CIA agents more 'Austin than 007'

WASHINGTON - CIA agents charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan appear to have bungled their way into an international incident by ignoring the most basic rules of the spy trade, experts say.

Far from the suave discretion of James Bond, experts say the operatives who snatched radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on February 17, 2003, sound more like the bumbling secret agent Austin Powers.

"Instead of super-sleuths, they were like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints," said former CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle.

Media reports say the agents placed phone calls to CIA headquarters on unsecured lines, ran up US$145,000 ($207,000) in bills at luxury hotels and operated far enough in the open for Italian authorities to learn their operational identities.

"Everybody knows that telephone calls can be traced. It's not exactly an emerging technology," said one former spy.

In fact, present and former intelligence officials who had no actual knowledge of Nasr's abduction said Italian accounts depicted an amateur operation.

Several other intelligence sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involved a covert United States operation.

"The tradecraft was beyond appalling," said an intelligence official with long experience in clandestine affairs. "I'd have to wonder if these were CIA officers trained in the clandestine arts."

Some suggested the operation could have been carried out by intelligence officials from the FBI or the US military.

But intelligence experts say tradecraft - the bag of tricks spies use to execute operations without being detected - has eroded at the CIA since the end of the Cold War and may not have improved much since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Loch Johnson, who teaches international affairs at the University of Georgia, said the mechanical gadgetry available to modern American spies was vastly more sophisticated.

"But one could argue that overall tradecraft expertise has not been at the level it was during the Cold War," he said.

The abduction of Nasr, who court documents say was flown to Egypt and tortured there, threatens to rattle US-Italian relations three months after US troops shot dead an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq without facing disciplinary action.

Italian prosecutors are considering calling for the extradition of 13 people involved in the operation and Italians are demanding to know if their own Government was also involved.

"The Italians wouldn't necessarily be involved. You try to get local co-operation. But if the locals aren't helpful, you do it alone. You have to," said a former senior CIA officer.

The CIA has broad powers to abduct terrorism suspects overseas and transfer them to third countries under a classified directive signed by President George W. Bush days after the September 11 attacks, US officials have said.

One former CIA official said an operation such as the one in Milan would probably involve only one or two CIA staff members.

Others would likely be Italian nationals or foreigners hired on contract.

Neither the Bush Administration nor the Government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is likely to support extradition, given the national security aspects of the case, legal experts say.

"But it does show the importance of dealing with terrorists in ways that are broadly supported around the world," said John Moore, director of the Centre for National Security Law at the University of Virginia.

- REUTERS