A CIA OFFICER INDICTED BY THE ITALIANS FOR RENDITIONS.
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From: DasGOAT@...Date: December 14, 2006 11:25:58 PM PSTRecent revelations, mostly from the European press:
"Scaramella worked with Bob Lady***, the Milan CIA agent wanted [in Italy] for the Abu Omar kidnapping
. A second CIA agent who collaborated with Scaramella was not named ... "Not only is he wanted for kidnapping and other crimes in Italy, Lady is linked to the Niger uranium forgery (justifying the Iraq war), as well as
Iran-Contra operations -- to both through the same man: Iranian double agent (for Israel) Manuchar Ghorbanifar."
"Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to
Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence ... and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel ... Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel ... Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special Plans. "Ledeen was 'consulting' for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq.
"According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December 2003, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background.
"The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief nor the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler.
"Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor. "Hadley authorized it and he could not have done so without reporting it to his direct superior," said Ledeen.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Backchannels_used_to_bypass_U.S._government_0111.html
"In San Marino, Scaramella seems to have deliberately sabotaged an official investigation into an arms trafficking network pointing toward Zurich. By publicly attacking the investigators as 'KGB' agents with ulterior motives, Scaramella
himself> succeeded in derailing public support." . . . . . . .
Fox lies (no shit) - the Litvinenko-Sacramella saga
by Jerome a Paris
Tue Dec 05, 2006 at 02:18:55 PM PST
Meanwhile, the man Alexander Litvinenko accused of his murder on his deathbed, Mario Scaramella, is now the subject of various revelations in the Italian press.
Several serious papers like La Stampa, Corriere della Sera and La Reppublica are now writing (as linked to and explained in English by de Gondi
over at the European Tribune) that Scaramella was under investigation by Italian magistrates for arms trafficking, and used Litvinenko in destabilisation attempts against Romano Prodi, the center left current Prime Minister, who beat Bush-stooge Berlusconi in a very close election last spring. Count on Fox News to use this story as an opportunity to spew the worst slanders against Prodi (and Russia). As Putin's spokesman has noted, the murder of Anna Politovskaya was just before the G8 summit, and the murder of Litvinenko was just before the EU-Russia summit. With 4 British Airways now grounded after traces of Polonium were found in them and elsewhere, and former Russian Prime Minister Gaydar mysteriously poisoned yesterday, there are a number of strange things happening to people that are or have been critical of Putin, but it's hard to know who to blame - and yet that has not prevented pundits all around from blaming Putin for all of it, with little justification.
And it is now revealed that Scaramella is linked to Berlusconi (via Senator Guzzanti) and to Bob Lady, the Milan CIA agent wanted for the Abu Omar kidnapping. So the people involved in the rendition flights and the shady destabilization attempts to maintain Bush ally Berlusconi in power are also deeply involved in what increasingly appears to be a campaign to paint Putin as an evil dictator.
The connections are troubling, to say the least.
------------------
La Stampa and Corriere della Sera have finally gotten around to seriously covering Scaramella- a job done only by la Repubblica the past ten days.Both papers reveal that Scaramella has been under investigation since January at the least. Transcripts of legally obtained taps have been leaked to both papers.
The excerpts indicate a conscious scheme on Scaramella's part to beef up false evidence against Romano Prodi, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio (head of the Greens and now Minister of the Environment) and Antonio Bassolini, president of the Campania Region. In a conversation with Senator Paolo Guzzanti, Scaramella volunteers unsubstantiated charges against Pecoraro Scanio immediately after a violent diatribe in TV between Guzzanti and Pecoraro Scanio. Scaramella accused Bassolino and Pecoraro Scanio of being linked to the Camorra and the KGB.
Scaramella used Litvinenko as a source [to prove] that Prodi was a KGB informant. Litvinenko had always denied being Scaramella's source and further accused Scaramella of having tricked him into signing false revelations.
It has also been revealed that one of Scaramella's consultants was Bob Lady, the Milan CIA agent wanted for the Abu Omar kidnapping. A second CIA agent who collaborated with Scaramella is not named.
Other revelations have Scaramella allegedly sabotaging the San Marino investigation into a possible international arms trade involving Switzerland. By publicizing that investigation as a Russian "KGB" operation, Scaramella blew the investigation apart.
There are wire taps on Ukranian and Russian spies or criminals, such as Alexander Talik, that indicate bewilderment on their part over Scaramella's actions.
In a conversation with his wife, Scaramella tells her that the Teramo scam reported yesterday (in which hapless Ukranians were arrested for transporting Russian grenades to a Neapolitan address) had nothing to do with Guzzanti. The Berlusconi press campaign had trumpeted the story as an attempt to kill Guzzanti and Scaramella. Both received police escorts after that campaign.
A conversation in mid- February 2006, between Guzzanti and Scaramella shows that Scaramella knew he was being tapped. Investigators are presently seeking to discover who was Scaramella's informant within the Interior Ministry. Neither article points to the unprecedented Telecom wiretapping scandal that involves Tavaroli, Mancini and Cipriani.
Although Berlusconi is never named it is apparent from the conversations that Guzzanti met and discussed Scaramella's hokum with him and received encouragement to immediately publicize the false accusations against Prodi.
Public Ministers have asked parliament for authorization to use the taped conversations. By law any conversation with a member of parliament or in which the name of an MP is mentioned (a Berlusconi law) must have authorization by the parliament to be used in an eventual trial. Criminal elements need only drop the name of an MP to complicate any investigation.
By publishing these leaks, both the Corriere and the Stampa have once again joined in the battle against parliamentary attempts to limit press freedom.
by de Gondi (publiobestia@...) on Thu Nov 30th, 2006 at 06:37:24 AM EDT
Well, well, well. Our ineffable Mario Scaramella, super professor throughout the world allegedly arranged those grave Ruskie mafia menaces against Senator Guzzanti and himself. Seems he had some Ukranians accomplices plant Russian grenades in a truck and had them discovered in Teramo.
It's nice to see the Ukranians turn up again. There used to be a curious site of Italian-Ukranian friendship that was in the habit of putting up strange articles that went straight to Berlusconi's charlatan Telekom Serbia Commission. Coincidently Francesco Pazienza had blackmailed a petty Contra thug, Pio Maria Deiana, into putting that false dossier together.
Seems the Mitrokhin Commission and the Telekom Serbia Commission have a lot more in common than just San Marino and Italo Bocchino's Finbroker.
As for the shoot-out on Vesuvius some years ago that involved Scaramella, the judges concluded that Scaramella's penitentiary cops literally attacked the camorrista without provocation.
All we need to find out now, is who is behind Scaramella's damned American front, The Enviromental Crime Protection Program. Who knows if the Anglo-American press will get off their asses and stop referring to Scaramella as an academic?
by de Gondi (publiobestia@...) on Wed Nov 29th, 2006 at 02:23:50 AM EDT
----------------
Litvinenko meets Gladio
Sushi bar man is nuclear waste expert
Mysterious past of last man to meet dead RussianGLEN OWEN and NICK PISA
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=418642&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=NEWS&ct=5
Sunday, November 26, 2006The last person to meet Alexander Litvinenko before he succumbed to the agonising effects of radioactive poisoning is a self-professed expert in nuclear materials.
International 'security consultant' Mario Scaramella, who joined Litvinenko for the now infamous clandestine meeting in a London sushi bar, headed an organisation which tracked dumped nuclear waste, including Soviet nuclear missiles left over from the Cold War.
Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent who became a trenchant critic of President Putin's Russia, fell ill after the sushi lunch - as exclusively revealed by The Mail on Sunday last week - and died 22 days later from poisoning by Polonium, a radioactive substance derived from uranium.
Yesterday other customers of the sushi restaurant answered an appeal by health agencies for them to undergo medical checks. Some 200 worried members of the public came forward, also including customers of a Mayfair bar where Litvinenko held another meeting on the day he was poisoned.
Sources revealed last night that renegade Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky had also been checked for radiation. His car, in which he ferried the stricken Litvinenko to hospital, was also tested. It was further disclosed that the tycoon has been interviewed twice by police investigating Litvinenko's death, but not as a suspect.
Prof Scaramella has strongly denied any involvement in the murder and Litvinenko's family, who blame President Putin, say they do not question his loyalty. Having given an interview to The Mail on Sunday earlier in the week, Prof Scaramella yesterday said he was unwilling to say any more because he was 'co-operating with the authorities'. Earlier, he had acknowledged that 'something very strange is going on'.
Our investigations have established that:
• He has a deep knowledge of nuclear materials and their whereabouts around the globe.
• Although he describes himself as an environmentalist, he has detailed knowledge of the activities of Russian agents.
• Some of the institutions listed on his impressive CV appear to have no record of him, prompting questions about a career involving a large number of posts around the globe.
Prof Scaramella agreed to meet us in his home city of Naples to respond to allegations circulating on the internet that he was an intelligence agent in the pay of several secret services. Arriving in the lobby of a hotel flanked by two bodyguards, he produced a professional-looking dossier detailing his career.
As the meeting progressed, Prof Scaramella denied he had links to any secret services and became irritated. "You are sounding like the police,' he said. "Do not use this information against me."
Prof Scaramella's knowledge of atomic materials is clear, however. The Mail on Sunday has discovered that in June last year Italian police launched an investigation into an alleged plot to smuggle uranium into the country after being tipped off by Prof Scaramella.
He told officers that the uranium was hidden in a suitcase and had originated from an undisclosed country in the former Soviet Union. Within just 24 hours, police in Rimini made four arrests.
At the time all Prof Scaramella would say was: "I was investigating the activities of former KGB activities in San Marino <\[>a tiny independent republic near Rimini]
"I was also looking into the trafficking of arms from the former Soviet Union and possible links with Italian terrorist groups. During this I was passed a document that said there were former KGB men in San Marino looking at selling nuclear military material.
"I told the police that 10kg of uranium was hidden in a suitcase and on its way to Italy on June 2; and on June 2 the arrests were made and the uranium found. It was enriched uranium 90 per cent capable of making a small atomic bomb. Also an electronic target device was seized."
The uranium plot came a year after Prof Scaramella announced that he had information that 20 nuclear warheads had been lost by a Soviet submarine in the Bay of Naples.
Prof Scaramella told the Mitrokhin Commission, which investigated KGB activities in Italy, that he had been passed the information from Russian intelligence sources.
Scaramella told The Mail on Sunday that his career began in his hometown of Naples, where he qualified as a solicitor in 1995. He set up his own company, and started specialising in environmental law.
In 1996, Prof Scaramella, who is unmarried with two children, says he started work as a professor of environmental law at Externado University in Bogota, Colombia, before moving the following year to the University of Nuestra Senora del Rosario, also in Bogota. At the same time, between 1996 and 2000, he also held a post specialising in environmental crime at the University of Naples.
Between 2000 and 2002, Prof Scaramella was secretary general of a little-known organisation named the Environmental Crime Prevention Programme. The ECPP describes itself as an organisation which 'provides environmental protection and security through technology on a global basis'.
It has offices at the Fucino Space Centre in Italy to deploy 'aerial surveillance to detect environmental crimes in Eastern and Southern Europe'.
On its website, the ECPP described itself as a 'permanent intergovernmental conference' with a secretariat in Naples and rotating presidencies held by countries such as Angola and Samoa.
None of the contact details listed for the organisation on its website work. When Prof Scaramella was asked where the group's head office was he said there wasn't one - you had to contact the general secretary, who currently was a Professor Papadopoulos from California's San Jose university.
A Dr Perikles Papadopoulos - listed as an assistant secretary general of the organisation - could not be reached. And last night, neither the campaign group Greenpeace, nor the Environment Investigation Agency, which campaigns against environmental destruction, could recall working with the organisation.
In 2003 he made the jump from environmental expert to KGB specialist when he was appointed as a consultant to the Mitrokhin commission. It was that work which put him into contact with Litvinenko and led to the sushi lunch, which he says he arranged to discuss a 'death list' which named both him and Litvinenko
Prof Scaramella explained that Professor Papadopoulos was key to his appointment on to the Italian parliamentary commission, facilitating a meeting in London with Italian legal officials setting up the inquiry.
Italy was a nest of CIA and KGB agents during the Cold War: Washington regarded the socialist-leaning country as the West European country most susceptible to influence from Moscow.
Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist for Russia's foreign intelligence service. His records of the period have led to inquiries across the globe, including the UK. One of the conclusions of the Italian inquiry was that the former Soviet Union was behind the assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Prof Scaramella explained that he had been approached by the commission because his career had given him a passing connection to Russia. "My work involved a lot of Soviet issues - the dumping of radioactive waste, which can be detected from space, and the loss of nuclear devices,' he said.
"I said to them, "I am not an expert on security services, only nuclear waste." But the commission said they wanted people from outside to investigate. So in 2003 I looked at the operations of the KGB and Eastern bloc countries on Italian soil, including the funding of Italian journalists by the KGB."
In 2004, Prof Scaramella also led an investigation on the illegal dumping of waste by the mafia in an Italian lake. Despite being only a civilian environmental consultant, he led two armed police agents to a villa where the suspects lived. They were greeted by a hail of bullets. One mafioso was arrested, and an arms cache seized.
Scaramella also told us that he also found time in 1999 to become a visiting scientist at Stanford University in California, and was made director of a university Nato programme which involved visiting Lithuania.
In 2002, at the same time as he says he was completing his duties for the ECPP, he also started a school of national security in Colombia to train local police. The same year, he says he was also based for four months at Greenwich University in London, again working on environmental law.
It is hard to corroborate details of Scaramella's career.
A spokesman at the University of Naples said last night: "There is no record of a Professor Mario Scaramella working here. He may well have been hired internally as an independent working within one of the faculties but our system has no record of him."
And Dr Maria Scaramella, a namesake at the university, said: "I used to get all this post for him but I could never actually find him. He was supposed to have an office on the third floor but I was never able to find it. He was supposed to have some sort of European funding for research but I never knew exactly what."
A spokesman for Greenwich University also said they had no record of him on its books.
None of the American or Colombian universities responded to messages asking whether Prof Scaramella had worked for them.
Internet discussion forums have buzzed with theories about Prof Scaramella this week - the most damaging claiming that he is a secret service operative with split loyalties who uses a range of political and business interests as a front for his activities. But he insisted: "I have never been to any security service headquarters or met any acting officers."
Prof Scaramella says he struck up an association with Litvinenko during his work for the Mitrokhin Commission, and they had met several times before in the Itsu restaurant to discuss intelligence matters.
He claimed that tip-off from Litvinenko had helped to foil a bizarre assassination attempt last year on Paolo Guzzanti, an Italian senator who headed the Mitrokhin inquiry. It led to the arrest of six Ukrainians who were said to have been trying to smuggle grenades into the country hidden inside hollowed-out Bibles.
"He was my friend - that is why he gave me this,' he said, brandishing a picture of Litvinenko training as a young KGB officer.
Even Prof Scaramella's father, Amedeo, was perplexed about his son's career. "I think it's best you talk to Mario,' he said. "I don't really want to say anything. He divides his time between Naples and Rome and he also spends a lot of time overseas. I don't ask too many questions."
Prof Scaramella said: "I am not willing to say anything else. I am co-operating with the authorities. If you want any information ask Scotland Yard."----------------
Litvinenko 'smuggled nuclear material'Belfast Telegraph (UK), December 06, 2006Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.
Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.
Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko's death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.
Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on 1 November to discuss a death threat aimed at both of them, was a potential witness. He was being interviewed at a "secure location" in London but was not in custody.
The Health Protection Agency said that eight people had been referred to a clinic in London for tests for exposure to polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed Mr Litvinenko. It declined to say whether Mr Scaramella was among them.
A post-mortem examination will be carried out on Mr Litvinenko on Friday.
In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.
The operation would have been one of the last carried out by Mr Litvinenko while still an FSB officer, in a unit tackling organised crime and smuggling. He fled Russia for London that year after the FSB began investigating him for corruption - charges which he claimed were invented as revenge for his decision to expose an FSB plot to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Friends of Mr Litvinenko, a critic of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said last night that they were unaware of his involvement with any smuggling for the FSB. Alex Goldfarb, an ally of Mr Berezovsky, said: "He did not mention anything about nuclear material while serving with the FSB."
Mr Litvinenko died on Thursday last week after publicly accused Mr Putin of ordering his poisoning.
Mr Scaramella, an academic and examining magistrate based in Rome and Naples, had been due to meet Mr Litvinenko on 10 November in London, but brought the meeting forward at short notice on 1 November. The Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly, where traces of polonium-210 have been found, is thought to be the first location visited by Mr Litvinenko on 1 November.
Later he met two Russian business associates at a Mayfair hotel and visited the nearby offices of Mr Berezovsky and a security firm, where polonium traces have also been found. Last night police confirmed that they were searching the five-star Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair as well as an office building in the West End.
Mr Scaramella has denied any involvement in his friend's death and derided suggestions that he was himself a Russian agent.He claims that he has long been involved in investigating the smuggling of radioactive material by the KGB and its successors. He claimed last year that Soviet destroyers had laid 20 nuclear torpedoes in the Bay of Naples in 1970, where they remain.
Mr Berezovsky, the exiled Russian billionaire visited almost daily by Mr Litvinenko, said: "I am deeply saddened at the loss of my friend. I credit him with saving my life and he remained a close friend and ally."
Russian authorities again denied involvement in the case, while Tony Blair vowed that there would be no "diplomatic or political barrier" to the inquiry.
Some observations here:
Now that the possibility of nuclear smuggling is gaining credibility, some people seem very intent on still blaming the Russian secret service.
If Litvinenko smuggled nuclear material for the FSB and was contaminated at that time, he would have died long ago.
Scaramella's assertion that he met Litvinenko to discuss a death threat to them both is nonsense. You don't go to a public place to discuss this kind of thing.
If Mr Litvinenko was investigated in Russia for corruption it is highly probably that was because Litvinenko was involved in illegal nuclear trafficking. It is impossible that a true anti-Putinist like Litvinenko (and Berezovky) would continue to work for the FSB.
Litvinenko's contamination must have been very recent. And his dubious contacts (Berezovsky) and other contacts (Scaramella) all seem to be involved in 'nuclear material'.
Let's be honest, people like Litvinenko and Berezovky are not journalists or businessmen, they are crooks and very dangerous ones at that.
Now that it becomes clear Litvinenko was a nuclear smuggler they try to put the blame on the FSB again. But these people had to flee Russia because they were involved in shady business deals. Apparently, once in the West they were allowed to continue their illegal trafficking, which was most successful under the cloak of their anti-Russian activities, and Britain let it happen.
Instead of blaming the FSB, Europe would do better to cooperate with the Russians to eradicate the illegal nuclear trafficking that is still taking place. It is certain Litvinenko and Berezovsky, involved in illegal nuclear trafficking, are not Russian FSB agents. As an ex-Russian, how else does one make a fortune ?==========
***ROBERT SELDON LADY
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321321.html
Robert S. Lady retired from the CIA about September 2004 and left Italy in January 2005, after being tipped off that the Italians wanted to collar him. The mainstream media say that his whereabouts is unknown (though they say the Italian police intercepted two phone calls he made on the lam in Honduras). If I have learned where he is spending most of his time in Honduras, near the capital city of Tegucigalpa, then I assume that the Italians have precisely located him. One problem is getting the proper authorities in Italy to begin extradition proceedings. If this happens, the problem will be to get Honduras or the US to arrest him and turn him over. Then there will be big problems for Italian-American relations -- and for the Bush administration as it covers up the detritus of how we came to waste American lives in Iraq, detritus that includes Plamegate, Nigergate, Rovegate, and Larry Franklin-Israeli spying.
Bob Lady is not only wanted for kidnapping and other crimes in Italy, he has connections to the Niger uranium con (made in Italy for war against Irag), and the old (1980s) Iran-Contra-Nicaragua affair. Lady's link to both the Niger-Italy con and Iran-Contra are through the same person: the Iranian spy who really works for Israel, Manuchar Ghorbanifar.
EXTRADITING ROBERT SELDON LADY
Gettng Honduras to extradite Lady might not be easy. He and his father have a long history in Honduras and Central America as explained later.
The US wants the matter dropped for many reasons. For one, the US has used Honduras, its closest Central American ally, as a base for puppet-nation-building in Latin America for over 25 years and doesn't want its Central American machinations exposed. (The Reagan administration aided Contras, or "Againsts," in Nicaraqua and "Fors" in states with repressive right-wing regimes like Guatemala and El Salvador.) Also, if pressured, Lady might squeal what he knows about Nigergate, the use of forged documents, obtained through Italy and France, to drive the US to war. For foreign governments to meddle in US foreign policy is considered "a horse of a different color."
ROBERT LADY OF HONDURAS -- NOT AN HISPANIC
In Honduras, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, Lady's father, and American from Florida, became a well known mining engineer and gold miner, an environmentalist, a farmer, a self-taught arborist, a sailor, and an expert ham radio operator. Bill Lady was a brilliant multitalented man. By all accounts and appearances, he was kind, generous, and gentlemanly. His son Robert is reported to have inherited his amiable disposition if not his good works. Mr. Lady apparently raised three sons and a daughter in Honduras and also maintained a home in Florida. Robert is the second oldest of his children.
Lady was raised like an American in Central America, although his mother Maria apparently was Hispanic. He looks somewhat Hispanic. (SEE LADY'S PHOTO.)
Robert Seldon Lady was born in 1954 in Honduras' capital city, Tegucigalpa (he is 51). Photos of him show his Hispanic ancestry. He apparently lived in Honduras until the 1970s, when he joined the NYPD and engaged in entrapment of "leftist" groups for them. He became a CIA agent in the 1980s. In the period 1981 to 1985 the US ramped up military and intelligence activities in Honduras, when Lady would have been in his late twenties.
Beginning in 1980, Iran-Contra (see any history book) was a scandal in which Republican Party operatives used the CIA to secretly sell missiles, etc., to Iran in exchange for a "timed release" of US hostages, timed to show up then-President Carter. Proceeds from the arms sales went to the rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua. This trade supposedly ended in 1986 when a Lebanese magazine -- not the mainstream media -- exposed it. According to some reports (also outside the mainstream), the CIA also imported cocaine to North America, through Central America, and used the cash to buy arms for Iran and the Contras. US clandestine operations -- designed to evade express orders from the people's representatives, the Congress -- have continued to link Central America and the Middle East through the agency of the CIA, foreign spies like Ghorbanifar, and Bob Lady.
Regarding Honduras, around 1990 both the US Army and Nicaraguan Contras worked out of the same base at Ojo de Agua, about 33 miles north-northwest of Tegus, the capital. Robert Lady's father said he owned a farm 60 miles east of Tegucigalpa, which would have located it very near the border of Nicaragua with its Contras. He also owned a house about 15 miles east of Tegucigalpa.
Robert Lady's father -- with his wide contacts in Honduras, farm land on which "you could grow anything," knowledge of the Honduras terrain, unusual familiarity with the Tegucigalpa airport hangars, and globe-spanning shortwave radios -- would have made the ideal CIA operative. He could have been the Mr. Big of Central America. There is no evidence that he was, and when he died in 2004, he apparently was not rich. (SEE PHOTO OF LADY'S FATHER.)
His son, Robert Seldon Lady, is another matter and may well have taken advantage of his father's Honduran assets and aptitudes to conduct CIA capers. Bob Lady conducted operations in Central America, off and on, during and after Iran-Contra, until he was tranfered to Milan, Italy, about the start of 2001. Some claim that CIA snitch Aldrich Ames -- arrested for spying for Russia -- "burned" (outed and ruined) agents in Latin America. However, Robert Lady was attached to the US embassy in Panama until the CIA transferred him to Milan around the beginning of 2001. His son graduated from high school in Panama in 2000. For a few years up to his departure for Milan, Robert Lady apparently had dual residencies, as he also owned a house in Abita Springs, LA (near New Orleans).
BOB LADY TO MILAN, ITALY, EMBASSY -- UNDER COVER
So, a couple of years before the now infamous grab of the Egyptian cleric Abu Omar (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr) in Milan, the CIA transferred Lady to Milan as Chief of Station and got him a second job, a cover job in the State Department consulate: Political/Military Officer. Lady was the only one to hold this job title in the entire worldwide foreign service. He started near the beginning of 2001.
US CIA HAS NO ARREST POWERS IN US, BUT GRABS MAN IN ITALY --
VIOLATION OF ITALY'S SOVEREIGNTY AND INTERNATIONAL "INCIDENT"
BTK: Bind, Torture, and Kill (a la Dennis Rader)
The Italian press calls the Lady matter "Imam Rapito," for "kidnapped cleric." I call it the BTK Grab, after the Kansas serial killer Dennis Rader, who bound, tortured, and killed his victims and dubbed himself BTK. Abu Omar was a Muslim cleric in Milan, Italy. His age has been reported as 42 at the time of the kidnapping. He had fled his native Egypt in the 1980s after a 1-year imprisonment for membership in the antigovenment organization Jamaat. He has two wives and two young children by his first wife. He was separated from his first wife and his children, who are in Albania, by political matters. At the time of the CIA snatch, he was the deputy imam at the Milan's Islamic center, reputedly the most militant Muslim outpost in Italy.
BTK: BIND-TORTURE-KILL
BIND
In late 2002, Robert Seldon Lady's CIA gang used their credit cards and US government discounts to begin a long stay at luxury hotels in Milan. After about 3 months of planning the grab of Abu Omar to deliver him to his native Egypt for questioning, and with little effort to hide their identities, the gang of 19 swung into action. Six of the gang tailed the militant cleric for about a week. Then they pulled back and another band of 13 swung into action to make the grab. (Separate surveillance and contact crews are typical of investigations targeting persons.) The six scouts waited nearby as a backup.
On February 17, 2003, as Abu Omar was walking to his mosque, two bushwhackers posing as Italian police officers stopped him and pepper-sprayed him to disable him. They and others forced the 42-year-old cleric and father of two into a white van. Abu Omar has since been charged by the same prosecutors who charged the CIA agents, but he was not under any charges anywhere at the time of the grab. (Italy recently has charged him with terrorist activities, mainly to extradite him and hopefully save his life.) As Abu Omar called loudly for help, a woman passerby heard his cries. This was something the gang had not anticipated.
It should be noted that the CIA has no police powers in the United States, let alone Italy. This affair is an affront not only to Italian sovereignty but to US justice. There is no reason for the US to protect persons who would do such things, who, after all, are common criminals. Kidnapping and torture are of course illegal under US laws. Abu Omar was under no charges andywhere at the time, was not arrested by the Italian police, but was kidnapped by the CIA.
The eyewitness told relatives and friends of Abu Omar about the grab, and one of them called the police. The police began a missing-persons investigation, but it apparently stalled out with no further evidence. The police maintained a wiretap on the immam's residence.
LT. COL. JOE ROMANO AND "MATS" -- THE AIR FORCE'S MILITARY AIR TORTURE SERVICE
The getaway van transported Abu Omar to a US Air Force base, Aviano, 125 miles east of Milan. Italian court documents show that a USAF security officer, Lt. Colonel Joseph L. Romano III, allegedly provided security clearance at the Aviano Air Base. He is presently under investigation for his possible role in the kidnapping. The Italian prosecutors -- led by Milan's main prosecutor, Armando Spataro, famed for prosecuting the Mafia -- say they want to question him and might consider seeking his arrest. Romano was in charge of security at the air base as commander of the 31st Security Police Squadron. Romano may have helped to get agents and Abu Omar off on his "rendition" (torture) trip. The kidnappers called Romano three times during the trip to Aviano, apparently to report their progress. Romano worked at the time under Brigadier General R. Michael Worden, the commander of the 31st Fighter Wing, who should have known about the rendition plans and who needs to be questioned.
TORTURE
From Aviano, a chartered Learjet took Abu Omar to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, also the destination of tens of thousands of US military casualties from Iraq. (The plane is owned by former catheter manufacturer and Boston Red Sox part-owner Phillip H. Morse of Jupiter, FL.) From there, a Gulfstream with the US FAA registration N85VM (now N227SV, for you plane spotters) then took Abu Omar to Egypt, where he hadn't been since the 1990s, for "intensive" interrogation. The use of torture is against the US Constitution, which all US officials are sworn to uphold. The US has condemned the torture of Egyptian dissidents by their government. Meanwhile, the CIA has made repeated use of Egypt as a place of interrogation for persons who have broken no laws in Egypt. Perhaps it's the cost of living there?
Kidnapper Lady apparently was Abu Omar's tour guide in Egypt, as he accompanied the immam there. Guido Olimpio of the paper Corriere della Sera has reported extensively on the Imam Rapito caper. He reported another Milan-based imam as telling Italian authorities that Omar had been tortured in Egypt after refusing to work in Italy as an informer. According to the testimony, Omar was hung upside down, kept naked, and subjected to freezing temperatures, electric shock, and loud noise that damaged his hearing. Italian officials, however, deny any foreknowledge or involvement in the whole caper.
Robert Lady reportedly stayed on in Egypt for 2 weeks, apparently watching as his Egyptian muscle hung, froze, zapped, and blasted Abu Omar. In his report, Judge Chiara Nobili says cell phone records show Lady was in Egypt from Feb. 22-March 15. The report says that those were likely the first days Nasr was being tortured during interrogations.
KILL?
The kidnap victim was released from prison in Egypt on April 20, 2004. This is known from his telephone calls to his second wife, in Italy, and to other associates, including fellow imam Mohammed Reda. In these calls he gave some details of the snatch and torture.
Abu Omar was soon re-arrested by Egyptian authorities, on May 9, 2004 -- possibly because his phone calls during his release started an investigation by the Italian police and the growing stink over the grab.
The last time he reportedly was heard from was in May 2005. His first wife, in Albania, received a letter from him (she has verified its authenticity) saying, "Now I live in Alexandria." It is hard to tell if he still is in Alexandria, in prison, or even dead -- completing the BTK pattern. He reportedly once was an intelligence source for the Italians. One of their beefs of Italian intelligence over the caper is that the Americans have not shared the intelligence obtained from Abu Omar's torture. The case is an embarassment for the Berlusconi administration, which faces reelection next year, and the Bush administration, which is imploding. This does not augur well for the imam's survival. However, the Italian prosecutor, Spatari, is attempting to extradite Abu Omar to Italy, which could save his life.
THE JIG IS UP FOR THE CIA
This story appeared on front pages and TV screens in a flash recently, on June 23, 2005, when the prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spatari, announced that a judge had issued arrest warrants for the 13 members of the actual snatch team. The judge temporarily denied warrants for the other 6 who had served as scouts and backups.
ROBERT S. LADY AND THE "DIRTY DOZEN" (DUMB CROOKS)
For some reason, the Italian authorities have released only names, some of which might be aliases, for the perps. They have not released photos, not to the media at least. One would think they would do so if they were sincere about wanting to arrest the fugitives, especially since releasing the cover names already has "burned" the agents.
The prosecutors have claimed that the abductors used passports and documents with their photos in checking into the luxury hotels to set up the caper. In something that belongs in the "Dumb Crooks" TV segment, the criminals also used US embassy cell phones without bothering to change the identifying chips. Later, an American in the embassy in Rome began using one of the phones again! Anyway, prosecutors obtained from the hotels photocopies of the crooks' photos that were dark and smudged. They claimed they were waiting for digtital graphics experts to enhance the photos before publishing them. We are still waiting.
Before going on to the leader of the Lady Gang, here are the other 12 listed in the first batch of warrants:
Some of these names are aliases. One person, possibly Harty or Harbaugh, reportedly is about 63 and is using his own name at the US embassy in Tanzania.
Monica (Courtney) Adler, 32 years old, born in Seattle, resident in Virginia. [Monica Courtney, according to Corriere, Guido Olimpio]
Gregory Asherleigh, 50 years old, born in Maryland, resident in Washington, DC.
Lorenzo Carrera, 34 years old, born in Texas, speaks fluent Italian and Spanish. [Carrera Gabriel Lorenzo, according to Corriere]
(Carlyle) Drew Channing, 40 years old, born in NY. [Chamming Drew Carlyle, according to Corriere]
John (Kevin) Duffin, 53 years old, born in Illinois, resident in Pennsylvania.
Raymond Harbaugh, 66 years old, born in Alaska, Virginia PO Box [Reston, VA, is CIA headquarters.]
Ben Amar Harty, 61 years old, Arab descent, speaks Arab, born in Iowa. [Harty Benamar, according to Corriere]
Cynthia (Dame) Logan, 45 years old, born in Maryland, address unknown.
George L. Purvis, 46 years old, born in China, resident in Virginia.
Pilar Rueda, 44 years old, born in California, address unknown.
Joseph Sofin, 52 years old, born in Moldavia, resident in Virginia.
Michalis Vasiliou, 43 years old, born in Greece, residence unknown.
ROBERT S. LADY -- "FLIGHT TO AVOID PROSECUTION"
Bob Lady retired with his wife Martha to the Piedmont wine country of northern Italy, near Asti, in September 2003. The Italian police began investigating the Abu Omar caper again in April 2004 when a wiretap on his home picked up Abu Omar's call to his wife. With the cops closing in about the first of 2005, Lady and the rest of the gang took it on lam, probably being relocated by the CIA.
The cops were bugging Lady's villa when, at the end of May 2005, he called Martha from Honduras. Soon afterward, neighbors say, Martha went on a lengthy trip to Honduras. ONE ONLY HOPES SHE DIDN'T TAKE THE HARD DRIVES WITH HER, as Robert Lady had done when his father died last year. Martha Lady returned home just in time to find her husband under an arrest warrant.
When the Italian police went to bust Lady at his home in Asti, on June 23, 2005, the day the first 13 arrest warrants were announced, he had flown the coop.
In the garage was what the prosecutor has called "a box used as a rubbish bin." In it was a list of Milan hotels the gang had used in planning the caper, "confirming the role of Lady Seldon [sic] as the organizer of the operation," the prosecutor said. The police removed documents and hard drives (less whatever Lady and his wife had spirited away).
Some time afterward, Lady called his wife from a Honduran cell phone, and she told him that she had been attempting to destroy the goods just as the cops arrived.
6 MORE WARRANTS FOR THE LOOKOUTS
The Italian court of jurisdiction refused to issue warrants for the persons who had served as scouts or lookouts. Prosecutor Spataro insisted that there was "serious evidence of responsibility" for the six, and an appeals court agreed. On July 25, 2005, the appeals court ordered the arrest of the following (ages and addresses unknown):
Eliana Castaldo
Victor Castellano
John Thomas Gurley
Brenda Liliana Ibanez or Liliana Brenda Ibanez
Anne Lidia Jenkins
WANTED FOR QUESTIONING -- LT. COL JOSEPH L. ROMANO, USAF
Col. Joseph L. Romano has since left Italy; but on June 25, 2005, prosecutors said they want to question him and are considering ordering his arrest as well. He is presently working in section 31P at the Pentagon.
ROBERT LADY AND NIGERGATE AND GHORBANIFAR
Robert Lady apparently was involved in Nigergate -- procuring forged documents that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair used an a pretense for making war on Iraq. The forged letters and Telexes purported to arrange sales of uranium oxide (yellowcake) by Niger to Iraq. They were the basis of Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union speech, just before the Iraq war, that the British government had evidence "that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush backed down on this claim -- after he got his war.
DECEMBER 2001 MEETING REPORTED BY NEWSWEEK --
FISHING FOR WAR GROUNDS
Bush had secret war plans when he ran for president in 2000. All he needed was an excuse. Newsweek Magazine reported that, at the end of his first year in office, in December 2001, there was meeting in Rome arranged by Michael Ledeen, foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove and Bush. Also present were Nicolo Pollari, head of Italy's CIA; the Minister of Defense (Pollari's boss), Antonio Martino; Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, now under indictment for spying for an Israeli group; Harold Rhode, from Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans; and Manuchar Ghorbanifar, an Iranian by nationality but basically a free-agent intelligence operative.
The Americans were on a fishing expedition for war grounds.
Pollari, Italy's spy chief, very likely know Lady, the head US spy in Milan. There was close cooperation between Italian and US intelligence after 9/11.
Gharbanifar, the Iranian equal-opportunity spy, had been a go-between in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, arranging arms sales by Col. Oliver North in the Reagan White House to Iran. Lady, in the CIA, had been involved in Iran-Contra on the Contra end in Latin America. Cash derived from the arms sales to Iran that Ghorbanifar arranged was used to buy weapons that Lady helped deliver to the Nicaraguan Contras. Lady and Ghorbanifar, then, had already worked on a black operation years before the Iraq war.
ALSO LATE 2001: DOCUMENTS FROM A "LADY" AT THE NIGER EMBASSY
IN ROME
Meanwhile, Rocco Martino (no apparent relation to Antonio), another soldier-of-fortune of the spy world, had been working for the French secret service (and who knows for whom else), by his account. He was providing them intelligence about Africa and the Middle East at the time. One of Pollari's spies (Italian CIA) told him a "lady" at the Niger embassy in Rome had some documents Martino should have.
In my opinion, the "lady" was no lady and no gentleman either, but Robert Seldon Lady. Lady had become very close to Italian intelligence since arriving in Italy about the time Bush was inaugurated, early in 2001. He had become even closer to his Italian colleagues after 9/11, just three months before the American fishing expedition and Martino's windfall. I think he took the late industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's watchword to heart: "Find a need, and fill it." The people at the meeting had a need of something to pin on Saddam Hussein, and Lady and his Italian and French cohorts filled it.
I think Lady accomplished this with the help of his fellow-laborer in Iran-Contra, Manuchar Ghorbanifar.
It appears that Italy, France, Iran, and possibly Israel (for whom Ghorbanifar sometimes worked) -- or at least persons who worked for these foreign governments -- influenced American policy to start a war. This is highly illegal and a violation of American sovereignty. Also highly illegal and a violation of *Italian* sovereignty is the abduction of Abu Omar.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Litvinenko Pal Scaramella, "Man of Mystery," Worked for Neocon CIA Officer
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