Aristide Brunello
  Aristide Brunello  (spook) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Member of | Le Cercle, Stauffenberg Service |
| Interests | • Operation Eva • BND |
Little known Cercle visitor. Vatican prelate and spy for the BND under Reinhard Gehlen. Attended a meeting of the Le Cercle.[2] | |
Monsignor Aristide Brunello was a Vatican prelate and a spook in the Vatican on behalf of West German interests. His participation in Le Cercle presumably was connected to his Vatican (intelligence) work in Eastern Europe.
Spy for Gehlen's BND in the Vatican
Brunello became a BND agent in Operation Eva, a West-German intelligence attempt to infiltrate the Vatican executive apparatus[3]. For the price of 2500 D-Mark, a generous salary, he spied for the BND from 1964 onward, under the agent name Eva-901. Concentrating on Italy, Eastern Europe and South East Asia, he had 15 sub-agents reporting to him[4]. Given "his special importance", he received a 20,000 D-Mark bonus for his services in 1967, formally for the book The Silent Church he wrote 13 years earlier, but in fact to pay gambling debts.[5]
He was a member of the Italian Catholic Association for the Christian Orient, working on wooing the Orthodox Churches. He was the translator of the first Italian version of the Septuagint Bible. This work, which began in 1941-45, was presented at the Second Vatican Council in 1963. He believed that his effort could be a point of convergence and union with the Orthodox Churches, but in the end it had very little impact.
Brunello later worked for the 'private' West-German intelligence service the Stauffenberg-Dienst, connected to the CDU party when it was in opposition, and financed by (mostly Bavarian) conservative industrialists figures.[6]
Rating
References
- ↑ https://www.stasi-mediathek.de/medien/schulungsfilm-der-mann-aus-camp-nikolaus |From 52:32
- ↑ https://isgp-studies.com/Le_Cercle_membership_list
- ↑ Jefferson Adams: "Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence" (under keyword Operation Eva)
- ↑ https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/bnd-spionierte-waehrend-des-kalten-krieges-in-italien-typisch-teutonisch-a-1144622.html
- ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom; Spionage unter Freunden: Partnerdienstbeziehungen und Westaufklärung der Organisation Gehlen und des BND; p 97
- ↑ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stauffenberg-Dienst
