A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial (25 page)

The CIA and Gladio may or may not have directly helped terrorists in the Years of Lead. But there is an abettor’s guilt in training and arming fanatical saboteurs in a politically volatile country, in encouraging them and their fellow travelers to believe themselves beyond the law. That such men go on to murder and maim can be of no surprise, nor would it be surprising if the CIA had intended that outcome. The CIA has never been held to account for its work in Italy, and it seems to have thought it never would.

Chapter 9

In Absentia

THE INDICTMENTS
AND
arrest warrants that Armando Spataro won in June of 2005 were valid throughout the European Union, which was to say that if any of the spies set foot in any of the twenty-five EU nations, he was to be arrested and sent to Milan. Never before had an ally of the United States indicted CIA agents for doing their jobs, so the indictments and warrants would have been big news in any era. But their press was the wider still because nearly four years into America’s “War on Terror,” few governments had challenged the American warriors. For millions of people, Spataro’s charges were, if not the stone with which David struck Goliath, at least one of those he picked up from the brook to give it a try.

Reporters came from every point of the compass to interview Spataro and found an Amerophile. The magistrate, it happened, had long believed that the Constitution of the United States was one of the world’s most beautiful pieces of literature, and he thought no less of America’s ongoing effort to perfect its union. In his office hung a print of Norman Rockwell’s
The Problem We All Live With, 1964
, the moving (if heavy-handedly Rockwellian) painting of Ruby Bridges in a dress of unsullied white entering kindergarten in New Orleans under the escort of four faceless U.S. Marshals. Spataro kept the print to remind himself and his guests of the power of the law, impersonally enforced, to do good. Also on his walls were Edward Hopper’s
Nighthawks
, a Warhol, and commendations from the FBI and DEA for his successful collaborations on Mafia and drug cases. Some years earlier the U.S. State Department had hosted him for a comparative study of the American and Italian justice systems, and on other occasions he had traveled extensively in the United States. In his young adulthood he had journeyed from coast to coast over forty-five days on only a few hundred dollars; he had detoured to Albuquerque because he liked its name. In his middle age he wrote essays on American culture, among them an appreciation of Sam Peckinpah’s film
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
, and he had lectured, also appreciatively, on the music of Bob Dylan. He thought Philip Roth’s
American Pastoral
surpassing brilliant. Like many Italians, he was fond of New York, but as befit one who must make do with Milan instead of Rome, he thought Chicago one of the most beautiful cities in the world. He was under the impression that Chicago was fronted by a lake pure as a mountain stream (perhaps the comparative mountain was Milan’s Monte Stella, built from the rubble of the Second World War), that it was free of trash, graffiti, and traffic jams (further understandable confusions for a Milanese), and that it was graced by the most perfect skyline in America (he had seen Seattle only in the fog). The photos on his computer’s screen saver were of Chicago’s waterfront and of a German shepherd he had named Bill because of the dog’s democratic approach, like that of the recent American president, to the females of his species. The screen saver also had photos of the Twin Towers.

Reporters inevitably asked him why he had brought the case, and just as inevitably he answered that he fought not the United States but lawlessness. A kidnapping was a kidnapping, no matter its perpetrators or victim. A country in which a person could be stripped of liberty without due process was a country in which nobody was truly free. He liked to quote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the principle—“we cannot fight tyranny with the instruments of the tyrants”—and also Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel—“A democracy must sometimes fight with one arm tied behind her back. Even so, a democracy has the upper hand.” On his own authority he would add, “We in Italy have lived under Mussolini. We have known the way of Fascism. We do not wish to repeat our mistakes.” To those who said Islamic terrorists were a new kind of foe—warriors rather than criminals, defeatable only with violence, not law—he replied that the same had been said of Front Line and the Red Brigades, but they had both been broken in court. Moreover, Italy was already succeeding against so-called Islamic terrorists, scores of whom he and his colleagues had imprisoned. He allowed that the lawlessness of George W. Bush had probably stopped some terrorists, but he doubted it had stopped more than it had created. “We make a big gift to the terrorists,” he said, “when we behave contrary to our democratic principles. We give to those fish other water to swim.” A two- or three-hour soliloquy on such topics refreshed rather than fatigued him. Most reporters, after reviving themselves, returned to their laptops and made him the esteemed protagonist of their dispatches.

Those who did not tended to be rightists. The
Wall Street Journal
editorial page, a proponent of law and order when it came to, say, welfare cheats or dope pushers, said Spataro’s prosecution of the U.S. kidnappers branded him “a rogue.” Other detractors more explicitly decried him a leftist saboteur of America’s fight against al-Qaeda, but his years prosecuting leftist terrorists made this line a hard sell, as did his having charged Abu Omar with terrorism on the same day he charged his kidnappers.

When the indictments and warrants were made public, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi summoned the U.S. ambassador to Palazzo Chigi for what aides described as a stern lecture on Italian sovereignty. But it soon became plain that Berlusconi had no enthusiasm for Spataro’s work. When Spataro sent Berlusconi’s minister of justice requests to extradite the spies (the United States having ignored Spataro’s requests to question them more gently), the minister refused to forward them to the United States. He also refused to forward the warrants to Interpol, which is to say to the rest of the world. After Berlusconi’s government fell in the spring of 2006, Spataro re-submitted his requests to the center-left government of Romano Prodi, but Prodi’s minister of justice refused him too. After Prodi fell in 2008 and Berlusconi rose again, Spataro submitted the requests again and was again denied.

Had the papers been forwarded to Washington, they would have been coolly received. The Bush administration said publicly it would not extradite the accused and privately that were it asked to do so, there would be repercussions. Italy’s governors knew their place. They also had their own reasons not to push extradition.

LUCIANO PIRONI
,
nom de guerre Ludwig, the maresciallo whose dream of leaving the Carabinieri for SISMI impelled him to help Bob Lady with the kidnapping, had not, at first, been disappointed in Lady. Even before the kidnapping, the head of SISMI’s office in Milan, Major Stefano D’Ambrosio, told Ludwig at a chance encounter that “a mutual friend” had spoken highly of him. Major D’Ambrosio had himself risen from the Carabinieri to SISMI and so was in a position to understand the plight of talent trapped in the Carabinieri. Not long after Lady’s commendation, D’Ambrosio asked Ludwig to collaborate on anti-terror investigations, and Ludwig gratefully accepted. A month or two later, Ludwig gave D’Ambrosio his résumé, and D’Ambrosio said he would pass it straight to Marco Mancini, director of SISMI’s operations in northern Italy. D’Ambrosio thought it likely SISMI would hire Ludwig sometime in the next year.

Then events took a difficult turn. Shortly before Christmas of 2002, D’Ambrosio called Ludwig to say that SISMI was relieving him of his command in Milan and moving him to Rome. He did not say why and did not sound happy. Later he told Ludwig he would be transferring back to the Carabinieri, an indignity Ludwig felt as his own. D’Ambrosio said, however, that Ludwig should not worry about his application to SISMI. He had given Ludwig’s résumé to Mancini as promised, and although Mancini had been mildly annoyed that it had not gone through regular channels, D’Ambrosio still thought Ludwig would be hired. It would be best, though, not to invoke D’Ambrosio’s name.

The next time Ludwig saw Lady, the maresciallo said he feared his application was sunk. Lady told him to relax, everything would be OK. Mancini was in line to become SISMI’s next director (he was soon promoted to SISMI’s number-two position), and the CIA had great “feedback” with him. Ludwig’s application, Lady said, was in good hands. As for why D’Ambrosio had been so abruptly dismissed, Lady could offer no insight.

MAJOR D’AMBROSIO
FIRST
learned that Bob Lady was interested in Abu Omar in the late spring or early summer of 2002. Lady had asked D’Ambrosio what he knew of the Egyptian, and D’Ambrosio had said he knew only that DIGOS was investigating him. Lady told him some of the fruits of DIGOS’s inquiry and said he had intelligence of his own that Abu Omar was planning to hijack an American school bus. (Spataro would later say the plans did not exist.) From time to time, as DIGOS learned more, Lady added a few details. He said he thought the investigation was going well.

But in October Lady announced unexpectedly that the CIA was planning to seize Abu Omar. He explained, as D’Ambrosio later told the story, that the CIA’s chief of station in Italy, Jeff Castelli, had proposed the rendition and that he, Lady, had objected. Lady supposedly argued that a rendition would bring to an abrupt halt all that DIGOS was learning about Abu Omar’s network, and unnecessarily because DIGOS had Abu Omar well enough surveyed to know if he was planning an attack. The rendition would also badly damage the CIA’s vital relationship with DIGOS, whose officers were not to be forewarned. Castelli, Lady said, had ignored him and lobbied headquarters for approval, which had been granted. A Special Ops team was in Milan scouting the kidnapping as they spoke, and SISMI, whose collusion Castelli had also obtained, was helping with the scouting. Lady asked D’Ambrosio what he knew of the operation.

D’Ambrosio had been listening appalled. He said his superiors at SISMI had told him nothing, perhaps because they had suspected he would object. He was offended both by the plot itself and by its execution in his territory without his knowledge.

Lady continued. After Abu Omar was “collected,” he was to be driven to the Italian air base near Ghedi, ninety minutes east of Milan, where the U.S. Air Force had a small contingent. While he and his collectors were en route, the CIA would send a plane from Ramstein to fetch him. SISMI had already sent a team to Ghedi to study where to hold him in case the plane were delayed. Where Abu Omar would be taken from Ghedi, Lady did not say. Nor did he say, as he would to Ludwig, that the CIA hoped to turn Abu Omar into an informer, or even to get information from him. The only objective seemed to be to get him off the streets.

D’Ambrosio said he found it impossible to believe that the Italian commandant of Ghedi, Colonel Gianmarco Bellini, would cooperate. Bellini had been shot down over Iraq in the Gulf War and tortured by the Iraqis. He would never let his base become a way station for a torture taxi.

Lady spread his arms wide to indicate the imbecility of it all.

“Why,” D’Ambrosio asked, “was Castelli set on the rendition?”

Lady didn’t have an answer. He got along terribly with his boss and said only, “What do you expect a Buddhist who burns incense in his office and listens to the music of Bob Marley to know about terrorism?”

D’Ambrosio had met Castelli twice before, once when he and his wife had come to Milan for an opera at La Scala and once when he had come alone for a routine check of the Milan station. He was a bit under fifty, wore glasses, seemed level-headed, and was said to keep a shrine to Jimi Hendrix in his office. D’Ambrosio would later theorize that Castelli had pushed the rendition with an eye to promotion. Other CIA chiefs were collecting scalps in the War on Terror, and he did not want to be left out.

Lady also said that Castelli had sent an aide, Sabrina De Sousa, from Rome to Milan, ostensibly to help manage the kidnapping but in truth to keep an eye on him. D’Ambrosio knew De Sousa: a dark-haired, dark-eyed, khaki-skinned woman of forty-some years who had sometimes treated him, he would later say, like a junior officer in a Third World militia.

D’Ambrosio assumed Lady was telling him about the plot at least in part because he hoped D’Ambrosio could stop it, but if so Lady was too circumspect to say so outright.

“Talk to your people,” he only said.

It was just what D’Ambrosio meant to do.

A FEW
DAYS
later, D’Ambrosio traveled to the SISMI office in Bologna to meet with Marco Mancini. Given the igneous nature of his subject, he asked Mancini to go for a walk, and on the city’s colonnaded streets he related what Lady had said. When he had finished, he said he hoped there had been some misunderstanding, that either no kidnapping was in the works or, if one were, that SISMI was not involved. But he urged Mancini whatever the case to speak to General Gustavo Pignero, SISMI’s chief of counterterrorism, to make sure the CIA did not try anything so foolish. He also asked Mancini not to tell anyone, not even Pignero, that Lady was his informer. He feared Castelli would punish Lady if he learned he was D’Ambrosio’s source. Mancini, as D’Ambrosio later told the story, listened mostly in silence. He did not seem surprised by the plot, but neither did he seem to approve of it. He was also disturbed by D’Ambrosio’s informer.

“But was it really Lady himself who told you?” he said.

“Yes.”

Mancini turned this over wordlessly.

D’Ambrosio asked if he should make a report of his conversation with Lady, but Mancini replied, a bit irritatedly, that that would not be necessary. He would speak with General Pignero personally. D’Ambrosio went back to Milan.

Some weeks later the general called D’Ambrosio and told him to come to Rome immediately for an urgent discussion whose topic he did not disclose. D’Ambrosio arrived at Fort Braschi, SISMI’s headquarters, the day after next. In the hallway outside Pignero’s office, he ran into one of Pignero’s aides, an acquaintance of D’Ambrosio’s, who asked what he had done to Mancini. D’Ambrosio, not understanding, asked what the aide meant. The aide replied that Mancini was furious with D’Ambrosio.

“He has done you in,” the aide said.

D’Ambrosio was not certain that Mancini’s furor stemmed from their talk in Bologna. He suspected another, equally inflammatory cause, also with Lady at its root. Some weeks before Lady told him about the rendition, he had told D’Ambrosio (again, according to D’Ambrosio) that Mancini had offered to become the CIA’s mole. The CIA apparently considered the offer but in the end declined it, partly because the agency feared a trap: maybe SISMI was only testing how brazenly the CIA would try to infiltrate its upper ranks. Also, according to Lady, the CIA thought Mancini was too willing to auction himself to the highest bidder. He was a bad risk. D’Ambrosio asked Lady for evidence of Mancini’s offer, but Lady said that while the affair was recorded in the CIA’s computers, any copy of the files that he made could be traced back to him. D’Ambrosio was not sure whether Lady’s tip was real or was manufactured for a reason he could not divine. (The motives of spies are often inscrutable even to their allies.) Lacking proof, he had let the matter lie. Now, outside Pignero’s office at Fort Braschi, he wondered if Mancini had learned of his talk with Lady—maybe even from Lady himself—and was angry that D’Ambrosio hadn’t reported it to him. (Mancini later denied that he had offered to spy for the CIA, and Lady denied that he had said Mancini had. Either man, subsequent events would show, would have had difficulty winning a reliability contest against D’Ambrosio.)