The controversial issue of the "agent provocateur" and the need for a legal framework to apply to this extremely useful, but sensitive and controversial investigative modus operandi, is examined in the present issue of our Magazine.
The significant and attentive remarks on this matter by the experienced magistrate, Marcello MADDALENA, Public Prosecutor at the Turin Court, open this fourteenth number of "Per Aspera ad Veritatem".
In an interview the Magistrate touches upon the legal approaches explored to date and upon all the relevant intelligence aspects, in particular intelligence means and modi operandi.
The same topic, selected as leitmotif of the present volume (no need to stress its significance) is also recalled in an interesting judgement by the European Court for Human Rights published in Part III, in a short interview with Cristina de MAGLIE, author of the accurate study, "L'agente provocatore" and in the book "Fifty Dead Man Walking" on an agent infiltrated into the IRA, both included in Part V.
The intelligence activity relies on two different and fundamental aspects: operations - the issue of the "agent provocateur" is of relevance in this respect - and analysys. Our forum is this time devoted to the latter in its medium to long term perspective.
The valuable contributions by DIAMANTI, ESPA and ROMA on intelligence analysis originated from a specialization course on Strategic Analysis organised by SISDe's Training School. While an interesting collection of essays on the same topic "Intelligence analysis and assessment" (yet to be published in Italy) has been included in Part V.
The present issue of Per Aspera ad Veritatem presents two more themes. We look at China from an unusual point of view and we open a window on the protection of human rights in international legislation.
The Chinese reality, so extremely important nowadays is presented in a sharp and somewhat surprising way by MINI (also considering the international consequences of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade). While the volume by EFTIMIADES "Chinese Intelligence Operations" offers us an insight into some of the most concealed aspects of the great Asian country.
The protection of human rights is currently a subject of great topical relevance. Recently important new goals have been achieved in this field with the charges brought against Slobodan Milosevic by the International Court for the crimes committed in the former-Yugoslavia and the long-awaited establishment of an International Court for crimes against humanity within the United Nations. These developments have prompt us to examine the institutive acts of the above mentioned Courts as, after the 1998 innovations, the European Court for Human Rights is acquiring a more permanent jurisdictional function of unprecedented significance.
The topical article by RAPETTO on economic intelligence focuses on the new issue of cyberlaundering, while TREMONTI's contribution draws a historical excursus on the political and economical changes - brought about by globalisation - with growing civil competition in opposition to traditional warfare.
Last July a Government Bill was submitted to senate on the "discipline of the Intelligence and Security System". This long awaited Government Reform Bill will be debated in Parliament where several other Bills on the same subject are still pending. Already in the past our magazine deelt with reform projects designed for the Intelligence System, undoubtely the subject will be present in our magazine again in the future.
Part IV is in this issue devoted to the Republic of Hungary's Intelligence System ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As in the interest in cold war spy stories in still alive, we have included among the previews published in Part V a volume by C. Andrew and O. Gordiewskij on the history of KGB, and one by Bukovskij on Moscow's secret records.
Finally, in the Historical Curios we publish an enjoyable and unusual reading on espionage in classic Greece somewhere between history and mythology.