Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare

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SISMI coat of arms

The Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare - SISMI (colloquial: "Servizio Segreto Militare"; German: "Military Intelligence and Security Service") was a military intelligence service in Italy until 2007 , which mainly operated abroad. The official seat was Rome .

It was replaced by a law (124/2007) that came into force in August 2007 on the reform of the Italian intelligence services by the civilian foreign intelligence service Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna .

SISMI was subordinate to the Minister of Defense and, via the Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e di Sicurezza (CESIS), to the Prime Minister's office . In its fields of activity it was roughly equivalent to the German Federal Intelligence Service .

assignment

The Italian Prime Minister was (and is still after the reform) politically responsible for the intelligence services . He exercised his political guideline competence in this area through the coordinating body CESIS . Under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, the cabinet committee “Comitato Interministeriale per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza” (CIIS) u. a. Set the general job profiles for the services.

The SISMI was subordinate to the Minister of Defense, who was in charge of the service and disciplinary supervision, laid down the operational principles and appointed the director of the service and his closest collaborators on the recommendation of the CIIS. SISMI sent the Minister of Defense and CESIS all the information and situation analyzes it had gathered, as well as details of all operations carried out.

The SISMI operated mainly abroad, but was not a pure foreign intelligence service. The two services SISMI and SISDE did not work according to the territorial principle, but according to the functional principle. The SISMI was responsible for the “execution of all reconnaissance and security tasks for the military defense of the independence and integrity of the Italian state against danger, threat or aggression”, as well as for counter-espionage otherwise reserved for “domestic intelligence services” . The SISDE also operated abroad for the investigation of (Italian) organized crime assigned to it.

In addition to general military topics, SISMI also dealt with the areas of politics, economics and other things that are usual for "foreign service". a. also proliferation of weapons of mass destruction , in which the service was able to create a very good basis, especially in the early 1990s. Traditional strengths of the service, which for a long time was only regionally oriented, were the Balkans, North and East Africa and the Near and Middle East. In the wake of the skyrocketing peace missions of the Italian armed forces and because of the increasingly globalizing threat scenarios, SISMI has developed well beyond its traditional operational limits in recent years.

The SISMI had coordination responsibilities vis-à-vis the “ Centro Intelligence Interforze ”, the military-operational intelligence service of the General Staff (J2). As a military service, SISMI, in coordination with the “Centro Intelligence Interforze”, took on the intelligence service of the deployment contingents abroad (e.g. East Timor, Afghanistan).

organization

The SISMI received a new, modern organizational structure in 2001. The director general of the service, assisted by an adjutant and a management staff, reported directly to three units for human resources, finance and external relations. The training department and the counterintelligence department were also directly subordinate to him. The situation center and the evaluation department were subordinate to one of the two deputy heads of service, and he also coordinated the activities of the four procurement departments. All departments of the service were in talks divided, a division level did not exist. In the area of ​​procurement, there was a subject-oriented department (e.g. terrorism, proliferation, organized crime), a department structured according to continents or regions, a military department and a technical intelligence department. The second deputy head of service was responsible for the infrastructure and logistics areas.

The staff (around 2,500 full-time employees) came almost exclusively from the ranks of the armed forces , but also from the Polizia di Stato , the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza as well as from other civil administrations. The staff there was selected as required and, with consent, entered the service. The new employees, if they came from police authorities, lost all police powers. External staff were only employed directly when there was a special need.

history

The SISMI was created by a law reforming the Italian intelligence services in 1977. Up to that point were its predecessors

mainly responsible for the reconnaissance of the (southern) states of the Warsaw Pact , Yugoslavia and other states in the Arab region , but actually operated mainly domestically. They mainly dealt with the containment of the political influence of the strong Communist Party of Italy (PCI) and the terror of the Red Brigades . In this context, these services, which came under the Ministry of Defense, were involved in state-shaking criminal machinations ( strategy of tension , propaganda due ). The 1977 intelligence reform was designed to put an end to these uncontrolled intelligence activities. The fight against and education of political extremism was completely outsourced from the military intelligence system and transferred to the new civil intelligence service, Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica . Both SISDE and SISMI consisted mainly of the staff of their predecessor organizations in the first years of their activity, which is why the spirit of the reform of 1977 could only slowly and gradually take hold. In particular, SISMI was repeatedly involved in serious domestic political scandals (Propaganda Due). In particular after the bomb attack on Bologna Central Station in 1980 , the SISMI reverted to the old pattern of action: two of its officers were convicted in 1995 for obstructing the investigation, together with Licio Gelli , the founder of Propaganda Due. It was not until the long-time director of SISMI, Vice Admiral Fulvio Martini , that the service was cleared of old fascist forces in the 1980s and made every effort to recruit young, unspent staff.

Against the background of fundamental global political changes since 1989 and the emergence of new threats, a discussion began in Italy in the mid-1990s about a far-reaching reform of the intelligence services, which remained without concrete results for years. In 2007 the ruling coalition Romano Prodis reached an agreement with the opposition on a reform law to which both sides contributed equally and which was unanimously adopted in parliament. Through this reform, the Italian foreign intelligence service was permanently demilitarized.

Affairs

Bologna attack in 1980

A bomb attack was carried out on the train station on the morning of August 2, 1980 ( Bologna attack in 1980 ). 85 people died and more than 200 were injured. The attackers were members of the radical right-wing organization Ordine Nuovo . Two SISMI officers were convicted in 1995 of obstructing the investigation.

Abu Omar kidnapping case

In 2006 it became known that SISMI had supported the US secret service CIA when it kidnapped Abu Omar , the Egyptian imam of a mosque in Milan , in February 2003 . Abu Omar was dragged into a car on the street, taken to the US military's Aviano Air Base , from there to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and finally to Egypt , where he has been imprisoned since then. Silvio Berlusconi , at that time still Prime Minister of Italy , had repeatedly denied that his government was aware of these events. Nicolò Pollari, head of SISMI from 2001 to 2006, also always said that the Italian secret service had no knowledge of the CIA operation. The investigating public prosecutor's office, however, learned through interrogations of the former vice-head of the SISMI, Marco Mancini, and several employees who were also arrested that the SISMI had actively supported the CIA.

Italian media also reported that the secret service had bribed journalists in order to cover up the operation and discredit politicians and judges involved in the discovery. Renato Farina, editor-in-chief of the right-wing daily Libero , confessed to working with SISMI and being paid to do it. Among other things, a falsified dossier had been published in his newspaper according to which Romano Prodi (at that time Berlusconi's opponent in the election as Prime Minister) had approved the illegal CIA flights in Europe as President of the EU Commission. Giuseppe D'Avanzo and Carlo Bonini, journalists with the La Repubblica newspaper who researched the abduction of Abu Omar, were spied on and wiretapped by the SISMI.

On February 12, 2013, an appeals court in Milan sentenced former SISMI director Nicolò Pollari to 10 years in prison and awarded Abu Omar and his wife 1.5 million euros in damages. Marco Mancini was sentenced to nine years in prison, the CIA office manager of Rome Jeffrey Castelli in absentia to seven years in prison, two other CIA employees also to prison terms. Pollari announced that it would appeal this judgment to the Corte Suprema di Cassazione .

Supervision of judges 2001-2006

In early July 2007, the Italian Supreme Judicial Council revealed that SISMI monitored prominent judges and prosecutors in Italy between 2001 and 2006 . Affected were, among others, public prosecutor Antonio Ingroia , who investigated cross-links between the Mafia and politics, the public prosecutors who investigated Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, and the long-time chairman of the European judges' organization Medel , Edmondo Bruti Liberati . Among other things, the judges' e-mail traffic was monitored. As a result, many European judges who are members of Medel were also monitored. Of the 203 judges monitored, 47 were Italians, the rest come from twelve other European nations.

ladder

  • Gene. Giuseppe Santovito (1978-1981)
  • Gene. Ninetto Lugaresi (1981-1984)
  • Adm. Fulvio Martini (1984–1991)
  • Gene. Sergio Luccarini (1991)
  • Gene. Luigi Ramponi (1991-1992)
  • Gene. Cesare Pucci (1992-1994)
  • Gene. Sergio Siracusa (1994-1996)
  • Adm. Gianfranco Battelli (1996-2001)
  • Gene. Nicolò Pollari (2001-2006)
  • Adm. Bruno Branciforte (2006-2007)

As a rule, the chiefs of service had the rank of lieutenant general (or vice admiral ) and were given a “four-star” post “if they were well managed” before they retired . The chiefs of service usually came from the armed forces . Nicolò Pollari was the first lieutenant general of the Guardia di Finanza at the head of the service. The SISMI Director, Vice Admiral Bruno Branciforte, appointed by the Prodi government in November 2006 , was previously the Fleet Commander ( CINCNAV ).

Web links

literature

  • Giuseppe De Lutiis, I servizi segreti in Italia. Dal fascismo alla seconda repubblica , Roma 1998 (Editori Riuniti)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reform law of the Italian intelligence services. In: Senato della Repubblica . August 3, 2007, accessed April 5, 2014 (Italian).
  2. ^ Italian ex-spy chief gets 10 years in CIA case , Reuters , February 12, 2013
  3. ↑ Ursula Knapp: Italian secret service monitored 200 judges, Die Rheinpfalz of August 4, 2007
  4. ^ Stasi for public prosecutors. In: Heise online . July 11, 2007, accessed April 5, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau-Online for the supervision of judges. (No longer available online.) In: Frankfurter Rundschau . August 4, 2007, archived from the original on September 30, 2007 ; Retrieved April 5, 2014 .

Coordinates: 41 ° 54 ′ 54.5 ″  N , 12 ° 25 ′ 28.6 ″  E