Operation Winter Harvest was a search and rescue mission tasked to Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) in response to the kidnapping of U.S. Brigadier General James Dozier on 17 December 1981 by the Red Brigades, an Italian terrorist organization.
ISA operatives worked in conjunction with Italian police to locate the kidnapped general primarily through the use of intercepted Red Brigades radio communications.
"[3] On 17 December 1981 in Verona, two members of the Italian terrorist organization Red Brigades disguised themselves as plumbers to gain entry into the apartment of Brigadier General James Dozier, the then senior U.S. Army officer in NATO's Allied Land Forces Southern Europe.
10 days after the kidnapping, the Red Brigades released a photo of Dozier with a swollen left eye sitting in front of a banner with the Italian group's emblem, denouncing the general as an "assassin and hero of the American massacres in Vietnam" and announcing the start of his "proletarian trial.
Once the ISA operators gathered information on the Red Brigades’ frequencies, they passed it onto the NSA who used the Aquacade spy satellite to pinpoint the safe houses that the signals were coming from.
Additionally, the ISA tracked a yacht owned by Dr. Mario Frascella near Venice that was in regular contact with the Red Brigades team in the Guizza district of Padua.
Though ISA played a crucial role in the search and rescue mission, the American government gave the Italian authorities all of the credit in order to keep the organization's existence secret.