Posted on 06/26/2005 7:03:50 AM PDT by ex-Texan
13 Charged in '03 Abduction Allegedly Stayed in Finest Hotels
MILAN, June 25 -- For 19 American intelligence operatives assigned to apprehend a radical Islamic preacher in Milan two years ago, the mission was equal parts James Bond and taxpayer-financed Italian holiday, according to an Italian investigation of the man's disappearance.
The Americans stayed at some of the finest hotels in Milan, sometimes for as long as six weeks, ringing up tabs of as much as $500 a day on Diners Club accounts created to match their recently forged identities, according to Italian court documents and other records. Then, after abducting their target and flying him to Cairo under the noses of Italian police, some of them rounded out their European trip with long weekends in Venice and Florence before leaving the country, the records show. * * *
* * * Posing as tourists and business travelers, the Americans often stayed in the same five-star hotels, rarely paid in cash, gave their frequent traveler account numbers to desk clerks and made dozens of calls from unsecure phones in their rooms.
During January 2003, they were regular patrons at the Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan, which bills itself as "one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels" and features a marble-lined spa and minibar Cokes that cost about $10. Seven of the Americans stayed at the 80-year-old hotel for periods ranging from three days to three weeks at nightly rates of about $450, racking up total expenses of more than $42,000 there.
* * * In early February, most of the operatives gathered for a rendezvous in La Spezia, an Italian seaside resort town on the Ligurian coast, almost a three-hour drive from Milan.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Oh, well, not for me to worry. I'm just a geezer living in the Peoples Republic of Oregon.
We ought rescue them by force.
What ticks off the Post and the rest of the MSM is not the expense involved -- since when does government money bother liberals? -- but the fact that we were able to kidnap an Islamofascist leader. This kind of thing might be good for morale for our side, and they don't want to encourage that.
Terrible! They were posing as tourists and behaving like tourists. No doubt they should have acted like secret agents. Trenchcoats and all that.
When BillyJeff spent a billion dollars travelling around the world with his entourage of thousands of crooks and lickspittles, the ComPost had no complaints about that.
Sounds like a Joe Wilson trip.
So it's OK for Italians to charge $450 for a night at the hotel. Where is the outrage of dumcRATs, EUweeeenies, oh nevermind...
the prosecutors office said the 13 suspects were believed to be behind the abduction of imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, who was grabbed off a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 and stuffed into a white van.
The prosecutors office said it would request "judicial assistance" from U.S. and Egyptian authorities. ... we are not sure of their true identity."
Foreign intelligence officials believe Nasr had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia before arriving in Italy in 1997 and obtaining political refugee status. ... including recruiting militants for Iraq
A CIA spokesperson in Washington said: "We're not even not commenting.
We're saying: if we have anything to say, we'll get back to you."
The U.S. embassy in Rome declined comment
Link for above:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1430145/posts
The Post seems to be reporting on a lot of secret info. Maybe we should get that special prosecutor to investigate this. Perhaps this info is being released for revenge against the administration. Perhaps the reporter is involved.
Investigate, Investigate!!! No double standard.
Absolutely. In terms of bang for the buck, I would think this was a pretty good expenditure. Probably way less than one episode of "Sesame Street."
Those that are not for us are against us. Those that provide aid and comfort have to pay the price.
Yes, and an independent commission too. Call C-SPAN, tell them to set up the cameras. Call McCain so he can get his grandstand nice and spiffy.
Maybe they should have dropped a hellfire missile on him. That would be cheaper right?
HELLFIREHELLFIRE is an air-to-ground missile system designed to defeat tanks and other individual targets while minimizing the exposure of the launch vehicle to enemy fire. HELLFIRE uses laser guidance and is designed to accept other guidance packages. It is used on helicopters against heavily armored vehicles at longer standoff distances than any other Army missiles now in the inventory. The HELLFIRE II is the optimized version of the laser family of HELLFIRE missiles. The Longbow HELLFIRE Modular Missile System is an air-launched, radar aided, inertially guided missile that utilizes millimeter wave radar technology.
Current launch platforms include the AH-64 APACHE helicopter and the Navy AH-1W. The system is also qualified for use on the UH-60 BLACKHAWK, and has been tested for use on the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) and the Improved TOW Vehicle (ITV). Prime contractors for the system are Rockwell International Corporation and Martin Marietta Corporation. The cost per missile is about $58,000.
Good thing the target was not in a gay bath house, all those poor CIA types having to spend a few weeks there...
Anyone else notice the absolute stupidity revealed in that statement?
We don't know who these people are, but we know that you must know them, so please provide us with their names so that we can prosecute your agents.
Barney Fife could not have been that stupid; therefore I conclude that my tagline applies.
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Seven of the Americans stayed at the 80-year-old hotel for periods ranging from three days to three weeks at nightly rates of about $450, racking up total expenses of more than $42,000 there.
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Hmmm. 7 people. 3 weeks. 3 weeks is 21 days.
7 X 21 = 147. $42,000 / 147 = $285 per day "total expenses".
Including food at government per diem rates for an expensive city, maybe including 3 rental cars (which cost a ton in Italy) $285/day total expenses is not a lot of per day money for a TDY in Milan. The "up to" $400/night thing may have been a bank holiday in Milan with typical nightly rate $150 (utterly normal for Milan).
As written this story is not showing anything outrageous, other than that so many agents would be committed to one project for so long.
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