Top Secret America, una nazione di intercettatori

Sto proseguendo in questi giorni la lettura dell'inchiesta del Washington Post sul mondo dell'intelligence e dell'antiterrorismo negli Stati Uniti, Top Secret America. La serie entra negli ingranaggi di una macchina che l'amministrazione Bush ha decisco - con molte ragioni - di rafforzare enormemente, ma che secondo il quotidiano ha assunto dimensioni inattese e soprattutto è sfuggita a ogni controllo di budget e probabilmente di obiettivo. Un fiume di denaro si è riversato sui tradizionali contractors e fornitori, scatenando un vero e proprio arrembaggio. Riporto qui un estratto dedicato a General Dynamics, una azienda di tecnologie militari le cui origini risalgono, alla fine dell'Ottocento e alla costruzione dei sottomarini, fino all'acquisizione di un brand che conosciamo tutti: Canadair. Dal 9/11 General Dynamics ha subito profonde trasformazioni che l'hanno portata a focalizzarsi sugli aspetti dell'intelligence, dall'intercettazione all'analisi delle informazioni. In questo periodo ha acquisito 11 società specializzate, ma soprattutto è passata da un fatturato di 10 miliardi di dollari nel 2000 a un volume di 32 miliardi nel 2009.

Sono soldi che creano molta occupazione e nuova edilizia. Ma è denaro ben speso tenendo conto di tutte le variabili in gioco? Secondo il Washington Post i costi rischiano di essere di gran lunga superiori ai benefici, specie se si tiene conto di ripercussioni come la perdita del controllo democratico o il rafforzamento di una cultura della paura e del sospetto. Due derive da cui non è facile tornare.

Per vostra comodità ecco i link ai tre articoli finora pubblicati:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/national-security-inc/print/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/secrets-next-door/print/

e le relative gallerie fotografiche

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/galleries/gallery-day-1/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/galleries/gallery-day-2/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/galleries/gallery-day-3/

(...) To understand how these firms have come to dominate the post-9/11 era, there's no better place to start than the Herndon office of General Dynamics. One recent afternoon there, Ken Pohill was watching a series of unclassified images, the first of which showed a white truck moving across his computer monitor.

The truck was in Afghanistan, and a video camera bolted to the belly of a U.S. surveillance plane was following it. Pohill could access a dozen images that might help an intelligence analyst figure out whether the truck driver was just a truck driver or part of a network making roadside bombs to kill American soldiers.

To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver's house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver's side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of the truck's movement. Click. A Google Earth map of friendly forces. Click: A chat box with everyone else following the truck, too.

Ten years ago, if Pohill had worked for General Dynamics, he probably would have had a job bending steel. Then, the company's center of gravity was the industrial port city of Groton, Conn., where men and women in wet galoshes churned out submarines, the thoroughbreds of naval warfare. Today, the firm's commercial core is made up of data tools such as the digital imagery library in Herndon and the secure BlackBerry-like device used by President Obama, both developed at a carpeted suburban office by employees in loafers and heels.

The evolution of General Dynamics was based on one simple strategy: Follow the money.

The company embraced the emerging intelligence-driven style of warfare. It developed small-target identification systems and equipment that could intercept an insurgent's cellphone and laptop communications. It found ways to sort the billions of data points collected by intelligence agencies into piles of information that a single person could analyze.

It also began gobbling up smaller companies that could help it dominate the new intelligence landscape, just as its competitors were doing. Between 2001 and 2010, the company acquired 11 firms specializing in satellites, signals and geospatial intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, technology integration and imagery.

On Sept. 11, 2001, General Dynamics was working with nine intelligence organizations. Now it has contracts with all 16. Its employees fill the halls of the NSA and DHS. The corporation was paid hundreds of millions of dollars to set up and manage DHS's new offices in 2003, including its National Operations Center, Office of Intelligence and Analysis and Office of Security. Its employees do everything from deciding which threats to investigate to answering phones.

General Dynamics' bottom line reflects its successful transformation. It also reflects how much the U.S. government - the firm's largest customer by far - has paid the company beyond what it costs to do the work, which is, after all, the goal of every profit-making corporation.

The company reported $31.9 billion in revenue in 2009, up from $10.4 billion in 2000. Its workforce has more than doubled in that time, from 43,300 to 91,700 employees, according to the company.

Revenue from General Dynamics' intelligence- and information-related divisions, where the majority of its top-secret work is done, climbed to $10 billion in the second quarter of 2009, up from $2.4 billion in 2000, accounting for 34 percent of its overall revenue last year.

The company's profitability is on display in its Falls Church headquarters. There's a soaring, art-filled lobby, bistro meals served on china enameled with the General Dynamics logo and an auditorium with seven rows of white leather-upholstered seats, each with its own microphone and laptop docking station.

General Dynamics now has operations in every corner of the intelligence world. It helps counterintelligence operators and trains new analysts. It has a $600 million Air Force contract to intercept communications. It makes $1 billion a year keeping hackers out of U.S. computer networks and encrypting military communications. It even conducts information operations, the murky military art of trying to persuade foreigners to align their views with U.S. interests.

"The American intelligence community is an important market for our company," said General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease. "Over time, we have tailored our organization to deliver affordable, best-of-breed products and services to meet those agencies' unique requirements."

In September 2009, General Dynamics won a $10 million contract from the U.S. Special Operations Command's psychological operations unit to create Web sites to influence foreigners' views of U.S. policy. To do that, the company hired writers, editors and designers to produce a set of daily news sites tailored to five regions of the world. They appear as regular news Web sites, with names such as "SETimes.com: The News and Views of Southeast Europe." The first indication that they are run on behalf of the military comes at the bottom of the home page with the word "Disclaimer." Only by clicking on that do you learn that "the Southeast European Times (SET) is a Web site sponsored by the United States European Command."

What all of these contracts add up to: This year, General Dynamics' overall revenue was $7.8 billion in the first quarter, Jay L. Johnson, the company's chief executive and president, said at an earnings conference call in April. "We've hit the deck running in the first quarter," he said, "and we're on our way to another successful year."

(...)

L'oscuro potere parallelo della Top Secret America

Basta leggere le prime righe della prima parte dell'inchiesta pubblicata questa mattina (diciamo il nostro mezzogiorno del 19 luglio) dal Washington Post, il comunicato stampa di presentazione, l'efficace infografica animata che cerca di far luce su una cinquantina delle entità coinvolte e delle loro sottosezioni, per arrivare a una conclusione disarmante: il 9 settembre 2001 la cellula terroristica che è riuscita a colpire così clamorosamente alcuni dei simboli più significativi dell'estabilshment e della cultura americani ha, molto semplicemente, vinto la sua guerra contro una parte così importante dell'Occidente.

Non hanno vinto per aver distrutto diverse migliaia di vite e sbriciolato grattacieli, edifici, velivoli. Hanno vinto perché hanno corrotto speriamo non in modo irreversibile una complessa psicologia collettiva. Hanno inoculato nell'America che conoscevamo il virus autoreplicante della mania di persecuzione. Hanno creato una nazione - e un governo - di veri e propri paranoici.

Così facendo - questa è in pratica la tesi molto ben documentata di Dana Priest e William Arkin - sono riusciti a scardinare uno dei fondamenti principali, forse il più importante della democrazia americana, il rispetto assoluto, magari con qualche temporaneo cedimento sempre ricondotto, anche faticosamente, su binari precisi, del principio della trasparenza e del reciproco controllo tra poteri. Nella patria delle teorie cospirazioniste, dello stile paranoico della politica, come titolava nel suo celeberrimo saggio del 1964 Richard Hofstadter, c'è sempre spazio per le rivelazioni, le commissioni di inchiesta, le leggi (come il Freedom of Information Act) che tutelano il diritto del cittadino di conoscere i fatti, anche quando c'è qualcuno che vorrebbe manipolarli o nasconderli.

E c'è la stampa libera, i giornali come il Washington Post, che 40 anni e più anni dopo il Watergate pubblica in prima pagina il primo di tre articoli che non potranno non far discutere. La presidenza coinvolta, quella di George W. Bush (figlio) e del suo esiziale "vice" Dick Cheney, questa volta non rischia di cadere. Ma gli americani, affermano Priest e Arkin, faticheranno a lungo per fare chiarezza e pulizia. Sotto l'ondata di permissiva emotività causata dal Nine Eleven, Bush e Cheney hanno autorizzato una catena di risposte che ha portato alla creazione di una maglia di sicurezza e controllo parallela, oscura e talmente radicata e complessa da sfidare ogni capacità di ricostruzione. Una rete di quasi 1.300 organizzazioni governative che coordinano quasi 2.000 "contractors" (come le famigerate società di sicurezza privata attive in Iraq a tutela degli interessi di non si sa bene chi). Una America Top Secret che brucia una montagna di denaro, costruisce e ristruttura edifici in tutti gli Stati dell'Unione, mobilita un totale di 850 mila persone (avete letto bene) con in tasca un tesserino che dice "questa persona opera segretamente per conto del governo e non deve essere disturbata".

Una rete talmente segreta da essere ormai sfuggita a ogni forma di controllo incrociato. Che conosce talmente poco se stessa da dar luogo a forme fantasmagoriche di ridondanza; di lavori identici svolti e continuamente rieseguiti; di informazioni accumulate, senza alcun costrutto, da una miriade di fonti con tecniche di ascolto, intercettazione, rilevamento molto sofisticate; di propaganda e guerriglia psicologica coordinata attraverso televisioni, radio, giornali, social network. Con quali ritorni, si chiede il giornale? Con quali vantaggi per la collettività in termini di sicurezza reale, di attentati sventati, di terroristi arrestati? Sono domande cui nessuno riesce a dare risposta.

Grazie al Tg3 e a Giovanna Bottieri per avermi sospinto stasera verso il sito del Washington Post. Incredibile pensare che solo Il Mattino di Napoli esce in edicola oggi citando in prima l'inchiesta dei colleghi americani. Se il Washington Post ha ragione c'è solo da domandarsi se l'America della trasparenza riuscirà a sconfiggere l'America dei segreti. Quand'anche il verminaio scoperto dal quotidiano fosse di dimensioni più contenute, ci sarebbe comunque da interrogarsi su quanto siamo disposti a concedere alla paura, se davvero vogliamo rinunciare alla certezza delle nostre prerogative democratiche in cambio della discutibile sicurezza di una vita (forse) priva di attentati terroristici ma comunque piena di terrore. E' una domanda che faremmo bene a porci tutti quanti, ogni volta che ascoltiamo le ipocrite promesse di chi vuol darci "più sicurezza" e sempre meno voglia di vivere insieme.

Washington Post Investigates the Intelligence World Responsible for America’s Safety

Two-Year Long Review Explores Redundancy, Unwieldiness in Top Secret Government Agencies

WASHINGTON--July 19, 2010--The Washington Post today published the first story in a new series exploring the Top Secret world created in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The series titled "Top Secret America” (www.TopSecretAmerica.com), describes and analyzes a defense and intelligence structure that has become so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, or whether it is making the United States safer.

Among the highlights:

-Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on Top Secret programs related to counter-terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence at over 10,000 locations across the country. Over 850,000 Americans have Top Secret clearances.

-Redundancy and overlap are major problems and a symptom of the ongoing lack of coordination between agencies.

-In the Washington area alone, 33 building complexes for Top Secret work are under construction or have been built since September 2001.

This is the first and most comprehensive examination of the complex system. It was reported by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Dana Priest and author, researcher, and military expert William M. Arkin. The findings are based on hundreds of interviews with current and former military and intelligence officials and public records. Nearly two dozen journalists worked on the investigation, including investigative reporters, cartography experts, database reporters, video journalists, researchers, interactive graphic designers, digital designers, graphic designers, and graphics editors at The Washington Post.

“This country’s top-secret national-security enterprise is both enormous and opaque,” Marcus Brauchli, The Post’s executive editor said. “We have sought through this long-term investigative project to describe it and enable our readers— including citizens, taxpayers, policymakers and legislators—to understand the scale and effectiveness of what has been created. The Post remains firmly committed to this kind of accountability journalism.”

In addition to the stories in the series, a blog will anchor the Top Secret America site providing updates on Top Secret America coverage, original journalism and insight around related national security matters. The Top Secret America blog will serve as an online destination for further reporting, discussion, analysis, and interaction. Priest and Arkin will host this continuing conversation throughout the rest of the year, working alongside readers to lead inquiries about dimensions of Top Secret America that remain unexplored.

Other multimedia features include:

-A searchable database illustrates information about government organizations that contract out Top Secret work, companies they contract to, the types of work they do, and the places where they do it.

-A map displays locations of all the clusters of Top Secret activity and some basic information about those areas.

-Each of nearly 2,000 companies and 45 government organizations has a profile page with basic information about its role in Top Secret America, and readers can filter searches by companies doing a specific kind of work, all companies mentioned in the story, or all companies with more than $750 million in revenue.

-A video guide to Top Secret America provides a concise, 90-second visual overview of the project’s major findings and implications.

-A video produced by PBS Frontline previews the series and illuminates the process of reporting. From the high-tech barn where Arkin worked to Priest’s guided-tour outside the NSA campus to a photographer’s experience shooting, the video captures how the information was gathered and evolved into the final series.

A second story to be published Tuesday takes an in-depth look at the government's dependence on private contractors and how it may be degrading the quality of the federal workforce. Managers of the intelligence agencies do not necessarily know how many contractors work for them. The Post estimates the number of contractors who work on Top Secret programs to be 265,000.

A third story to be published Wednesday focuses on the economic and cultural impact of a high concentration of Top Secret work within a community located around the National Security Agency. While the rest of the country struggles with an economic recession, in the clusters of Top Secret America, expansion continues and the unemployment rate is low. The NSA plans to expand by two-thirds its current size over the next 15 years.

The first installment of the series is available now online at:

www.TopSecretAmerica.com

as well as at:

www.washingtonpost.com/TopSecretAmerica.

Dana Priest is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. She was the Post's intelligence reporter for three years and its Pentagon correspondent for seven years before that. She has traveled widely with Army Special Forces, Army infantry troops on peacekeeping missions and the Pentagon’s four-star regional commanders. Priest received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “The Other Walter Reed” and the 2006 Pulitzer for Beat Reporting for her work on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas. She authored the 2003 book, “THE MISSION: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America’s Military” about the military’s expanding influence over U.S. foreign affairs.

William Arkin is a reporter for The Washington Post and has been a columnist since 1998. He has been working on the subject of government secrecy and national security affairs for over 30 years and has visited war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books about the U.S. military and national security including seven basic reference works. He has been a consultant for Natural Resources Defense Council, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and the U.S. Air Force.

Il film delle Number Stations

Altra segnalazione dall'amico Benn Kobb: si tratta di "Clandestine" un suggestivo documentario di 30 minuti realizzato da Gideon Kennedy e Marcus Rosentrater con materiale d'archivio americano sulla storia delle Number Stations, le misteriose emittenti che ancora adesso vengono utilizzate dai servizi di intelligence per gestire le reti di agenti sul campo, con lunghi messaggi in forma criptata. La colonna sonora del documentario è costituita dall'inconfondibile sound di queste stazioni, nella famosa antologia del Conet Project.

Di seguito il trailer su YouTube e una breve intervista ai registi proposta dall'Atlanta Film Festival. Clandestine ha anche una pagina Facebook molto attiva.

10 Questions with Gideon Kennedy & Marcus Rosentrater of CLANDESTINE (with Code!)

In the early days of film the norm was to store a print for a few years after an initial run and when space was needed, to burn it. Studios would keep the hits they knew they could re-release every few years, but Hollywood had no problem destroying hundreds of films they no longer had any financial use for--to be fair, they did keep the scripts around so they could remake them. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the 1960s that film preservation really started in earnest and it really wasn't till the 1980s there were enough techniques developed to salvage the large number films that were literally crumbling. One hundred plus years of filmmaking has disappeared, and is disappearing, and no one will see it.

What directors Kennedy and Rosentrater have done is to go beyond preservation and have, in the tradition of oral storytelling, reordered the familiar to craft a new narrative that's grounded in reality, tinged in paranoia and intimately personal.

CLANDESTINE

Gideon Kennedy & Marcus Rosentrater - Directors

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Watch the Trailer

If you could describe your film using only 3 words, what would they be?

ECHO HOTEL PAPA (that's also a clue!)

Is there a character or subject in your film you most identify with? Would you switch places with them just for a day?

Can't really say without generating unwanted suspicion.

What's the one thing about your film you're most proud of?

The fact that we were able to weave sounds and images from hundreds of sources into one seamless film that tells two stories, is really something to be proud of. That, and a genuine paranoia of the FBI.

When you first screened your film, was there a moment, scene or character the audience reacted to, that surprised you?

Because our film is half non-fiction and half narrative fiction, many people assume that the narrative half is documentary and therefore autobiographical. It is not. However, it is based on research around the thoughts, feelings and reactions people have towards an adulterous parent or role model.

What do you want audiences to take away from your film?

We've found that many viewers leave reflecting on a parent or role model who has let them down, or somehow grew out of favor. On the documentary side, it's been fun to see people's reaction to Numbers Stations; their surprise that governments are still br [transmission cut off]

Who are the directors, filmmakers and artists that most influenced your film or yourself?

Hopefully a viewer, watching our film, would see the influences of Chris Marker, Craig Baldwin, Rick Prelinger, Laura Kissel, Bill Morrison, Peter Watkins and perhaps even Jay Rosenblatt.

Who is the unsung hero of your film and why?

Adolf Tolkachev. In addition to being one of the most productive spies in history, his story and personal life are the most reminiscent of the story told in the narrative segments. His greatness is relative to which side you are on.

Where do you see your film in 5 years?

Gathering dust on archive.org, from which most of it came.

Someone has to go to the bathroom during your film, and they have to miss part of your film. Do they miss the beginning, the middle or the end?

Leave at the beginning, and don't come back. In a word, ABORT!

Una inaspettata radio-spia milanese

Haaretz dedica un interessante approfondimento al personaggio di Michael Harari, figura leggendaria nella storia dei servizi di intelligence israeliani, l'uomo che aiutò a tirare le fila di operazioni come il raid di Entebbe o "Ira di Dio", la missione, successivamente immortalata nel film di Steven Spielberg "Munich", per vendicare l'uccisione, a Monaco, degli atleti della squadra israeliana olimpica. Ma fu anche coinvolto nelle oscure vicende panamensi immediatamente precedenti l'invazion americana, quando Harari divenne addirittura consigliare di Manuel Noriega.

Comprensibilmente Harari non è mai stato troppo incline a farsi intervistare. Il quotidiano di Gerusalemme cita il momento pubblico più famoso, il colloquio con i giornalisti del primo canale della tv pubblica israeliana ormai più di venti anni fa. Oggi Harari è tornato a parlare, a lungo, con il giornalista del Messaggero Eric Salerno, che ha utilizzato queste conversazioni per il suo recentee libro Mossad Base Italia. Al centro dell'attenzione di Salerno ci sono le relazioni tra servizi israeliani e italia, nei giorni immediatamene successivi alla seconda guerra mondiale. Hariri ha raccontato a Salerno delle sue esperienze come radio operatore della Aliyah Bet, l'organizzazione segreta che nelle diverse nazioni organizzava il reimpatrio clandestino di chi voleva migrare nella Palestina britannica e in Israele prima della dichiarazione dello Stato nel 1948. Harari era dislocato in Lombardia e il suo nominativo era FNM, come "Ferrovie Nord Milano" (il che chissà perché mi fa ricordare le volte che uno torna dalla Malpensa su uno degli ultimi treni e viaggia con la security di El Al, ragazze e ragazzi giovanissimi, molto simili a come doveva essere Harari 60 e più anni fa, che abitano tra la città e l'aeroporto e scendono da quel treno come "normali" pendolari, solo a un'ora un po' insolita).

Il libro di Salerno parte da queste prime forme di collaborazione offerta agli agenti pre-israeliani per elaborare una storia dei rapporti tra i servizi informativi italiani e il Mossad e gli altri servizi dello Stato ebraico, rapporti che coinvolgono anche personaggi fascisti e post-fascisti. Un libro che non potrà non far discutere, corroborando le ipotesi cospirazioniste dei tanti, troppi nemici di Israele (non appartengo a questa infausta schiera, zeppa di antisemiti dichiarati) ma facendo anche arricciare il naso ai pochi gruppi di sostenitori, come Informazione corretta, che scrive un sacco di cose giustissime con il tono da mastino del nostrano giornalismo di destra, inducendomi a volte a dubitare che la difesa di Israele sia l'obiettivo primario. Personalmente ritengo che certe storie vadano raccontate, dando voce ai protagonisti e alle loro testimonianze dirette, a dispetto di chi ritiene - spesso per motivazioni diametralmente opposte - che sia sempre meglio tacere. Dall'articolo di Haaretz sembra di capire che Harari non abbia smentito il racconto riportato da Eric Salerno. La sua vicenda di operatore radio va così ad aggiungersi ai pochi fatti e alla notevole mole di folklore che da anni andiamo imbastendo a proposito delle stazioni-numero sulle onde corte, le presunte centrali di controllo delle reti di agenti del Mossad e di tanti altri servizi spionistici in tutto il mondo.

Tales of Harari in Italy

By Yossi Melman

Mike Harari is one of the most admired and mysterious figures in Israel's intelligence community. But over the last quarter century, his numerous clashes with journalists and photographers have supplied ample evidence of his attitude toward the media: He is not a big fan. Except for one interview with Channel 1 television in 1989, given in order to clear his name, he always adamantly refused to be interviewed.

Harari headed the Mossad's Caesarea operations department during the dramatic years of the fight against Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s. His otherwise successful career in the agency was tarnished in July 1973, when a team from the Mossad's Kidon unit killed Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent Moroccan waiter, in Lillehammer, Norway after mistaking him for the real target: Hassan Ali Salameh, a senior member of the Black September organization, who was involved in planning the kidnap and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Several Mossad agents were caught and served time in jail, but Harari and then Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, who supervised the operation on the ground, managed to get out of Norway.

Harari continued in the Mossad for another two years and then went into business. He served as Panama's honorary consul in Israel and as an adviser to Panama's former president, Manuel Noriega.

In 1989, U.S. President George Bush ordered his country's army to invade Panama and depose Noriega, who was arrested and sentenced to jail (where he still remains) for drug trafficking, money laundering and extortion. For a time, there were rumors that Harari had been either killed or arrested during the invasion. Harari gave the Channel 1 interview to dispel these rumors.

Given his animosity toward the press, it is surprising that he recently agreed to another interview with a journalist - not an Israeli one, heaven forbid, but an American-Italian one. Eric Salerno held lengthy conversations with Harari in the latter's Tel Aviv home. The talk focused not on Harari's work in the Mossad, but on his distant past, when he was a radio operator in Italy's Lombardy district for the Mossad L'Aliya Bet, which brought illegal immigrants to prestate Israel. Harari related, for instance, that his code name in radio messages was FNM, an Italian abbreviation for the rail line to northern Milan, and showed the interviewer a pistol he retained from operations in 1948.

The conversation forms a chapter in a book Salerno recently published in Italian, Mossad base Italia. The book relates the story of the generous aid the Italians provided to Mossad L'Aliya Bet and other prestate undergrounds, such as the Haganah, as well as the close cooperation, ever since Israel's establishment, between Italy's intelligence service, SISMI, and the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence branch.

The Israeli organizations never examined the backgrounds of the Italians who assisted them. In 1938, members of the Betar movement participated in a naval training course in Benito Mussolini's fascist Italy. Mossad L'Aliya Bet and the prestate military organizations Palmach and Palyam - which worked to bring Jews to Israel, purchase arms and blow up ships and planes carrying weapons to Arab countries - were assisted by former fascists.

A key Italian figure was Pino Romualdi, leader of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, with which the current speaker of the Italian parliament, Gianfranco Fini, was also affiliated. Romualdi supplied the Irgun, another prestate underground, with explosives from old cartridges used by the fascists in World War II. Another fascist who was very close to Mussolini, Fiorenzo Capriatti, came to Israel and helped create Shayetet 13, the navy commando unit.

According to Salerno, the Mossad persuaded Italy's current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and his aides to order Italy's intelligence services to give it the names of their own operations officers, so that Mossad could obtain their help in its clandestine operations. Adm. Flavio Martini, a former head of SISMI, said that when he was SISMI's chief of operations in the 1970s, he traveled to Syria, and upon his return, provided Israeli intelligence with Damascus' plans for war.

Based on the evidence and documents gathered by the author, all Italian governments since World War II helped the Mossad and Military Intelligence. Israeli espionage agents confirm that Italy's intelligence services are among the friendliest in the world toward their Israeli counterparts.