The internet searches also identified CIA properties in Florida, Chicago, Ohio, northern Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington state.

Some of the buildings are official premises under guard, while other addresses appear to be private residences.

"Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the internet age," said Jennifer Dyck, a chief CIA spokeswoman. "There are things that worked previously that no longer work."

Dyck refused to comment on the actions that would be taken to remedy the security breach "since we don't want the bad guys to know what we're fixing".

"The two men were not traditional mobsters," Mitra Hormozi, the New York prosecutor, told the jury. "They were better. They could get away with murder because these two men were New York City police detectives." Defence lawyers were expected to make their own statements later yesterday.

Ms Hormozi said that for a monthly stipend of $4,000 (£2,300), the men used their positions in the department to protect the Lucchese Mafia clan by selling it inside information about prospective police stings and investigations, and, more importantly, arranging the murders.

"Eppolito and Caracappa together were a perfect combination to gather and get information about the Mafia," she said.

The cases against both men are replete with dark ironies. Mr Caracappa helped create the department now dedicated to fighting mafia crime. Mr Eppolito, meanwhile, admitted late in his career that his father and grandfather were members of the Gambino crime family. He has even written an autobiography: Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob.

Both men had retired to Las Vegas where they were arrested last year. Freed later, on bail of $5m each, they have come to trial insisting they are innocent.

The murders, prosecutors say, were committed at the bidding of Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, a Lucchese family underboss currently serving a life sentence.

Allegedly, Casso paid them $75,000 for one hit and took to calling the pair his "crystal ball". Jurors will be told how they kidnapped one victim and delivered him personally to Casso for assassination. Another time they allegedly killed a mobster after pulling him over in their marked police car. They are also accused of giving the address of a victim tagged for assassination only to find the wrong man was killed.

Lopinski stressed that Poland was very interested in improving relations with Russia but that those relations had to be based on truth. "Truth on Katyn is paramount to our relations," the spokesman said.

The Sejm (Polish parliament) Speaker Marek Jurek also called the decision shocking, as, in his point of view, peace and security can be built only on the condemnation of evil.

He believes that the decision of the Russian prosecutor's office was a "very unpleasant moment in Polish-Russian relations" and added that the Russian authorities do not have to defend the Soviet policy as Russia was the first victim of communism.

Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said that the country would not give up its efforts to persuade all countries that the killing of Polish officers in 1940 was a genocide.

Jan Rokita of the Civic Platform PO said that the time when there were big chances to clear up issues related to the Katyn crime has been closed for many years.

Rokita believes that the only thing Poland may do now is to try to persuade Russians that their attitude was humiliating not only for Poland but also for their own Russian honor.

Sixty-five years ago, in April and May 1940, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) executed almost 22,000 Polish citizens, mostly Polish officers and policemen imprisoned in Kozyelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk as well as Poles imprisoned in the Western regions of Belarus and Ukraine in an "operation" known as the "Katyn massacre". Katyn is a location a few kilometers off Smolensk city where the burial site of one group of victims was first found.

On Friday, the head of the investigation department of the National Remembrance Institute, IPN, Prof Witold Kulesza, told PAP that the IPN had received from the Russian Military Prosecutor's Office a document in which the latter claimed it would not recognize Poles murdered in Katyn as victims of political repression.

The Russians said no proof had been found that Poles murdered in Katyn by Stalin's order had been brought to legal responsibility under the 1926 Russian penal code.

I just attended the 78th Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California. In a kilt. Commando, since you ask. Now in ordinary times I'm not particularly interested in these industry fetes, primarily because my chances of winning an Oscar are similar to my chances of being hit in the neck by a salad fork dropped from the International Space Station. But on this occasion my girlfriend (perfect in every regard except for miserable taste in men) happened to be nominated for one of these brassy little fellows, so bethought me I it would be in good taste to flash my nose about at the festivities.

We strode the red carpet, which for the record is not true red but Pantone 201 C. My knees got on Japanese television. The ratio of extremely famous people to trogs such as myself was approximately two-to-one, but because I have no idea who anybody is, it wasn't particularly intimidating. The women are tall and the men are short. For a few delirious hours, we were part of a select group of Happy People, the movie business's elite, admired by all. I could see the attraction in it, surrounded by security people facing the other direction, never having to open a door or pay for a drink. And I could see how, after extended exposure to this sort of treatment, one could lose one's grasp of what real life is about. When you're rich and famous, there are no rough edges. You start wondering what the commoners are bitching for.

She won the Oscar, by the way. That and (at the Vanity Fair party, naturally) the opportunity to congratulate Graydon Carter for keeping Christopher Hitchens from becoming homeless, were for your tragic little correspondent the highlights of a glittering evening. But reality, that endless queasy medium in which us ordinary folk are suspended like aphids in agar, rushed in by morning to claim us again. What has changed? Now my girlfriend can't get renter's insurance and there's this little gold man parked on her kitchen counter next to the microwave. Otherwise, nothing. We both went back to our respective jobs the next day, alcohol-poisoned but intact. My respect for Hollywood folk in general has increased, though. To live in that world all the time and still remain above-average in the social consciousness department (to the degree that they're hated by Washington) is no mean feat.

Meanwhile, for the Happy People, every day is Oscar day. They get into their fancy cars and drive in HEPA-filtered comfort from their attractive homes to their enjoyable activities, untouched by poverty, illness, bad schools, job insecurity, malnutrition, or a transmission that won't go into third. These are the people that are setting our national priorities. I quote from a February 27, 2006 letter to the Boston Globe written by one of the happiest of the Happy People, yclept Linda Gosselin:

"It would be difficult to consider yourself happy if you are convinced your country consists of imperialist occupiers trying to take over the world. But if you realize the true road to freedom happens when democracies lead to thriving societies, you're feeling pretty good right now."

See, this is what I'm talking about. It's as if somebody macerated a bunch of Republican talking points in a blender, then decanted the resulting ooze into a clyster and injected it in the author's right ear. Even Thomas Friedman couldn't garble a sentence that badly. Ms. Gosselin has never lived in a nation occupied by a foreign army, I suspect. Nor has she ever been investigated for sedition.

"We have a choice each morning we're lucky enough to open our eyes. We can look at our lives and society in a positive manner and work toward making a better world for our children or we can endlessly dwell on every negative aspect of life we've ever witnessed."

The key phrase here is 'look at', which I'm pretty sure is all Linda does with her life and society every day. Except maybe once a year writing a check to Unicef or sending some clothes down to the Salvation Army. And when she says, "a better world for our children", she means specifically her own children, Tiffany and Jack Henry, for whom life's main passage so far has been getting the braces off their teeth in time for the Homecoming Ball. And I'll bet Linda is white. I could be wrong-- she could be a poor black sharecropper working the tobacco fields of Braintree. But there's privilege in her remarks. She has never, I'm certain, had bad teeth or a bounced rent check or an itchy asshole because the water got turned off and she hasn't had a shower in four days. She has never left her kids with neighbors because she couldn't get out of work in time to put them to bed. For that matter, she has never watched her babies get eaten alive by rabbits, but this is happening less and less in all strata of American society since the barbaric practice of lettuce-baiting has ended.

"Could it be", Linda postulates in a reflective mood, "that we conservatives have a more positive world view? How about a more positive national view? A more positive view of religion? A more positive view of our careers? A more positive view of the future?"

These are excellent questions, to which the obvious answer is "no, you conservatives are living in a delusional bubble of smug self-congratulation, go fuck yourself". But this isn't positive thinking. It would be better to say, "yes, Linda, you conservatives have more positive views. Did you know your daughter is dating a black man?" But the real answer is this. Linda is right. If you're a real conservative, meaning wealthy (there are a lot of false conservatives that are actually minarchists, that is, persons interested in a small government the role of which is strictly to protect the rights of its citizens), life is pretty damn good. You can afford the best medical care, education, and organic food; you can (like 'President' Bush) afford to have a sustainable ranch with the latest in resource-efficiency technology, and you can afford to live where the common folk can't spread disease on you and there are no riots or liquor stores or homeless people.

I, too, would have a more positive worldview, like Linda, if I got the Oscar treatment every day. But I suppose I could be happy happy happy like her even if I wasn't rich and sheltered. After all, like she says, we have a choice each morning we're lucky enough to open our eyes. I question, however, whether her eyes have ever really been opened.

Ben Tripp is an independent filmmaker and all-around swine. His book, Square In The Nuts, may be purchased here, with other outlets to follow: http://www.lulu.com/Squareinthenuts. His favorite animal is the rhinoceros. Mr. Tripp may be reached at credel@earthlink.net.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of the 1982 "Holy Blood" book, who are suing Brown's British publisher Random House, allege that he lifted their ideas wholesale.

Part of Brown's defense has been to say he wrote the synopsis for "The Da Vinci Code", one of the most successful novels with sales of around 40 million copies, before he became familiar with the "Holy Blood" book.

"You acquired a copy of 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' before you accept in your evidence you did," said the historians' lawyer Jonathan Rayner James. "There are very few dates, let alone exact dates, in your witness statement."

Brown, 41, said neither he nor his wife, Blythe, who is also his assistant, had used ideas from the book for his synopsis.

There are seven books listed in the partial bibliography for "The Da Vinci Code" synopsis, written in January 2001, but "Holy Blood" is not among them.

"That is the clear piece of evidence to me that "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" was not around when I wrote the synopsis," said Brown, adding it would have been in his interest to add the work to his bibliography in order to impress his publisher.

Both books share the idea of Jesus marrying and having a child by Mary Magdalene and their bloodline being protected by the mysterious Priory of Sion, a theory greeted with outrage by some Roman Catholic leaders.

RESERVE YOUR SEATS

The publicity-shy author was forced to answer questions in the full glare of the world's media for a second day.

Unable to cope with the number of reporters and fans trying to watch Brown, court officials have asked journalists to reserve seats in the gallery. British courts normally work on a first-come, first-served basis.

When asked why his copy of "Holy Blood" was so heavily annotated, Brown said he used it for a "refresher course" he and his wife underwent after the publication of "The Da Vinci Code".

Brown joked that prior to "The Da Vinci Code" and the almost overnight fame it brought, he had been used to attending book signings where five people would turn up, three of whom would be book store employees who had taken pity on him.

Brown admits he used "Holy Blood" when he wrote "The Da Vinci Code", but that it was only one of several sources and he did not copy its "central themes".

"I have never been shy about saying 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' is part of this," Brown said. "The whole Teabing section of the book -- those are the sorts of snippets of information that 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' is very good on."

Leigh Teabing, a character in the novel, is an anagram of the claimants in the case, and the 1982 work is referred to in the narrative.

Brown is expected to give evidence again on Wednesday and the case is due to end on Monday. It could be weeks before judgment is pronounced.