God's Own Monster

Italian investigator Adamo Bove fell to his death in July 2006 after uncovering an illegal wiretapping operation by Italy’s SISMI military intelligence agency. Bove served as a special investigator with Italy’s DIGOS national law enforcement agency in the mid-1990s before being hired by Telecom Italia. By 2003 he was the head of both the offices of Security Governance and International Security Coordination. After leaving Telecom Italia in 2005, he was commissioned by prosecutors in Milan to investigate a 2003 joint CIA/SISMI operation to rendition Abu Omar. Omar was a radical imam living in Milan who was seized and transferred to Egypt where he was held for four years. Italian prosecutors identified and indicted 26 CIA personnel involved in the operation, and Adamo Bove assisted with the investigation. Bove was an expert on digital surveillance and while examining cell phone records by the suspects, he discovered Telecom Italia’s Radar software which was designed to facilitate legal investigative wiretaps could also be accessed and used without legal justification and without leaving any records in the system logs. This incident bore remarkable similarities to the penetration of Vodafone Greece’s wiretap software in 2004, which was later attributed to the US National Security Agency. Telecom Italia’s head of security Giuliano Tavaroli was directly involved. He cooperated with his longtime friend Marco Mancini, the deputy director of SISMI, and Emanuele Cipriani, owner of a private investigations firm. The three men kept files on more than 5,000 people, including journalists, politicians, magistrates, athletes, and referees. On July 21st, 2006, Bove fell more than 100 feet from an overpass on Via Cilea in central Naples. His wife and twin brother both publicly stated he was not depressed and was used to dealing with high-pressure investigations. Between September and December 2006, Tavaroli, Mancini, and Cipriani, along with twenty other coconspirators in various military, law enforcement, and civilian organizations were all arrested in the widening scandal, with many jailed afterwards. #milan #italy #telecom #naples #cia

Libyan dissident Faisal Zagallai was nearly killed by a former Green Beret in a hit ordered by Muammar Gaddafi in October 1980. Faisal and his wife Farida were graduate students at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. They and many other Libyans were studying in the US on scholarships paid by Muammar Gaddafi's government in the mid-1970s with the intention of creating a new class of educated citizens to develop Libya into a major economic power. But as life deteriorated back home under Gaddafi's rule, Faisal and other Libyan expats worldwide became anti-Gaddafi activists. Gaddafi responded with a campaign of murder and intimidation. In the spring of 1980, eight dissidents were killed in separate incidents across Europe, and Faisal soon learned from the FBI that his name had appeared on a kill list. On their recommendation, he purchased a pistol and was issued a concealed weapons permit as a precautionary measure. On the night of October 13th, a job recruiter for IBM arrived for a scheduled interview at Faisal's apartment. In reality it was a former Green Beret named Eugene Tafoya, who'd been offered $50,000 to kill Faisal. When Tafoya suddenly attacked, Faisal went for his handgun hidden underneath the couch cushions. Tafoya managed to shoot him in the head twice with a .22 Magnum revolver. Faisal miraculously survived, though he was permanently blinded in one eye. The ensuing investigation uncovered one shocking twist after another as Detective Ray Martinez discovered the international implications of the attempted murder. The FBI soon turned against him as he dug deeper, and news coverage of the attack led a former CIA officer named Kevin Mulcahy to contact Martinez, not long before Mulcahey passed away unexpectedly at a rural cabin in Virginia. For episode 137 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with retired Detective Ray Martinez about the biggest case of his career, the forces that were involved across the United States, Europe, and Libya, and the lives that were ended or ruined along the way. The episode is available now. #colorado #libya #mystery #greenberet #coldwar youtube.com/watch?v=3uAc1qYD…