[popdonnelly]

I agree with you that there is something strange about Cannistraro's role in this matter. How did he know so much about this false information?

[piasa]

The documents were just what Administration hawks had been waiting for. The second former official, Vincent Cannistraro, who served as chief of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, told me that copies of the Burba documents were given to the American Embassy, which passed them on to the C.I.A.’s chief of station in Rome, who forwarded them to Washington. Months later, he said, he telephoned a contact at C.I.A. headquarters and was told that “the jury was still out on this”—that is, on the authenticity of the documents.
-------"The Stovepipe: How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.",Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, 10/27/2003