Indictments in Italy

Indicted: 26 Americans, including CIA agents, in Italy accused of abducting an Egyptian cleric who ended up being tortured in Egypt. Unfortunately and predictably, the US government will just protect those indicted from such an exercise of actual justice. You can't have the US image tarnished, after all.

Additionally:

Among the Italians indicted Friday were Nicolo Pollari, who until earlier this year was Italy’s chief of military intelligence, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini.

Mr. Pollari has denied responsibility, saying he cannot defend himself because he would need to use evidence classified as state secrets. The suggestion is that officials outranking Mr. Pollari gave approval for the kidnapping. “We are very disappointed by the decision of the judge, being convinced that the lack of proof and the acquisition of documents covered by secrets of state demonstrates Pollari’s innocence,” Mr. Pollari’s lawyer, Tittal Madia, said, according to the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

A Pollari flashback:

La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.
[...]
Hadley's meeting with Pollari, at precisely the time when the Niger forgeries came into the possession of the U.S. government, may explain the seemingly hysterical White House overreaction to Wilson's article almost a year later.

It's all very incestuous, isn't it?

Related: More background material here.