One of the difficulties with my hypothesis was how Rove was able to manage the timing on both stories. Josh's piece goes into the timing of the development of the TANG story (which Josh was involved in)
"By the late spring of 2004, 60 Minutes had interviewed Burba, the Italian journalist, Rocco Martino, the 'security consultant' who had attempted to sell her the documents in October 2002, and the SISMI asset (the female Italian national) who works in the Nigerien Embassy in Rome. The interviews implicated Antonio Nucera, a colonel from the Italian intelligence service SISMI, as the immediate source of the documents. After an initial conversation, Nucera himself refused all contact with the reporters working on the story.Delayed indeed. a bunch of repugs agreed to be interviewed and then kept pulling out at the last minute - repeatedly kicking the can down the road. Eventually "The produced segment was scheduled to be aired on Wednesday, September 8th, 2004... As late as the day of airing itself, a final decision had yet to be made on which segment (TANG or Niger) would run."
After this, a string of problems delayed the airing of the story."
Now, if we switch over to the TANG story, Burkett "says he was handed the documents at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo on March 3 by an unknown intermediary." March 3. That would qualify as "late spring " - so, if my hypothesis is correct, the apparently fake TANG documents anonymously entered the stream at the same time it became known that the Niger story was being developed, and then the Niger story kept getting delayed incrementally until while the TANG story was brought to fruition.
(incidentally it was in March04 when i wrote: " if rove is so smart, it would make sense for him to preempt some of the damage -- and get it outta the way 6 months in advance. the awol brouhaha has been dismissed before, itll prolly come out again, so why not bring it to the fore now.")
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