Now, because a Milan prosecutor had the temerity to issue arrest warrants for thirteen of our high-flying spies and to seek warrants for another six of them -- the great majority are officially "on the run" and assumedly have been pulled out of Europe by the Agency. The CIA station chief who headed the operation had even bought a retirement house near Turin. "That he thought he could live out his golden years in Italy," reports Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times, "is another indication of the impunity with which he and the others felt they were operating, Italian prosecutors say."

A small tip for Interpol investigators: If any of these agents are still at large in Europe, I wouldn't be checking out obscure safe-houses. The places to search are top-of-the-line hotels, Michelin-recommended restaurants, and elite vacation spots across the continent.

When evaluating the CIA's actions in Italy, you might consider the Agency's mission statement as laid out at its website: "Our success depends on our ability to act with total discretion… Our mission requires complete personal integrity… We accomplish things others cannot, often at great risk… We stand by one another and behind one another." Or you might simply adapt an ad line from one of the few credit cards the team in Milan seems not to have used: The nightly cost of a room in Milan's Hotel Principe di Savoia, $450; the cost of a Coke from a mini-bar in one of its rooms, $10; the cost of leasing a GulfstreamV for a month, $229,639; that feeling of taking the American taxpayer for a ride, priceless.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.

[Special thanks go to Nick Turse for his typically invaluable research aid.]

Read ohter column by Tom Engelhardt   

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