The Valerie Plame Backstory

The story didn't begin with the outing of Valerie Plame, and it won't end with the indictments expected tomorrow. Meanwhile, the mystery conntinues, as the Washington Post reports:

Still, the penultimate day of the 22-month probe ended with the same mystery that has kept much of Washington, including some of the possible targets and lawyers in the case, on edge about Fitzgerald's plans.

The backstory, of course, is the "evidence" that President Sluggo cited that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium ore in Africa. In his account, published in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, Joseph Wilson turned from the lack of evidence for Bush's claim to the question of how the claim was raised in the first place:

As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged.

Those forged documents came from Italian intelligence sources. So guess who's coming for lunch on October 31? That's right, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Josh Marshall is on top of the story.
So how does the investigation extend back to before the outing of Valerie Plame? Murray Waas of the National Journal has the story that the Vice President's office withheld documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee.