!

You will see why the Bush administration will stonewall on the Plame Affair. You see, Mrs. Plame’s CIA role may have been revealed to reporters by her counterparts inside British or Italian intelligence keeping tabs on WMD in central Africa. That’s right, from our own “Coalition Partners.” Behind the Karl Rove and Plame Affair is a plot by three heads of government, Bush, Blair and Berlusconi, to deceive their nations, international institutions and world public opinion for their own cynical and immoral aims. Worse than Suez, worse than Gulf of Tonkin, worse than the Plain of Jars, worse than Watergate and worse than Iran-Contra.

Or you can read this version from Daily Kos.

This story from the Nation speculates on a plausible Israeli connection:

According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled Shulsky’s – and which has not previously been reported – prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon’s office, not inside Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad – which prides itself on extreme professionalism – had views closer to the CIA’s, not the Pentagon’s, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official.”

Bottom line? It’s likely that the Bush administration fabricated the case for invading Iraq to an extent we didn’t dream, and that several other countries are involved.

I don’t think Patrick Fitzgerald’s stopping at perjury charges.