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Deception comes in many guises:
There isn't any one action against deception that is right for every individual or every situation. Deception offers an entire suite of capabilities that should be picked judiciously in any application. The following is useful deception taxonomy based upon military experiences and history.
Concealment: Hiding through the use of natural cover, obstacles or great distance. Trees, branches; Terrain; Mountain Passes; Valleys.
Camouflage: Hiding movements and defensive postures (troops) behind natural camouflage.
False/Planted Information: Letting opposition have the information you want them to have. Planting information you choose: False radio broadcasts, morphed pictures, videos and other misleading information aimed at enemies, leadership and general populations.
Ruses: Where equipment and procedures are used to deceive the enemy; carry their flag/colors; march troops in the same formations; use the same uniforms and adversary radio frequencies (false orders). Initiate cries of help as if from the enemy troops.
Displays: Make the enemy see (or think he sees) what isn't really there. Horses pulling logs, thousands of campfires, fake artillery, rubber tanks, dummy airfields.
Demonstrations: Make a move that suggests imminent action, such as moving troops to the left, when you really are preparing to attack on the right; move troops constantly back and forth.
Feints: Demonstrate an attack. Use false attacks as a means of covering up the real mission/movements. Use false retreats to encourage chase by the other side.
The Many Faces of Deception:
Lie to the enemy in any way that suits your needs. Use the media to lie. Use perception management to get the attacker to believe what you want him to believe. Initiate protracted but futile negotiations. Circulate false reports on the 'Net. Fabricate treasonable letters.
Insight
Out-think one's adversary. Study the oppositions past engagements and learn from their mistakes. Know your enemy better than he knows you. Stay one step ahead. It's a chess game: predict your opponent's moves.
Honey Pots
Make a target so attractive that your enemy comes running into a trap. Think sneak attack/ambushes.
adapted from this
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Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena
Hostage of the CIA?
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A car carrying a former hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and Italian intelligence officials, was driving to the Baghdad Airport when U.S. forces fired on the car, killing an intelligence agent, and wounding Sqrena.
Berlusconi was quick to vent his fury. 'Given that the fire came from an American source I called in the American ambassador,' - BNN
Berlusconi is a LIAR - Italy involved in 'Rendition Progam'
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...Journalist had information, and the US military did not want her to survive...
Same pattern of events as other situations...
Mass protests
followed by kidnapping
followed by Leaders evoking patriotism by saying
"we will not give in to terror..."
Sgrena, a 56-year-old reporter for the communist daily newspaper Il Manifesto, had been held captive in Iraq since Feb. 4.
Thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Rome last month demanding that Italy pull its troops out of Iraq, after a video was released of a tearful Sgrena warning that she would be killed if the country didn't withdraw.
Shortly after the video was released, the Italian senate voted to extend the country's 3,000-troop mission in Iraq to June. -
source
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Shooting deliberate
The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.
"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home.
"They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."
The shooting late Friday was witnessed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged.
"Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added. - Turkish Press
My truth (La mia verità)
By Giuliana Sgrena
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Troops shot Sgrena from behind - Naomi Klein
One of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it's often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road.
And I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all. She was on a completely different road that I actually didn't know existed. It's a secured road that you can only enter through the Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top military officials.
So, when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, released her from captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went through the elaborate checkpoint process which everyone must go through to enter the Green Zone, which involves checking in obviously with U.S. forces, and then they drove onto this secured road. And the other thing that Giuliana told me that she's quite frustrated about is the description of the vehicle that fired on her as being part of a checkpoint. She says it wasn't a checkpoint at all. It was simply a tank that was parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals. From her perspective, they were just -- it was just opening fire by a tank. The other thing she told me that was surprising to me was that they were fired on from behind. Because I think part of what we're hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn't know who they were, and they were afraid. It was self-defense, they were afraid. The fear, of course, is that their car might blow up or that they might come under attack themselves.
And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she -- the bullet that injured her so badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren't coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable.
democracynow
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Troops in Shooting Were for Negroponte
The temporary road checkpoint where American troops mistakenly killed an Italian intelligence agent last week was set up to provide extra security for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, a U.S. Embassy official said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, assured his Italian counterpart that the inquiry into the death of Nicola Calipari would clearly determine what happened, Italy's government said.
Calipari died Friday when troops at the checkpoint fired at an approaching car that was carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been freed by Iraqi kidnappers.
"The mobile patrol was there to enhance security because Ambassador Negroponte was expected through," embassy spokesman Robert Callahan said, confirming a report that first appeared in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
It was not known if Negroponte, who was nominated last month by President Bush (news - web sites) to be the new director of national intelligence, passed through the checkpoint before the shooting. Senior U.S. officials usually travel by helicopter to avoid attacks in Iraq (news - web sites), but methods are varied so as not to be predictable. -Yahoo
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Were the Hostage takers CIA? Is this why Sgrena was shot at?
Or were they really aiming at Calipari [a senior Italian intelligence officer]
remember: Sgrena was working for il Manifesto, a Marxist publication.
What was she writing about?
Chemical warfare?
Bulldozers shifting topsoil from the now radioactive city of Fallujah, perhaps?
The secret burying of
foreign soldiers who were promised a green card by the US government?
Or that the US are staging their own terror acts to stay in the region?
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Update:
A Documentary, aired by Italian TV contains footage shows Giuliana Sgrena revealing that
she was reporting on the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah
before she was Kidnapped by so-called insurgants:
Further: she was told by her kidnappers that she should not discuss these issues when released
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Italy probes possible CIA role in abduction
A passerby who claimed to have witnessed the abduction said several men grabbed Omar, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, on a Milan sidewalk and hustled him into a parked van that drove off accompanied by another car.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, several unnamed U.S. officials have been quoted by numerous media outlets discussing the U.S. practice of "rendition," in which suspected terrorists or Al Qaeda supporters captured abroad are sent for interrogation to countries where human rights are not universally respected. - Chicago Tribune
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Italians order arrest of CIA operatives involved in Rendition
Milan, 24 June (AKI) - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for the abduction of an Egyptian cleric in the northern city of Milan and his transfer to Cairo, where he was then tortured until he partially lost the use of his legs. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was seized near his home in Milan on 17 February 2003. His capture is part of a controversial practice "extraordinary rendition" stepped up after the September 11 2001 attacks. Terror suspects are picked up irrespective of national laws and sent to third countries in what rights groups denounce as 'outsourcing torture'. Milan daily Corriere della Sera reports that among those issued with arrest warrants on Thursday was the former US diplomatic consul in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who was replaced unexpectedly several months ago. Warrants were issued for ten men and three women, whose nationalities were not specified.
source
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Italy Seeks Arrests of 13 in Alleged Rendition
[Excerpts] June 25, 2005
A review of the names listed in the court documents suggests that most of the people were operating under cover names. Attempts by The Washington Post to locate individuals named in the warrants were unsuccessful. The majority of the people named have no listed residence, workplace, working telephone or corporate history, according to a review of public records.
Moreover, half of the U.S. phone numbers that the operatives listed when checking into Italian hotels had been disconnected when called on Friday. Two numbers were answered by recordings for companies with names that are unregistered. A third number was answered by an answering service for a company described as a foreign trade service. Phone messages left by The Post with all three companies were not returned.
Two of the individuals had listed their addresses as boxes at the same post office in Dunn Loring, Va., that is used by a man who is listed as an officer of Premier Executive Transport Services, a company that owns two planes used by the CIA for renditions. The man's name also appears to be a cover.
Three of the 19 people named in the court documents, however, appear to be legitimate identities. One is listed in public records as a longtime U.S. government employee who has been stationed abroad.
washington post
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Central America - Negroponte - links to Rendition...Black-ops agents uncovered by italians
A point that may be made in the excellent follow-up by A2 concerns burned agents in Central America. According to the Corriere expert Guido Olimpio, Bob Lady had already been burned in Central America as well as many of his collegues by Aldrich Ames in 1994. Ames, whose actual position in the CIA is not specified by the author, severly damaged American undercover networks in South and Central America.
According to Olimpio, Bob was born on February 2, 1954, in Tegulcigalpa, Honduras. He was a cop with the NYPD before becoming an agent in the 80's. It appears he was involved in black ops: he allegedly infiltrated left-wing organizations, radicalized them and set them up for the fall.
Digos agents went to Robert Seldon Lady's home with an arrest cum search warrant yesterday. His wife said that he was out of the country on business. The authorities sequestered a large quantity of documents. An anonymous source does not exclude that he may decide to turn himself in, once he's discussed the matter with his former(?) employees.
Robert Seldon Lady was the Milan station chief responsible for the commando operation.
The real identities as well as their cover names of the agents have been released as well as their photos. After all they are considered fugitives at large.
A source declared that as agents they are definitely burned.
I can't help recalling that the Italians did not appreciate it when the Americans burned the Italian spy network in Baghdad after the Calipari affair. Although I wouldn't consider it a deliberate intention of the judges' behalf- it's just an obvious consequence of the investigation- it is noteworthy that the government did not use its powers to hamper this investigation as I pointed out yesterday.
[see cryptome]
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Negropontes disappeared - NOW WORLD WIDE?
Child abuse ring connected?
Say Hi to the new director of U.S. national intelligence
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From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, a country that was being used as a training and staging ground for the CIA-created and -backed Contra armies, who relied on a terrorist strategy of targeting civilians. Those years saw a massive increase in U.S. military aid to Honduras, and Negroponte was a key player in organizing training for the Contras and procuring weapons for the armies that the United States was building in order to topple the socialist Nicaraguan government (Extra!, 9-10/01).
Negroponte's ambassadorship was marked by another human rights scandal: the Honduran army's Battalion 316, which operated as a death squad that tortured, killed or disappeared "subversive" Hondurans-- and at least one U.S. citizen, Catholic priest James Carney. Despite regular reporting of such crimes in the Honduran press, the human rights reports of Negroponte's embassy consistently failed to raise these issues. Critics contend that this was no accident: If such crimes had been acknowledged, U.S. aid to the country's military would have come under scrutiny, which could have jeopardized the Contra operations. - FAIR
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Beware provocations
The Los Angeles Times has revealed the creation of an organisation by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld called the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group" Its purpose is to "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception". The PPOG's role is to manufacture the terrorism that is to be combatted.
Faced with the massive opposition to their war plans Bush and his team may again be planning some terrorist act to provoke massive revulsion and whip a sceptical and reluctant world into supporting war against Iraq and other targets.
Chris Floyd of CounterPunch writes, "The US government is planning to use 'cover and deception' and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Such operations are not new for the United States authorities. - source
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CIA methods exposed by kidnap inquiry
Agents' use of commercial mobiles gives Italian police detailed picture of how Muslim cleric was abducted
July 2, 2005 -
"I was walking down Via Guerzoni with my little girl and I saw a man with a long beard and a djellaba being stopped by two westerners with a mobile telephone. They were asking him, in Italian, for his documents, the way the police do," the witness said.
"At the junction with Via Croce Viola there was a pale-coloured van on the pavement," she continued. "Then, all I heard was a loud noise like a thud. The van suddenly shot backwards and then set off again, away from the mosque, passing me at high speed. And the three people I'd seen, they weren't there any longer."
One of them was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, otherwise known as Abu Omar, a radical Muslim cleric living in Milan and under investigation by the Italian authorities on suspicion of involvement in Islamist terrorism. His disappearance, in February 2003, caused an inquiry that attracted worldwide attention last month when a Milan judge ordered the arrest of 13 American secret service agents accused of the cleric's abduction. Details from the inquiry have provided a unique glimpse of the way in which the CIA seizes its foes abroad. The prosecutors in charge of the inquiry claim that Abu Omar was the target of what the US terms an "extraordinary rendition", the seizure of a suspect by agents for dispatch to a third country, often one in which torture is common.
Washington says it obtains guarantees that suspects grabbed in this way will not be tortured. But, in a call to his wife last year after he was released and before he disappeared again, Abu Omar said he had almost died under torture in an Egyptian jail. His current whereabouts is unknown, though associates say he was rearrested last year. By ploughing through hundreds of thousands of mobile phone records, tracing hotel registrations and bugging phone conversations, the Italian police have built up a picture of the CIA's operation that offers several surprises.
According to the police version of events, the CIA's special removal unit (SRU) can whistle up private jets to fly its captives unseen across international frontiers. A Learjet allegedly took Abu Omar from the joint US base at Aviano in Italy to another US base at Ramstein, Germany, then a chartered Gulfstream V whisked him to Cairo. Yet barely a dollar was spent on making the team's communications secure.
The secret agents used ordinary mobile phones. Italian investigators put names to the abductors by matching their calls to the phone contracts they had signed. And they could be sure of the team's movements because they could see when the calls had been made and from which mobile phone. In at least one case, calls were traced to a phone that was apparently returned to a US diplomatic pool. After a silence it was reactivated by an American citizen using the antenna 100 metres from the US embassy in Rome.
Investigators suspected Abu Omar was taken to Aviano, on discovering three calls made after the abduction by the apparent leader of the SRU to the mobile of the base's then security chief. A second surprise is the numbers involved. The Italian investigators say they have identified 23 members of the operation, and have been able to put names to 20 of them. At least six were women and - a third surprise - there seem to have been intimate links between male and female colleagues. SRU members made several, apparently recreational, trips within Italy as they waited to seize Abu Omar and, on at least two occasions, couples booked into double rooms. Most of the names on their passports were false. But two are not, and one belongs to the man the Italian prosecutors claim was the coordinator of the operation.
The suspected operational leader of the SRU remains unidentified. The inquiry showed that the biggest number of calls converged on the phone of someone identified in court papers merely as X.
On the day of the abduction, as the coordinator monitored events from his office at the consulate, X deployed his team. Italian investigators concluded that the lookout was one of the women, a 33-year-old; and that a six-strong team actually carried out the abduction and delivered Abu Omar to the entrance to the A4 motorway where a second team of six was waiting to speed him to Aviano. The last trace of X is a call the same day to Virginia, the state in which the CIA has its headquarters. But the coordinator's Italian mobile sprang to life again on March 3 2003. And the company's records show that by then he, like Abu Omar, was in Egypt. Yesterday, Mel Sembler, the US ambassador to Rome, who had been out of Italy, returned after being summoned to explain to the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, an operation about which the Italian government insists it was never informed.
Mr Berlusconi demanded that the US "fully respect Italian sovereignty".
The US embassy declined to comment on the kidnapping allegations, though it did say yesterday that relations would continue to be underpinned by "mutual respect". - John Hooper - The Guardian
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See The Plame Affair
and The UK Ricin Ring that never was
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In 2002, Italians with spooky connections helpfully provided documents that seemed to show Saddam was trying to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. President Bush famously referred to this ostensible danger in his State of the Union speech in January 2003. Then the documents turned out to be clumsy forgeries. In early February 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations to make the American case for invasion. He'd dropped the Niger stuff, but picked up other Italian threads of information about terrorists with horrible weapons.
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Powell fixed on the network of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a then-little-known terrorist wannabe who had been operating out of the Kurdish area in northern Iraq, but whose actual ties to Saddam were hard to substantiate. "Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested," Powell told the world. He limned Zarqawi-linked conspiracies to use deadly poisons in Great Britain, Chechnya, even in the Pankisi Gorge in the Caucasus. But, still, no solid link to Saddam. Powell showed a slide that underscored what was supposed to be known, and implied what needed to be known. A large block on the diagram read: "Possible Italy Cell."
Powell's speech came the same day the alleged kidnapping team assembled again in Milan. Their target, Abu Omar, looked like he might be the missing link tying terror to Saddam and deadly toxins. Italian prosecutors and judicial police had been building a case against the Egyptian preacher for months, in consultation with the FBI, according to a senior Italian source involved with the investigation. But Washington intended to invade Iraq in March, no matter what, and Italian prosecutors were not ready to arrest him. The Italian plan, according to the same source, was to nail Abu Omar and other alleged members of the same network in early April 2003. But Monica and her friends snatched him off the street in the middle of February. A few days later, according to traces run by the Italian prosecutors, the telephone used by Bob L., the man identified in the court documents as head of the C.I.A. in Milan, showed up in Egypt for a couple of weeks. That would have been the time when interrogators most needed the expertise of someone like Bob, who had been thoroughly briefed on the case by the Italian political police, known as DIGOS.
As happened so often when the Bush administration went looking for grand conspiracies in the free-wheeling spring of 2003, Abu Omar wasn't able to tell the Americans all they wanted or needed to hear. Fourteen months later, the Egyptians briefly let him out of prison, apparently thinking they had turned him into a collaborator. He phoned his wife and another imam in Milan and told his story. Italian police, who monitored those calls, set out to find whoever had stolen him. The cell phone records from the scene of the kidnapping, like crumbs in the forest, led the way to the C.I.A.
Most of the people on the team were in their 40s, 50s or 60s. Presumably they were old pros. Why didn't they do a better job of covering their tracks? Almost certainly because they believed the fix was in.
Both American and Italian press reports claim that the head of Italy's Intelligence and Military Security Service (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, was informed about the kidnapping before it took place. The Berlusconi government has flatly denied this. It claims no one in the Italian government or its intelligence services had any prior knowledge of this crime, which the Italian judge calls an affront to national sovereignty. A source close to the prosecution tells me that the search goes on for direct links to whatever Italian officials may have approved it. They are the "real" targets of the investigation, according to this source, although no proof has surfaced. (Coincidentally, one of Pollari's top deputies, Maj. Gen. Nicola Calipari, was shot and killed accidentally by American troops in Iraq earlier this year.)
- Bourne Again?
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The Italian [inside] Job?
Washington and Rome, Jul 2, 2005 -- Genoa police have arrested the two leaders of a neo-Fascist unofficial intelligence and "anti-terrorism" police network in Italy and have conducted searches of homes throughout the country in a major crackdown on a group that recruited police and intelligence agents to their cause. The two neo-Fascist leaders -- Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca -- who reportedly have close ties to both the P-2 Masonic lodge and a secret Cold War network known as Gladio, were arrested. Some 25 members of the regular state police, the Carabinieri, the Frontier police, and the Prison police were placed under official investigation. Tens of searches, including two houses in Genoa, were conducted by police in nine Italian regions: Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Molise, Sicily and Sardinia. The investigation may soon extend to members of the Italian intelligence service SISMI. In 2004, Saya and Sindoca established the Department of Strategic Anti-Terrorism Studies, which reportedly had links to both the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government in Israel.
Some Italian police were tricked into assisting the organization because they thought it was legitimate. Saya and Sindoca were leaders of the Testra Nazionale - Nuovo MSI (an off shoot of the neo-Fascist MSI party represented in the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi). The group is also unofficially known as the Fiamma Tricolore (Tri Color Flame). Police have shut down the web site of Testra Nazionale - Nuovo MSI. There is now a suspicion by prosecutors in Genoa and Milan that the neo-Fascist intelligence group may have been involved with American covert operators in the kidnaping of Imam Abu Omar (Moustapha Hassan Nasr) from a street in Milan in 2003. Omar, a political refugee in Italy, was spirited out of Italy to Egypt by a covert team of U.S. Defense Department Special Forces, mercenaries, and intelligence agents who are now the subject of international arrest warrants (see articles below). There is now mounting evidence that the U.S. team was working with the parallel Italian intelligence network.
Former Italian President Francisco Cossiga has quickly distanced the parallel intelligence network from official intelligence and police networks by claiming the two men arrested are just criminals and not tied to the Italian Gladio, which a number of intelligence experts believe Cossiga once headed. Cossiga also defended the secret U.S. intelligence operation in Italy that is presently under attack by Milan prosecutors. Cossiga said that by not telling the Italian government of the operation, the U.S. avoided having its secret plans spread throughout the Middle East. By mentioning both the Milan and Genoa cases, Cossiga may have unintentionally linked the two. The parallel intelligence network is reportedly the outgrowth of a Gladio network consisting of six divisions that operated in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East during the Cold War.
Italian sources report that the Milan case against the Americans and the Genoa case against the private Italian network may be linked in another way. The reported CIA station chief in Milan, Honduran-born Robert Seldon Lady (whose name may be an alias and whose CIA connections may be incorrect or overstated) was, prior to his assignment in Milan, in charge of a covert American unit in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua charged with penetrating anti-American groups and taking them over. It is now believed that Lady was in charge of a similar operation to turn Abu Omar and others into intelligence assets for the Americans. Abu Omar, according to Albanian intelligence sources, assisted the U.S. with intelligence on Islamic militants in Albania. It is also believed that the late Deputy SISMI chief Nicola Calipari became aware of information in Iraq that linked the control of terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere to a "third level" in "an anti-terrorism country." Calipari was shot to death by U.S. troops while transporting freed Italian hostage and journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad International Airport. The U.S. ruled the shooting an "accident." Abu Omar may have become a hot potato for the Americans after Calipari discovered links between the Americans and terrorist groups in Iraq and elsewhere -- and a decision was made to conduct a "rendition" of the imam to Egypt to get him out of circulation. Abu Omar, also said to have been a credible intelligence source, may have also become aware of U.S. connections to terrorist groups.
In an unexpected and possibly related move, the U.S. Defense Department announced that it was withdrawing a specal forces unit, mostly comprising Navy SEAL personnel, from the Rota Naval Station near Cadiz in southern Spain. The move came after the Pentagon announced it would move much of its Special Operations to southern Europe, particularly Spain, Italy, and Portugal and establish a new Special Operations command at Rota.
Some experts on Gladio and the "stay behind networks" have cited the similarity of the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings and a Gladio/P-2-connected train bombing in Bologna in August 1974 and the 1978 assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro (after he announced he would bring Communists into the government) and the recent assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri after his negotiations with the pro-Syria and pro-Iran Hezbollah. Hariri was reportedly threatened beforehand by White House National Security Council officials in the same way Henry Kissinger threatened Moro in 1974 while the Christian Democratic leader was Foreign Minister. The United States blamed the Italian Red Brigades for Moro's killing in the same manner it blamed Syria for Hariri's assassination. And in another link to the present day, Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) also threatened Moro in 1976 for negotiating with the Communists. This was at the same time both Richard Perle and another arch-neo, Frank Gaffney, worked on Jackson's Senate staff.
- Wayne Madsen
Report: Egyptian Imam Was a CIA Informant
see Secret warfare
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Flashback: Bush Thanks Italy for Iraq Help
NewsMax Wires Dec. 16, 2004 WASHINGTON - While much of Europe has little good to say about President Bush, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi praised him Wednesday for just the sort of talk that annoys some of Italy's neighbors.
"President Bush tells me and all of the others always what's in his mind," Berlusconi said following a one-hour Oval Office meeting with Bush. "And it is very positive that 'yes' means really 'yes' to him, and 'no' means 'no."'
Berlusconi spoke through a translator.
Berlusconi is one of Bush's most supportive friends in Europe, a rare continental ally willing to send significant numbers of troops to Iraq. Bush thanked the Italians for that, and for a similar commitment in postwar Afghanistan. He also praised Berlusconi as a friend and confidant.
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[snip]
"I want to reassure President Bush that we'll do any possible accord to strengthen the relationship between the United States of America and Europe," he said. "Because I agree with him, the West is only one."
Berlusconi has long said he was the victim of left-wing prosecutors. His coalition, formed in June 2001, has survived longer than any other government in Italy since World War II. - newsmax.com
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| In September 2003, Berlusconi said of Italian Judges:
"To do that job you need to be mentally disturbed, you need psychic disturbances. "
"If they do that job it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race."
- BBC
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Why would Berlusconi need IMMUNITY?
Italy's constitutional court has begun deciding whether Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's immunity from prosecution is legal.
December 9, 2003, 2003 -
A law passed by parliament earlier this year gave Mr Berlusconi immunity as long as he remains in office. Critics claimed it was a deliberate attempt to scupper a corruption trial. The trial in Milan relates to an alleged attempt to bribe judges during Mr Berlusconi's business dealings. The constitutional court's 15 judges must reach a decision on whether the law should be upheld by 23 January, although court sources said an announcement could come next week. Lawyers for Mr Berlusconi argued in court for the law to be retained.
Mr Berlusconi's chief lawyer, Gaetano Pecorella, said the court's ruling would have implications "beyond the Berlusconi case". If the law is revoked, the Milan trial is expected to resume. If the law stays, it will be too late to restart proceedings by the time Mr Berlusconi's time in office has elapsed. Milan prosecutors claim the law is "openly anti-constitutional" by changing the principle that all Italians are equal. As well as covering Italy's prime minister, the law also grants immunity to the president, speakers of both houses of parliament, and the president of the constitutional court. Mr Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, is believed to be worth more than 10 billion euros ($13 billion). He claims the Milan trial is politically motivated. Mr Berlusconi is accused of attempting to bribe judges to block the takeover of a firm by a business rival.
- globalpolicy.org
related:
Italian PM escapes conviction in bribery trial
MILAN: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi escaped conviction in a major corruption trial on Friday after a court invoked a statute of limitations that meant time had run out to sentence him for bribery. Berlusconi welcomed the verdict, which brought down the curtain on a trial that lasted almost five years, saying he had always expected to be cleared. "I was right to have been completely at peace about this because I was fully aware that I didn't do anything wrong," the billionaire media mogul said in a statement in Rome. The verdict, read to a packed court in Italy's financial capital, implied that the 68-year-old Berlusconi was guilty of one count of authorising a $434,404 bribe to a Rome judge in 1991 but could not be sentenced because of the time limit. The court then acquitted Berlusconi of a second charge of bribing the judiciary in the late 1980s to ensure victory in a contested takeover battle for a state owned food group. reuters
Dailytimes.com
Court strikes down Italian PM's immunity
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Italian PM accused of editing report on agent's death
Reports have surfaced that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi intervened to ensure that a report on the killing of an Italian intelligence agent in Baghdad by US troops would not damage relations with Washington.
An Italian report released on Monday blamed the killing of Nicola Calipari, while he was escorting a freed Italian hostage, on the "inexperience" of US troops acting under stress and without proper rules of engagement.
The much-awaited report differed significantly from the US account issued on Saturday, which exonerated the American troops who opened fire on Mr Calipari near Baghdad airport on March 4.
The Italian report said the US roadblock near the airport had not been properly signalled and that "the soldiers in the American patrol opened fire out of inexperience and because of the tension".
Newspapers have revealed that Mr Berlusconi had personally demanded changes to the report so that it was not too critical of the Americans and would not sour relations with them.
Rome daily Il Messaggero reported "The head of government asks for changes", while the opposition-supporting La Repubblica claimed "Berlusconi imposes prudence".
"The report must be technical, only technical," it quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying, without giving any source.
"It can even be tough, but it must not in any event prejudice to the slightest degree political understanding with the United States."
Mr Berlusconi is one of Washington's most faithful allies and Rome has maintained about 3,000 troops in southern Iraq since June 2003. Il Messaggero quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying, "the report must in no case be the starting point of a diplomatic conflict with the United States".
The paper said he "read, reread, corrected and tweaked" the report before handing it back to military intelligence.
That, according to the press, was why the report was published four hours later than originally announced.
Italian public opinion has been infuriated by the killing of Mr Calipari, regarded as a national hero who did nothing wrong, as he shepherded journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport after she had been freed from a month in captivity.
The two Italian representatives on a joint US-Italian inquiry into the shootings refused to sign off on the US account of the incident. - AFP
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Gladio type organisations are still in Operation
The CIA controlling 'terror groups' ?
July 6, 2005 -- Italian police and prosecutors investigating secret neo-Fascist Italian "parallel network" linked to Pentagon covert kidnaping team and Israel. Two arrests made, many others probable. Possible "control" links between Bush administration and terrorist groups also probed. Assassinated Deputy SISMI chief Nicola Calipari and kidnaped Imam Abu Omar (a U.S. intelligence asset) also likely aware of U.S. control links to terrorist groups.
On July 5, RAI News of Italy reported that U.S. and Israeli agents worked inside the Italian Red Brigades when Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnaped and murdered by the "leftist" terrorist group in 1978. Giovanni Galloni, former Vice Chairman of the Italian Christian Democratic Party, tells RAI that U.S. and Israeli agents working inside the Red Brigades were complicit in the abduction and assassination of Moro.
Updated information has just come from Italy on this explosive story:
Giovanni Galloni who was the Vice Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party and the Vice President of the Superior Council of the Italian Magistrates (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura - the highest body of the Italian magistrates) -- and a friend of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime Minister (rumored to be the next President of Italy) who kidnaped on March 16 1978 after having been threatened by the United States during the Nixon and Ford administrations to force him to abandon his policy of opening up to the Communist Party of Enrico Berlinguer and a more independent Italian foreign policy concerning the Middle East and other regions. Moro was killed after 55 days and his body abandoned in the middle of Rome in a position equidistant from the headquarters of the Communist Party and the Christian Democracy.
Asked about the US involvement in the kidnapping of Imam Abu Omar in Milan, Galloni made a statement that, by his own admission, was a new revelation. He, apparently shocked the interviewer. Galloni said that:
1) A few days before his kidnaping by, supposedly and officially, the Red Brigades, Moro told him that he was worried because he knew that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by both the US and the Israeli intelligence. However, neither were passing any intelligence to the Italians at that point. Moro could not understand why. Galloni also said that during the kidnaping those U.S. and Israeli intelligence did not provide any information concerning the place where Moro was kept (Moro was kept for 55 days before being killed) while when U.S. General Dozier was kidnaped, the prison was identified in 15 days.
2) Journalist Carmine "Mino" Pecorelli, who ran a newsletter - Osservatore Politico -OP -- considered closed to intelligence circles [in particular the head of SID Vito Miceli and the head of anti mafia Carlo Alberto Della Chiesa], wrote few days before the kidnaping that an unprecedented act of terrorism was going to take place in a few days. Someone had used him to leak the information. Pecorelli later was killed on March 20 1979, and Giulio Andreotti (who had earlier revealed earlier the existence of the Gladio network) was accused of having carried out the killing through the Mafia, with whom he was accused to have trong linksl.. Galloni said that, in fact, the elimination of Pecorelli was a "very scientific operation" and was carried because of what Pecorelli revealed before the kidnapping of Moro.
3) The Red Brigades who were arrested and tried in three trials for the crime of kidnaping Moro never revealed where Moro was held. Galloni who was the head of the Italian magistrates said that the three judges in the different Moro trials told him that the accused - even supposedly those who said they would confess to everything - were never convincing.
Final quote of the Galloni interview:
"The Red Brigades today tell us that they have said everything they knew . But this is not true. Probably they did not say something. What is this something?... They too wanted to cover up certain positions, certain realities; this is the question mark that pops up. And this is the question mark that pops up concerning our so-called devious intelligence agencies (Servizi Deviati). Because the Italian
"Servizi Deviati" are not devious, they are persons who, in good faith, thought that -- given the close alliance that we had with the United States - concerning some delicate issue -- they had to answer to their American colleagues of the CIA than to the Italian government…" - Wayne Madsen
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Up to 200 Italian police 'ran parallel anti-terror force'
By John Philips in Rome 05 July 2005
Up to 200 police officers and former intelligence operatives are being investigated by Italian magistrates on charges of organising an illegal "parallel" police force to combat terrorism. The shadowy group appears to have set itself up as a private security firm, offering protection to senior figures, and illicitly using official police resources. Its leaders have been accused of "usurping" public functions and illegal usie of classified data.
Judge Francesco Lalla, Genoa's chief prosecutor, said the self-styled "Department for Anti-terrorist Strategic Studies," (Dssa) maintained an arsenal of weaponry, stored by its accused commanders Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindaco, both with links with the Italian far right. The revelations have heightened many Italians' unease about the strategies of the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, against Islamist terrorism. Judicial sources said the Dssa recruited from police, paramilitary carabinieri, finance police and the armed services and presented itself to Italian institutions as well as potential recruits as an elite body specialising in fighting Islamic and Marxist terrorism.
Mr Saya, now under house arrest, had applied for €32m (£21.6m) in European Union finance and had allegedly sought contact with the Vatican to try to obtain a contract to protect of Pope Benedict against terrorist attack. Magistrates focused on the Dssa after it allegedly claimed to have a video of the murder in Iraq of the Italian hostage Fabrizio Quatrocchi and tried to sell the footage. Investigators are trying to determine what official support the organisation may have had.
The Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, has suspended dozens of police officers who joined the network. But Carlo Taormina, an MP from Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, insists Dssa was a bona fide security company with nothing to hide and "the high commands of the police and intelligence services were aware of its existence".
Il Messaggero quoted an investigator who said it was particularly disturbing that phone intercepts suggested Dssa members had been planning to kidnap Cesare Battisti, a Red Brigades activist living in exile in Paris. "We were seeing the genesis of something similar to the death squads in Argentina," the magistrate is reported to have said. The group was charged with making unauthorised use of interior ministry data bank information as well as equipping cars with sirens and flashing lights and the official "lollipop" sticks, used by Italian police to stop traffic or wave as they break traffic regulations.
Gilberto Di Benedetto, an associate of Mr Saya who acted as a middleman with the Vatican, said most members had joined the Dssa in good faith, despite its farcical aspect. "There were people who were hoping for power or to become private investigators, but there also were many police officers and sergeants who believed the Dssa would advance their careers," he said.
La Repubblica newspaper quoted Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent and head of the "Bin Laden unit" at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, until last November, as saying the head of Italy's military intelligence agency Sismi had authorised the CIA to abduct Abu Omar, a militant Islamic cleric who was flown from Milan to Egypt and reportedly tortured.
Mr Berlusconi's government denies knowledge of the affair, which became public after Milan magistrates issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents.
- belfast telegraph
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A screen capture from an Islamist Web site on the Internet, posted on Wednesday 6th July 2005, shows identification cards of Egypt's top envoy to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif. Iraq's al Qaeda group posted Web pictures of Ihab's identification cards showing his driving license, foreign ministry and health insurance cards as proof it had kidnapped the Arab diplomat. [Reuters via China Daily]
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| Linked? Are these hostage takers the CIA???
Kidnapped ambassador 'is Arab patriot'
4 July 2005 - EGYPT has appealed to the kidnappers of its ambassador in Iraq to treat him well and view him as an Arab patriot.
Foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Egypt was working with Iraqi officials to secure the release of Ihab al-Sherif.
He said Mr Sherif "is working for the benefit of the Iraqi and the Egyptian people". - scotsman
Egypt's top envoy to Iraq kidnapped
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No...It's that dastardly ZARQAWI!!!
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ZARQAWI THREATENS EGYPT ENVOY - Special Broadcasting Service, Australia
7.7.2005. - The group connected to al-Qaeda's alleged frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has threatened to kill Egypt's top envoy who was kidnapped five days ago in Baghdad.
A message posted on the Internet, which could not be verified, said: "the Islamic court of the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Land of Two Rivers has decided to refer the ambassador of the state of Egypt, an ally of the Jews and the Christians, to the mujahedeens so that they can execute him" -
sbs.com.au
Zarqawi: Everywhere and nowhere, Dahr Jamail
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ARE U.S. ROGUE PENTAGON AGENTS OPERATING ILLEGALLY AND WITH IMPUNITY ABROAD?
Task Force 121 Under FBI Investigation [excerpt]
Washington, DC -- Jun 26, 2005 [Wayne Madsen] -- There is increasing evidence that units of the Pentagon, operating under the authority of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, and Deputy Undersecretary of Intelligence Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, are operating outside U.S. domestic law and routinely violating international treaties and laws ratified by the United States. The covert Pentagon units, operating under an "above top secret" carve out program called Task Force 121(TF 121) (at last report), and drawing from special operations personnel in the Army's Delta Force, Green Berets, the Navy SEALS, British Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS), and various ex-U.S. and foreign intelligence and Special Operations (including British SAS, Israeli Sayaret Mat'kal, and South African Recce Commandos) personnel hired from shadowy private contractors, are now being linked to illegal kidnapings, posing as U.S. law enforcement agents (including FBI agents) and journalists, and assassinations of foreign political leaders.
TF 121 is also at the center of the scandals at the Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention centers. It has been accused of hiding Iraqi war prisoners at both centers under aliases, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and commiting acts of torture against internees. TF 121 is credited with the capture of Saddam Hussein and is said to be the lead element in the search for Osama bin Laden.
Wayne Madsen
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Italy Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
ROME - An Italian prosecutor asked an appeals court Wednesday to issue arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives, accusing them of helping plan the kidnapping of an Egyptian radical Muslim cleric in 2003.
An Italian court issued warrants for 13 purported CIA officials last month but turned down a request by prosecutor Armando Spataro to issue warrants for six Americans accused of helping prepare the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr.
The prosecutor's request, obtained by The Associated Press, said the six were involved in studying the area in Milan where the cleric was seized and his habits, as well as the best routes to the highway the kidnappers would use to bring the Egyptian to Aviano, a joint U.S.-Italian air base north of Venice.
Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was allegedly snatched on a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, flown from Aviano to Ramstein air base in Germany and then to Egypt, where he reportedly was tortured. The operation purportedly was part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible ill treatment.
Spataro said he expected the three-judge panel to rule on his request in the next few days.
The CIA has declined any comment on the case, which has strained relations between the two allied nations, already tested by the shooting death of an Italian agent by U.S. troops in Baghdad, Iraq, in March.
In its appeal, the prosecution said "there were no doubts" that the six were part "of a single group of Americans who came to Milan to carry out the operation."
The prosecution repeated its contention that the abduction was a grave violation of Italian sovereignty and that it damaged an Italian anti-terrorism operation.
Nasr was believed to have fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and prosecutors were seeking evidence against him before his disappearance, according to Italian news reports last year, which cited intelligence officials.
None of the suspects is believed to be in Italy. After the initial arrest warrants, prosecutors said they would seek extradition.
yahoo.com
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Notice the time of this report: 4th July 2005 3 days before the London Bombing
Italy denies approving Muslim cleric's abduction
By Phil Stewart | July 4, 2005 ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Monday rejected allegations that it had authorized the 2003 kidnapping in Milan of a Muslim terrorism suspect, who prosecutors believe was whisked to Egypt and tortured.
Michael Scheuer, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst, was quoted in the Rome daily La Repubblica as saying the head of Italy's SISMI military secret service authorized the abduction of cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr.
Italian prosecutors believe Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was abducted on Feb. 17, 2003 and flown to Egypt. They said evidence showed he was tortured by Egyptian authorities during questioning there.
The La Repubblica report said the alleged CIA operation was part of the U.S. policy of transferring terror suspects to foreign countries for interrogation, a process Washington calls rendition.
"Neither the government, nor diplomatic corps, nor the director of the SISMI, nor the information and security apparatus ever received any sort of advisement from United States authorities," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office said in a toughly-worded statement.
"There was no contact, no conversation, no sharing of information regarding the Milan episode, for which reason no authorization was ever requested or given," it said, referring to the La Repubblica story.
CONVERSATION WITH AMBASSADOR
The newspaper quoted Scheuer, who helped set up the rendition program during the administration of former President Bill Clinton, as saying in an interview that the head of SISMI knew about the abduction.
Asked where the authorization came from, Scheuer said: "From SISMI, from the head of SISMI." He added that SISMI's counterespionage unit also knew.
But Berlusconi's office said: "Those affirmations, beyond being false, are also absolutely incompatible with the contents of the conversation between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and U.S. ambassador to Rome Mel Sembler."
A Milan judge last month issued arrest warrants for 13 people for the kidnapping of Nasr. Judicial sources said all 13 were linked to the CIA.
Berlusconi later summoned Sembler about the case and told him that the United States must respect Italian sovereignty. Sembler told Berlusconi that U.S. policy was always to do so, the U.S. embassy said.
The government also sent a minister to parliament to deny any state role in the kidnapping.
Scheuer, who was chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center's unit that focused on al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, resigned from the agency last November after writing a book criticizing the U.S. war on terror.
La Repubblica said he knew the CIA station chief in Rome at the time of the kidnapping.
"Nobody would ever think about moving in London without informing the MI6 or in Paris without telling the DGSE (foreign intelligence service). Rome is no exception," Scheuer was quoted as saying.
homelandsecurity.osu.edu
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| DIPLOMATS AMBUSHED IN IRAQ
Two foreign diplomats, from Pakistan and Bahrain, have narrowly escaped separate assassination attempts in Iraq, as insurgents appeared to be targeting Muslim envoys in a new tactic.
The Bahraini charge d'affaires in Iraq was injured by gunfire when his vehicle was ambushed near his residence in the central Mansur district, shortly after the Pakistani ambassador narrowly escaped a similar attack in the same area.
SBS
related: BAHRAIN ENVOY SHOT IN IRAQ
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Envoy Murdered:
July 08, 2005 - Sharif, 51, was the first foreign head of mission kidnapped and murdered since Iraq's hostage crisis began. He was abducted last weekend while walking in a Baghdad street.
The Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers, the group of Al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claiming the murder. - Source
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July 8 - The grim news broke Thursday, just hours after multiple explosions rocked London.
"The insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" -
posting a picture of Egypt's blindfolded ambassador-designate to Iraq on a militant Islamic Web site-announced that it had executed the kidnapped envoy. Ihab al-Sherif had been abducted in a brazen assault in Baghdad last Saturday, pistol-whipped by gunmen who shouted that he was "an American spy," stuffed him into the trunk of a car and sped off. - msnbc.msn.com
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| US says case closed in shooting of Italian agent
ROME, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Italian magistrates have placed a U.S. marine under official investigation for murder over the killing of an Italian agent in Iraq earlier this year, judicial sources said on Thursday.
But the United States immediately said it considered the issue closed after a joint Italian-U.S. investigation, even though the two governments disagreed on the conclusion of that probe.
Intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was shot dead at an improvised U.S. checkpoint on a road near Baghdad in March as he was accompanying an Italian hostage to safety.
Italy and the United States held a joint inquiry into the incident, but they failed to agree joint conclusions and instead issued conflicting reports.
While the U.S. military exonerated its troops of any blame, Rome said nervous, inexperienced American soldiers and a badly executed road block were at the root of the shooting.
In the meantime, Italy's independent judiciary have pushed ahead with their own probe and have carried out forensic tests on the car Calipari was traveling in when he came under fire.
Placing someone under official investigation for an alleged crime does not imply guilt and does not mean the person will necessarily be charged.
"Mr. Calipari was a brave servant of the Italian people and his death is indeed a tragedy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "But as for the investigation into the facts surrounding the matter, it's closed, as far as we're concerned." (Additional reporting by Saul Hudson in Washington)
- alertnet.org
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