Purported CIA operatives left a trail of phone calls

ROME -- It wasn't their lavish spending in luxury hotels, their use of credit cards or even frequent-flier miles that drew attention. Instead it was a trail of casual cell phone use that tripped up the 19 purported CIA operatives wanted by Italian authorities in the alleged kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric.

Italian prosecutors who have obtained arrest warrants for the 19 presented evidence that the suspects used at least 40 Italian cell phones, some in their own names.

Experts say that either they were bumbling spies or they acted with impunity because Italian officials had been informed of their plan -- a claim the government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi has publicly denied.

"If these were really CIA agents they've made a disaster," said Andrea Nativi, research director for the Rome-based Military Center for Strategic Studies. "They strained relations between Italy and the U.S. and between the CIA and Italian intelligence agencies."

Italian judges issued a first batch of warrants last month for 13 Americans accused of abducting Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on a Milan street. Another court this week issued six warrants for a group the prosecution claims planned the abduction.

In his request for the latest warrants, prosecutor Armando Spataro wrote that an analysis of mobile phone traffic showed that most of them were present on the route that Abu Omar took from his home to a Milan mosque "including in the days before" the kidnapping.

A track of their cell phones also showed them on those streets "nearly 100 times" in the month before Abu Omar's disappearance, the prosecutor said. He concluded that the six were part "of a single group of Americans who came to Milan to carry out the operation."

Why they would use their cell phones so openly has baffled experts, particularly since prosecutors are certain that not all the names of the 19 suspects are aliases.

One has been identified by prosecutors as the former CIA station chief in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who owns a retirement home in wine country in Asti, near Turin. Though police didn't find Lady there when they raided the house, they did discover a list of hotels where U.S. government employees received discounts, including hotels where prosecutors contend the suspects stayed.

Another person on the list has the same name as a man who now works at the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania.

Unless the power or the wireless antenna is turned off, a mobile phone remains in constant contact with the nearest cell towers even when it's not being used for a call. Information processed by the cells can be used to precisely locate or track the movements of a phone user.

Nativi, the military expert, called the use of regular cell phone accounts "a huge weakness in the operation." It would have been more difficult to track anonymous prepaid cards, satellite phones or radios, he said.

The wireless system used in Italy and most of the rest of Europe relies on a stamp-sized smart card that is inserted in the back of every handset. This removable "SIM" card stores an individual's phone number and other account data.

A unique numerical identifier is assigned to every phone and every SIM, said Bruno Errico, director of consulting for Openwave Global Services, a company that provides tracking applications and other software to wireless companies worldwide.

Wireless companies are obliged by law to keep records of the unique data that each phone exchanges with the cell network as well as the numbers to which calls are placed, he said.

Since a phone is served by several cells at any given time, investigators can easily triangulate the location of a device, Errico said. In an urban area, where the network of cells is dense and overlapping, such tracking can have a margin of error of just a few yards.

Had the agents used non-Italian phones and SIMs, the local network would still have tracked them but magistrates might have had a tougher time linking the phones to each of the suspects since not all countries require wireless users to provide identification, said Errico. To avoid tracking, the agents would have had to use other systems not available to the general public, such as radios, Errico said.

"As long as you use public communication systems, there is no way you can avoid being tracked," he said.

Or, as Nativi put it: "When you go on this kind of operation you need to turn off your damn phone."

Yoram Schweitzer, a researcher for the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said he wasn't surprised the operatives stayed in five-star hotels, which provide excellent cover for those posing as businessmen or businesswomen. But analysts did question whether using of credit cards was advisable.

Chris Aaron, a former editor of Jane's Intelligence Review magazine, said the team must have known that local cells phones put them at risk of being exposed.

"A CIA team would have been aware of the Italian ability to log calls and track their location, so they clearly weren't worried about that," he said.

The CIA in Washington has declined to comment on the case.