- Italian Mitrokhin Commission
The Italian Mitrokhin Commission was a parliamentary commission set up in 2002 by the
Italian Parliament , then led bySilvio Berlusconi 's right-wing coalition, the "Casa delle Libertà", and presided by senatorPaolo Guzzanti ("Forza Italia "). Its aim was to investigate allegedKGB ties to opposition figures in Italian politics, basing itself on one hand on the controversialMitrokhin Archive , on the other hand on various others sources, including the consultantMario Scaramella , who rose to international prominence in 2006 in the midst of theAlexander Litvinenko affair. Litvinenko was a former KGB agent poisoned in London in 2006.The Mitrokhin Commission alleged, among others, that
Romano Prodi , former center-leftPrime Minister of Italy andPresident of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, was the "KGB's man in Italy." Mario Scaramella was arrested end of December 2006 and charged withcalumny and illegalweapons' trade , while interceptions of phone calls between Scaramella and senator Guzzanti were published by the Italian press at the end of 2006, showing that they planned to discredit various figures of the opposition by claiming KGB ties.The commission was shut down in March 2006 without any concrete evidence given to support the original allegations of KGB ties to Italian politicians. "
The Guardian ",2 December 2006 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,1962357,00.html Spy expert at centre of storm] en icon]In five years, the Commission heard 47 consultants, for a total cost of 1.9 million euros "
Le Figaro ",4 December 2006 , [http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20061204.FIG000000288_mario_scaramella_l_italien_qui_enquetait_sur_l_ex_kgb.html Mario Scaramella, l'Italien qui enquêtait sur l'ex-KGB] fr icon ] Following various events, including the arrest in December 2006 of Mario Scaramella, a consultant of Paolo Guzzanti (paid 1.300 euros a month, not including additional work expenses), for defamation, as well as the April 2006 general election won byRomano Prodi 's left-wing coalition, "L'Unione", the Italian parliament instituted a new commission to investigate the Mitrokhin Commission and allegations that it was manipulated for political purposes. Reuters cable,November 28 ,2006 ]Members of the commission
The commission was composed of twenty senators and twenty deputies. They were: the president
Paolo Guzzanti ; the vicepresidents Andrea Papini and Giovanni Mongiello; the secretaries Giampaolo Zancan and Salvatore Meleleo; the senatorsGiulio Andreotti , Guglielmo Castagnetti, Mario Cavallaro, Amedeo Ciccanti, Cinzia Dato, Luciano Falcier, Costantino Garraffa, Mario Gasbarri, Lauro Salvatore, Loris Giuseppe Maconi, Lucio Malan, Luigi Marino, Franco Mugnai, Gianni Nieddu, Lodovico Pace, Piergiorgio Stiffoni, Roberto Ulivi, Lodovico Pace, Piergiorgio Stiffoni, Roberto Ulivi; the deputies Ferdinando Adornato, Gabriele Albonetti, Maurizio Bertucci, Valter Bielli, Francesco Carboni, Fabrizio Cicchitto, Giuseppe Cossiga, Oliviero Diliberto, Lino Duilio, Giuseppe Fallica, Vincenzo Fragalà, Pierfrancesco Emilio Romano Gamba, Francesco Giordano, Giuseppe Lezza, Giuseppe Molinari, Erminio Angelo Quartiani, Enzo Raisi, Giacomo Stucchi.Allegations
Allegations of KGB ties, which were denied and judged as defamation in justice, included former (and current) premier Romano Prodi, labelled as the "KGB's man in Italy", his staff,
Massimo D'Alema ,Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio , General Giuseppe Cucchi (current director of theCesis ), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, andGuido Salvini , both in charge of the "Imam Rapito" case, as well as "La Repubblica " reportersCarlo Bonini andGiuseppe D'Avanzo , who broke theYellowcake forgery scandal. Also known as the "Niger uranium forgeries", this latter affair refers to falsified classified documents provided by the ItalianSISMI to US intelligence. These forgeries depicted an attempt by the regime ofIraq 'sSaddam Hussein to purchaseyellowcake uranium fromNiger during theIraq disarmament crisis , and was one of the pretexts invoked by the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003.The "Bulgarian connection" claim
Senator Guzzanti also revived the old "Bulgarian connection" thesis concerning
Mehmet Ali Agca 's 1981 attempted assassination ofPope John Paul II . He claimed in the draft of the report, without providing evidence to back his claim, that "leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt", alleging that "the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul" because of his support forSolidarity , the Polish trade-union, relaying "this decision to the military secret services" (and not the KGB). [ cite news | title=Soviets 'had Pope shot for backing Solidarity' | publisher=The Telegraph | date=March 3 ,2006 | url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/03/wpope03.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/03/ixworld.html ] According toFrank Brodhead , however, the new conclusions brought by Paolo Guzzanti were based on the same "information" provided in the early 1980s byMichael Ledeen , a US neo-conservative with ties to the SISMI and one of the leading proponent, today, of an attack against Iran, and Mehmet Ali Agca himself, which is "bogus at best and at worst deliberately misleading." The "Bulgarian connection" thesis was debunked byFrancesco Pazienza , a member ofPropaganda Due , cited in a 1987 article in "The Nation " as well as by media analystEdward S. Herman in "1986: The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection". Pazienza claimed that Michael Ledeen "was the person responsible for dreaming up the 'Bulgarian connection' behind the plot to kill the Pope." Ledeen recognized to the "Vanity Fair" having been paid $10,000 by the SISMI in 1979 or 1980, allegedly on extradition matters with the US. [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/07/yellowcake200607?currentPage=3 The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed] , "Vanity Fair", July 2006 en icon ] . "Washington Post " reporterMichael Dobbs , who had initially believed thisconspiracy theory , later wrote that "the Bulgarian connection was invented by Agca with the hope of winning his release from prison. … He was aided and abetted in this scheme by right-wing conspiracy theorists in the United States andWilliam Casey 's Central Intelligence Agency, which became a victim of its own disinformation campaign." [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/07/yellowcake200607?currentPage=3 The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed] , "Vanity Fair", July 2006 en icon ] "Senator Guzzanti said that the commission had decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt in 2005, after the Pope wrote about it in his last book, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums". The Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Ağca's initiative and that "someone else masterminded it and someone else commissioned it" Fact|date=February 2007.
Guzzanti's claims in the draft report were based on recent computer analysis of photographs that purported to demonstrate Antonov's presence in St Peter's Square during the shooting and on information brought by the French anti-terrorist judge
Jean-Louis Bruguière , a controversed figure whose last feat was to indict Rwandese presidentPaul Kagame , claiming he had deliberately provoked the 1994Rwandan Genocide against his own ethnic group in order to take the power. [ [http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20061121.FIG000000175_rwanda_bruguiere_incrimine_paul_kagame.html Rwanda : Bruguière incrimine Paul Kagamé] , "Le Figaro ",21 November 2006 fr icon] According to "Le Figaro ", Bruguière, who is in close contacts as well with Moscow as with Washington DC, including the CIA and the FBI, has been accused by many of his colleagues of "privileging theraison d'état over law." [ "Le Figaro ",22 November 2006 , "Un juge provocateur", p.2 ]Both Russia and Bulgaria condemned the report. "For Bulgaria, this case closed with the court decision in Rome in March 1986", Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said, while also recalling the Pope's comments during his May 2002 visit to Bulgaria. [ Reuters, 2 March, 2006. "Soviet Union ordered Pope shooting: Italy commission". [http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-03-02T154206Z_01_L02207710_RTRUKOC_0_US-POPE-ASSASSINATION.xml&rpc=22 Available here] en icon ]
This "Bulgarian connection" thesis, which claims that the Soviet Union was in fact behind the Pope's assassination attempt by the former
Grey Wolves member, Mehmet Ali Agca, had been denounced previously by Pope John Paul II during his travel to Bulgaria in May 2002. In Russia, Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov called the accusation "absurd." [http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/02/D8G3J3J00.html Italian Panel: Soviets Behind Pope Attack] ] .Analysis of the allegations
In an interview published in "La Repubblica" in November 2006, former KGB agent Yevgeny Limarev told how the "working group" of the commission purpose was to find connections between Italian political left exponents and KGB or FSB, presumably for political purpose. Asked about targeted personae he said: "Without a doubt, the first name on the list was that of Prodi, especially during the period preceding the spring elections. [...] Prodi was a real obsession, in spite of the fact that nothing ever came out on your Prime Minister." [http://www.repubblica.it/2006/11/sezioni/esteri/putin-spia-avvelenata/intervista-limarev/intervista-limarev.html "Il gruppo della Mitrokhin voleva Prodi e D'Alema"] , "
La Repubblica ",November 27 ,2006 ] Reuters, 28 November, 2006 [http://today.reuters.it/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-11-28T141548Z_01_DIG850609_RTRIDST_0_OITTP-COPACO-MITROKHIN.XML] ] In a rebuke to the original Mitrokhin commission's authenticity,Vasily Mitrokhin himself refused to meet the Commission's members before his death." [http://www.comunisti-italiani-trentinoaltoadige.it/PdciTAAHOME_file/Attualit%C3%A0_file/Attualit%C3%A0107.htm L'Intervento] diLuigi Marino nella Commissione Mitrokhin, Ufficio stampa, Roma, 22 settembre 2004" it icon ]On
December 1 ,2006 several Italian newspapers published interceptions of telephone calls between Paolo Guzzanti andMario Scaramella , a consultant on the Mitrokhin Commission, who became involved in the events surrounding the death of former KGB agentAlexander Litvinenko in Great Britain on23 November 2006 "L'Unità ",December 1 ,2006 . [http://www.unita.it/view.asp?IDcontent=61474 Mitrokhin, la magistratura indaga, l'Udc prende le distanze] 2006-12-08 it icon ]In the interceptions, Guzzanti declared that the Mitrokhin Commission's unstated goal was to depict
Romano Prodi andAlfonso Pecoraro Scanio , leader of theFederation of the Greens and current Minister of Environment in Prodi's government, as "agents of the KGB", financed by Moscow in order to discredit him. In these interceptions, the two men also discussed plans to claim thatAntonio Bassolino , governor of theCampania region, was linked to theCamorra . According to the "Corriere della Sera ", these interceptions demonstrated that Scaramella was in contact with Italian police agents, penitentiary police agents, and twoCIA agents, one of them beingRobert Seldon Lady , former CIA station chief in Milan, indicted by prosecutor Armando Spataro for having coordinated the abduction ofAbu Omar in 2003 in Milan, a case ofextraordinary rendition which gave rise to the "Imam Rapito affair ".Corriere della Sera 30 November 2006 [http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2006/11_Novembre/30/mitrokhin.shtml Così la Mitrokhin indagava su Prodi] - URL accessed on 2007-02-27 it icon ]Scaramella, according to the interceptions, was to collect false witnesses among KGB refugees in Europe to support this aim. He was arrested end of December 2006 on charges of
calumny and illegalweapons' trade . The investigation showed that Scaramella received some of his "information" from Alexander Litvinenko. Scaramella was then an obscure figure, described as follows by the "International Herald Tribune ":"a slew of media reports about him and his career here — which included trying to prove that some top Italian center-left politicians, including Prime Minister Romano Prodi, are Russian spies — have invariably included unflattering adjectives. They include: "incurable liar", "wannabe 007", "braggart", "bumbler" and "swindler" — not to mention "fool" and "mental case." cite news | title = Italian emerges as an odd footnote in Litvinenko case | publisher =
International Herald Tribune | date =2006-12-08 | url = http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/08/news/poison.php | accessdate = 2006-12-11]His repeated offers to collaborate with the Italian secret services were all rejected in the 1990s by the Italian government.
Reuters ,2007-01-05 . "Italy gives Litvinenko contact withering welcome". [http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyid=2007-01-05T124048Z_01_L04421348_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-POISONING-SCARAMELLA.xml accessible here] . URL accessed on 2007-01-24. en icon ] Nonetheless, from 2003 to 2006, he worked for the Mitrokhin Commission. When a left-wing member of the Commission questioned his creditals, he promptly remade one.According to the investigations of Rome prosecutor Pietro Salvitti, who indicted Mario Scaramella, cited by "La Repubblica",
Nicolò Pollari , head of SISMI indicted in the "Imam Rapito" affair, as well as SISMI n°2,Marco Mancini , arrested in July 2006 for the same reason, were some of the informers, alongside Mario Scaramella, of senator Paolo Guzzanti. Beside targeting Romano Prodi and his staff, this "network", according to Pietro Salvitti's words, also aimed at defaming General Giuseppe Cucchi (current director of theCesis ), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the "Imam Rapito" case andGuido Salvini , as well as "La Reppublica" reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo, who broke the Yellowcake forgery scandal as well as theSISMI-Telecom affair , in which Marco Mancini, n°2 of the SISMI already indicted in the "Imam Rapito" affair, was arrested for end of 2006. [http://www.repubblica.it/2007/01/sezioni/cronaca/caso-scaramella/caso-scaramella/caso-scaramella.html Il falso dossier di Scaramella - "Così la Russia manipola Prodi"] , "La Repubblica ",11 January 2007 it icon] The investigation also showed a connection between Scaramella and the CIA, in particular throughFilippo Marino , one of Scaramella's closest partners since the 1990s and co-founder of theEnvironmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP), described as an empty shell according to the "International Herald Tribune". Marino, who now lived in the U.S., has acknowledged in an interview an association with former and active CIA officers, including Robert Lady, former CIA station chief in Milan above-mentioned. "International Herald Tribune ",9 January 2007 , "How one man insinuated himself into poisoning case". [http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/09/news/mario.php see here] en icon]Closure of the Commission and creation of a new commission
The Mitrokhin Commission was shut down in March 2006 without any concrete result provided, and not one political figure was exposed by the allegations, despite months of press speculation alimented by Berlusconi family newspaper "
Il Giornale ". "The Guardian ",2 December 2006 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,1962357,00.html Spy expert at centre of storm] en icon] Following the general election and the nomination of Romano Prodi as head of the new government, a parliamentary commission was instituted to investigate about this controversed "Mitrokhin Commission".References
See also
*
Mitrokhin Archive
*Mario Scaramella
*Silvio Berlusconi andRomano Prodi
*Mehmet Ali Agca
*Yellowcake forgery scandal
*"Imam Rapito affair "
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