Two Strange Deaths in European Wiretapping Scandal

[acmavm]

http://www.alternet.org/story/40485/

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Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove -- head of security at Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm -- told his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment. Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass. Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.

Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace how a "Special Removal Unit" composed of CIA and SISMI (the Italian CIA) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged involvement of 26 CIA agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then dropped it.

The first Italian press reports after Bove's death said the 42-year-old had committed suicide. Bove, according to unnamed sources, was depressed about his imminent indictment by Milan prosecutors. But prosecutors immediately, and uncharacteristically, set the record straight: Bove was not a target; in fact, he was prosecutors' chief source. Bove, prosecutors said, was helping them investigate his own bosses, who were orchestrating an illegal wiretapping bureau and the destruction of incriminating digital evidence. One Telecom executive had already been forced out when he was caught conducting these illicit operations, as well as selling intercepted information to a business intelligence firm.

About 16 months earlier, in March of 2005, Costas Tsalikidis, a 38-year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece had just discovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in the company's mobile network. The spyware eavesdropped on the prime minister's and other top officials' cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece's secret service chief. Others bugged included civil rights activists, the head of Greece's "Stop the War" coalition, journalists and Arab businessmen based in Athens. All the wiretapping began about two months before the Olympics were hosted by Greece in August 2004, according to a subsequent investigation by the Greek authorities.

Tsalikidis, according to friends and family, was excited about his work and was looking forward to marrying his longtime girlfriend. But on March 9, 2005, his elderly mother found him hanging from a white rope tied to pipes outside of his apartment bathroom. His limp feet dangled a mere three inches above the floor. His death was ruled a suicide; he, like Adamo Bove, left no suicide note.

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What do you think? It's not unlike a Le Carre novel. But it's surely possible. Look at the death of Roberto Calvi.

[jcv1]

1. follow the money

Sounds connected to me.... the NSA involvement in worldwide wiretapping seems to lead back here for the "hit" orders

[BridgeTheGap]

2. "THEY" will stop at nothing!

Capable of atrocities, murder, assasination? You betcha!

[katty]

3. o please....this is so obvious, the night of long knives continues

[cliss]

4. Moral of the story:

If you are involved in confidential information, eavesdropping, or have highly damaging information, you are at risk.

Look at all the people who have died under mysterious circumstances. They all had 1 thing in common: they knew too much.

Advice for anyone who knows too much: watch your back. Walk around with a Flak Jacket, even if it makes you look fat. Hire a body guard, don't just run down to the 7-Eleven for a Slurpee. Hire someone to do that.