An important adjunct to your new Plame post, was just posted here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1781072/posts
It appears that Wilson's wife made the recommendation regarding her husbands qualifications for the trip to Niger before Cheney asked the CIA to look at the issue.
I believe that even then the political moles within the bureaucracy had their act in play before Cheney asked about Niger.
My conspiracy mind could even speculate that the "unconfirmed" report given to Cheney, the day after Plame recommended her husband, was in fact the delivery of the enticement for Cheney to go seeking what the moles had already forged, or knew was forged before that enticement was placed in front of Cheney.
They set Cheney up and then went about using their forgery, or what they already knew was a forgery when they put it in Cheney's briefing, as "evidence" that Cheney had gamed the intelligence; when all he had done was ask them to go find what they already knew as in the intelligence stream - the forgeries they KNEW were forgeries before the matter was ever presented to Cheney.
And, it is not at all funny, or inconsequential that there is no paper-trail for how the forgeries arrived in a safe in the offices of Plame's department at CIA.
Thanks for the link! Someone pinged me to York's article on that just as I was about to post this, so I added a quick note and link in the answer to Question 6, but I haven't had a chance to analyze the new data yet and integrate it.
"And, it is not at all funny, or inconsequential that there is no paper-trail for how the forgeries arrived in a safe in the offices of Plame's department at CIA."
Bump to that!