A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial

by Hendricks, Steve

  Two years later, as his trial drew to a close, Lady emerged once more and spoke via Skype to Luca Fazzo of Il Giornale, a rightist newspaper owned by the brother of Silvio Berlusconi. Lady said he assumed he would be convicted, but he wanted to underscore that his role in the rendition had been exceedingly small. CIA chiefs like him, he explained, were too well known by local law enforcers to be used in renditions. If things went awry, it would be bad for both the chiefs and the CIA. So the CIA imported out-of-towners to do all the real work, and it was they who were responsible for the mistakes in Abu Omar’s rendition. His account, while not entirely devoid of truth, was rather at odds with his recruitment of Ludwig, his flight to Cairo, and his possession of surveillance photos of Abu Omar.

  He had a fallback argument, though. Whatever his role in the kidnapping, he said, “I am responsible only for carrying out an order I received from my superiors”—a defense whose pedigree was succinctly summarized by one commentator as “I vas only following ze orders.”

  “I worked in intelligence for twenty-five years,” Lady continued, “and almost none of my activities in these twenty-five years were legal in the country where I was carrying them out… . It’s a life of illegality, if you want to look at it that way. But governments all over the world have professionals in my field, and it falls to us to do our duty. When Achilles attacked Troy, it was an illegal operation, but it was what he and the others thought they had to do.”

  I thought he had his analogy wrong. Lady in Milan had played the role of Paris, with Abu Omar his abducted Helen. Spataro was Achilles, or better still Agamemnon, out to punish Paris and the other Trojans for their crime.

  “Humanly,” Fazzo said, “what effect has all of this had on you?”

  “I can’t say I’m angry,” Lady replied. “But I’m tired, very tired… . I console myself by remembering that I was a soldier. I was in a war against terrorism. I could not debate orders that were given to me. They tell me to do this, and what can I do? But there is one thing I can’t swallow.”

  “And that is?”

  “I love Italy. I decided to live my life in Italy. My whole family loves Italy. I thought that I could serve there professionally, and then at sixty-five I’d be making my own Barbera in my grand house near Asti—ten acres of vineyards, a stupendous place. Instead, I had to flee.”

  ON THE NIGHT in 2008 that Barack Obama was elected president, Spataro watched the returns at a party held by the U.S. consulate in a Milan disco. He had been delighted to accept the consul’s personal invitation.

  “Good Morning America!” he e-mailed friends a few hours after the party wound down. “I’d like to express my happiness for a dream which comes true… . Nearly all attendees, Italians and Americans, supported Obama and all good news on him were greeted with cheers. Today the world is living a bright and unforgettable morning.”

  A year later Spataro made his closing argument at trial and asked Judge Magi to sentence Jeff Castelli and SISMI director Nicolò Pollari to thirteen years apiece, Bob Lady and Sabrina De Sousa to twelve years apiece, and the other Americans and Italians to ten or so years apiece depending on their degree of involvement. A few weeks later Magi returned convictions for twenty-three of the twenty-six Americans: Lady got eight years, De Sousa and the other Americans five. Castelli, First Secretary Ralph Russomando, and Second Secretary Betnie Medero-Navedo were acquitted because, Magi said, their jobs at the U.S. embassy in Rome bestowed a wide immunity on them. Lady and De Sousa, working from the consulate in Milan, were less immune. Magi also acquitted SISMI’s Pollari and his senior aide Marco Mancini because the Constitutional Court’s rulings on state secrecy kept him from considering important evidence against them. Pio Pompa and another SISMI official got three years each. (Maresciallo Luciano Pironi, pseudonymously Ludwig, had earlier received a suspended sentence. He finished his tour at the Italian embassy in Belgrade, then was assigned to a military academy in Turin, where he trained recruits how to be Carabinieri.) Judge Magi ordered the convicts to collectively repair Abu Omar and his wife with €1.5 million, but the reparations would have to withstand appeal, and most of the repairers were beyond the grasp of Italian courts. Lady’s estate remained in escrow.

  De Sousa responded to her conviction by suing Lady and Castelli for getting her into the mess, and Colonel Romano opined through his lawyer that the verdict “should be an embarrassment to Italy.” The Wall Street Journal, speaking for rightists the world over, declared the ruling “one more dubious milestone in the legal war against the war on terror” and warned that “innocent people may eventually pay for Mr. Spataro’s ‘victory.’ ” Spokesmen for the State and Defense departments said Magi’s decision “disappointed” the Obama administration.

  THE NUMBER of men rendered to torture by the United States under George W. Bush is still not known. Reporters on the beat have guessed from one hundred to several hundred; a few outliers think more than a thousand. Many decent Americans believed that when Bush left office their long national nightmare would be over. They were apparently under the impression that Democrats had not connived in the outsourcing of torture. Two days after Obama became president, he issued an executive order banning the United States from torturing people directly but not—contrary to many confused reports—from sending captives elsewhere to be tortured. What created the confusion (intentionally, I suspect) was that Obama ordered a task force to study extraordinary rendition with the goal of ensuring that the United States did not send people to torture. The task force, of course, had no power to ensure the goal was met, but hopeful reporters read what they wanted into the order. Later Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, explained that the CIA would still extraordinarily render people. He added, as a kind of balm, “If we render someone, we are obviously going to seek assurances from that country that their human rights are protected and they are not mistreated.” It was precisely what the Bush administration had said.

  Toward the end of 2009 the president’s task force recommended that the United States protect the victims of its renditions by visiting them in the dungeons it had rendered them to.

  Simultaneously Obama’s Justice Department was arguing in federal court, again exactly as Bush’s had, that lawsuits against the government by victims of rendition must be dismissed because they would reveal secrets vital to the nation’s security. The lead plaintiff in the most important suit, Binyam Mohamed, had been rendered by the CIA to Morocco, where his genitals had been sliced open dozens of times and caustic liquid poured in the wounds.

  As for Abu Omar’s kidnappers, Obama’s people said off the record that should Italy request their extradition, the president would not comply. Bush’s people had at least had the courage to say so on the record.

  EGYPT DID NOT rearrest Abu Omar, perhaps because his torment had already been made public and jailing him again would only draw more attention to it. Unable to work or preach, he was at a loss to fill his time. He said he might run for elected office, but then did not. He started a blog to tell his life story, but what he told was unilluminating and he soon quit the chore. Five years to the day after he was kidnapped, one month after “Monica Courtney Adler” gave birth to a daughter, his wife gave birth to a son.

  Significant Characters

  Islamic Radicals and Acquaintances

  Abu Imad (Arman Ahmed El Hissini Helmy). Imam of the mosque on Viale Jenner.

  Abu Omar (Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr). Victim of the kidnapping in Milan.

  Abu Saleh (Mahmoud Abdelkader Es Sayed). Leader of Milan’s al-Qaeda cell before Abu Omar’s arrival.

  Abu Talal (Talaat Fuad Qassim). Leader of Gamaa and the Islamic Brigade in Bosnia; first victim of a U.S. extraordinary rendition.

  Ali Sharif (Ali Abdel Al Ali). Administrator of the mosque on Via Quaranta.

  Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel-Rahman). Leader of Gamaa in prison in the United States.

  Mohammed Reda Elbadry. Teacher at the mosque on Via Quaranta.

  Karim Said Atmani. Associate i
n terrorism with Anwar Shaaban and Fateh Kamel.

  Nabila Ghali. Second wife of Abu Omar.

  Marsela Glina. First wife of Abu Omar.

  Hayam Abdelmoneim Mohamed Hassanein. Friend of Merfat Rezk.

  Fateh Kamel. Associate in terrorism with Anwar Shaaban and Karim Atmani.

  Merfat Rezk. Witness to the kidnapping.

  Shawki Bakry Salem. Husband of Merfat Rezk.

  Sayed Shaban. Man who told Abu Imad that he knew someone who had seen the kidnapping.

  Anwar Shaaban. Early leader of the mosque on Viale Jenner and the Islamic Brigade in Bosnia.

  Italian Officials

  Stefano D’Ambrosio. SISMI’s chief in Milan.

  Stefano Dambruoso. First magistrate to investigate the kidnapping.

  Renato Farina. Journalist paid by SISMI.

  Marco Mancini. SISMI’s chief of northern Italy.

  “Massimo.” Police official and CIA mole.

  Bruno Megale. DIGOS’s chief of counterterrorism in Milan.

  Gustavo Pignero. SISMI’s chief of counterterrorism.

  Luciano Pironi, aka Ludwig. Marshal of the Carabinieri.

  Nicolò Pollari. SISMI’s director.

  Pio Pompa. SISMI agent who ran an off-the-books spy shop.

  Armando Spataro. Second magistrate to investigate the kidnapping.

  American Officials and Officers

  Embassy and consular officials:

  Jeff Castelli. CIA chief in Italy.

  Sabrina De Sousa. Second secretary at the U.S. embassy in Rome.

  Betnie Medero-Navedo. Second secretary at the U.S. embassy in Rome.

  Bob Lady. CIA chief in Milan.

  Joseph Romano III. Air Force lieutenant colonel at Aviano Air Base.

  Ralph Russomando. First secretary at the U.S. embassy in Rome.

  Agents who were in Dergano, Abu Omar’s neighborhood, during the time of the kidnapping:

  Monica Courtney Adler.

  Gregory Asherleigh.

  Raymond Harbaugh. Apparent co-leader of the kidnappers.

  James Thomas Harbison.

  Ben Amar Harty.

  George Purvis. Apparent co-leader of the kidnappers.

  Pilar Maria Rueda.

  Joseph Sofin.

  Agents who were in the caravan that took Abu Omar to Aviano Air Base:

  Lorenzo Gabriel Carrera.

  Drew Carlyle Channing.

  Vincent Faldo.

  Cynthia Dame Logan.

  Michalis Vasiliou.

  Agents who helped scout the kidnapping:

  Eliana Isabella Castaldo.

  Victor Castellano.

  John Kevin Duffin.

  John Thomas Gurley.

  Brenda Liliana Ibanez.

  James Robert Kirkland.

  Anne Linda Jenkins.

  Acknowledgments

  I WAS FORTUNATE to have the help of two able research assistants, Jessica Easto of Knoxville and Alice Annicchiarico of Milan, and of a skilled translator of Arabic, Andrea Okorley of Philadelphia, whom I found through the excellent Translations for Progress. I also had adept interpreters in Egypt, whom I do not wish to jeopardize with individual thanks. Aida Seif El Dawla, the vocal director of Cairo’s El Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, gave me important help in understanding torture in Egypt. The staff of Human Rights Watch, particularly Elijah Zarwan, helped me make connections in Cairo and Alexandria without which I would have been lost. Reporter Caryle Murphy and researchers Lorenzo Vidino and Daniele Ganser read parts of the manuscript and made valuable editorial suggestions. Reporter Guido Olimpio generously shared with me the fruits of his investigations into the spies of Milan. My editor at W. W. Norton, Alane Salierno Mason, gave wise counsel and has my gratitude for enduring my many delays. Her assistant, Denise Scarfi, steered the book’s production with superlative competence, and copy editor Fred Wiemer expertly cleaned up many of my blunders of style. My agent Andrew Wylie advocated for this book with an enthusiasm as contagious as it was influential; I landed fortunately when he decided to take me under his wing. Jofie Ferrari-Adler of Grove/Atlantic still has my thanks for introducing me to Andrew. Stefania Zamagni, Daniel Stephens, and the staff of Madrelingua Language School in Bologna are responsible for great improvements in my poor Italian. Diana Zimmerman of Lewis and Clark Library in Helena, Montana, gave me her usual cheerful, efficient aid with interlibrary loans, and the staff of the Knox County Public Library in Knoxville, Tennessee, helped as well. Judy Bovington, Tim Davis, Doug Andreasen, Melissa Cohen, Emma Takvoryan, the teachers of Garden Montessori, Stefania Ragusa, and Lorenza Moscarella gave me miscellaneous irreplaceable support in holding family and self together. So did my wife Jennifer and son Elliott, who saw me through the usual writerly melodramas and a rather disagreeable depression. My debt to them is tremendous but a pleasurable one to repay.

  Notes

  On Sources and Language

  My book would have been much the poorer without the works I cite below, and I am grateful to their authors. For brevity’s sake and because I have aimed the book at the general reader, I have not cited sources for many well-established facts. For the same reasons, I have preferred to cite books that synthesize articles and other sources instead of citing those articles and sources individually. I have made exceptions for original sources critical to the book.

  Many quotations that appear in English in the book originally appeared in Italian. If a quotation is cited below to a work with a title in Italian, I translated the quotation. If the quotation is cited below to a work with a title in English, the author of that work made the translation—although where I thought the translation of certain words or phrases could be improved, I have amended them. Italian police translated almost all of the conversations in the book that originally took place in Arabic. Throughout the book, when transliterating Arabic names into English, I have preferred commonly known spellings even when they were not the most transliteratively correct. Thus, for example, I have used “Osama bin Laden” instead of “Usama bin Ladin.”

  This book tells many stories whose participants would not talk to me or other investigators, who lied when they did talk, or who through honest confusion told different stories at different times. I have noted instances in which I was unsure whether I had teased out the truth. Most of the people I interviewed would not speak on the record and so have not been cited below. I almost never reproduced what I was told off the record unless I could verify it with another source on the record. I have noted the few exceptions. Where I have made errors of fact, I welcome corrections and will ask my publisher to make them in future editions of this book.

  Sources

  In General

  For an overview of aspects of the CIA relevant to my book: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Doubleday, 2007 (the Bible of the field); Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Doubleday, 2008; Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, Three Rivers, 2003; Ronald Kessler, Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency, Pocket Books, 1992, and The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror, St. Martin’s, 2003 (Kessler is more infatuated with the CIA and the “War on Terror” than I); Tyler Drumheller, On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence, Carroll & Graf, 2006; Lindsay Moran, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, Berkley Trade, 2005.

  For an overview of Islamic terrorism: Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Vintage, 2007; Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, I. B. Tauris, 2004.

  For an overview of Italian politics and society: Tobias Jones, The Dark Heart of Italy, North Point Press, 2004; Paul Hoffman, That Fine Italian Hand, Henry Holt, 1990; Paul Ginsborg, Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State: 1980–2001, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, and A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and
Politics 1943–1988, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Luigi Barzini, The Italians, Touchstone, 1964.

  Chapter 1: A Kidnapping

  For Luciano Peroni, alias Ludwig: PIRONI Luciano, Verbale di interrogatorio di persona sottoposta ad indagini, N. 10838/05 R.G.N.R. mod. 21, Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale Ordinario di Milano, Apr. 14, 2006; Untitled deposition of Luciano Pironi, Proc. Pen. N. 1966/05 R.G.G.I.P., Sept. 30, 2006.

  For “Massimo”: Guido Olimpio, Operazione Hotel California, Feltrinelli, 2005. I interviewed a man who claimed to be Massimo, but as he told me no more than what was in Olimpio’s report, I am inclined to believe he was a pretender.

  Chapter 2: A Sirocco

  For Flaubert’s statement “We have had bands of ten or twelve Arabs … ”: Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt, ed. Francis Steegmuller, Penguin, 1979.

  For the rise of Islamism and Islamic terrorism in Egypt and beyond (including Pakistan and Afghanistan): Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Vintage, 2007; Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, I. B. Tauris, 2004; Caryle Murphy, Passion for Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East: The Egyptian Experience, Scribner, 2002; Geneive Abdo, No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, Oxford University Press, 2000; Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh, University of California Press, 1985; Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, Oxford University Press, 1969.

  For Abu Omar’s youth and travels before coming to Italy: Author interviews of Abu Omar, Alexandria, Egypt, Apr. 2007; Abu Omar, “Abu Omar Al-Masri” (blog), http://abuomarelmasri.blogspot.com.

  For the history of postwar Milan: John Foot, Milan since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity, Berg, 2001.

  Chapter 3: The Enemy Within

  For Omar Abdel-Rahman’s statement “We must be terrorists …”: Andrew C. McCarthy, “Prosecuting the New York Sheikh,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1, Mar. 1997.