The company described itself in the ad as "a rapidly growing research based consultancy specializing in communications' ability to influence attitudes and motivate behaviors."
Castelli could not be reached for comment.
The company's president is another former senior CIA operations official,
Reynold (Ren) Stelloh, who headed the spy agency's Los Angeles office before retiring in 2000.
A former Cairo station chief, Stelloh also held senior positions at the CIA Counterterrorism Center and the National Resources Division, which conducts domestic U.S. operations, during his 25 years with the agency.
Castelli was the CIA's chief of station in Rome in February 2003, when an agency team abducted an al Qaeda suspect known as
Abu Omar from a Milan street and secretly flew him to Egypt for interrogation.
Castelli had championed the "extreme rendition" over the objections of other CIA operations officials who judged its security procedures to be faulty. But he had the backing of top CIA headquarters officials.
The operation eventually flapped when Italian counterterrorism police intercepted a telephone call from Omar to his wife in Milan, in which he described his abduction and, he said, torture at the hands of Egyptian interrogators.
After an investigation by Italian police, who traced the spy team's cell phone calls, hotel bills and rental car records, 26 Americans, all but one CIA officers, were indicted on kidnapping charges. Their trial in absentia in Milan is near completion, with guilty verdicts expected next month.
The fiasco generated a tsunami of bad publicity for the Bush administration and put the defendants, including Castelli, in jeopardy of being arrested if they leave the United States, especially if they try to enter a European Union country.
At first Castelli's career seemed unaffected by the blown operation.
He received two promotions, according to Matthew Cole, an ABC News investigative reporter writing a book about the case, and his boosters in the agency slated him to run the CIA's prestigious New York station.
But the findings of a CIA "accountability board" and negative reaction to Castelli's proposed assignment among many in the agency's operations rank-and-file sunk the promotion. He retired last year.
A description of PhaseOne Communications in the
Jack Myers trade journal in 2004 suggests its work may be applicable to managing the effectiveness of U.S. government propaganda operations.
"The formulas and systems used by PhaseOne were originally derived during World War II," the journal said, "as elements of classified work of U.S. and British intelligence analysts, who developed the science of content analysis to a point where it was able to successfully predict enemy behavior based on public communications."
Knowledgeable observers said they would not be surprised if PhaseOne were contracted by the government to analyze the effectiveness of terrorist propaganda against the United States, and vice-versa.
Company president Stelloh did not return a telephone call Thursday seeking comment.
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