Here's a timeline from the information in the Repubblica piece, "The Voyage of the false papers between Rome, London and Washington" by Carlo Bonini, published July 19, 2003:
January 2, 2001 - Break in at the Niger Embassy in Rome.
"Staying with the Italian version of the affair, we should turn back the calendar of this story to the fall of 2001, to Rome, to the fifth floor of Via Badaimonti 10, site of the Nigerian embassy, where -it may be recalled- "it all began" with a singular burglary reported on January second." (6th paragraph)
January 31, 2001 - Second break-in at the Niger Embassy.
"Well, to this theft there followed a second. January 31, Adam Maiga Zakariou, functionary of the embassy, returns to his apartment only to discover it has been turned upside down by a break-in. The bars on a window have been ripped out. The bedroom and living room -notes the report of the Trionfale company of carabinieri- have ben put in disarray. Zakariou explains to the carabinieri that "a watch of modest value and two women's rings" are missing. ..." (7th paragraph)
Fall (October?) 2001 - Sismi (Italian Intelligence Service) is in possession of the forged Niger papers and shares the information contained in them with MI6 and US intelligence.
..."And just as certainly, -(La Repubblica has given the account in the past days)- that the information contained in those papers are the common property of the Italian, British and American intelligence services since the Fall of 2001, when the useless scraps of paper are cooked up in Rome." (3rd paragraph)
October 2002 - Italian journalist(s) receive copies of the forged Niger documents from an "ex official of the [Italian] military services"
"In the Fall of 2002, indeed, the papers assembled a year earlier in Rome by confidential sources close to Sismi, and already acquired by Mi6, had returned in circulation. And not only in the embassies. "The false dossier -writes Il Giornale- built upon the base of the same original indications worked by Sismi, purified of final conclusions, assembled with paper documentation not real but not unlikely, is presumably distributed by an ex official of the military services to one or more Italian journalists who, once the appropriate verifications (even in Niger) had been made, would have decided to not publish it at all." Panorama confirms: "a set of six pages began to circulate (...) The dossier even wound up in the editorial offices of some newspapers, who did nothing with them". (2nd paragraph)
October 2002 - Italian journalist(s) bring the forged Niger documents to the US Embassy in Rome.
Reached by La Repubblica, a qualified source from the American administration tells the story this way: "If someone wrote that, in October of 2002, a journalist was the "confidential source" that delivered the false dossier on Uranium trafficking to our embassy in Rome and that this journalist was Italian, the circumstance would be hard to deny". The journalist didn't ask for money. Quite simply, he told his interlocutors that he was occupied with an inquiry, that he had received the documents form sources credibly close to Italian intelligence services, and that he needed to verify their questionable quality and foundation.
October, 2002 - US embassy in Rome forwards the documents
...It is certain, however, as confirmed last Thursday by the State Department, that the embassy in Rome transmitted the papers to Washington abstaining from any judgement as to their reliability." (1st paragraph)
Certainly, therefore, in October of 2002, the false dossier is in the possession of Sismi, the US embassy, an indeterminate number of journalists in Rome, Mi6, the CIA and the State Department in Washington. ...(2nd paragraph)
bttt
I read somewhere that our Embassy in Rome paid $200 for it
I'll bet that thing landed on her desk!