Robert Seldon Lady

Robert Seldon Lady   ( spook)
Born	February 2, 1954  Tegucigalpa,  Honduras
Nationality	US
Parents	Billy Seldon Lady
Criminal convictions	kidnapping
Interests	•  Manucher Ghorbanifar •  Rocco Martino
Spook who led the CIA base in Milan, Italy during the 2003 kidnaping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. Later convicted for it by the Italian justice system.  CIA/European Division/Milan Base/Chief In office 2003 Preceded by Robert Seldon Lady Succeeded by Robert Seldon Lady Known during the kidnaping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr

Robert Seldon "Bob" Lady' is a retired CIA spook who led the CIA base in Milan, Italy under diplomatic cover, where he was exposed as part of a kidnapping operation, in order to torture the victim in Egypt.

Background

Lady grew up in Honduras, the son of an American expatriate, Billy Seldon Lady, who had many resources and aptitudes coveted by the CIA and who operated an airline, Aero Servicios, linked to the CIA.

Activities

He became a New Orleans Police Department police officer in the 1970s, before joining the CIA. He was an affable New York City cop in the 80s who infiltrated leftist groups. He joined the CIA in the 1980s.

He participated with his father in operations of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

In Honduras, Lady managed his "business" with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian "businessman" and central figure in the Iran-Contra Affair drug and weapons smuggling operation directed from El Salvador by Félix Rodríguez and Luis Posada Carriles, which caused the biggest scandal that shook the Reagan administration. These operations also developed in parallel with the smuggling network of billionaire Gerard Latchinian, godfather of businessman Yehuda Leitner, who was a supplier of weapons and repression equipment to the Honduran dictatorship of Roberto Micheletti.

Nigergate

His name was then associated with the "Nigergate", an disinformation operation to create a pretext for the 2003 attack on Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger.

In 2001 the Italian "former" spook Rocco Martino received a telephone call from a former colleague at SISMI, who informed him that his source, the "lady" at the Niger embassy, was in possession of documents that might be of interest to him. “I met her and she gave me documents,” Martino later told the Sunday Times (London). "SISMI wanted me to pass on the documents but they didn't want anyone to know they had been involved." Martino thus received half a dozen letters and other documents between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale of 500 tons of uranium oxide. Martino passed the dossier on to the French secret service, who had paid for it. It was a forgery, and very amateurish, not likely produced through official channels by any state intelligence agency with their vast resources. However, it soon became important as the Bush administration, in its first year (2001), ramped up its public relations campaign for war.

Kidnapping

Lady was involved in the 2003 kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, where he was sent to Egypt to be tortured.

On November 4, 2009, Italian Judge Oscar Magi convicted Lady, along with 22 other accused CIA employees, of kidnapping, and sentenced him to eight years.

On July 18, 2013 Lady was arrested in Panama, but was released the next day.

CIA/MI6 smear campaign

The Mitrokhin Commission investigated allegations that the prosecutor in the case, Armando Spataro, had secret links to the KGB.

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