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have the document in-hand before it was declared a forgery? That's the question to be answered, IMHO.
And the answer, if I remember right, is it took no more than a day or two from receipt to debunking. There apparently was quite a time between when the reports of the document's existence surfaced and the documents were in-hand. I'd hate to provide a link to a reputable source for that; the Repubblica article Marshall refers to seems to say as much, but my Italian's horrible at best. The "Niger" document was easy to expose as a fraud, but it rested in details that the rumors apparently did not include.
Rather's documents were difficult to declare as forgeries, but apparently he got them without much ado; "not authenticated" seems like a better way of describing them, in most respects (I'll leave aside possible font issues).
I don't think the two situations are sufficiently parallel.
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