October 8-9, 2002: Italian Journalist Thinks Niger Documents Are Fakes

One day after receiving the Niger documents (see Afternoon October 7, 2002), Elisabetta Burba meets with her editors and expresses her concern that the documents might be fakes. She and her husband, a historian, closely reviewed the documents and noted several apparent problems; for example, that the amount of uranium specified in the documents—500 tons—is very large, and that the letters do not include details on how the uranium would be delivered. She proposes that she travel to Niger to determine the document’s authenticity. [Associated Press, 7/20/2003; Talking Points Memo, 10/31/2003; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 147] But Burba is instructed by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Carolo Rossella, who is known for his ties to the Berlusconi government, to hand them over to the American embassy in Rome for verification. [Washington Post, 7/20/2003; New Yorker, 10/27/2003; Talking Points Memo, 10/31/2003]