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I hadn't heard that before. Where did you come across the info that the letterheads had been hand-copied? I'd like to include that in my records.

I found this amusing:

When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions. The identity of the thieves has not been established.

One question that comes to mind, which should have been explained by the journalist, is how he came to the conclusion that there was more than one thief? And from whom did this info on the theft originate?

The rest of the article seems to hang on this mere guess, a theory which is simply not justified given the available info :

But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.

Well, isn't that special? Here's my theory, using the KISS method:

There is a report that two bottles of perfume were stolen, along with a watch, but no evidence has been mentioned of anything else tampered with or removed from the premises. In the absence of such evidence, there isn't much reason to be baffled about the thief's intention... the most obvious explanation is just that he or she intended to steal some perfume and a watch.

The alleged robbery - and so the alleged forgery if the claim is that it is derived from paper obtained in it- occured AFTER the Iraqi met with the Nigerien official mentioned by Wilson, and also AFTER the even earlier confirmed and well-known visit to Niger of the Iraqi trade mission which invited the president of Niger to visit Baghdad.

Way back when ~ the earliest stories about the sales documents being "forgeries" contained the business about them having been handwritten/handdrawn!

The folks making the claim about "forgery" were not commenting on the nature of the copies, which were always described as "copies". The originals were left behind in the hands of the targets of the espionage that resulted in the holographic "copies" falling into the hands of various intelligence services.

My comment refers to the initial story that starts this thread ~ it's not the documents themselves that are forgeries, but the contents of the "copies" ~ because the intelligence agencies do not have the originals!