The Italian connection

[formercia]

Fearless Leader's New World Order slowly begins to unravel...


http://www.alternet.org/story/39482/
Waging a Dirty War With Italy's Help

By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, AlterNet. Posted July 26, 2006.

An exposé of the close relationship between President Bush and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi -- Big B and little b -- reveals that country to be our willing partner in our dirty 'war on terror.'
There's a covert, illegal, parallel American-Italian intelligence structure operating out there. Rogue spymasters like Robert Lady, the CIA's "retired" station head in Milan, and Marco Mancini, until recently number two at SISMI, the Italian CIA, are two of its now-exposed operatives. They worked within a web spun by President Bush and Silvio Berlusconi. Big B and little b huddled together for an overnight retreat in Crawford in late July 2003. At the time, Berlusconi was prime minister of Italy, and he remains today that country's richest man.

Their webs of intrigue connect: the forged yellowcake dossier used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq, the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects to countries where they would be tortured, and the payback to the Italians via a contract to build 23 Marine Ones, the president's helicopter fleet.

The intimate relationship between the shadowy American and Italian security networks is being illuminated by Milanese prosecutors, who simultaneously are being spied upon by those whom they are investigating. The prosecutors' disclosure of parallel American and Italian wiretapping and disinformation campaigns sheds rare light on black operations.

Some of the more troubling news is buried among the papers filed in Abu Omar abduction case. Omar, an Egyptian imam, was kidnapped on a busy Milan street by an American-Italian "special removal" unit and flown to Cairo where he was tortured, apparently under the supervision of the CIA's Robert Lady. The Milanese prosecutors have obtained a confession from Lady's Italian partner, Marco Mancini, and are on the verge of indicting General Nicolò Pollari, the current head of SISMI. The prosecutors have also obtained arrest warrants for 26 CIA agents and are seeking their extradition.