[15] In 1938 General Gamba, chief of the SIM Cryptographic Bureau, requested cooperation in the cryptanalytic field at the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW/Chi).

The Servizio Informazioni Militare provided also OKW/Chi with a captured Swedish diplomatic codebook and with a Turkish code that Chi was trying hard to break.

After the Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy when Benito Mussolini was deposed on 24–25 July 1943, the Servizio Informazioni Militare turned to OKW/Chi for help and cooperation.

In late February 1944, Foschini was kidnapped by the SS as he left Rodolfo Graziani's villa on Lake Garda and disappeared to Germany.

[20] De Leo signed an agreement with the German Abwehr, but SID activities were hampered by Nazi Germany's intense hostility toward Italy after the armistice.

The murder was carried out by French fascist-leaning and anti-communist Cagoulards, in exchange for 100 semiautomatic Beretta rifles and the promise of future shipments.

By the mid-1930s Italian counterespionage, led by Colonel Santo Emanuele, had been involved in France through the Cagoule, taking advantage with great skill of the opportunities this provided to penetrate the Deuxième Bureau.

[28] Information obtained by SIM in France enabled Italian authorities to arrest the members of a French spy ring in Italy in 1939.

[28] Before the Ethiopian campaign, SIM secured the text of the secret Hoare–Laval Pact, which sanctioned an Anglo-French agreement for the partition of Ethiopia among France, Britain and Italy on the eve of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

The surfacing of the draft of this pact brought about its failure and the resignation of both Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval and the subsequent start of unilateral Italian military operation for the conquest of Ethiopia.

[29] In February 1936 Emilio Faldella, head of the special SIM section for East Africa (AO), infiltrated Palestinian agent Jacir Bey in Negus Haile Selassie's entourage.

Jacir Bey offered to persuade the Emperor to reach a peace agreement with Italy, effectively turning Ethiopia into an Italian protectorate.

[30] Terms involved the maintenance of Haile Selassie on the throne and continuance of Ethiopian sovereignty over an independent but reduced state in Shewa with a corridor to the sea at the port of Assab.

In return, all of Tigray and border areas of Eritrea and Somalia would be ceded to Italy, and unconquered Ethiopia would be placed under a strong Italian protectorate on the model of Manchukuo.

The biggest Italian intelligence victory scored during World War II was the acquisition of U.S. encipherment tables obtained through the break-in of the U.S. Embassy in Rome in September 1941 authorized by General Cesare Amè, head of the SIM.

Fellers, who was something of an Anglophobe, usually authored his dispatches in a less than favourable manner casting great doubt about the long-term success of the British and her Commonwealth allies fight against the Italo-German army in North Africa.

He made contact with the Italian consulate in that country, and from the Yemeni coast organized a group of Eritrean sailors (with small boats called sambuco) in order to identify, and notify Rome with his radio, of the Royal Navy movements throughout the Red Sea.

On 1 August 1942, while attempting to come back to Eritrea, De Martini was captured on Dahlak Island by sailors from HMS Arpha and imprisoned in Sudan until the end of the war.

[36] On 18 May 1942, Maltese irredentist and SIM spy Carmelo Borg Pisani was sent on an espionage mission to Malta, to check British defences and help prepare for the planned Axis invasion of the island (Operazione C3).

On 12 November 1942, he stood trial under closed doors in front of three judges, headed by Chief Justice of Malta Sir George Borg, and defended by two lawyers.

[2] This section was headed by General Vittorio Gamba, a published student of cryptology who had been breaking codes since World War I, and was located in Rome.

Copies of the bulletin were sent to Mussolini, to the Chief of General Staff and to king Victor Emmanuel (via his aide-de-camp Paolo Puntoni), while a good portion of the diplomatic traffic was sent to Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister.

Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary that Sezione 5 cryptanalysts routinely read British, Romanian, and neutral Turkey's diplomatic traffic.