From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:27:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600116:000:11759
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 11 18:27:00 1992


/* Written  9:10 pm  Dec  8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
/* Written  8:30 pm  Dec  6, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */
/* Written  6:39 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
Bellant: Old Nazis/Heritage Groups 4
	     
PART ONE - SECTION 4
	
[The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council]
	
     
 Friends of Dictatorship
	
     - Italians: -
	
      Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have 
been close allies in recent years of those in Italy who would 
overthrow the government and re-install fascism in Rome. Italy's 
problems with fascism have been much more recent than World War 
II. In 1981 a conspiracy was foiled in which a group of business, 
political, Mafia, military and Vatican-connected figures planned 
to overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a 
dictatorship. The group, called the P-2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly 
a thousand members. The prestige of P-2 members (heads of the 
intelligence agencies, 38 generals and admirals, and 3 cabinet 
officers, for example), plus revelations of financial scandals, 
brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the 
Italian government, and an extensive parliamentary inquiry. [f-42]
	
      Although P-2 had existed for many years as an illegal 
secret society, in the 1970's it became involved in efforts to 
destabilize the Italian system through economic warfare and 
terrorism, including bombings of public places. The P-2 goal was 
to create a demand for fascism to restore order.
	
      A 1987 article by Jerry Meldon in the <Boston Globe> 
discussed the Italian neo->fascist right's strategy of terror:
	
     "In many ways, it [the Italian right] has been a much more 
dangerous movement than the kidnappers and murderers of the 
extreme left. Far more deaths can be attributed to right-wing 
terrorists' acts. More significantly, the neo-fascists have 
enjoyed the protection and support of Italian intelligence 
agencies and, according to a 1976 congressional report, the CIA."
	
     "With such offical support, the fascists have pursued a 
`strategy of tension' through their own [terrorist] acts and 
those of leftist groups they penetrated. They have cultivated a 
climate of fear to undermine support for the West's most popular 
communist party and justify an authoritarian takeover of the 
Italian government. [f-43] "
	
      The calculated terror began in 1969, when the right 
resolved to fight the growth of the left in Italy. On December 
12, a bomb exploded in a plaza of downtown Milan, killing 16 
people and injuring another 100. Within the hour several more 
bombs went off in Rome. Fascist stormtrooper groups formed. In 
December, 1970 a rightist coup was attempted but failed.
	
      Police discovered further plots as violence continued 
throughout the 1970's. Reaction to and fear of assassinations, 
kidnappings, knee-cappings and mob violence began seeping into 
Italy's everyday life. Lifestyles changed as Italians altered 
spending habits, dress and daily routine to avoid becoming a 
victim. Much of this early terrorism was blamed on the left.
	
      In 1973, police found that terrorist activity and the 
control of fascist groups was being orchestrated by a group 
called the Rose of Twenty, made up of military officers and 
industrialists. After their arrests, however, the violence 
continued. More plots were uncovered, including lists of targets 
for assassination. The police still had not uncovered P-2, the 
control center of the terror. In 1980, a bomb ripped through the 
Bologna train station, killing 85 people. The bombing was 
eventually linked to members of P-2 and Italian neo-fascist 
terrorist groups.
	
      By the mid-70's, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was 
gaining electoral support and leaders of the ruling Christian 
Democratic Party were meeting with the PCI to discuss the 
possibility of a coalition government. P-2 and its friends abroad 
worked to stop the coalition and PCI's electoral success. P-2's 
immediate target: defeat the PCI in the 1976 elections. Their 
long-term strategy was to defeat the system which allowed the PCI 
to exist.
	
      One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A. 
Guarino, 79, an adviser to the Republican National Committee on 
senior citizens' affairs, who was long active in Italian GOP 
politics. A theology student in Mussolini's Italy in the late 
20's and much of the 1930's, Guarino helped establish the ethnic 
division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican 
Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [f-44] He attended the 1985 
Council convention to ensure that his friend Frank Stella won the 
chairmanship of the Council in a tight race with former Cleveland 
mayor Ralph Perk.
	
      Guarino was also described in <St. Peter's Banker>, a book 
about activities involving P-2, as an "honorary member of P-2." 
[f-45] Foreign members of P-2 were rare. One other of the 
select was Jose Lopez Riga, founder of the Latin American death 
squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.
	
      The exposure of P-2 and Guarino's involvement (which 
Guarino has denied) came about when Michele Sindona, head of 
Vatican banking operations, was sentenced to 25 years in a New 
York prison for illegal banking activities. Italian 
investigations of Sindona led to Licio Gelli, grandmaster of the 
secret, illegal P-2 Lodge. Sindona and Gelli were associates of Guarino.
	
      Gelli was an ardent Blackshirt in the Fascist Party of 
Mussolini's Italy and one of his firm supporters to the end. As 
the leader of P-2, he made violations of the Lodge's oaths 
punishable by death. The presence of certain Mafioso and police 
officials in P-2 made the death threats credible.  After Italian 
police traced Sindona to Gelli, it was discovered that Guarino 
had been corresponding with Gelli. The <New York Times> reported 
that Guarino wrote Gelli that "things were going badly for 
`Michele'," the banker imprisoned in New York. Guarino had hosted 
Gelli at Reagan's 1981 inauguration, and introduced him to 
"members of the entourage." [f-46]
	
      Guarino's dealings with the P-2 network began no later than 
1976, when the Mafia-linked Sindona financed an <ad hoc> group 
called Americans for a Democratic Italy, cochaired by Guarino 
and Paul Rao, Jr. who is described in <St. Peter's Banker> as "a 
prominent member of the Italian-American community and attorney 
for the head of the Gambino family." [f-47] Sindona and 
Gambino family members were indicted in 1982 for "operating a 
$600 million- a-year heroin trade between Sicily and America." [f-48]
	
      Guarino was also involved in John Connally's Committee for 
the Defense of the Mediterranean, which propagandized on the 
Italian Communist Party (PCI) threat to the West. [f-49] 
Connally, Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury and member of 
the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon 
and Gerald Ford, was a friend of Sindona. [f-50]
	
      Another friend and guest at Connally's Texas ranch was 
Roberto Calvi, a Vatican banker and P-2 member, according to 
Larry Gurwin in <The Calvi Affair>. Calvi was in Gelli's inner 
circle, serving as an "executioner," one of a dozen hooded men 
with axes who served Gelli in the secret initiation rites for new 
members of P-2. The ceremony included the mixing of the 
initiate's blood with that of Gelli and his "executioners," the 
testing of courage with vipers, and an oath that bound the new 
P-2 member to Gelli and the netherworld of fascism for life. 
[f-51] Calvi's life was cut short, however, when he was 
found hanging from a bridge in London in 1982.
	
      In 1978, Guarino's Italian Heritage Council ally, Frank 
Stella, became National Chair of the Heritage National Committee 
of Connally for President, when Connally sought the 1980 GOP 
nomination for president. [f-52]
	
      Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente, 
a Stella protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now 
serving as a Republican National Committee Ethnic Liaison 
staffer, says, "Everyone at the White House knows Frank." 
Stella's name has gone through the White House appointment 
process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the 
little-known Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to 
monitor the legalities of covert operations of the intelligence 
agencies. [f-53] He withdrew his name after it had been publicly 
released. Stella was being considered for the post of Ambassador 
to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to 
Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow.
	
      Stella, a Detroit businessman, has many local civic service 
activities to his credit. In February, 1988 he was named cochair 
of a panel evaluating the advisability of legalized casino 
gambling for the city of Detroit. He is also a top Michigan GOP 
fundraiser. Stella had an <ex officio> seat on the Republican 
National Committee by virtue of his chairmanship of the 
>Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1981-83 and 1985-87. In 
1988 Stella was named National Chairman of Italian-Americans for Bush.
	
      Stella can't quite forget about Italy. In February, 1986 he 
gave an award of "honorary member" in the National Italian 
American Foundation to Victor Emmanuel of Savoy. [f-54] Stella is 
president of the foundation. He says it is "perceived to be the 
spokesman for the Italian-American community in the United 
States."[f-55] The man he honored, Victor Emmanuel, would be the 
king of Italy today, except his family, the House of Savoy, was 
expelled from Italy in 1946 due to its die-hard support of 
Mussolini's fascist order. [f-56] Victor Emmanuel, a reputed 
gunrunner for the Shah of Iran, is an arms trafficker and member 
of P-2. He is alleged to have used his wealth and influence to 
avoid a long prison sentence after he shot and killed a West 
German tourist in a party brawl on a Mediterranean island several 
years ago. [f-57]
	
      The irony of the award to this erstwhile fascist by the 
"spokesman" for Italian-Americans, is that Victor Emmanuel, until 
recently, was one of only two Italians in the world not allowed 
to set foot on Italian soil. The other person banned was his 
father. [f-58
	
     -{Chinese}: -
	
      The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican 
federations are led by Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the 
1950's and 1960's as an ardent advocate of Chiang Kai-Shek's 
dictatorship on Taiwan. Both federations appear to be little more 
than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. That 
was highlighted at the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council 
convention, when an official Taiwan delegation arrived at the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting as part of a 
nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan's second 
inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from 
Taiwan was the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary 
president of the delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs 
the Asian-American Republican Federation. [f-59] Other Chinese 
and Asian GOP federation members are part of trade groups linked 
to Taiwan.
	
      The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was 
interrupted at the Chinese federation's request so that the 
delegation could present awards from the Taiwan government to 
Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage Groups Council 
chair (who later became Reagan's ambassador to Jamaica). Also 
receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who 
funds the Asian American GOP federation, according to its 
chairman, Ben John Chen. Chennault became chair of the Republican 
Heritage Groups Council in 1987.
	
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