Two Strange Deaths in European Wiretapping Scandal

[IChing]

Two Strange Deaths in European Wiretapping Scandal
By Paolo Pontoniere and Jeffrey Klein, New America Media. August 19, 2006.

European investigators are tracking the mysterious deaths of two security experts who had uncovered extensive spyware in their telecommunications firms.>>>snip

Investigations into the alleged suicides of both Adamo Bove and Costas Tsalikidis raise questions about more than the suspicious circumstances of their deaths. They point to politicized, illegal intelligence structures that rely upon cooperative business executives. European prosecutors and journalists probing these spying networks have revealed that:

The Vodaphone eavesdropping was transmitted in real time via four antennae located near the U.S. embassy in Athens, according to an 11-month Greek government investigation. Some of these transmissions were sent to a phone in Laurel, Md., near America's National Security Agency.

According to Ta Nea, a Greek newspaper, Vodaphone's CEO privately told the Greek government that the bugging culprits were "U.S. agents." Because Greece's prime minister feared domestic protests and a diplomatic war with the United States, he ordered the Vodafone CEO to withhold this conclusion from his own authorities investigating the case.

In both the Italian and Greek cases, the spyware was much more deeply embedded and clever than anything either phone company had seen before. Its creation required highly experienced engineers and expensive laboratories where the software could be subjected to the stresses of a national telephone system. Greek investigators concluded that the Vodaphone spyware was created outside of Greece.

http://www.alternet.org/story/40485/

[Pierre.Suave]

1. I just read that over there

very interesting bit of info.

[IChing]

2. yes, I wish I could have put more about the case because

it really sounds more like a CIA operation than anything.

[Straight Shooter]

3. "Some ... transmissions sent to a phone in Laurel, Md., near NSA."

No big surprise there. And the "suicide" modus operandi has a certain organization's fingerprints all over it.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Transmissions sent to *A* phone in Laurel, MD?

Just ONE phone? With all the secure broadband/sattelite connections the US govt. runs, they use just a single POTS line to transfer all this intelligence?

Either this is an inept operation or an intensely focussed one.

And the operators of this "program" seems pretty obvious.

What are they after?

[Straight Shooter]

9. Good catch.

Probably one phone with 200 extensions.

What are they after? Why do you think bush is so angry about not being allowed to spy carte blanche? ;)

[thefool_wa]

16. Seems inefficient but

If you have all of your data mining software set up at the client end and it scans information there then accumulates data over even the period of a few hours it can then route that info via a single secured line back to NSA with relative efficiency.

This sounds like how they are doing this type of thing to circumvent our constitution. If they set up all of the illegal systems for this type of operation outside the US, they need not fear US authority over their actions.

Unfortunately it is starting to look like the people of other countries don't like this either. I swear sometimes the bushies WANT us to be te least liked country in the world....

[Canuckistanian]

23. I can't imagine what state intelligence services are in now

Negroponte in charge of the NSA, Hayden in the CIA....

I imagine the agencies must be splintered so badly that mini-operations like this are everywhere, run by the "political wings" of the spy agencies.

No coordination, no coherent strategies, nothing. Backstabbing and second-guessing must be endemic.

This does not bode well.

[thefool_wa]

24. I couldn't agree more

And I fear it is only going to get worse.

[Vidar]

4. More CIA crap.

[0007]

14. Was David Kelly's death CIA or Scotland Yard?

Dr. David Christopher Kelly CMG (May 17, 1944 – July 17, 2003) was an employee of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD), an expert in biological warfare, and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. His talk with a journalist about the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq inadvertently caused a major political scandal, and he was found dead days after appearing before a Parliamentary committee investigating it. The Hutton Inquiry, a public inquiry into his death, ruled that he had committed suicide.

What's the difference?

[Peace Patriot]

20. Note the date of David Kelly's death: three days after the Plame outing.

July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak).

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.

July 22, 2003: The entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation program headed by Plame--Brewster-Jennings, outed (also by Novak), putting all US agents/contacts in danger of getting killed, and disabling all projects.

I think they were running WMDs into Iraq. Got foiled somehow--possibly by the Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network. Kelly found out, and was assassinated for possessing this dangerous information. The news stories/Hutton report reveal that he had been whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC (late May '03, post invasion) about the "sexed up" prewar WMD intel (the report that Bush had cited)--a big brouhaha in England at the time; he was mysteriously outed to his bosses (late June--circa Libby/Judith Miller* meetings about Plame and Wilson), interrogated at a "safe house" and threatened with the Official Secrets Act; on July 7, 2003 (according to the Hutton report), Tony Blair was informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (not HAD said--COULD say); Wilson had published his article dissing the Niger/Iraq nuke connection, the day before, July 6; the two events became conflated, making it appear that the Bushites, in outing Plame/BJ, were reacting to the Wilson article (which they surely knew was coming), and not to the far more dangerous item (unknown to all but a few) of what David Kelly knew and had not yet disclosed to the British public.

I don't think Kelly was offed merely for talking about "sexed up" intel. And I don't think he committed suicide over the controversy. He was an old hand at controversy. He was a legendary tough guy, who had stared down both Saddam Hussein and the Russians on WMD issues. The circumstances of his death (and the ludicrous Hutton whitewash) point very strongly to murder. If it was suicide (--very unlikely), it was because of threats. Kelly was for the invasion--but after the invasion, did a dramatic turnabout, and began trying to warn people about the false pretext for the war. What turned him around? Discovering a plot to PLANT WMDs in Iraq answers well to this. Such a plot would have appalled Kelly.

Many suspect that the Rome meeting in 2001 is where the Niger forgeries were cooked up (cited by Bush in his SOTU speech as coming from the British). Present were several rabid NeoCons at least one of whom was on the Pentagon payroll (Michael Ladeen), the head of SISMI and several other Italian fascists, and notorious Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Did the Niger forgeries plot ALSO include a plot to actually procure nukes and plant them in Iraq, post-invasion, to justify the war? (You've got to wonder why certain parties kept putting the Niger forgery item back into Bush's speeches, after it had been removed by the CIA as false info based on forgeries.)

SISMI sure seems to be in the middle of a lot of Bushite crap. What is it with them? Are they expecting to inherit the new province of the Bush-Roman Empire--the Middle East--after the American people get rid of their Emperor? ("Et tu, Brute!")

----------------

*(Judith Miller knew Kelly and used him as a major quoted source in her book "Germs." It was to Miller that Kelly wrote one of his last emails, on the day he died, in which he expressed concern about the "many dark actors playing games." She had emailed him cheerily, telling him that "his fan club" reported that he'd done well in his forced testimony that week before a Parliamentary defense commitee. In truth, he hadn't done well at all (according to all reports). His reply to her was quite terse. To others that day, he wrote of looking forward to his daughter's wedding in the fall and returning to Iraq.)

[0007]

22. I'm convinced that we're living in the dark ages......

You make so much sense.

[NYC]

5. I saw headlines about this

yesterday, but didn't read the article. I don't remember where it was.

Thanks for posting this. Have you read two books by James Bamford:

The Puzzle Palace

Body of Secrets

Both are excellent.

[BeHereNow]

6. Good lord, where does it end?

How many people have been "suicided" by these
thugs?
Any one keeping a list?

I've lost count.

BHN

[xchrom]

7. hey -- they exposed WHERE the cia were

then they suicide themselves.

happens all the time.

[goforit]

10. They are being exposed! And this is step #1!!!

[mod mom]

11. Are foreign governments complicit with this or are they just discovering

that they too are targets?

[IChing]

12. US x-diplomat in Athens who resigned explains the Greek case

Last Updated: Friday, 24 March 2006, 08:31 GMT


Death muddies Greek spy probe
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Athens
>>>>>>>snip
The theory is put forward by John Brady Kiesling a former American diplomat who worked at the US embassy in Athens until resigning in 2003 over the US-led invasion of Iraq.

He is convinced American intelligence agents were behind the whole bugging operation and he says it is possible they used Mr Tsalikidis to install the software.

"I believe he committed suicide to protect his professional honour," says Mr Kiesling.

As for why the Americans would tap the phones of the political and security elite of a country regarded as an ally, Mr Kiesling says there is a simple answer.

Trust

He argues American intelligence agencies would not have trusted the Greeks with the massive security operation surrounding the Athens Olympics in August 2004 set up to counter any potential terrorist threat.

"They believe you cannot trust foreigners, that foreigners are incompetent and of dubious trustworthiness," he says. "You owe it to yourself if you have the capability, to have an independent ear listening to them and I think that is what this was."....>>>>snip

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4838552.stm
Don't forget this article above came from back in March
However the original article I posted in the beginning suggests even more sinister connecting implications

[Supersedeas]

25. don't count on the U.S. media to get to the bottom of it...

[Julius Civitatus]

30. "you cannot trust foreigners, that foreigners are incompetent ...

and of dubious trustworthiness,"

That's, in a nutshell, how the Bush administration views the rest of the world, and I'm willing to say it's a view shard with legions of their voters.

[Acadia Blue]

13. This kind of stuff used to happen in the Old Soviet. KGB tactics

have come to the West.

[gorbal]

21. That would make sense

If you look at the overall general scheme of things no one has done more to help the spread of socialism than George Bush...It's his means more than his ends that disturb me.

[acmavm]

15. DUPE

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=229767&mesg_id=229767

[Peace Patriot]

17. The other thread has only two comments--maybe because it was posted

too early. But it does have much more detail on both "suicides." Do go there and read it! Boy, does THIS one smell to high heaven! And guess who shows up again--SISMI, the Italian intelligence cabal fascists who likely had a hand in the Niger forgeries--and, as this article points out, colluded with 26 CIA agents in an illegal operation to abduct Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and "flew him to Cairo where he was tortured." Italians were infuriated by this violation of their sovereignty.

[Peace Patriot]

18. IChing, I almost didn't read this cuz I didn't think it had to do w US/

/Bush junta. You can't tell from the title that it has LOTS to do with them--in fact, everything to do with them. I suggest re-posting in GD with a title more suggestive of the content, re: US.

Also of interest, re: US--the involvement in this of the Italian fascist cabal that likely helped cooked up the Niger forgeries for Bush, and other Bush junta skulduggery (torture, death) in Europe.

[IChing]

19. Reposting in GD? But what about Jon bennet ramsey? LOL

It is posted in editorial section but this is also really a news story.

You may be my guest to post this again somewhere else
the story does need to get out.

thanks for the kick

[donkeyotay]

26. Power corrupts.

"In the United States, where massive eavesdropping programs have operated since 9/11, investigators, reporters and members of Congress have not explored whether those responsible for these spying operations may be using them for partisan purposes or economic gain."

[Blue_Tires]

27. 'suicided?'

how cliche....at least they could have set them up for "car accidents" "gay love triangle gone wrong" or a "street robbery that took a tragic turn":sarcasm:

[warrens]

28. Paging John LeCarre

Like he said one time, he'd heard true stories that made his fiction look weak.

[goforit]

29. Hmmm , the Cabal still at large.