Illuminati News: Was The Assassination Of The Former Italian Prime Minister, Ordered By Henry Kissinger Bettino Craxi (1934-2000) "America's "nobility" were doing their share to destroy the Republic of Italy, a notable contribution having come from Richard Gardner even while in his official capacity as President Carter's ambassador to Rome. At that time Gardner was operating under the direct control of Bettino Craxi , an important member of the Club of Rome and a key man in NATO. Craxi was the leading edge of the conspirators' attempts to destroy the Italian Republic. As we shall see, Craxi was almost successful in ruining Italy, and as the conspirators hierarchy's leading player, was able to get divorce and abortion pushed through the Italian Parliament, resulting in the most far-reaching and destructive religious and social changes ever to strike at the Catholic Church, and consequently, the morals of the Italian nation. "After President Ronald Reagan was elected, an important meeting was held in Washington D.C. in December 1980 under the auspices of the Club of Rome and the Socialist International. Both these organizations are directly responsible to the Committee of 300.

The main agenda was to formulate ways and means of how to neutralize the Reagan presidency. A group plan was adopted and, as we look back, it is perfectly clear that the plan the conspirators agreed to follow has been very successful." Looking back at the explosive testimony by Guerzoni linking Kissinger to the Moro assassination, it is interesting to note it was covered extensively by the Italian media, but not a peep was heard in the U.S. as the big from the wire services and the Post and Time suppressed every word of the Guerzoni testimony to the American public. The mainstream media further suppressed key testimony by several Red Brigades members about how Moro was brutally shot to death and how they knew of high-level U.S. involvement in the plot to kill Moro. During the years following the Moro killing, I saw up close and personal how the U.S. was orchestrating terrorism in Italy, working undercover with the P2 Masonic Lodge and the Vatican, in the very same manner terrorism and a propaganda-based media is being orchestrated today in America.

And to put icing on the cake, leading to a journalistic hiatus near the Adriatic Sea, came the shocking discovery that Black Ops CIA money was also controlling the English language newspaper in Rome and all the other news coming out of the American wire services. Although the news outlets were shut off, Dr. Coleman provided a behind the scenes look at really happened to Moro even though his writings found a long and hard road, never really reaching the mainstream. "In June and July of 1982, the wife of Aldo Moro testified in open court that her husband's murder came about as a result of serious threats against his life, made by what she called "a high ranking United States political figure," writes Dr. Coleman. "Mrs. Eleanora Moro repeated the precise phrase reportedly used by Kissinger in the sworn testimony of Guerzoni: "Either you stop your political line or you will pay dearly for it." "Recalled by the judge, Guerzoni was asked if he could identify the person Mrs. Moro was talking about. Guerzoni replied that it was indeed Henry Kissinger as he had previously intimated.

Guerzoni went on to explain to the court that Kissinger had made his threats in Moro's hotel room during the Italian leaders official visit to the U.S. Moro-then Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Italy, a NATO member-country-was a man of high rank, one who should never have been subjected to Mafia-like pressures and threats. Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) "Moro was accompanied on his American visit by the President of Italy in his official capacity. Kissinger was then, and still is, an important agent in the service of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, a member of the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations. "In my 1982 expose of this heinous crime, I demonstrated that Aldo Moro, a loyal member of the Christian Democrat Party, was murdered by assassins controlled by P2 Masonry with the object of bringing Italy into line with Club of Rome orders to de-industrialize the country and considerably reduce its population. "Moro's plans to stabilize Italy through full employment and industrial and political peace would have strengthened Catholic opposition to Communism and made the destabilization of the Middle East-a prime goal-that much harder.

"From the foregoing it becomes clear just how far ahead the conspirators plan. They do not think in terms of a Five Year Plan. One needs to go back to Weishaupt's statements about the early Catholic Church to understand what was involved in the murder of Aldo Moro. Moro's death removed the roadblocks to the plans to destabilize Italy, and as we now know, enabled conspiracy plans for the Middle East to be carried out in the Gulf War 14 years later." For more informative articles, go to Greg Szymanski Greg also has his own daily show on the Republic Broadcast Network. Go to Greg Szymanski is an independent investigative journalist and his articles can been seen at He also writes for American Free Press and has his own site Listen to my Radio Broadcast live Monday night at 8pm Pacific time on LewisNews, returning Jan. 1 2006 Radio . Greg is also regular on Rense.com the first Thursday of every month at 9-10 pm pacific time.

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Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - US envoy admits role in Aldo Moro killing - Telegraph World News US envoy admits role in Aldo Moro killing Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister, who was seized at gunpoint by the Red Brigades in 1978 By Malcolm Moore in Rome 12:01AM GMT 11 Mar 2008 An American envoy has claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister who was murdered by terrorists in 1978.

Steve Pieczenik, an international crisis manager and hostage negotiator in the State Department, said that Moro had been "sacrificed" for the "stability" of Italy. In a new book called We Killed Aldo Moro, Mr Pieczenik said he was sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day that Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a far-Left terrorist group. Moro, who had been prime minister for a total of more than five years between 1963 and 1976, was snatched at gunpoint from his car in Rome. Related Articles Sting nets Moro kidnapper 18 Jan 2004 He had been heading to parliament for a crucial vote on a ground-breaking alliance he had proposed between the Christian Democrat Party and the Italian Communist Party. The alliance enraged both sides of the political spectrum in Italy, and also upset both Moscow and Washington. Moro's widow, Eleonora, later said Henry Kissinger had warned her husband against his strategy. "You will pay dearly for it," he is alleged to have said.

Mr Pieczenik said he was part of a "crisis committee" headed by Francesco Cossiga, the interior minister. Moro was held for 54 days. Mr Pieczenik said the committee was jolted into action by the fear that Moro would reveal state secrets in an attempt to free himself. A false statement, attributed to the Red Brigades, was leaked saying that Moro was dead. Mr Pieczenick said that this had a dual purpose; to prepare the Italian public for the worst, and to let the Red Brigades know that the state would not negotiate for Moro, and considered him already dead. The following month, Moro was shot and placed in the back of a car in central Rome, midway between the headquarters of the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats. In a documentary on French television last weekend, Mr Cossiga admitted the committee had taken the decision to release the false statement. On This Day: Aldo Moro Kidnapped by the Italian Red Brigades Aldo Moro in a photo released by the Red Brigades to the media on April 20, 1978.

On This Day: Aldo Moro Kidnapped by the Italian Red Brigades March 16, 2012 06:00 AM by findingDulcinea Staff On March 16, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by a left-wing extremist group; he was killed 55 days later when the terrorists’ demands were not met. Many in Italy believe that domestic or international government forces were complicit in the murder of Moro, who was due to sign a controversial agreement with the Communist Party on the day of his kidnapping. Moro Kidnapped Before Compromise Two-time former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, leader of the Christian Democratic Party, had negotiated an agreement to form a coalition government with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) . Known as the Historic Compromise, it alarmed both right wing parties and the extreme left, including the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group. “The Red Brigades completely opposed this idea, as it interfered with the declared aim of spearheading an armed Marxist revolution in Italy, led by a ‘revolutionary proletariat,’” explains The Florentine.

On the morning on March 16, as Moro was en route to the House of Representatives to enact the compromise, a dozen members of Red Brigades launched an assault on his car. The extremists shot and killed five of Moro’s bodyguards and abducted him, taking him to a safe house. The Red Brigades demanded the release of 13 leftist prisoners in exchange for Moro . Throughout his captivity, Moro was allowed to send letters to political allies and family members, in which he pled with the Italian government cooperate with the terrorists. In one letter, Moro writes to Italian Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga : “Weigh your actions carefully in order to avoid further evil ... In the given circumstances, besides humanitarian reasons, what becomes apparent is the reason of state. Most of all this reason of state means that in my present condition I find myself under full and uncontrolled domination. There is the risk that I will be induced to talk in a manner that could be dangerous ... May God enlighten you for the best.” Despite pleas from his friends, family and Pope Paul VI, the Italian government, which had negotiated with the Red Brigades in previous situations, refused to negotiate for Moro .

On May 9, Moro’s body was found in the trunk of a ca r, parked symbolically between the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and the Communist Party. The BBC: Italy’s history of terror There are many theories that the Italian government or foreign governments were involved in the kidnapping of Moro , or that they were willing to let Moro be killed for their own political gain. At issue is the Historic Compromise, which never went through due to the kidnapping. Italy would have become the first post-war Western European country to include communists in the majority government. There were many significant opponents to the compromise: right-wing and anti-communist politicians, along with some Christian Democrats, did not want to see the Communists given power. Both the United States and Soviet Union opposed the compromise, believing that it would destabilize East-West relations. The U.S. and NATO were concerned that the deal might threaten NATO’s position in Italy. A 1978 article by journalist Mino Pecorelli, who was murdered the following year, said that the kidnapping had “the hallmark of a lucid superpower.” Pecorelli suggested that the Gladio, a covert anti-communist network in NATO, aided the Red Brigades in the kidnapping.

Proponents of this theory point to the near-perfect execution of the kidnapping as evidence that the kidnappers were aided by elite forces. In particular, the fact that the kidnappers were able to kill the five bodyguards without harming Moro suggests that a professional shooter was involved. There are also many people who believe that, even if the Red Brigades carried out the kidnapping without outside help, there were governmental figures who wanted Moro to be killed and obstructed efforts to save him . Italian authorities launched a nationwide manhunt for Moro, but ignored key leads that would have led them to the kidnappers. Furthermore, for a country known for being willing to negotiate with terrorists, it was unusual for the government to adopt a hardline stance. Steve Pieczenik, a hostage negotiator in the State Department, claimed in 2008 that Moro was “‘sacrificed’ for the ‘stability’ of Italy.” According to his book, “We Killed Aldo Moro,” the U.S. and Italian governments instructed Pieczenik to write and deliver a false statement attributed to the Red Brigades, announcing Moro’s death.

Pieczenik said the statement was presented as a means of communicating to the Red Brigades that the Italian government already considered Moro dead, thereby removing the authority they leveraged through his captivity. Richard Drake, author of “The Aldo Moro Case,” rejects the conspiracy theories that have emerged surrounding Moro’s murder . He argues that the killing more aptly represents the threats of a country captivated by Marxist-Leninist ideology: “For all those under the beguiling spell of the revolutionary mystique, the prescriptions of Marx and Lenin transformed the most bestial acts of inhumanity into thrilling deeds on behalf of the proletariat. The Moro kidnapping was just such an act.” Munich Massacre The Brigate Rosse, known as the Red Brigades, was created in 1970s by radical Marxist-Leninist students who wished to see the overthrow off the capitalist system. The most active of Italy’s paramilitary groups during the “Year of Lead,” the Red Brigades became famous for the kidnapping of prominent Italian officials and industrialists . Following the murder of Moro, the Italian government cracked down on the Red Brigades and the extreme left .

More than 10,000 leftist leaders were arrested in 1980, while many of the Red Brigades’ leaders “disavowed their political doctrine and turned their comrades into the police,” reports The Florentine. Due to the crackdown, Red Brigades fissured around the mid-1980s, splitting off into The New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party and the Union of Combatant Communists. The New Brigades inherited the militancy of the original Red Brigades . The New Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the assassinations of labor minister advisor Massimo D’Antona in 1999, professor Marco Biagi in 2002 and a police officer in 2003. Elaborate sting nets Aldo Moro kidnapper - Telegraph Elaborate sting nets Aldo Moro kidnapper By Bruce Johnston in Rome 12:01AM GMT 18 Jan 2004 Italy hatched a dramatic secret plot with Algeria to secure the capture last week of a female Red Brigades terrorist who was part of the cell that kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, the former prime minister.

Because the two countries have no extradition agreement, the elaborate ruse was necessary to ensnare Rita Algranati - who had been on the run for 23 years - and a fellow terrorist, Maurizio Falessi, after the pair were tracked to Algeria. The unprecedented deal prompted Algranati's lawyer, Flavio Rossi Albertini, to describe his client as the victim of an "under-the-table deal" that "ignored international agreements". It is a view shared by few in Italy, where widespread celebration greeted the news that two terrorists involved in the country's bloodiest post-war era had finally been caught. Giuseppe Pisanu, Italy's interior minister, and a close party colleague of Mr Moro, said: "I suffered this tragedy first-hand. For me personally, the arrests are a form of compensation." Related Articles Red Brigades woman held in Cairo 15 Jan 2004 Algranati, 46, was a blue-eyed blonde just out of her teens when she joined the fanatical Red Brigades.

"Comrade Marzia" was accused of being the attractive look-out who lifted a bunch of flowers into the air to alert her fellow terrorists that Moro's motorcade was arriving in a Rome street in March 1978. Five bodyguards were killed in the ambush, while Moro was kidnapped, held captive for 55 days and then murdered after a trial in a kangaroo "people's court". Although Algranati was cleared of involvement in Moro's kidnapping owing to lack of evidence, other Red Brigades terrorists have since said that she was one of the 10-strong gang that mounted the attack. She was later found guilty in absentia of six other terrorist murders. Decades on the run ended last Tuesday when Algranati was arrested with Falessi after they were lured to Cairo. Initially, they were reported to have been spotted by a diligent Egyptian immigration officer during a stopover in Cairo as they flew from Algiers to Beirut. The truth, however, is far less mundane. Italy first learned of the pair's whereabouts in Algeria several months ago in an intercepted phone call.

Officials in both countries quickly began planning Tuesday's swoop with their Egyptian counterparts, reflecting the improved intelligence links between Europe and secular North African states since the September 11 terror attacks. The pair have told Mr Albertini that the Algerian authorities were fully aware of their backgrounds and had never previously complained about their presence in the country. Yet they apparently convinced the couple that they were no longer secure in Algeria, urging them to leave the country. "They knew perfectly well who we were," they told Mr Albertini. "They took us from our home and gave us identity documents and air tickets, and told us to leave the country, assuring us that we would run no risks." Upon landing in Cairo, however, they were seized by 20 armed Egyptian security officers, handed over to Italian officials and put on the first flight to Rome. Although the fugitives had been heading for Lebanon last Tuesday, their final destination is believed to have been Nicaragua. Algranati first fled there from Italy in 1982 while her former husband Alessio Casimirri, also a convicted terrorist, still lives openly in Managua, running two Italian restaurants.

Aldo Moro found dead - May 09, 1978 - HISTORY.com Aldo Moro found dead Publisher A+E Networks On May 9, 1978, the body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is found, riddled by bullets, in the back of a car in the center of historic Rome. He was kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists on March 16 after a bloody shoot-out near his suburban home. The Italian government refused to negotiate with the extreme left-wing group, which, after numerous threats, executed Moro on May 9. He was a five-time prime minister of Italy and considered a front-runner for the presidency of Italy in elections due in December. Aldo Moro was regarded by many as Italy’s most capable post-World War II politician. A centrist leader of the Christian Democratic Party, he served five times as prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s and promoted cooperation between Italy’s disparate political parties. When he formed his first cabinet in 1963, he included some Socialists, who were thus participating in the Italian government for the first time in 16 years.

Moro last served as prime minister in 1976, and in October 1976 became president of the Christian Democrats. On March 11, 1978, he helped end a government crisis when he worked out a parliamentary coalition between the Communist Party and the dominant Christian Democrats. Just five days later, Mr. Moro’s car was attacked by a dozen armed Red Brigade terrorists. His five guards were killed, and Moro was abducted and taken to a secret location. On March 18, the Red Brigade issued a communique claiming responsibility for the kidnapping and stating that Moro would undergo a “people’s trial.” The Red Brigade, established in 1970 by Italian Renato Curcio, employed bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies as a means of promoting communist revolution in Italy. The Italian Communist Party, which supported democracy and participated in Parliament, condemned the terrorist Red Brigade, and the Red Brigade accused the Communist Party of being a pawn of the bourgeoisie. Renato Curcio and 12 other Red Brigade members were on trial in Turin when Moro was kidnapped, and legal proceedings were only briefly halted after his abduction.

The Italian government declined to negotiate with the kidnappers, claiming that such an action would undermine the state and throw Italy into chaos. Some critics accused the Christian Democrats of yielding to pressure from the Communist Party, whose leaders were even more strongly opposed to a dialogue with the Red Brigade. Police and the army arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists and scoured the country looking for the “people’s prison” where Moro was being held but failed to find any solid clues. On March 19 and April 4, letters apparently freely written by Moro were delivered pleading with the government to negotiate. The government attempted secret talks, but on April 15 the Red Brigade rejected these negotiations and announced that Moro had been found guilty in the people’s trial and sentenced to death. Threats to execute him led nowhere, and on April 24 the terrorists demanded the release of 13 Red Brigade members held in Turin in exchange for Moro’s life.

On May 7, Moro sent a farewell letter to his wife, saying, “They have told me that they are going to kill me in a little while, I kiss you for the last time.” Two days later, his body was found on Via Caetani, within 300 yards of the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and 200 yards from the Communist Party headquarters. According to a wish expressed by Moro during his abduction, no Italian politicians were invited to his funeral. During the next decade, many Red Brigade leaders and members were arrested, and the organization was greatly weakened. Related Videos Aldo Moro mystery: Italian prosecutors revisit former PM's 1978 murder | World news | The Guardian Aldo Moro mystery: Italian prosecutors revisit former PM's 1978 murder Investigation may be reopened after claims about involvement of external forces in abduction by terrorist group A picture of Aldo Moro released by the Red Brigades in April 1978.

Photograph: AP Monday 17 June 2013 13.23 EDT First published on Monday 17 June 2013 13.23 EDT Close This article is 3 years old It was arguably the darkest episode of Italy's postwar history: the kidnapping of former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978 and the discovery of his corpse 55 days later in the boot of a Renault 4 in central Rome. Despite four trials, numerous investigations and the passage of 35 years, the affair continues to raise questions among Italians, with many sharing the belief that the truth has never fully come out. On Monday it emerged that Rome prosecutors had taken a tentative first step towards reopening the case, after new claims about the supposed involvement of external forces. There is no doubt that the murder was carried out by members of the urban guerrilla Red Brigades, several of whom were given hefty sentences for the crime. But there are unanswered questions over how Moro's 55 days in captivity were handled by the authorities. Some suspect that acting alongside the terrorists were bigger forces for whom Moro's disappearance was, in the circumstances, a necessary evil.

Moro, president of the then powerful Christian Democrat (DC) party, was on his way to inaugurate a new government on 16 March 1978 when he was snatched and his five bodyguards killed. The government was to have been a "historic compromise" between the DC and the Italian Communist party (PCI), the biggest of its kind in the west. With the cold war raging, Moro's plans were deeply controversial – in Rome, Moscow and Washington. In the eight weeks before his bullet-ridden body was discovered on 9 May, the Italian government insisted it would not negotiate with terrorist organisations. A massive police investigation failed to rescue Moro. Some say tipoffs were mishandled or ignored. Prosecutors are reported to be evaluating if there is enough fresh evidence to warrant reopening the case. La Repubblica said they were acting in response to some of the new claims and tipoffs received in recent years. The intervention that appears to have carried most weight is a book written by a former magistrate who led investigations of the affair, in which he implicates foreign intelligence services such as the KGB and the highest echelons of the Italian state.

Ferdinando Imposimato, now honorary president of Italy's supreme court, singled out former prime ministers Giulio Andreotti and Francesco Cossiga when he told the AffarItaliani website: "The role [of the Italian political class] was one of absolute subordination to this foreign hegemony. In Italy the orders that came in from abroad were obeyed." Andreotti died last month; Cossiga in 2010. Andreotti was initially convicted but later acquitted of ordering the murder of an investigative journalist suspected of knowing too much about the Moro affair. Writing in La Repubblica, Miguel Gotor, a centre-left politician and historian, condemned the "intellectual and civil sloth" that had led to the lingering mystery over the murder. He said a new judicial investigation, while to a certain extent welcome, risked being "the belated and rotten fruit of a sick country", adding: "Certainly, this new move by the magistrature could prove useful because it will gather together new documents and testimony, but we will be forgiven for doubting that it will be able to give qualitatively more justice than has hitherto been the case." The Murder of Aldo Moro was a CIA decision.

| INSIDER The Murder of Aldo Moro was a CIA decision. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States. While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.” Through NATO, working with various Western European intelligence agencies, the CIA set up a network of stay behind “secret armies” which were responsible for dozens of terrorist atrocities across Western Europe over decades. This report will focus on the stay behind army in Italy, as it is the most documented. Its codename was Operation Gladio, the ‘Sword’. An Overview The Purpose of the ‘Stay Behind’ Armies In the early 1950s, the United States began training networks of “stay behind” volunteers in Western Europe, so that in the event of a Soviet invasion, they would “gather intelligence, open escape routes and form resistance movements.” The CIA financed and advised these groups, later working in tandem with western European military intelligence units under the coordination of a NATO committee.

In 1990, Italian and Belgian investigators started researching the links between these “stay behind armies” and the occurrence of terrorism in Western Europe for a period of 20 years. ‘Secret Armies’ or Terrorist Groups? These “stay behind” armies colluded with, funded and often even directed terrorist organizations throughout Europe in what was termed a “strategy of tension” with the aim of preventing a rise of the left in Western European politics. NATO’s “secret armies” engaged in subversive and criminal activities in several countries.

In Turkey in 1960, the stay behind army, working with the army, staged a coup d’état and killed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in Algeria in 1961, the French stay-behind army staged a coup with the CIA against the French government of Algiers, which ultimately failed; in 1967, the Greek stay-behind army staged a coup and imposed a military dictatorship; in 1971 in Turkey, after a military coup, the stay-behind army engaged in “domestic terror” and killed hundreds; in 1977 in Spain, the stay behind army carried out a massacre in Madrid; in 1980 in Turkey, the head of the stay behind army staged a coup and took power; in 1985 in Belgium, the stay behind attacked and shot shoppers randomly in supermarkets, killing 28; in Switzerland in 1990, the former head of the Swiss stay behind wrote the US Defense Department he would reveal “the whole truth,” and was found the next day stabbed to death with his own bayonet; and in 1995, England revealed that the MI6 and SAS helped set up stay behind armies across

 Western Europe.

The Birth of Operation Gladio A ‘Strategy of Tension’ In 1990, the Italian Prime Minister had confirmed that Italy’s “stay behind” army, termed “Gladio” (Sword), existed since 1958, with the approval of the Italian government. In the early 1970s, Italy’s communist support was growing, so the government turned to a “Strategy of Tension” using the Gladio network. At a top secret 1972 Gladio meeting, one official referred to making a “pre-emptive attack” on the Communists. As the Guardian reported, links between Gladio in Italy, all three Italian secret services and Italy’s P2 Masonic Lodge were well documented, as the head of each intelligence unit was a member of the P2 Lodge. Setting up the Network In 1949, the CIA helped set up the Italian secret armed forces intelligence unit, named SIFAR, staffed in part with former members of Mussolini’s secret police. It later changed its name to SID.

At the end of World War 2, a former Nazi collaborator, Licio Gelli, was facing execution for his activities during the war, but managed to escape by joining the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, Gelli was recruited by SIFAR. Gelli was also head of the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, and in 1969, he developed close ties with General Alexander Haig, who was then Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Through this network, Gelli became chief intermediary between the CIA and General De Lorenzo, Chief of the SID. Gladio Creates ‘Tension’ Gladio was involved in a silent coup d’état in Italy, when General Giovanni de Lorenzo forced the Italian Socialist Ministers to leave the government. On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank, which killed 17 people and wounded 88 others. That afternoon, three more bombs exploded in Rome and Milan.

US intelligence was informed ahead of time of the bombing, but did not inform the Italian authorities.[6] In 2000, a former Italian Secret Service General stated that the CIA “gave its tacit approval to a series of bomb attacks in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.” The bombing was linked to two neofascists and to an SID agent. Testifying in a court case trying four men accused of involvement in the 1969 bank bombing in Milan, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of military counter-intelligence from 1971 to 1975, stated that his unit discovered evidence that explosives were supplied to a right wing Italian terrorist group from Germany, and that US intelligence may have aided in the transfer of explosives.

He was quoted as saying that the CIA, “following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism,” and that, “I believe this is what happened in other countries as well.” The Report The Italian government released a 300-page report on Gladio operations in Italy in 2000, documenting connections with the United States. It declared that the US was responsible for inspiring a “strategy of tension.” In examining why those who committed the bombings in Italy were rarely caught, the report said, “those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”[10] The Red Brigades The Red Brigades were a leftist Italian terrorist organization that was formed in 1970. In 1974, Red Brigade founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested.

Alberto Franceschini later accused a top member of the Red Brigades, Mario Moretti, of turning them in, and that both Moretti and another leading Red Brigade member, Giovanni Senzani, were spies for the Italian and US secret services. Moretti rose up through the ranks of the Red Brigades as a result of the arrest of the two founders. The Red Brigades and the CIA The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, which was founded by Corrado Simioni, Duccio Berio and Mario Moretti. Corrado Simoni had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe, Duccio Berio had been supplying the Italian SID with information of leftist groups and Mario Moretti, apart from being accused by the Red Brigades founders as being an intelligence asset, also happened to be the mastermind and murderer of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro.

An Italian police report referred to the Hyperion Language School as “the most important CIA office in Europe.” The Murder of Aldo Moro Moro Makes Powerful Enemies Aldo Moro, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister from 1963 until 1968 and later, from 1973 until 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades in 1978, while still a prominent politician in the Christian Democrat Party. When he was kidnapped, Moro was on his way to Parliament to vote on inaugurating a new government, of which he negotiated, for the first time since 1947, to be backed by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Moro’s policy of working with and bringing the Communists into the government was denounced by both the USSR and the United States. Kissinger’s Threat Moro was held for 55 days before his eventual murder. The reasoning was for his plan to bring the Communist Party into the government. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States.

While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.” Moro was “Sacrificed” Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department hostage negotiator and international crisis manager, “claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro.” Pieczenik “said that Moro had been “sacrificed” for the “stability” of Italy.” He had been sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day of Moro’s kidnapping to be part of a crisis committee, of which he said was “jolted into action by the fear that Moro would reveal state secrets in an attempt to free himself.” The action the committee took was to leak a memo saying that Moro was dead, and to have the memo attributed to the Red Brigades.

The purpose of this was to “prepare the Italian public for the worst and to let the Red Brigades know that the state would not negotiate for Moro, and considered him already dead.” In a documentary on the subject, Pieczenik stated that, “The decision was made in the fourth week of the kidnapping, when Moro’s letters became desperate and he was about to reveal state secrets,” and that, “It was an extremely difficult decision, but the one who made it in the end was interior minister Francesco Cossiga, and, apparently, also prime minister Giulio Andreotti.” Moro’s Letters Among Moro’s released letters, which he was writing while in captivity, he stated that he feared that a shadow organization, with “other secret services of the West … might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country.” During his interrogation while in captivity, Moro even referred to “Nato’s anti-guerrilla activities.” However, the Red Brigades did not use this information, perhaps because, according to the founders of the Red Brigades, the leader of the organization at the time of Moro’s kidnapping, Mario Moretti, was working for the Italian or US intelligence services. Maverick Journalist Killed by President?

Shortly after Moro’s death, Italian journalist, Mino Pecorelli, a man with “excellent secret service contacts,” voiced his suspicion in a 1978 article that Moro’s death was linked to Gladio, which was not officially acknowledged until 1990. A year after Moro’s death, Pecorelli was shot dead in Rome. He claimed that the kidnapping of Moro was committed by a “lucid superpower.” In 2002, former seven-term Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, was convicted of “ordering” Pecorelli’s murder. Pecorelli was about to publish a book “containing damaging criticisms of [Prime Minister Giulio] Andreotti by murdered Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.” The Bologna Bombing On the morning of August 2, 1980, Italy experienced its worst-ever terrorist attack at Bologna train station, which killed 85 people, and wounded more than 200 others. A long and complicated investigation was undertaken, and eventually, a trial began. In 1988, four right-wing terrorists were sentenced to life in prison.

Two other defendants were convicted of slandering the investigation, “Francesco Pazienza, a former financier linked to several criminal cases in Italy, and Licio Gelli, the former grandmaster of the so-called P-2 Masonic lodge.” This is the very same Licio Gelli who happened to be a CIA intermediary for the head of Italian intelligence for the Gladio network. Although later on, Gelli was acquitted of the charges. Publié il y a 4th August 2014 par Victor The Long Ides of March of Aldo Moro The Long Ides of March of Aldo Moro Shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er, In states unborn, and accents yet unknown. — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar “Beware the Ides of March”—or even the day after. On the morning of 16 March 1978 in Rome’s central via Fani, the Red Brigades (BR) kidnapped Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, head of the Christian Democratic Party (DC), killing five agents of his entourage.

The fifty-five days of his detention in a secret “people’s prison” and eventual assassination by his captors on 9 May 1978 marked the climax of over thirty years of internal and external opposition to post-fascist Italy’s chartering its own political and economic course by “parallel convergences.” It is worth revisiting this long and twisted story as an early template for the bad faith with which the US Empire deals with the world today. It is not a story for conspiracy-phobes. The plot of all plots: whodunnit? Moro himself coined the phrase, “parallel convergences,” hinting at dark forces behind the facade of the legitimate state. The executors of Moro’s death are not in doubt. The BR condemned him to death on 29 April 1978 for “advancing counterrevolutionary programs in the service of bourgeois imperialism,” shooting eleven bullets into his body curled up in the trunk of a red Renault on 9 May. Moro’s phrase “parallel convergences” challenged translators at the time. Today, we understand it, in part, as the network of economic international elites, whose interest state intelligence structures serve—the CIA first among peers.

I asked Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and exhaustive histories of CIA, DEA, FBI, what the phrase meant as Moro used it. Valentine said, “A CIA/military intelligence guy I knew well, Col. Tully Acampora, told me that JFK’s station chief in Rome starting mid-1963, Bill Harvey, was sent there to help . . . General Giovanni di Lorenzo, head of Italy’s military intelligence and security services, subvert the government of Leftist Prime Minister, Aldo Moro.” “Leftist”? Aldo Moro had toyed with the idea of joining the Socialist Party, but he was a devout Catholic and chose the DC instead. He was, however, interested in national sovereignty, the relief of emigration from the underdeveloped South, and an autonomous energy policy of trade with the Middle East. Only a year before the arrival in Rome of CIA station chief, Bill Harvey, the Mafia murdered Italian Energy Minister, Enrico Mattei, a close associate of Moro’s, after Mattei’s fruitful overtures for fair trade with oil-rich, Third World countries.

Behind the Mafia lurked the “Seven Sisters,” as Mattei dubbed the cartel of the American oil companies—and the services of the CIA together with Italian secret services. The Italian director, Francesco Rosi, made a film about this dramatic event, titled, The Mattei Affair. The journalist who helped him with research disappeared, presumed killed by the Mafia. Cold War: Italy’s “Stability” Must Be Secured Italy’s vassalage to the US in the Cold War mattered tremendously—more than Americans know. One of the earliest directives by the then-recently established US National Security Council made no bones about Washington’s intentions should the Italian Communist Party win the parliamentary elections in 1948. The US, the directive punctuated, would intervene “even at the cost of a civil war.” Throughout the Cold War, the US considered Italy a front-line state. The “iron curtain” ran vertically north south from Poland’s Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Italy’s Trieste on the northeast tip of the Adriatic Sea. Italy’s eastern neighbor was communist Yugoslavia (until 1948 allied with Moscow) and further south, across a narrow stretch of sea, communist Albania, also allied with Moscow until 1961.

Indeed, as NATO and American military bases grew to dot Italy over the decades, their missiles pointed east, at Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, Italy’s central Mediterranean location, especially Sicily’s, provided the US with a key asset location for control of the Middle East. US policymakers were determined to preserve this essential geopolitical asset in their sphere of influence. As they saw it, one thing only threatened American hegemony in Italy: the vastly popular and respected Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest communist party in Western Europe, which had been one of the two “hero” parties of the Resistance against the Nazi-fascist occupation in WW II from 8 September 1943 to 25 April 1945. In 1948, the PCI, allied with all left parties as the Popular Front, would almost certainly have won the parliamentary elections without the funding of a red-scare campaign by the CIA and the fomented fatal incidents and violent clashes at party rallies that seemed to sound the thunder of a coming civil war. Intimidated, the people voted a majority to the he DC, 48% of the vote; close behind came the Popular Front with 30% of the vote.

“Without the CIA. The Communist Party . . . would surely have won the elections in 1948,” writes Jack Devine, former CIA chief-of-station in Rome, in his book, Good Hunting . In the early 1950s, Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and Ambassador to Italy, Claire Boothe Luce, insisted that the PCI be outlawed. All Italian political parties, from extreme right to left, refused. They, justifiably pointed out that, because the PCI had been one of the main forces of the Resistance, there would be civil war in Italy if such a measure were enacted. For the Americans, communists in power endangered the security of NATO and the policy of control of the Middle East. When in 1953 William Colby became director of the CIA in Italy his task was to direct clandestine political actions to contain the influence of the PCI.

As he wrote in his memoirs, “My task was to prevent that Italy fall in communist hands at the next elections.” Keeping the PCI out of the executive was made a condition, agreed upon by President Harry Truman and Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi (DC), for the distribution of funds through the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Italy. Still in the 50s, a secret accord, “Plan Demagnetize,” stipulated a close collaboration between the intelligence services of the US and Italy’s to set back the influence of communism on Italian society. In the Pre-Dawn of the Cold War: Mustering Their Mafia and Fascist Battalions This communist threat had been identified and organized against as early as the allied landing in Sicily, in July of 1943. The OSS (predecessor to the CIA), founded in 1941 with 13,000 agents by OSS chief “Wild Bill” Donovan, had assigned the “Italian Section” to James Jesus Angleton, who came from a masonic family and would head the CIA’s Israeli desk by 1950.

Angleton recruited a “Mafia Circle”—so denominated in CIA documents—to help with the allied landing in Italy. The circle was made up of Mafiosi (including Michele Sindona, who would become notorious for the crack-up of the Franklin National Bank in 1979) suggested by the gangster, Lucky Luciano, whom American naval intelligence approached in prison in Clinton, New York. The “Mafia Circle,” however, was not dissolved after the Allies’ smooth landing; it widened. The circle rushed to liberate other Mafiosi long imprisoned by Mussolini’s regime. Officials of the American occupation put the “ liberated “Mafiosi in important positions of administrative, police, and military power throughout Sicily to function as an anti-communist network of collaborators. As mayors, for example, the appointees would eventually exert regional influence on the elections and policies of senators and deputies in the parliament in Rome throughout the life of the first Republic—and close ties with the Interior Ministry and its secret services. Nor did Angleton’s anti-communist recruitment stop at the Mafia. He began to gather exponents of the fascist regime, storing them as future assets in allied-occupied Sicily.

Chief among them, was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, commander of a frogman flotilla unit in the Italian Royal Navy until 1943, expert marine saboteur, collaborator from 1943 to 1945 with the Nazi puppet regime of the Repubblica of Salo’, on on Lake Garda, in Northern Italy. After 1945, Borghese was convicted of Nazi-collaboration but not of war crimes, though it was certainly known that his quasi-private army participated with the SS in some of the most brutal massacres in central Italy—perhaps 10,000 victims in what is known as “the war against civilians.” When the partisans of Resistance leader, General Cadorna, arrested Borghese in Northern Italy on Liberation Day, 25 April 1945, Angleton drove up north in his jeep on 30 April, took charge of Borghese, dressed him in an American uniform, and took him safely to Rome.

In a report to OSS, Angleton wrote that Borghese “represented a long-term interest at the heart of our work.” For good measure, Borghese and his loyal army were later absorbed into “Gladio,” NATO’s super-secret select group of paramilitary operatives –but that is another story. In Sicily throughout the fifties, fascists, through the largesse of funding by the US, organized themselves into neo-fascist groups, with ties to the Italian secret services. The twinning of mafia and fascists, con-joined by the OSS in the 1940s, would prove a formidable force of destabilization in the 1970s, setting off an ideological war in the streets between provocateur neo-fascist groups and extra-parliamentary revolutionary communist formations—a “strategy of tension,” as the violence initiated by the right came to be known. That this “tension” broke out at a moment of increasing gains by the left, threatening a communist electoral victory or a share in the executive could not have been a coincidence, Italian public opinion maintains to this day.

Italy’s strictly limited sovereignty as US client or asset state was being defied by gains in social democracy—and the expanding popular democracy was a threat to Italy’s “stability” as US vassal. Italian Reds Are Winning On the morning of 16 March, this threat was about to become a reality. Aldo Moro was scheduled to call for a vote of confidence on the proposed new government of “national solidarity”—a power share with the Communist Party in the cabinet and the executive branch, a first in Italy, a first in Western Europe. This was the culmination of negotiations for the compromesso storico (“historic compromise”) between the DC and the PCI to make the government more representative of the electorate.

Three agencies were not pleased: Moscow, because Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the PCI had recognized NATO in order to make power-sharing possible in a NATO-dominated Western European country; Washington, because from long date it had opposed the accession of the communists to the executive; and the Red Brigades, because 1) they thought the PCI should remain an opposition party 2) they regarded the compromesso as a further betrayal or weakening of the PCI’s commitment to class struggle initiated by the Resistance and subsequently thwarted by too many PCI “compromises” with the ruling bourgeois parties, and 3) because the compromesso would dent the drive toward the social and political revolution to which they aspired. This was the turbulent local and geopolitical climate on that fatal morning in March. Killed as a symbol of the liberal state or its sacrificial gravedigger? Did the BR kill Moro as a symbol of the “bourgeois, liberal-imperialist” state, as claimed?

Franco Bonisoli, with Mario Moretti and Lauro Azzolini, a member of the executive command of the Red Brigades at the time of Moro’s sequestration, declared in 1998 that for the BR the state consisted of the Christian Democratic Party with Moro at its head. Since the BR by then was aiming at the heart of the state, Moro was the intended symbol. Mario Moretti, who alone among the brigatisti interrogated Moro in prison, said the assassination was the ultimate expression of their Marxist-Leninist line. But in 1998, Aldo Moro’s son, Giovanni, who had been twenty-years old when his father was killed, gave an interview to La Repubblica, insisting that Moro could not have been killed as a mere symbol but to end his political project: Our impression [in the family] was unanimous: we all felt that he wasn’t targeted as a symbol, as later maintained. What was done was a surgical intervention on Italian politics. Moro was the architect of the encounter with the communists. He was a subject at risk. And, anyway, it’s enough to look at the years of the bombs.

When Moro is marginalized, the bombs, too, are marginalized. His political line is strictly connected to this piece of Italian history. The “years of lead” and the “strategy of tension”: rightists and leftists target the state To be sure, the year 1978 marked nearly a decade of assaults on members and symbols of state institutions, the media, and the judiciary, a campaign of the left. On the right, the targets were civilians massacred across Italy (“We will bury democracy under a mountain of corpses,” wrote a flyer, acknowledging a massacre by Ordine Nero–Black/Fascist Order, a neo-fascist group). Liberal and left public opinion in Italy then and now holds that this terror by the right was planned and carried out in order to destabilize the multi-party state and supplant it with a decidedly rightist, pro-American, and anti-communist one. The opinion was bolstered by the findings of interminable trials and countless judiciary and parliamentary investigations into subversive activities by the neo-fascists in collusion with organs of the state, operating as extensions of external actors.

In this opinion, the “years of lead,” as the season of violence came to be dubbed in Italy, were the expression of a “strategy of tension,” intended also neutralize the Communist Party, which commanded over 34.4% of the popular vote in 1976. The massive support for the Communist Party and its representation in Parliament led, among other progressive measures, to the addition of a Workers’ Bill of Rights, enshrined in the constitution in 1970. For the Red Brigades, this wasn’t enough, but it was more than enough for anti-proletarian neo-fascists. In fact, almost simultaneously with the pending enactment of the Workers’ Bill of Rights in 1970, the season of terrorism began in earnest in Milan with the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank in Piazza Fontana on12 December 1969, killing seventeen people and wounding 80. The anarchist railway worker, Giuseppe Pinelli, was detained on suspicion, committing suicide by defenestration during a break in interrogations.

The absurdity of this reported account provoked the writer Dario Fo (Nobel Prize for Literature) to dramatize it as a farce in “Accidental Death of an Anarchist” (1970), the most famous and acclaimed of his plays. Movimento Ordine Nuovo, a far-right, neo-fascist organization, was suspected of planting the bomb, but in a series of chaotic trials lasting until 2005 no one was ever punished for the massacre, though a court identified two neo-fascists as the terrorists. Only three days before the Piazza Fontana bombing, a secret neo-fascist coup, code-named “Tora, Tora,” had been called off for reasons never revealed, though three trials followed the disclosure in March 1971 of the plot by the left paper Paese Sera. In the final trial in 1984, all the accused were found not guilty of conspiring against the state.

The plot is known in Italy as the golpe Borghese (the Borghese coup) because Angleton’s “asset” Junio Valerio Borghese, the fascist aristocrat, known as “The Black Prince,” was central to it (the Spanish word golpe gained currency in Italy after the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973). By the time of the failed golpe Borghese in 1969, Borghese’s fascist-era, quasi-private army had been being trained in the US since Angleton’s time in Sicily in 1943—at first twenty saboteurs; later many more. President Francesco Cossiga, who had been Interior Minister during Moro’s sequestration, declared in an interview years later that the “role of the CIA was to fund anti-communist neo-fascist groups.” However, in the midst of assaulting the Interior Ministry in Rome, Borghese called the operation off. Conjectures suggest that a neo-fascist coup in Italy was not exactly what Washington desired or needed at the time.

Nevertheless, the bombing in Piazza Fontana and the botched coup, with US and NATO warships allegedly waiting on the ready in the Mediterranean, were followed by a relentless frenzy of terrorist attacks. Here is a select list of the bloodiest, perpetrated by the neo-fascist groups: 1970 Gioia Tauro, Calabria: 6 dead; 27 wounded 1972 Peteano di Sagrado, Venezia Giulia: 3 dead, 1 wounded 1973 Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan: 4 dead; 46 wounded 1974 Piazza della Loggia, Brescis: 8 dead; 94 wounded 1974 Train Italicus (between Florence and Bologna): 12 dead; 48 wounded 1980 Bologna Train Station: 85 dead; 200 wounded What role the “Parallel State”? Something was really rotten in Italy.

Traumatic attacks on civilians, subversions, coups, and false-flags prompted the writer, Pier Paolo Pasolini, to write, shortly before his own murder in 1976, a j’accuse in the pages of the Corriere della Sera: “I know the names, but I have no proof.” Justice was slow or reluctant to catch up with the neo-fascist killers (there was better success with the left). Moreover, members of the secret services, the Interior Ministry and military intelligence derailed pursuit, trials, and investigations—a practice that came to be known as depistaggio, or “throwing off course.” This was not all that surprising. Mussolini’s secret police, army brass, and intelligence, were seamlessly integrated into the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the military of the new Republic, under the supervision of the American occupation and, after 1949, NATO (and NATO’s “stay behind,” secret program of communist containment).

This virtual continuity of the fascist regime, now interlaced with the Mafia, unopposed by the Vatican, supported by shadowy secret societies and Masonic lodges, within the new organs of power popularized the phrase “parallel state” among the Italian public during the “years of lead”—one post-fascist, democratic government on show for unsuspecting citizens; another, neo-fascist, in the shadows undermining national sovereignty. Particularly the intelligence services were known to protect members of neo-fascist groups, thwarting the judiciary under the rubric of “state secret.” Pasolini’s vatic words rebounded two years later over the fifty-five days of Moro’s captivity and murder, when the whole political class—from the Christian Democrats to the communists, from the socialists to the Vatican– his friends, partners, and allies throughout the life of the republic, ignored the written appeals from his cell to negotiate his release. The government took the hard line: no negotiating with terrorists. The Communist Party agreed, fearing to be lumped in the same terrorist bag with the BR if they did.

Pope Paul VI, from a window on St Peter’s Square called for Moro’s release “without conditions.” The refusal to negotiate was as if Italy’s politicians understood that Moro’s fate was sealed—that he was already dead. The Red Brigades’ condition for freeing Moro required that the state release from prison a number of their group, a not unreasonable request in cases of political sequestration, Moro noted in his letters. However, the BR also insisted on the recognition by the state of the BR as a political counterpart, as an armed political party, as a fighting force. No state could legitimize the force that would overthrow it. It was a demand that could not be met. This both closes and opens the mystery: on the one hand, the BR made an offer which was refused, and they killed him; on the other hand, they made an offer so intractable that they knew it would be refused, so his death was pre-ordained–by whom? Giovanni Moro accuses all parties of shielding the truth: There is still no truth—historical, judiciary, or political . . .. Moro was killed for his political project.

Even the brigatisti have not told the truth: why didn’t they make public all that my father revealed under interrogation? In the letters found in 1990—those never made public at the time—my father mentions Gladio for the first time. With the revelation of Gladio, the BR could have caused embarrassment to the DC, but they kept it secret. It could have destroyed the image of the state as integral and solid. Why didn’t the brigatisti use it? I am sure they are lying to this day. And why did they kill him precisely when a glimmer of hope opened within the DC [for negotiations]? And, finally, why did the state do nothing to save him? Giulio Andreotti {DC] was the political head of the state . . . Francesco Cossiga (DC) was the Minister of Interior. In any other country, a Minister of the Interior to whom such a disaster happened would have been sent to cultivate roses. Instead, he became twice Prime Minister and once President of the Republic. Losers and Winners Who, in fact, benefitted from Moro’s death?

Not the BR, as the state came down hard and opportunistically on Italian leftists of all stripes, arresting 12,000, and inducing 600 to escape to foreign parts, virtually destroying the historic nucleus of the BR. Not Italy, which ditched the compromesso storico, its chance to form a coalition of national unity, representative of the whole spectrum of Italian voters. Not the two historic parties of the Resistance, the parents of the Republic, and the articulators of its progressive constitution, “founded on labor.” Morally compromised by their refusal to negotiate Moro’s release, both the Communist Party and the Christian Democrat Party lost the confidence and respect of the voters, plunging Italy gradually in its present-day political vacuum, a “failed state” in all but name, a virtual NATO/American military base. The right certainly benefitted, as Mussolini’s old party, Movimento Sociale Italiano, morphed into Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) to rule, in tandem with racist, anti-immigrant, separatist Lega Nord (Northern League), and with the party of opportunist media magnate, Silvio Berlusconi.

The PCI became the Democratic Party of the Left and then plain Democratic Party (DP). This association of retrograde political forces together with a (counter-) reformist, neo-liberal, mutilated left rules in coalitions on and off as a virtual tributary state and logistical outpost in the American “War on Terror.” Prime Suspect: “Et tu, Kissinger?” We must recall that only five years before Moro’s assassination, Salvador Allende’s government was overthrown by a coup, overseen by the CIA. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had justified the action in part by saying, “If we allow Chile to go communist, then Italy will follow.” Moro’s widow testified that “a high ranking United States political figure” had threatened her husband’s life, while on an official visit to Washington with the Italian delegation in 1976. She testified at the parliamentary inquest that the official said, “Either you stop your political line, or you will pay dearly.” Moro’s close friend and party associate, Minister Giovanni Galloni, identified the official as Henry Kissinger, at the time US Secretary of State.

Textually, the words recorded in the documents of one of five trials, read like this: “Onorevole, lei deve smettere di perseguire il suo piano politico per portare tutte le forze del suo Paese a collaborare direttamente. Qui, o lei smette di fare questa cosa, o lei la pagherà cara. Veda lei come la vuole intendere” (“Your honor, you must stop pursuing your plan of getting all the political forces of your country to collaborate directly. Either you stop this thing, or you will pay dearly. It’s up to you how to interpret.”) Giovanni Moro recalls his father’s theory of “parallel convergences” when he says: I insist on repeating it: my father was the man who wanted to move Italy beyond the Cold War. There were oodles of people in Italy and outside Italy who considered him dangerous. This is the explanation that takes into account so many possible involvements.

Conclusion What should resonate for readers in this old story is the similarity to aspects of present–day American “foreign policy.” Think of the “strategy of tension” implicit in “color revolutions,” planned, funded, and staged by US entities (including NGOs), aimed at effecting “regime change.” Think of the mustering, arming, training, and funding of reactionary forces—fundamentalist Islamists or Neo-Nazis—to “destabilize” a place by sowing terror. Think of how funding terrorist rightist groups in Italy evoked the terrorist response of the left—classic “divide and conquer” imperial strategy—and apply it to any place the US interventions have destroyed as integral states—Iraq, Libya, and now Ukraine, with ongoing attempts in Syria. What do you see? Not only parallel stories but “parallel convergences” maybe? Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu Notes. Aldo Moro Aldo Moro He was born at Maglie on 23 September 1916, and died on 9 May 1978.

He graduated in Law and was a university lecturer. President of the Catholic University Federation (FUCI) from 1939 to 1942 and subsequently of the Catholic Graduates' Movement, combining his Party work with governmental responsibilities: in 1948 he was appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the 5th De Gasperi Government. In 1955 he was Minister for Justice in the 1st Segni Government, and Minister for Education in the Zoli, and 2nd Fanfani Governments. In 1959 he was elected Political Secretary of the Christian Democrat Party, and re-elected in 1962. In 1963 he was asked to form the first centre-left organic government and remained Prime Minister until 1968, heading three successive coalition Governments. In the 2nd Government he was briefly Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs after the resignation of Saragat.

From 1969 to 1974 he was Minister for Foreign Affairs in the 2nd and 3rd Rumor Governments, in the Colombo Government, the 1st Andreotti and 4th and 5th Rumor Governments, and was outstanding not only because of the way he settled the international disputes that were still outstanding between Italy and such countries as Yugoslavia and Ethiopia, but also for his commitment to European integration. He was once again Prime Minister on 23 November 1974 with his 4th Government, and as Prime Minister and Rotating President of the European Community he signed the Helsinki Final Act. On 12 February 1976 he formed his 5th Government. In 1976 he was elected the President of the National DC Party Council. On 16 March 1978, the day Andreotti presented his 4th Government to both Houses of Parliament, he was kidnapped by the Red Brigades. On 9 May he was assassinated. His body was found in the boot of a car parked in Via Caetani in Rome.

Commanding Heights : Italy Political | on PBS View all categories for years from to | See Full Report | Print Political 1945-1946: Resistance fighters kill Mussolini. The German army in Italy surrenders. Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi becomes prime minister. A plebiscite makes Italy a republic. A Constituent Assembly is elected under a new system of proportional representation. King Umberto is exiled, Enrico De Nicola becomes provisional president, and De Gasperi builds a coalition with the Socialists and Communists. 1947-1948: A peace treaty establishes Italy's borders and reparations payments. Under pressure from the United States and the Church, Prime Minister De Gasperi forms a new Christian Democrat government that excludes the Communists. A new republican constitution goes into effect in 1948, with a weak executive and a bicameral parliament. Luigi Einaudi is elected president for a seven-year term. 1949-1952: Italy joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and becomes a founding member of the Council of Europe.

Successive administrations led by Christian Democrat Prime Minister De Gasperi rely on support from more and more right-of-center Socialists and Liberals. Left-wing parties in the governing coalitions become increasingly dissatisfied with the government's internal policy. 1953-1959: The Socialists split into the left-wing majority Socialists and the right-wing minority Social Democrats, enabling the Christian Democrats to maintain power at the head of successive coalition governments. Italy is admitted to the United Nations. Giovanni Gronchi succeeds Einaudi as president. The new liberalism of the Vatican under Pope John XXIII facilitates a gradual shift to the left. 1960-1962: During a brief premiership, Fernando Tambroni attempts in vain to find a new right-wing coalition by drawing on monarchists and neo-fascists. He is rapidly succeeded by Christian Democrat Amintore Fanfani, whose move to the left in his coalition government costs him the support of his own party. Fanfani stands down at the end of 1962. 1963-1968: Christian Democrat Aldo Moro replaces Fanfani as prime minister and resumes his shift to the left.

His alliance with the Socialist Party is strained. Both parties are divided. Social Democrat Giuseppe Saragat is elected president. In 1968 Christian Democrat Mariano Rumor forms a short-lived center-left coalition. The Communist Party breaks with Moscow after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. 1969-1972: Christian Democrat Emilio Colombo replaces Rumor as premier. A law creating new regional assemblies begins devolution of power to Italy's regions. Christian Democrat Giovanni Leone is elected president. With the economy in recession and workers demanding social reforms, Colombo resigns, and Parliament dissolves. Giulio Andreotti, also a Christian Democrat, forms a center-right government. 1973-1975: A series of governments, beginning with Prime Minister Andreotti's and ending with Aldo Moro's, prove unable to deal with economic decline, political corruption, or lawlessness. In 1975 the Communists make landslide gains in local elections. 1976: Prime Minister Moro's government resigns when the Socialists withdraw their support.

The Communists increase their share of the vote and propose the "historic compromise": a coalition of the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists. When the Christian Democrats reject the proposal, the Communists join the organized opposition. Andreotti returns to form a Christian Democratic government. 1977-1982: Sandro Pertini is elected president in 1977. Andreotti remains in power as premier through 1979. Dissatisfaction with political chaos prompts greater Communist participation in politics. The Socialists return in 1980 to share power with the Christian Democrats and Republicans until the following year, when the Christian Democrats relinquish the premiership to Republican Giovanni Spadolini. 1983-1987: The leader of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Bettino Craxi, becomes the first Socialist prime minister, leading a broad-based coalition government. Craxi is a strong premier who remains in office longer than any of his recent predecessors. Francesco Cossiga is elected president in 1985. Craxi rules over a period of strong economic growth, but resigns in 1987 under allegations of corruption.

1988-1991: After two short-lived coalition governments, Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti takes office at the head of a coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, and minor parties. After the Berlin Wall falls in 1989, the Italian Communist Party, no longer a part of mainstream politics, changes its name to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). Provincial governments are granted greater authority. 1992: Christian Democrats and Socialists suffer setbacks in elections, exacerbated by investigations into political corruption. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro is elected president, and Socialist Giuliano Amato is named premier. Amato forms a government of tecnici, or technocrats, which carries through major monetary and economic reforms. Shaken by corruption allegations, his government survives only one year. 1993: Prime Minister Amato resigns amid public discontent over illicit political funding. In a referendum, a majority of Italians favor a new majority electoral system and cleaner democracy. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, former head of the Bank of Italy, forms a new administration of tecnici. Constitutional reforms introduce a new majority electoral system, and Italy enters its Second Republic.

1994: Prime Minister Ciampi resigns. New parties form, but the new electoral system leads to the emergence of two coalitions of the center-left and center-right. The latter, led by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, gains a majority in parliament. Berlusconi becomes premier, but his coalition soon disintegrates amid fears that his business interests may affect his political decisions. 1995: President Scalfaro directs Treasury Minister Lamberto Dini to lead a new tecnici government, supported by the center-left. Opposed by Forza Italia, Dini soon agrees to step down. In preparation for the 1996 national elections, the center-left parties create the Olive Tree coalition, or Ulivo, led by economist Romano Prodi, while the center-right unites under the Freedom Pole coalition. 1996-1997: Romano Prodi's Ulivo coalition forms the first left-leaning government since World War II. Ulivo gains support from the far left in exchange for labor and pension reforms. A constitutional reform commission proposes the introduction of direct election of the president.

Upheaval over austerity measures put in place in preparation for the European Monetary Union (EMU) leads Prodi to resign. 1998-2000: Massimo D'Alema of the PDS becomes premier of a coalition government of seven parties, and Parliament names former Prime Minister Ciampi president. Prodi goes on to become president of the European Commission. D'Alema resigns in 2000 following a poor showing by his coalition in regional elections. Former Prime Minister Amato returns as premier, heading a reshuffled, center-left Cabinet. 2001-2003: National elections return Berlusconi to power at the head of a center-right alliance with majorities in both houses of parliament. Conflict-of-interest accusations surround his ownership of the three main private television channels. Relations with European Union partners are poor and made tense by Italian support, and French and Germany opposition to, U.S. plans for a war with Iraq.

Question: Aldo Moro was Prime Minister of which European country?
Answer: Italy