Link Campus University, Rome Italy.
A name and a place that will be popping up again. pic.twitter.com/AFPZyusHsP
— renojeff 🇺🇲 (@BeAPatriotFirst) May 6, 2019
Link University, the university in Rome at the center of the SpyGate scandal, has had a long history of playing host for international intelligence officials and gatherings.
In 2004, the CIA sponsored a conference co-hosted by Link that brought together officials from intelligence and police agencies from nearly 30 countries. The goal of the conference was the rethinking of intelligence-gathering activities in a post-9/11 world and a post-Iraq-war-intelligence-debacle world.
Former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Jamie Miscik and former CIA analyst Stephen Marrin were in attendance. Marrin was a guest lecturer at Link.
Andrew Bagley, a former FBI adviser was a visiting researcher at Link in May and June, 2010. Since 2015, he’s been privacy counsel at Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm that was hired by the Democratic National Committee to ascertain who hacked its computers in 2016. (Crowdstrike would later conclude that it was Russian actors.)
FBI Special Agent and cybersecurity expert Preston Ackerman gave a presentation at Link in September 2016.
Former Italian Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta has been a director of “Special Projects,” and a professor at Link since 2015.
Gen. Carmine Masiello and Roberto Baldoni, both cybersecurity experts and deputy directors of the Italian Department of Security Intelligence, lectured or held talks at Link.
Prof. BALDONI, Cyber Warfare Conference @robertobaldoni @mrtlgu @francibosco @securityaffairs @barbaracarfagna @arturodicorinto @ViA_blog pic.twitter.com/ro4WO3Bw2I
— mmachiavelli (@mmachiavelli) July 6, 2017
Emanuela Del Re, Italian deputy minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, lectured at Link in 2015 and 2016.
Claire Smith, a career UK diplomat and former member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, organized a training course for high-ranking Italian military officials in Rome in 2012 which was co-organized by Link. Smith was photographed during the course standing next to Joseph Mifsud.
Mifsud and Claire Smith train Italian military and law enforcement officials at LINK Campus in Rome. LAD had MOD and Foreign Office contacts. They also ran dipomatic training for Commonwealth countries. pic.twitter.com/U20uW4hF8z
— Chris Blackburn (@CJBdingo25) March 22, 2018
In 2017, Link was named coordinator for two NATO Research Projects.
Gianni Pitella gave a talk together with Mifsud at a Link forum on terrorism in 2015. Pitella and Mifsud have known each other since at least 2011. The two maintained a close relationship during the time Pitella was the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest power block in the European Parliament. Pittella is also a former vice-president of the European Parliament.
It was in 2016, while Mifsud was associated with Link University, he told then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russian government was in possession of “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
That statement would be the genesis of the Russia investigation that would envelope the Trump presidency for the next several years.