Results tagged “Armando_Spataro” from SpyTalk

CIA Officer in Italy Rendition Flap Enters New Phase

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Jeff Castelli, a onetime high flying senior CIA officer whose career nose-dived following the exposure of a kidnapping operation he supervised in Italy, has joined the Washington office of an esoteric marketing analysis firm headed by another former spy.

Castelli's exact title and duties at Los Angeles-based PhaseOne Communications could not be learned, but a source familiar with the company's business said his main responsibility would probably be generating government contracts.

Most of the the firm's clients are commercial, including Hollywood studios who hire it to analyze the effectiveness of movie trailers and promotional advertising, said the source, who asked not to be identified. Other clients include AT&T, General Motors, Nestle, Campbell's Soup, Gillette, Sears, Con-Agra, Ralston Purina and Alberto-Culver. 

But the company recently advertised for a "Research Analyst with a Top Secret clearance" to conduct "research on target audiences using secondary demographic, social/cultural, psychological, economic and political materials."
FLORENCE, Italy -- The chief prosecutor in a trial related to the U.S. "rendition" of a suspected terrorist believes there is more than enough evidence to secure a conviction of over two dozen Americans charged in the case despite a ruling that excludes key Italian documents and testimony under  "state secrecy" laws.

Sabrina DeSousa is as cool as you'd expect a CIA operative to be in a hot spot.

CQ Photo
Sabrina DeSousa (Jeff Stein/CQ Photo)

DeSousa's predicament is that she's wanted on kidnapping charges in Italy, along with two dozen other Americans connected to the CIA's "rendition" of an al Qaeda suspect from a Milan street to an Egyptian torture chamber in 2003.

Three years later, Italian authorities monitoring the missing man's home phone broke open the case, eventually filing kidnapping charges against DeSousa and the others, all but one CIA undercover operatives.

In spy-speak, it's called maintaining your cover.