A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial

by Hendricks, Steve

  Casson subsequently discovered documents in military archives that proved Gladio’s existence, then he discovered that Gladiators were among the whitewashers of the Peteano bombing. He also discovered a list of probable Gladiators, some of whom were tied in varying degree to other rightist attacks. But he could not learn with certainty whether Gladiators carried out or gave direct support for the attacks, nor could he learn whether Gladio as an organization had sanctioned or supported them.

  After Casson exposed Gladio in 1990, the man who ran it from 1971 to 1974, General Gerardo Serravalle, said that during his tenure the CIA’s Rocky Stone told him the United States did not much care whether the Gladiators could fight a stay-behind war against an invading Red Army. The United States was far more interested in “the subject of internal control—that is, our level of readiness to counter street disturbances, handling nationwide strikes, and above all any eventual rise of the Communist Party. Mr. Stone stated quite clearly that the financial support of the CIA was wholly dependent on our willingness to put into action, to program and plan these other—how shall we call them?—internal measures.” Serravalle did not specify what, if anything, Gladio did to counter “any eventual rise of the Communist Party”—whether, say, Gladio merely drilled in riot control or, say again, gave aid to the strategists of tension. (Other Gladiators and Gladio documents suggested that Gladio had been tasked as early as the 1950s with combating internal rather than external threats.) Serravalle also said that on taking command of Gladio, he discovered it was full of hotheads who wanted to attack the Left and that he was so appalled by the discovery (evidently he thought he would be running a kind of anti-Communist Junior League) that he ordered Gladio’s arms caches dug up and flown to the Gladio base in Sardinia. Since he seems to have had them dug up only after the cache near Peteano was found, the truth may be that he feared other caches would be unearthed and Gladio with them. He may also have feared that explosives from the cache near Peteano had been used in the bombing and that other caches might be put to similar use.

  In 1998, several years after Serravalle offered his revelations, a terrorist from New Order named Carlo Digilio said that he and others in his Venetian cell regularly discussed their plans for the strategy of tension with a certain U.S. Navy captain. Digilio and his cellmates assumed the captain was either a CIA or military intelligence officer, but they had no evidence of either possibility. Digilio said he told the captain in advance of a plan that he had heard, at second or third hand, to bomb Piazza Fontana, but although the captain seemed concerned, he did nothing Digilio could see to deter the bombing. After the attack, Digilio told the captain what he knew of how it had been carried out, and again the American seemed to do nothing with the information. A magistrate thought enough of Digilio’s claims to ask a judge to indict the mysterious captain, which would have allowed the magistrate to put questions to the U.S. government, but since it was impossible to prove even the captain’s existence, the judge declined to indict.

  In 2000 came another testifier. Paolo Emilio Taviani, minister of defense in the 1950s and of the interior in the 1960s and 1970s, said that senior officers of SID had not only been aware of the plot to bomb Piazza Fontana but had even been on the verge of stopping it. However, they decided not to, and later they tried to protect the bombers by framing leftists in Padua with the attack. Taviani said he did not believe, as some did, that the CIA had organized the bombing. But he added, “It seems to me certain, however, that agents of the CIA were among those who supplied the materials and who muddied the waters of the investigation.” He offered no proof.

  Taviani’s testimony was followed by that of General Giandelio Maletti, who ran SID’s counterintelligence section in the early 1970s. Maletti said that the materials for several rightist bombs, probably including the bomb at Piazza Fontana, had been brought to Italy from military bases in Germany, and he thought it likely the CIA had been the courier. He did not elaborate why he thought so. He also said that the CIA routinely worked with rightwing groups it knew to be violent, because “the CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left …”

  Other witnesses of lesser rank and varying reliability also came forward. Some claimed that U.S. intelligence officers were told in advance of a bombing in Brescia in 1974 that killed eight and wounded nearly a hundred, and others claimed that the makings of the bomb at Bologna’s railway station in 1980 came from a Gladio arsenal. Some of the claimants might merely have been trying to share the blame for their sins with the CIA.

  After Gladio’s exposure in 1990, Prime Minister Andreotti admitted that the army had existed but said it had long ago been disbanded. When documents emerged that proved his claim untrue, he owned up to the army’s continued existence but shrewdly deflected attention from himself by saying NATO was running Gladios all over Europe. A NATO spokesman said in reply, “An organization of this kind does not and never has existed within the framework of the NATO military structure.” The next day, however, NATO said its spokesman had erred, then refused to say more. NATO’s supreme power, the United States, said nothing. Investigators were not long in learning that NATO had run, and was still running, Gladios all over the continent—in Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. The CIA seems to have had a hand in setting up some of the secret armies, but the details are far from clear. The revelations were a great scandal in Europe, and the Gladios were supposedly shut down. In the United States that begat them, the story was hardly a blip.

  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, am
ong 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.