CIA Employees On Trial In Europe For Kidnapping
By Nicole Belle Tuesday Apr 22, 2008 3:30pmAnd not a peep in the mainstream media, with the exception of this story at CQ Politics.
It’s not easy for me to generate a lot of sympathy for a CIA man involved in a kidnapping, but I feel sorry for Bob Lady.
Lady, many readers will remember, was the CIA’s base chief in Milan, Italy, and nominally in charge of a February 2003 agency operation to snatch an al Qaeda suspect off the city’s streets.
Sounded like a pretty good idea at the time. It was only a few months after we’d been smacked, big time, by al Qaeda killers here.
But the snatch turned into a public relations nightmare two years later when Italian authorities announced they had eyewitnesses and indisputable evidence tying the CIA to the crime.
So last week 26 Americans, most of them CIA employees, went on trial in Milan for kidnapping, albeit in absentia and to little notice here. They are fugitives from justice, with international warrants issued for their arrests.
The central figure in the case has always been “Mr. Bob,” Robert Seldon Lady, a bear-like man with a pasha’s grin who spent a lifetime in the CIA.
He and his wife loved Italy so much they bought a house in the foothills of the Alps and retired there in 2004.
Months later an urgent call came, warning Lady to get out of Dodge — don’t even pack.
The cops were on their way.
Tipped off, the Ladys successfully fled the country. But they left behind a bonanza of evidence in their dream home, not the least of which was a CIA surveillance photo of the kidnap victim, Osama Mustafa Hasan Nasr, known as Abu Omar.
How dumb can you get? Sometimes it seems the CIA’s ineptitude knows no bounds. Read on...
You can't write stuff like this. The little guy stuck carrying out the operation (that he objected to) had to flee his home to avoid imprisonment, not to mention lost his wife, and all their property in Italy may go to Omar as restitution for his rendition. Don't get me wrong, he did the rendition, but the station chief who conceived of the plan got a minor "rap on the knuckles" and is now being groomed to take over the New York City office. And the CIA abandoned Lady, disowning him as an employee and refusing to assist him in any way.
So, as with Abu Ghraib, the accountability begins and ends with the least powerful and never makes it up to the top decision makers.
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The "I was just following orders defense" flew out the window at the Nurnburg Trials.
This story is just too long for MSM news outlets - too difficult for plain folks to follow. Car chases - that's what we like!
And they hate us for our freedom.........bla bla bla.........
I would love to hear about arrest warrants for Darth Cheney and Dumbya and much of their criminal regime.
Lets see the Jason Borne interpretation!
Great, thanks to Bush & Co. OUR people are international fugitives of justice and Bin Laden is still free.
They can spin it all they want but with all the data out there, there is no way history is going to judge Bush kindly.
Just one more story the American media refuses to report or give the story the attention it deserves. Let's see there was the recent admission that torture was approved at the highest levels of the Bush admin, and Bush knew too. In and out of the news cycle in one day. NY Times breaks the story that many former military analysts hired by news networks had business interests that benefitted from the Iraq war. Complete network news blackout on that story. Then there were the Downing Street Memo's. Anyone care to add some stories I've forgotten?
America sez: What the hell does this have to do with American Idol.
I kind of have mixed emotions here. Couldn't he have quit the CIA if he objected to doing what he was told to do?
Whether it's the MSM, Boosh, or Candy McCain, I can definitely relate dude, struck stupid, snatched bald-headed, and we don’t even need to address the insensitive political based issues. As a matter of fact, McCain was granted that coveted title just the other evening, as recalled through a fog of designer bourbon and pain medications, and yes, it had something to do with his unsound financial accounting proposals, that “incident” in prison (although I heard there was mutual consent) and militantly stubborn violent navel gazing. Yes, he is a monster, and didn’t like his mother, and, ah, fuck it, hated his old man too, so fuck you too.
Oh yeah, now I remember, he also told Lil’ dick Cheney to stop propping up Boosh’s fractured dictatorship of victimization and second rate drama tactics. At that time he was compelled to ride off into the sunset barely grasping leather embossed ape-hangers on his Big Wheels to the poorly recorded strands of Dave Allan & the Arrows “Blues Theme”(He played a Moserite I heard). But like he said to Russert the other day as they engaged in the usual Rusty Trombone, his chemical composition at the time wisely prevented me from further cadaver destruction.
"Sometimes it seems the CIA’s ineptitude knows no bounds."
Read "Legacy of Ashes" for an extended look at the CIA's long history of ineptitude. It isn't new, it isn't a minor problem. and we don't have any way to fix it.
Not a peep. But maybe now.
If anybody knows how to say "Fuck You" and mean it, it's the boy king and his puppet master the "Big Dick". "Better You than Me" they say when it comes to accountability for their actions, and "Better me than You" when it comes to their profiting from the loss of others.
The poster of this message disavows all knowledge of this post and the poster and the post will self destruct in....................................................
There's a movie script that writes itself. Quick, get a treatment together and call George Clooney!
The Italians never could control themselves with the Lady's.
Aww, the poor criminal lost his home and the dancing chimp won't help him.
Self-inflicted. He should be sent back over to Italy to stand trial.
Just a little reminder, nobody (yet) retracted this US-law, did they?
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/aspa080302.htm
Never happen. Too much of a chance of Lady pointing fingers at the wrong (ie right) people and making it too dangerous for certain powerful people to leave the country.
Heh. The Bush Administration's Infamous IncompetenceTM strikes again! Some people compare Bush America to Soviet Russia. IMHO, the Tsarist regime is a better choice. The Tsars were every bit as incompetent and stubborn as Georgie Porgie, and ran the Russian Empire into the ground...
carsick @ 13:
That's exactly what I was thinking as I read the story. The guy Lady, needs to write a book and do it fast. Then it goes to a movie. I'd call George Clooney in a heartbeat if I had his number. Not necessarily to talk about a movie though. ;)
From reading that story, it sounds the whole team of CIA people over there were not the brightest bulbs. They totally underestimated the Italian authorities. It sounds like "Agents gone wild"
The world is well aware that the US government has become fascist. And their business's are not being let in on the "money grab". So of course they have nothing to lose by spilling the beans on the US governments dirty laundry. And it is heapin loads of it.
For example, the UN is investigating 911, specifically the neocons role in it.
That's a big big big sign that the world has more Hugo Chavez's than it has GWB's.
The air is akin to before world war two. People getting treaties saying the US will not attack them... It didn't work then, and I hope they (the Neo-Con, US Gov) fall.
There may be many more Pinochet moments, large and small, down the pike.
Krackonis @ 21:
Sigh...
Bushism resembles fascism. It is not fascism. The fascists in America are going to come from the Theocrats merging with the Plutocrats. Bush is an Idiocrat who uses the Theocrats for his own agenda.
An American fascist would have no hestitation, frex, to not just say leftists should be rounded up, but would have armed goons making sure/em> they are rounded up. An American fascist government also would have the capacity to order a full-fledged war economy, as fascism glorifies the military. An American fascist government also would not be accountable to public opinion like the GOP is (why do you think there isn't a draft, yet?) and would have people protesting in mass numbers beaten or gunned down Tianmen-style by the American SA/SS.
So, yes, certain aspects of Bushism are structurally fascist. But, the GOP itself is only a pale shadow of what an American fascism would look like.
Of course, the first thing I thought was "Syriana"!
Seriously, though, why hasn't C&L shown some love to The Spy Who Billed Me?
There's a reason why the private contractors are the ones with immunity, and why more and more of our Clandestine operations are outsourced.
The bigger question: why haven't Italy and the EU seen these types of actions as acts of war? Don't suppose their profit margins are better than ours?
I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of looking at the ad to the right of the older guy with the birthday hat and gizum dripping from his mustache and beard. WTFUWT?
In the covert business you believe you are doing God's work and if it goes wrong, your superiors will protect you -- then it goes wrong and they don't even know your name. "Rufus? Rufus Fender? No, never heard of Rufus Fender. With that name, wouldn't we remember him?"
pissed off patricia @ 20:
I think it was arrogance more than anything else. They probably figured they were doing the Right Thing and never even considered the fact that they might be investigated by the Italians.
To think as a kid I used to feel sorry for the Soviets because their government had insulated them from information that might threaten the party line. My country is looking more and more like a 1980's stereotype of the USSR all the time.
Unfortunately, incidents like this are not that uncommon. But, the CIA cutting him loose is not usual at all. This sounds like a decision that was made by a political hack. The CIA makes mistakes. There is no question about it. Yet, for the most part, they are pretty darn good at what they do. We seldom learn of their many successes. The main problem they have is appointees in key positions. These are seldom professional intelligence people and do not have a clue about what they are doing. When Bush1 was running the show, there was an insider joke that went something like, "The fastest connection to the Kremlin was not the 'hot line', but George Bush after a glass of wine".
Too bad, so sad!
" NOT A PEEP " got that right . Because they're STILL beating to death Pennsylvania primaries and how Hillary got the rural midget with a lisp vote and how obama " Can'T seal the deal " or cure cancer , solve global warming or make the Washington wizards a play off team .
Not a peep about the U.S. lead war on Somalia , with their proxy army Ethiopia and the human catastrophe , including massive amounts of refugees , civilian killings , rapes , going unreported .
Not a peep about Gaza children , half of which are suffering from malnutrition , partly because of the Oil , food , electricity cut off by Israel . to be expected that Wolf Blitzer won't report any of that , arabs are not " worthy victims" to CNN .
You would THINK 26 Americans going on trial in Italy for kidnapping would be worth mentioning on 24 hour "news " channels , but for the same reason they hire their generals to spin for the pentagon , they won't report this story . It questions U.S. foreign policy .
14All @ 28:
Wrong decade. You're thinking of the Kruschchev-Brezhnev era USSR. The Stalin regime wouldn't have bothered to keep information secret, it would have done bloodletting. The Gorbachev regime would have told them three weeks after it was irrelevant. The Lenin regime would have been more like Stalin.
We made a mistake when we created a branch of the government that doesn't answer to the government.
I guess Bush should get the Noble Peace Prize.
Lay down with pigs, wake up in the mud.
Who was the head of the CIA when this event happened?
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired of looking at the ad to the right of the older guy with the birthday hat and gizum dripping from his mustache and beard. WTFUWT?”
Congratulations, a beautiful illustration of Americans’ attention span.
And we wonder why the MSM wants to cover flag pins.
He lost the house the CIA helped him buy, but I can still feel sympathy. He lost his home and messed up his family. In fact, if the Company isn't supporting him, now, it's almost a shame. But on the other hand, if you work for an outfit that laughs at concepts like "human decency" and "human rights", what can you reasonably expect from the leadership when you're in trouble? Even if the trouble you're in came about because you were following their orders?
And, dammit, he kidnapped a human being and did so knowing that the victim was going to be tortured, brutally tortured. In consigning the guy -- even a terrorist -- to inhuman treatment, Lady acted on his real values, the kind of values he, presumably, is inculcating in his kids.
I couldn't tell from the story but was this Jeff Castelli one of the ones who will be on trial?
I know he is being groomed to head the New York offices of the CIA but won't it look a wee bit questionable if he is being accused by the Italian authorities of kidnapping?
Isn't it amazing how the communists were our mortal enemies until the republicans and the corporations found out how much money we could make doing business with them? If this were the old days, the republican smear machine would come up with all these characters who had ties to communism and knew Obama. Now the communists own a good portion of our national debt, happily fill jobs Americans use to have, and don't pay any U.S. taxes on any of it. No wonder we will all be paying hundreds of dollars a month for toll roads in the near future. Roads that could have been paid for by tax money that Americans used to pay.
In the meantime our tax money is being used to pay for secret prisons. Thank you George Bush, and your buddies. You are now friends with the communists. See, we knew you knew how to make friends with our enemies(if the payoff was high enough)! And thank you for making America stronger.
DAMN THOSE PESKY OTHER COUNTRIES FOR HAVING LAWS THAT DONT ALLOW US TO MUCK AROUND DOING WHATEVER WE WANT....
WE CAN CHANGE THAT....
MCCAIN "THE REPUBLICAN" IN 2008
skyreader7 @ 40:
The People's Republic is about as Communist as Kaiser Wihelm II was intelligent. For the non-historically aware: that means not much.
Spooks gone wild!
The New York office? The CIA does domestic surveillance? Throwing all your subordinates to the wolves must make recruiting a little difficult.
Of course, they are. For the same reason Bush is a republican. Because he says he is. For the same reason Bush says he is compassionate. Because he says he is.
El CheapO @ 33:
Master of Understatement, is that you?
Indeed, that Hague Invasion Act has still not been erased. Let's see, ARE other countries illegally snatching Americans? Check.
If the CIA would have a REAL case against that suspect, they would have had the assistance of the Italian Justice Department. No, the evidence turned out to be less than shaky. From top to bottom it's another example of arrogance and disregard for any international law.
There's a well known case here (NL) concerning an Amsterdam cab driver, who happened to hand out his biz card to a the wrong person (narc suspect) at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Long story short: he became a victim of an illegal FDA/FBI operation, involving a plea bargain criminal informant from California (who had to name names and play along to get out of jail) and a zealous FDA Director of International Operations (interviewed by investigative reporter from Amsterdam on this case), who saw no international treaty problems. He basically said: 'A few kids from my hometown went to Amsterdam, obviously used drugs and when they came back, one of them committed suicide. So I have no problem using any means to root out dangers to the national security of our nation.' I'm not fucking kidding, ok.
The cab driver's lawyer battled hard to prevent extradition. You'd think that would have been easy, as the US refused to hand over any solid evidence for that case. Nope, just a little pressure was needed to manhandle the Dutch Justice Department. The cab driver ended up in max security prison in the US, pleaded guilty to get a lower prison sentence (7 years), for something he wasn't part of, but was screwed into, so the FDA could have good PR.
I've so had it with this shit.
I'm sympathetic for Lady only to the point that he's been made a scapegoat by his own government.
He could have avoided this. If this really went against his conscience he could have resigned, as that is the only honorable thing to do when faced with performing an unconscienable act in the line of duty.
Not that the CIA has any conscience. Or honor.
Besides, he knew the job was dangerous, damn dangerous, when he took it.
End of sympathy.
Bush has a sneering contempt for law is laid out in this video presentation.(Link Below) Fein discusses the danger of Bush's lawlessness on the international scene, and why other nations are unwilling to assist America because of Bush's swaggering disregard for international norms.
"Bush, says that on his say so alone he can identify anyone in the United States as creating a "significant risk of undermining reconstruction program in Iraq, or political reform by creating a risk that an act of violence might be committed." And when he identifies you, he doesn't inform you. But you are instantly subjected to a financial death penalty. All your assets are frozen; no one then can do any business with you."
A Must Watch - Video Discussion -
Chairman of the American freedom agenda Bruce Fein and former United States Congressman Bob Barr
Wonder if there's any connection between the facts that the CIA abandoned him and that the damn surveillance photograph was found in his house. Of course their is. Under the bus he goes.
Anyone know how to spell extradition? Oh, my spell check says I do. Just copy and paste this to Italy along with the agents that were tried and convicted of crimes over there. I'm sure they would want justice to be meted out.
If not, send them a gift basket.
I'm sorry but this piece trying to make Robert Seldon Lady look like the wronged little guy is absolute bullshit, excuse the blog pimping but this man is a criminal- Iran-contra, Honduras (Negroponte and his death squads) and the Niger Uranium con that helped get a million plus people killed in Iraq. That CQ piece is absolute crap you have been had.
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-cr...
El CheapO @ 33:
JFK wanted to "dismantle" the CIA
I guess that's why General Hayden now has to purchase personal liability insurance for all of the spies in the National Clandestine Service (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/cia_increases_legal_li...). Its either that or they start to walk. I mean really, who wants to hang it out there for Uncle Sam when Uncle Sam let's you hang out there?
SP
pissed off patricia @ 36:
George Tenet
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_J._Tenet
General_Rennenkampf @ 23:
Sigh...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAV87X5keQ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT_ZqCH8TW4&feature=related
America: freedom to fascism..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M19jzF8AwEA
me @ 16:
Thanks for the reminder.
I forgot all about that.
I notice this was a few months before the invasion of Iraq.
hmmm, do you think they were planning something?
pfttt.
It's hard for me to muster anybody who participates in crimes against humanity, regardlesss their position in the pecking order.
Unfortunately it's people like Lady who are going to take the fall for the Bush admin's crimes.
Peter G above me in teh thread poses a valid question:
"The New York office? The CIA does domestic surveillance? Throwing all your subordinates to the wolves must make recruiting a little difficult."
Let me repeat that, because we seem to be missing what is staring in our faces, is right there in the article.
Perhaps bold letters are needed.
THE NEW YORK OFFICE? THE CIA DOES DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE?
THE NEW YORK OFFICE? THE CIA DOES DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE?
Ever heard of the UN Headquarters? Lots of foreigners to spy on! All in one place!
Does this mean that the US wouldn't intervene if the 26 CIA agents are taken from US soil extrajudiciously (kidnapping is such an ugly word) and then they were sent to Italy?
Or is this just another example of "One law for us, one law for U.S."?
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