Small Wars Journal

Ex-CIA Officer: US Allowed Italy Kidnap Case to Shield Others

Sun, 07/28/2013 - 4:55am

Ex-CIA Officer: US Allowed Italy Kidnap Case to Shield Others by Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy.

A former CIA officer has broken the U.S. silence around the 2003 abduction of a radical Islamist cleric in Italy, charging that the agency inflated the threat the preacher posed and that the United States then allowed Italy to prosecute her and other Americans to shield President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials from responsibility for approving the operation.

Confirming for the first time that she worked undercover for the CIA in Milan when the operation took place, Sabrina De Sousa provided new details about the "extraordinary rendition" that led to the only criminal prosecution stemming from the secret Bush administration rendition and detention program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks...

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