FOX News: Italian Connection Links Mario Scaramella to KGB Spies, Past and Former Prime Ministers (December 01, 2006)

Revelations that Mario Scaramella, a shadowy nuclear security expert and well-known information peddler, tested positive Friday for the same radioactive toxin that killed former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko gives the evolving spy mystery yet another weird twist: The Italian Connection.

Scaramella, described in media reports as an academic who has long maneuvered in and out of the European clandestine information community, is also linked to an investigation of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, long thought to have had ties to the former Soviet espionage apparatus.

Prodi, an arch rival of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, once was the target of an investigation into KGB infiltration of the Italian government, an inquiry sparked by information found on scraps of paper supplied by the KGB's archivist when he defected to the British.

That information revealed how the KGB had successfully recruited 261 leading Italian politicians and journalists.

Curiously, Scaramella reportedly was meeting with Litvinenko at a London sushi restaurant to tell the former KGB agent that his name was on an assassination list that he'd uncovered.

Prodi's political opponents, meanwhile, have launched several investigations into his financial and political dealings.

1. The "investigations into [Prodi's] financial and political dealings" were brought up in the run-up to the latest elections. From wikipedia: Romano Prodi's political beginnigs

   Prodi served as chairman of the powerful state-owned industrial holding company IRI - from 1982 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1994. He twice came under investigation for alleged corruption while he was head of IRI. He was accused of conflict of interest first in connection with contracts awarded to his own economic research company, and secondly over the sale of the loss making state owned food conglomerate SME to the multinational Unilever - for which he had for a time been a paid consultant; but, for both accusations, he obtained a full acquittal.

2. Litvinenko reportedly accused Scaramella of poisoning him, and was described as "being nervous" and "not eating anything". Litvinenko was also reportedly puzzled that Scaramella wanted to meet him in person to show him an e-mail which he could have simply forwarded to him.

3. Our own de Gondi debunked the (unnamed by FOX) Mitrokhin commission thusly:

   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.

4. As for the allegations that Prodi was a KGB agent...

   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.

   (Same comment by de Gondi) And, in case that wasn't enough,

   Scaramella used Litvinenko as a source that Prodi was a KGB informant. Litvinenko had always denied being Scaramella's source and further accused Scaramella of having tricked him into signing false revelations.