App r oved For Re lease 2001 /03/2W6MkyDP96-00788R0001 00240026-8
TERRORISM
Fat Man, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
ifow fAe t/.S. and Italy got the Mafia to helpfind General Dozier
U.S. in July 1981 when Italian authorities
suddenly seized his passport, a signal that
they were preparing to indict him. The
Italian
military
attache
told Lombino
that he could make a lot of money if he
would help with the Dozier case. On Dec.
22, only five days after Dozier had been
abducted, Lombino phoned the Fat Man
AGENZIA D-DAY
O
n the evening ol'JQfiC.
17, 1981, Red
Brigades
terrorists kidnaped Briga-
dier General James Dozier, 50, the high-
est-ranking U.S. officer in NATO’s south-
ern Europe command, from his home in
Verona. The abduction triggered the larg-
est man hunt in Italy’s history. Forty-two
days later, Italian commandos stormed an
apartment
in Padua and freed the
American general. It was a stunning
piece of police work that won praise
from around the world; it also marked
the beginning of the end for the noto-
rious terrorist group. But the full story
of how the authorities found Dozier
has never been revealed. American
and
Italian
intelligence
agencies,
Time has learned, turned to the Mafia
for help in locating the general.
What occurred was a remarkable
tale
of
triumphs
and
bungles,
of
Brooklyn consiglieri and Milan Mafi-
osi, of chases along New York City’s
Fifth Avenue and gun-toting crimi-
nals tailing intelligence agents along
Italian autostrade. So secret was the
operation that not even U.S. Ambas-
sador
to
Italy Maxwell Rabb was
aware of it until Time Correspondent
Jonathan
Beaty,
accompanied
by
Rome
Correspondent Barry
Kalb,
questioned the diplomat two weeks
ago. Beaty’s report:
I
t took only two days for top offi-
cials
at
SISMI, the Italian
intelli-
gence agency, to decide that it might
be useful to turn to the Mafia for help
in finding General Dozier. Although
the Mafia had long detested the Red
Brigades,
SISMI
knew
that
there
would be a public outcry if it was ever
discovered
that an
Italian govern-
ment agency had contacted the Ma-^
_
fia
directly.
Consequently,
a more
The jubilant and still unshaven victim after his rescue
subtle
plan
was
devised. An
ap-
Triumphs and bunglesfrom Brooklyn to Milan.
proach would be made to Mafiosi in
the U.S., who would be asked to get in
touch with
their
counterparts
in
Italy.
Marcello
Campione,
then
military
at-
tache to the Italian mission at the United
Nations, began making inquiries in New
York Mafia circles. Working under a code
name, “the Tailor,” Campione was led to
an influential Mafia consigliere in Brook-
lyn who makes his living by helping Ital-
ians move to the U.S. “The Fat Man,” as
the arranger is known in the underworld,
agreed to put Campione in touch with a
fugitive Mafioso from Italy who was hid-
ing out in New York.
That contact turned out to be Domi-
nic Lombino, 40, a lawyer from Milan
whose
clients had
included
Franchino
Restelli, the northern Italian city’s lead-
ing Mafioso. Jailed briefly in 1978 for his
and
then Armando
Sportelli,
chief of
SiSMl’s foreign operations in Rome. The
word: Dozier was being held somewhere
inside the triangle formed by the cities of
Verona, Padua and Bologna. The next
day, after more phone conversations with
associates in Italy, Lombino was able to
tell SISMI that the American general was
definitely
in
Padua. Lombino
did
not
know the precise location, but suggested
that his old client Restelli, then impris-
oned
in
Milan’s
notorious San
Vittore
prison for Mafia activities, might be able
to come up with the address.
Attache Campione
quickly
agreed.
Over the Christmas holiday he developed
a plan to sneak Lombino out of the U.S.
and into Italy so that Lombino could talk
with Restelli. Since Lombino was
still a
cial had to concoct a new identity for him.
With the Fat Man’s
aid, Lombino
ac-
quired the Social Security number of an
unwitting high school, driver s education
instructor from Brooklyn, while a cooper-
ative priest in Manhattan provided him
with false baptism records.
On Dec. 27, dressed in dark glasses,
Levi’s and running shoes, Lombino head-
ed for the U.S. passport office on Manhat-
tan’s Fifth Avenue. Though he had been
assured that there would be no problems,
Lombino, now joined by Campione, ner-
vously showed up an hour early to check
out the area. They quickly spotted too
many men wearing trench coats and
reading newspapers. Sensing a trap,
Lombino ran down the up escalators
to the street andjumped into a cab be-
fore he could be captured. The star-
tled Campione simply disappeared
into the crowd.
The pursuers turned out to be FBI
agents who had learned that an Ital-
ian Mafia associate living illegally in
New York was
trying
to obtain a
false
passport
to
return
to
Italy.
Within hours, FBI agents were grill-
ing both the Fat Man and Campione,
demanding to know why the Italians
were
helping
a
fugitive
Mafioso
like Lombino. A panicky Campione
called Sportelli in Rome to find out if
he should tell the FBI the truth. The
SISMI foreign-intelligence boss imme-
diately called “M,” the CIA agent in
Rome who was serving as the agen-
cy’s liaison in the Dozier case and ex-
plained the entire ploy.
The CIA was intrigued. It quickly
called the FBI off the case and began
negotiating directly with Lombino by
phone. Lombino, however, no longer
trusted
SISMI. He
insisted on
U.S.
protection as well as a pledge that he
could legally return to the U.S. if he
went to Italy and saw Restelli. The
Justice
Department
approved
the
residency
deal, and as a
result,
in
early January 1982 Lombino made
the first of two trips to the Washing-
ton,
D.C.,
area
to meet
with
CIA
agents.
For unknown reasons, Lombino’s trip
to Italy was delayed. According to Italian
intelligence sources, the problem was a ri-
valry between Campione and General
Ninetto
Lugaresi,
the
head
of
SISMI.
Finally, on Jan. 23, Lombino boarded an
Alitalia flight from New York’s Kennedy
Airport to Rome. Accompanied by Cam-
pione and wearing a wig as a disguise, he
carried CIA-supplied papers in the name
of Andrew Dimanso, the alias he was sup-
posed to use in Italy. When the pair land-
ed in Rome, they were met by the CIA’s
“M” and a cadre of American and Italian
intelligence agents. Lombino was hustled
away to a hotel a block from the U.S. em-
bassy. Twice during the next day, he met
with Franca Musi, a Red Brigades courier
who had been captured two weeks earlier
in Rome. The Italians thought that Musi,
FEBRUARY 28, 1983
Kelly, “areAppKQ^ae! IS© paRjB tea S6e2QQrl4Q2J£&ry£iiA
those who are disillusioned, no, disgusted,
with the way the government has been
running this country.” A decade ago, Kel-
ly’s denunciation of West German
de-
mocracy might have been dismissed as
mere ideological ranting. But the Greens
seem to be only the most politically visible
and potent part of a vast counterculture
movement
in West Germany
that has
reached extraordinary proportions.
West Germans refer
to the broader
phenomenon as the
“alternative move-
ment.” Its numbers are estimated at be-
tween 4 million and 5 million, much larg-
er
than
the
1.5
million
to
million
adherents of the Green Party itself. Thriv-
ing all over the country, the alternatives
include
squatters and
punkers,
doctors
and lawyers, engineers and social work-
ers, who have organized hundreds of com-
munes in which they are attempting to
define, as one of them puts
it, “a culture
alongside the traditional, confining Ger-
man society.” Joseph Huber, 34, a lectur-
er at Berlin’s Free University and a phi-
losopher of the alternative scene, sees this
counterculture wave as a “new class” in
West German society.
The movement’s members are mostly
under 35, although an older fringe of over-
50s is also active. Most of them vigorously
reject the traditional German work ethic,
sense of order, loyalty to family and secu-
rity in favor of nebulous concepts of self-
determination and grass-roots activism.
They oppose nuclear weapons and nucle-
ar energy. The alternatives are passionate
about
a
clean
and
safe
environment,
about women’s
rights
as well as
those
of oppressed
minorities
like immigrant
workers
and
homosexuals.
Says
Carl
Amery, 60, Bavarian writer, environmen-
talist and Green Party member: “The al-
ternative movement is trying to recapture
the German warmth that was killed in the
war years.”
There are those for whom the coun-
terculture movement is more frightening
than laughable. They see in
it a renais-
sance of an ancient streak of German ro-
manticism, a form of escapism that too of-
ten has preceded political follies. For most
Greens reflect old but recurring
fears of the relentless advance of
industrialism and urbanism that
threaten the individual with a
society of scientific management
and
assembly
lines.
With
ro-
mantic and dangerously simplis-
tic longing, the alternatives look
to the lost past, to what they be-
lieve was a simpler, less corrupt
world of noble motives and a
pristine environment.
There is a strong nationalis-
tic edge to the alternative movement. The
counterculture’s music is purely German,
both rock
tunes and the
protest songs
of peace groups. Decrying the U.S.
is a
constant theme.
Arthur Bums, the U.S. Ambassador
to Bonn, is fond of complaining to West
Germans that by neglecting to teach the
history of the past 40 years—West Ger-
man
schoolbooks have
tended
to
skip
lightly over
the
Hitler and immediate
postwar
periods—the country has
pro-
duced a generation with little or no his-
torical perspective. In the eyes of West
German youth who cannot remember the
cold war or the Berlin airlift or the Kore-
an War, there is really not much to distin-
guish between the
U.S. and the Soviet
Union. As a result, the vital Atlantic Alli-
ance is sometimes questioned or even na-
ively perceived as a fading and largely un-
necessary relic.
West German
intellectuals
of
the
Marxist-oriented left are fascinated, puz-
zled but not attracted by the Greens. Says
Werner Holzer, editor of the left-leaning
Frankfurter Rundschau: “The intellectual
left has remained aloof for the most part
because
of the Greens’
unruly way
of
thinking.” In their inarticulate way, the
Greens, indeed, appear to be rejecting all
the political ideologies of the past, includ-
ing Marxism. Nonetheless, says Professor
Richard Lowenthal of the Free Universi-
ty of Berlin, the Greens’ thinking has been
influenced by the Marxist teachers who
are now established in West German uni-
versities. This influence has presumably
helped turn the Greens against capital-
A painted protester
Activists wearing mutant masks to represent the face of the world after nuclear war
24$02}Qi-8rhe ieft-
j ists have not taught them how
parliamentary democracy works
or the importance of the legal
system. They have not transmit-
ted any of the utopian Marxist
hope. The Old Left is responsi-
ble for the gaps in the Greens’
education.”
The rise of the Greens, be-
ginning in
1979, came just
as
disillusionment with West Ger-
many’s three other established
political parties was spreading.
In the 1980 national elections, the Greens
polled only 1.5% of the vote. Later the
same year, in the state election in Baden-
Wurttemberg,
they won 5.3% and
en-
tered
the
state
parliament.
In
quick
succession came similar electoral break-
throughs in West Berlin, Lower Saxony,
Hamburg and Hesse. In several of the
state
elections,
the Greens
ousted
the
Free Democrats as the third parliamenta-
ry party.
However
inchoate
and
unrealistic
their ultimate aims, the Greens have al-
ready left marks on the country. That In-
terior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann
talks about saving dying German forests,
that Social Democratic Leader Vogel now
hedges on the missile issue, that the Free
Democratic
Party now champions
the
rights of foreign workers—all can be at-
tributed to the
political stimulus of the
Greens. More than its Catholic counter-
part,
the
Protestant Church
has
been
moved to respond to the concerns of West
German
youths.
The
large-circulation
press has been unable to ignore the pres-
sures of the counterculture movement. A
regular diet of environmental coverage is
now a feature of such major magazines as
Stern and Der Spiegel. Both publications
have come out strongly against the de-
ployment ofnew NATO missiles, a position
closer to that of the Greens than of the So-
cial Democrats.
By last autumn, according to opinion
polls, the Greens enjoyed support from as
much as 9% of the electorate. In recent
months, though, they have fallen back.
One reason is that the Social Democrats,
under Vogel, have moved just far enough
to the left on the NATO missile and eco-
nomic issues to pick up some Greens sup-
porters. Another reason is that, ironically
enough,
the
Greens’
moral
credibility
comes at the cost of their political credi-
bility. Says a Munich tenants’ rights orga-
nizer: “The Greens have trouble enough
trying to find out what their supporters
want, let alone having to deal with ques-
tions like how they will vote on unem-
ployment programs.” If the Greens fail to
win 5% of the Vote, their future as a politi-
cal force will depend on whether Vogel’s
Social Democrats maintain their leftward
drift. In short, the Greens will disturb the
West German political scene as long as
there is room on the left for a new genera-
tion
of
skeptical
citizens
with
a dim
sense of the past and a hazy vision of the
future.
—By Frederick Palnton. Reportedby
RolandFlaminiand GaryLee/Bonn
The key link: Milan Mafioso Franchino Restelli
whose
faijSUppHOV©<ltrFOI3
tions,
might
give
valuable
information
to
Lombino,
but
she
claimed
only
to
know that Dozier was being held some-
where in Padua.
It was now time to see Restelli. On the
night of Jan. 26, Lombino climbed into a
white Alfa Romeo with four Italian po-
licemen and headed
for
Milan.
Behind
them was a second
car
carrying Cam-
pione and other SISMI officers. It was only
part of the odd caravan that raced along
the highway that night. The Italians were
tailed by
at
least two Mercedes
sedans
filled with Mafia soldiers armed with ma-
chine
guns.
Their
instructions:
protect
Lombino. When the improbable parade
of motorists reached Milan, a cia agent
joined up as well.
The lawyer and SISMI agents then met
with Restelli, who was brought out of jail
especially for the conference, which took
place in a police office in the Palace of
Justice.
“It
is very important to America
that we find the general,” Lombino said to
the Mafia leader. “Can you help us?”
T
he question did not exactly
surprise
Restelli/Lombino had already been in
touch with him
through
intermediaries,
and from
his
jail
cell
Restelli had
dis-
patched
his troops
to track down leads.
Restelli had also ordered the supply fine of
heroin to parts of the underworld cut off in
order to encourage tips from addicts sud-
denly
deprived
of drugs,
Restelli’s
pre-
sumption:
in exchange for giving the au-
thorities information on Dozier, he would
receive more favorable treatment from the
Italians. On Jan. 27, according to a partici-
pant at the meeting, Restelli gave the SISMI
agents the address of the apartment build-
ing in which Dozier was being held.
His
mission
accomplished, Lombino
returned to Rome. Next morning, Jan. 28,
he was sitting in his room at the Hotel Bos-
ton with “M” when the word came: James
Dozier had just been rescued in a daring
raid at 2 Via Piridemonte, in the heart of
Padua.
“M”
turned
to
Lombino
and
thanked him profusely for his help.
Since
the
rescue,
U.S.
officials have
been
careful
to
give
full
credit to the Italians. Both
Rome
and
Washington
have
forcefully
claimed
that the success of the op-
eration was
the
result of
dogged
police work
and
the
confessions
of
Red
Brigades
members
who
had been captured during
the
six-week
search
for
Dozier.
When
first questioned
by Time two weeks ago
about CIA and Mafia
in-
volvement
in
the
rescue,
Ambassador Rabb
heat-
edly denied
it. “I swear to
God that nothing like this
ever happened,”
the am-
bassador
said. In
fact, he
insisted,
he
had
spent
The key address: 2 Via Pindemonte, after the successful raid
much of his time fendir
Pup tent in which Dozier was held captive
kept try-
ing to send to Italy a swarm ofexperts rang-
ing from FBI agents to Pentagon tacticians.
Some of the American aid was bizarre at
best: during the last week of the search,
Time has learned,
U.S. military
officials
brought to Rome a psychic who sent the ca-
rabinieri chasing after a futile lead. “They
were coming through the windows, coming
through the doors,” recalled Rabb. “Every-
body in the intelligence agencies wan ted
in, but this was a job for the Italians.”
When presented with evidence of Ma-
fia involvement, Rabb
offered
to check
with the embassy’s CIA station chief. The
ambassador
returned
minutes
later,
looking embarrassed. He confirmed that
SISMI had indeed made a deal with Lom-
bino and that, after the U.S. had offered
Lombino protection and a guarantee that
he could return to the U.S., the Mafia law-
yer had gone to Italy and met with “M.”
Rabb insisted that nothing had come of
Lombino’s aid. “It was a big fizz,” the am-
bassador
said. The
FBI and
the
Justice
Department refuse to confirm or deny the
story,
while
the
CIA
offers
a
terse
“no comment.”
It may never be known just how valu-
able the Mafia’s help was in finding Dozi-
er. Rabb’s explanation, which minimizes
the
Mafia’s
role, may be
accurate. The
Italian police did indeed make a series of
key arrests just before the raid, and law-
enforcement officials in Rome insist that
these suspects helped lead them to Dozier.
In the days just before the rescue, the trail
was growing so hot that the police might
have found the general without help from
Restelli. On the other hand, Italian mag-
istrates
acknowledged
that on
Jan.
Restelli was secretly released from prison
at the request of SISMI and the CIA to meet
with officials in Milan. U.S. embassy per-
sonnel
in Rome
confirm
that
Dozier’s
whereabouts
was
not known
until
the
night before the raid, which
is when the
Mafia leader reportedly gave the address
to the Italians.
Today General Dozier is stationed at
the U.S. Army base in Fort Knox, Ky. Mar-
cello Campione, who clashed with the head
of
SISMI,
has
been
dis-
patched to the Italian em-
bassy in far-off Khartoum,
the capital of Sudan. Fran-
chino
Restelli
has
been
transferred from his Milan
prison to a more hospitable
jail
in
Parma.
Dominic
Lombino
is back in New
York,
reportedly
waiting
for the Justice Department
to approve
the
residency
papers
requested
by
the
CIA.
In
Italy,
trouble
is
brewing within SISMI about
the sum of money, which
turned out to be $500,000,
that was promised to Lom-
bino but that has apparent-
ly
disappeared.
And,
oh
yes,
the Fat Man
is
still
p p rove t
I JOF IQF I
V
\
RY 28, 1983
g _Jleari
For
ag the news, the
Release 2immm
lends.
TIME, FEBRUARY 28, 1983