DAR AL HARB-U.S.A.: TRIALS, RENDERING & DISTORTED INFORMATION?!?

CIA had a distorted picture of Muslim cleric, evidence suggests
By John Crewdson
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

In late 2002, the portrait of Abu Omar being painted by the CIA's Rome station for higher-ups at the agency's headquarters was that of a violent, hate-filled terrorist preparing to strike innocent civilians, even children, at any moment.

But evidence collected by Italian prosecutors preparing to put CIA operatives on trial for Abu Omar's abduction suggests that officials at CIA headquarters approved the operation after getting a distorted picture.

One senior CIA official said he was led to believe that the idea of rendering Abu Omar from Milan to Egypt, where he claims to have been tortured, originated with the CIA's Italian counterpart, SISMI, which supposedly wanted him out of Italy but was hampered by his grant of political asylum.

But a senior Italian intelligence official, Gen. Gustavo Pignero, told prosecutors shortly before his death from cancer last fall that the idea was proposed by the chief of the CIA's Rome station in conversations with Pignero and Italy's former top spymaster, Nicolo Pollari.

"If everyone was doing rendition, (the Rome station chief) wanted to do it too," said another former senior Italian intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Chicago Tribune's request to interview the CIA's now-former Rome chief was declined by the CIA, which asked that he not be named because he still works under cover.

One veteran CIA official said the idea that Abu Omar could be turned into an informer for the CIA, or even Egyptian intelligence - as the Rome station purportedly envisioned - was highly improbable because "he was way too committed" to the radical Muslim cause. The only charge against Abu Omar in Italy, filed long after his abduction, accuses him of helping send young Muslim fighters to Iraq.

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1) CIA had a distorted picture of Muslim cleric, evidence suggests