The shoot out in March 2004 had hilarious developments for Guzzanti's ridiculous Mitrokhin commission. Scaramella, a self-styled "professor" later claimed that he was actually checking out an antenna which he alleged was to be used by the evil Ruskies to contaminate the Bay of Naples by setting off a dozen atomic weapons (apparently without a nuclear explosion) that had been dumped there by a Russian submarine. Supposedly this event would be blamed on the NATO. The Russians thought the accusations were a bad joke.

The four camorra members involved in the shoot out were actually involved in transporting weapons. They did not shoot at Scaramella to take him out but apparently shot at the two penitentiary cops who were there to meet Scaramella for reasons as yet unknown. One of the members of the camorra was wounded and quickly arrested. The arms were sequestered.

As far as the Mitrokhin Commission goes, what can I say. You can download the audiences on the parliament's site and sit back for riotous laughing. Guzzanti is best known for having sired the two comics and political satirists, Sabina and Paolo. He does his best to compete with them but is basically a hallucinated psychotic with a strong tendency to go into fits of obscenity. It's no wonder he's a senator for Berlusconi's personal political entity.

As for Scaramella, he is along the lines of Rocco Martino (Niger forgeries) and Igor Marini (Telekom Serbija), con artists that work around the secret services. He has a track record of putting together unsubstantiated claims of Russian nuclear weapons traffic. Thanks to Guzzanti his claims end up in the papers as the usual scare tactics.

Keep in mind that the Litvinenko- Batten- Scaramella accusation against Prodi was given maximum press between April 3 and 6, 2006, just on the eve of the Italian general elections, and was object of a parliamentary interrogation by Fascist Democrat (AN) deputy, Ignazio La Russa. Litvinenko had made his revelations to Batten in February.

Evidently it was too early to influence the elections. Better just days before.

Of course this does not resolve the case of Litvinenko's poisoning- a fact that occurred on November 1st but was only reported by Checheny news on the 13th- and yesterday by the WP.

And of course it does raise questions on who Gerard Batten could be other than yet another ex-Telecom employee.