The key points
- The trigger for the investigation
- Intelligence activity
- A political assessment
- Criminal police activities: the final bet
- The blitz, the trial by fire
Secret services and judicial police: two separate worlds, different objectives, autonomous hierarchies and systems. But the intelligence information and information necessary for an indictment in court have become a continuous and unstoppable flow and intertwining in the case of the espionage in favor of the Russians carried out according to the Rome prosecutor’s office by the frigate captain Walter Biot, now in prison in Regina Coeli with very serious charges. Myriads of stalking, wiretapping, photographs, bugs, correspondence, reports to superiors, staff on alert H 24-7 / 7 as they say in jargon. An exciting journey. Fragile, of course. At risk of discovery. All done with bated breath. Then, all of a sudden, fingers crossed, the inevitable blitz.
The trigger for the investigation
It is not yet known how the thread of information research begins. Maybe you will never know. One thing is certain: we started with the intelligence activity five months ago. It is up to Aisi (Information and Internal Security Agency), directed by the prefect Mario Parente, with the operational arm of counter-intelligence. Sector removed with reform law no. 124 of 2007 to the Aise (Agency for information and external services), now led by General Gianni Caravelli, then it was called Sismi. If the external service follows a hostile agent abroad, after crossing the border in Italy it must pass the file to Aisi. The competition between the two agencies remains, it is like saying Rome and Lazio or Milan and Inter. The level of collaboration between the two services ten or twenty years ago was minimal, even less. Today, at least the right, there is.
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Intelligence activity
Aisi, therefore, Biot pawn. Check out Russian and their encounters. It collects information and continuously enriches the file. Any misstep of such an activity can burn the procedure. Appetite, however, also comes with eating with the information gathered. It is necessary to see how far the naval officer goes into his association with the Moscow spy. The development of controls increases the level of quality and quantity of information. But the passage of time increases the risk of intelligence action. Then comes a decision not taken for granted. Aisi intends to speak and pass the question, if shared, to the public prosecutor of Rome led by Michele Prestipino.
Parallel convergences
Intelligence has been in dialogue with investigators for many years. The comparison can be profitable for both. A supporter of these processes was Mario Mori, director of Sisde, then Aisi, from 2001 to 2006. A great friend, among others, of Ilda Boccassini, legendary prosecutor and then assistant prosecutor in Milan. The story of the spying of the Italian Navy officer in favor of the Russians, however, is a political question. Indeed, geopolitics. It could be resolved confidentially between the respective intelligence, always informed the higher political authorities. Having ascertained the fact, our sector could have negotiated with the Russians the times, methods and procedures to resolve the anomalous agreement between Biot and the Moscow official serving at the embassy in Rome. The decision to go to the prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, has other consequences. It is not excluded that they were intended. It was decided, however, at a high level.
A political assessment
Certainly the intelligence – Aisi, Aise and Dis, the Information and Security Department under the command of Prefect Gennaro Vecchione, who coordinates – must always transmit the most urgent and relevant dossiers to its top. Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and the authority delegated to information and security services Franco Gabrielli. In this case, the involvement of the Minister of Defense Lorenzo Guerini and of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio is discounted. Perhaps also of the owner of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese, for the national security profiles. Transmitting the dossier to the prosecutor assumes at least one certain consequence: the publicity of the story. The arrest, as it happened, would become known, by force of circumstances, and the story below. He would go around the world. The Italians, of course, would have appeared to be recruitable by external agents. But the Russians were evidently hunters of military secrets in the house of others. The political choice to highlight the issue is a wink to Washington. A hypothesis, of course. But plausible.