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." In a rebuke to the original Mitrokhin commission's authenticity, Vasily Mitrokhin himself refused to meet the Commission's members before his death.
On December 1, 2006 several Italian newspapers published interceptions of telephone calls between Paolo Guzzanti and Mario Scaramella, a consultant on the Mitrokhin Commission, who became involved in the events surrounding the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in Great Britain on 23 November 2006
In the interceptions, Guzzanti declared that the Mitrokhin Commission's unstated goal was to depict Romano Prodi and Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, leader of the Federation 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 that Antonio Bassolino, governor of the Campania region, was linked to the Camorra. According to the Corriere della Sera, these interceptions demonstrated that Scaramella was in contact with Italian police agents, penitentiary police agents, and two CIA agents, one of them being Robert Seldon Lady, former CIA station chief in Milan, indicted by prosecutor Armando Spataro for having coordinated the abduction of Abu Omar in 2003 in Milan, a case of extraordinary rendition which gave rise to the Imam Rapito affair.
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 illegal weapons' 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.
His repeated offers to collaborate with the Italian secret services were all rejected in the 1990s by the Italian government. 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 the CESIS), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the Imam Rapito case and Guido Salvini, as well as La Repubblica reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo, who broke the Yellowcake forgery scandal as well as the SISMI-Telecom affair, in which Marco Mancini, n°2 of the SISMI already indicted in the Imam Rapito affair, was arrested for end of 2006. The investigation also showed a connection between Scaramella and the CIA, in particular through Filippo Marino, one of Scaramella's closest partners since the 1990s and co-founder of the Environmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP), described as an empty shell according to the International Herald Tribune. Marino, now living 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.
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