http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=3Dhsnews-000002707658
CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
April 19, 2008 =96 2:43 p.m.
The CIA=92s Odd Man Out
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
It=92s 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=92s base chief in Milan,
Italy, and nominally in charge of a February 2003 agency operation to
snatch an al Qaeda suspect off the city=92s streets.
Sounded like a pretty good idea at the time. It was only a few months
after we=92d 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 =93Mr. Bob,=94 Robert
Seldon Lady, a bear-like man with a pasha=92s 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 =97
don=92t 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=92s ineptitude knows no
bounds.
Ironically, Lady had successfully pursued other al Qaeda operatives,
according to Italian law enforcement sources I talked with in Milan
last November. They said they liked working with Lady, a onetime cop.
But the greater irony is that Lady had opposed the operation from the
get-go, American intelligence sources said.
Snatching Omar was the brainchild of Jeff Castelli, a rising star in
the CIA, who was the Rome station chief and in charge of all U.S.
intelligence operations in Italy.
There was little doubt Omar was a bad guy, a cog in an Islamic
underground that was recruiting, preparing and dispatching holy
warriors to Muslim crusades in Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia and later
Iraq. Indeed, Italian prosecutors and counterterrorism police were
closing in on Omar and another 20 or so Milan-based terrorist
suspects.
Why, Lady argued, should they get in the way of the Italians, who were
doing a good job recruiting sources in Milan=92s Muslim neighborhoods
and getting close to the terrorists?
=46rom the standpoint of standard clandestine tradescraft, there were
other foolish elements to Castelli=92s plan as well, such as allowing
the CIA surveillance and snatch teams to use cell phones, which can
easily be traced to their owners and used to track their locations.
The Italian investigators did just that. It turned out the CIA boys
and girls were using not only their own phones but also personal
credit cards, for both pleasure and business as they cavorted through
the luxury hotels of Milan and Venice for their mission.
Ruh-roh.
But =93renditions,=94 as the kidnappings are called, were all the rage in
2003, not arrests.
The CIA=92s Counterterrorism Center gave Castelli his head. Lady, ever
the good soldier, went along.
Truth and Consequences
Mr. Bob=92s team play cost him his retirement home, which was seized by
Italian authorities when he fled, and eventually, his wife.
=93I don=92t blame her,=94 Lady told writer Matthew Cole, the only
journalist known to have interviewed the ex-CIA man, in a little
noticed piece in the March 2007 issue of GQ magazine.
=93She=92s been living with a guy who is frustrated and powerless,=94 Lady
said. =93I can=92t take this stuff out on anyone, so she has to bear the
load. It=92s too much. Why should she have to deal with this?=94
At the time, a downcast Lady was hanging out in South Florida. Lately
he=92s been doing some security consulting work in Central America,
where he grew up, the son of an American businessman in Honduras.
The Italian dream has eva****ated. Even the family photos and other
mementos left behind could be auctioned off with the house, if he=92s
convicted.
And there=92s little doubt of that.
=93I=92ll probably be convicted,=94 Lady told Cole. =93But I won=92t go to
t=
he
trial, and I=92ll never see Italy again.=94
In the ultimate irony, his house could end up the property of al Qaeda
suspect Abu Omar, who=92s recovering in Egypt from wounds suffered at
the hands of Egyptian interrogators, to whom the CIA delivered him in
February 2003.
Italian investigators, tracing Lady=92s cell phone calls, put him in
Cairo the same time Omar was there.
So it=92s hard to be too sympathetic for his plight.
Except for this: He was abandoned on the field.
The CIA has disowned him. It hasn=92t provided him a lawyer, or helped
him pay for one. Lady is on his own.
This is taking the concept of =93plausible denial=94 way too far.
For sure, the sacrifices of many an agency operative must forever
remain secret, as the wall of anonymous stars in its headquarters
vestibule so elegantly attests.
But that=92s for operatives who have never been conclusively identified
as agency employees. Italian prosecutors have a shopping cart full of
evidence about Lady=92s role in Milan, where he was well known to local
authorities.
While Lady suffers, the official who concocted the Milan caper is
moving on up.
As I re****ted last February, Jeff Castelli got only a rap on the
knuckles from the CIA=92s Accountability Board and is being groomed to
take over the agency=92s New York station, a hugely im****tant post.
CIA spokespeople will not discuss Castelli or Lady. They don=92t exist,
in the CIA=92s fantasy.
=93Leaders used to protect those below from the top as they went up,=94
Lady groused. =93It=92s a way of harnessing the loyalty of those they
led.=94
He is bitter. =93Now they protect the top. They manage down and step on
anyone below.=94
I bet CIA campus recruiters don=92t talk about that.
Memo to CIA honcho Michael V. Hayden : Do the right thing. Stand by
your man.
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