Did Bush Administration Have Role in Bogus Letters on Iraq Uranium Purchase?

In this article in today's (4.3.2007) Washington Post, there is a recap of the story about the bogus letters that were given by a source to an journalist for an Italian weekly called Panorama. The letter eventually led to the following sentence being put in the 2003 State of the Union speech: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The article is called "How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War", but it doesn't really tell how that happened. In particular it doesn't attempt to answer the big question: Did someone or some group in the Bush Administration forge the letters, got them to a source in Italy, and then planted them in the Italian media? The article also doesn't explain why, in the sentence quoted above, Bush named the source as the "British Government" instead of the Italian Government?

The Italian Government from 2001-2006 was headed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a politician who governed from the right and was close to the Bush Administration. The following is from the Wikipedia article on Berlusconi: "The Berlusconi government has had a strong tendency to support American foreign policies despite the policy divide between the U.S. and many other founding members of European Union (Germany, France, Belgium), a break from the traditional Italian foreign policy. Italy, with Berlusconi in office, became a substantial ally to the United States due to his support of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq." (hyperlinks included from original article).

According to the Washington Post article "A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, had sent along information about the alleged sale of uranium to Iraq." Obviously the Italians were a source for purported information about the sale of uranium to Iraq. Therefore, it is not surprising that the forged documents came through Italy. The fact that it came through Italy, though, doesn't mean that they originated in Italy.

The article concludes with this sentence: "Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them." Maybe the "rogue elements" weren't in Italy, maybe they were a lot closer to home.