Assassinations, Bombings and Betrayal: Italy’s Hidden War UNCENSORED
It’s an open wound for Italy because the powers that be do not want the country
to know the embarrassing truth. The perpetrators of the attacks
were at the end of a long chain. The Italian state was responsible
for the civil war in Italy. No country in the world has witnessed
so much violence, so many deaths, and so much bloodshed. Milan, the Piazza Fontana, in the shadow
of the city’s Duomo Cathedral. Right here,
a few meters from this fountain, began a strage,
the Italian word for massacres. Piazza Fontana, some people claim,
was where Italy lost its innocence. Piazza Fontana was zero hour, the start of what would become known
as the Years of Lead. 12 December, 1969, a day we shall always remember. Horror and indignation… Friday, December 12th, 1969. At 4:37 PM,
a bomb devastated the Central Hall of the National Agrarian Bank,
the Piazza Fontana. Carnage ensued. Seventeen people died and 88 were injured. Then, within the hour, four further bombs
went off in Milan and in Rome, injuring another 17 people. No one claimed responsibility. The mysterious nature of these bombings
was meant to stir up a climate of fear. These were random attacks
that could strike anyone at any time. Anyone of us could be in a bank
or a railway station, heading off on vacation. Some even took place
in the month of August. The country was in a state of shock. Piazza Fontana ushered in a new era. Never before had Italy experienced
a terrorist attack of this scale. What the Italians did not know
was that the Piazza Fontana bombing was the result of a conspiracy and the template
for the wave of terrorist attacks to come. From the outset, the police investigation
focused on far-left activists, specifically anarchistic movements, homing in on one person in particular,
Pietro Valpreda, an anarchist militant and a member
of the mysterious 22nd March Movement. He and others were arrested
a few days after the bombing, as described in detail on television
by the police authorities. It seems the terrorist
came in with a suitcase and walked over to the table before placing the case beneath a chair and filling out a form. Was the chair there? No, it was there, beside the beam. He began to write, and he lit a cigarette. According to witnesses who saw the smoke, it seems the fuse
was sticking out of the suitcase. He took his cigarette,
touched the fuse, lit it, then took his time
to walk out with his form. The police insisted
that this was exactly how it happened. Explosives were detonated by a lit fuse. Yet, just a few days after the attack, a secret memo from Italy’s
military intelligence service, the Servizio Informazioni Difesa,
or SID, contradicted the official version
of events and spoke of a time bomb. The same memo also accused
far-right activists of having infiltrated the 22nd March Movement. Oddly, though,
this explosive memo was suppressed. Investigating magistrates
did not become aware of it until many years later. Pietro Valpreda is guilty. He is one of the men
behind the massacres in Milan and Rome. Police HQ in Rome
has just received confirmation. Valpreda, an anarchist
and the ideal culprit, was thrust into the spotlight. The conspiracy was underway. Despite the disinformation
put about by the intelligence services, certain investigators were not taken in. In the 1970s, the magistrates investigating
the Piazza Fontana attack realized they had to follow the black lead if they were to find the truth
about the massacre. However, when the intelligence services
got wind of it, they did their level best to ensure
that this lead could not be followed up. The black lead was the one
that led to the far right. In Italy, it was embodied by the MSI,
the Italian Social Movement, a political party
that had been popular since the 1950s. Operating beside the official face
were other smaller, more nefarious, and very active groups. The names of two neofascist activists
soon cropped up in the investigation. They were Giovanni Ventura
and Franco Freda, publishers and booksellers
in the city of Padua, in the northeast of the country. Freda and Ventura were the leaders
of a cell in Padua that had a score or so of memories. Their activities were centered
on a bookshop selling Nazi literature
and esoteric material. The truth was that in this small bookshop,
fueled by these books, the bombings were being planned. The investigation eventually showed
that Freda and Ventura bought detonators and their leather bags
contained the explosives. After their arrest in April 1971, Freda and Ventura denied planting the bomb
in the Piazza Fontana, but their statements highlighted
the actions of the secret services. The secret services played a twin role. On the one hand, they knew something
was being planned in far-right circles. Yet they did not intervene. They let the attacks take place
because they were politically useful. Later, after the bombings, the secret services played a major role
in muddying the waters by pointing a finger
at those who were not the real culprits. A journalist named Guido Giannettini
established a link between the intelligence services for whom he worked
as an agent in the Padua cell. His job was to carry out the bombings. When the investigating magistrates
identified him, the secret service he worked for, the SID,
denied that he was one of their sources. They found him
and made him leave the country. He went to France,
where he remained for a while. Then he fled to Argentina. Among the secret services,
the police, and the legal authorities, who was putting up the smokescreen? Just how far up the chain of command
and responsibility for the attack lie. Did the intelligence services
allow it to happen, or did they want the massacre? Why all this manipulation? The attack at the Piazza Fontana
and on the trains created widespread panic and generated public support
for state intervention. Given it at any moment, the state can offer more security
in exchange for reduced freedom. It was not fascist terrorists or enemies
of the States who pursued this objective. It was people who worked for the state. State terrorism. This shattering accusation
was made in a prison cell in Milan by a black legend of the Years of Lead,
Vincenzo Vinciguerra. He was convicted of a bomb attack in 1972 and was the only far-right terrorist
to acknowledge his crime. I’ve been in prison for 36 years
and six months because I made a choice. I confessed to being
behind the Peteano bombing, in which three Carabinieri were killed. From a judicial point of view, the only possible outcome
was a life sentence. That’s what happened
because that was my choice. I did not appeal,
and ever since, I have been in prison. Vinciguerra did not disown fascism
but broke with the far-right movements, accusing them of having been
in the service of a strategy, one whose name
gained great notoriety in 1969. The Strategy of Tension. Let me repeat what I said in court
with regard to the Strategy of Tension. “Destabilize the public order
to stabilize the political order.” What became known
as the Strategy of Tension began in 1969 with the Piazza Fontana bombing,
and it lasted until 1974. Throughout these years,
the approach was to cause mayhem by carrying out bombings
all over the country. This provoked demands
for more law and order, which were met by a coup d’etat
or an attempted coup d’etat. Let’s go back a few years
to understand why Italy proved to be such fertile territory
for a strategy of tension. Italy was, first of all,
a country with limited sovereignty because it was a defeated country
after the Second World War. It was therefore subjected
to the obligations imposed by the victorious nations. Since Italy is a country of frontiers, communism was just a short step away,
right across the border. Also, we had the strongest communist party
in Europe. There was no way the Americans
and British could stand by and allow this country
to slip over to the red side, across the Iron Curtain,
a term coined by Churchill. He described it
as stretching from Stettin in the Baltic to the Italian city of Trieste
in the Adriatic. During the post-war years, Italy became a key country
in the Atlantic Alliance, having pledged its allegiance
to the United States, which set up and controlled
strategic military bases there. Italy had to try hard
to appear to be a normal democracy. However, in reality,
there was no such thing. The security apparatuses, that’s to say the intelligence services
and the military, were not subject to government control, as is the case
in any other democratic or normal country. They were dependent
upon foreign chains of command based in the victorious countries
in the Second World War. A top secret American document written in 1951
by the National Security Council illustrated the hold the United States
had on Italian domestic policy. It stipulates that:, “In the event that the communists
gain participation” “in the Italian Government by legal means” “or in the event that Government
ceases to evidence a determination” “to oppose communist threats,” “the United States
should take military measures.” I was in charge of all liaison
with the Italian services, and SIFAR at that time
ran the entire Gladio Operation. Gladio, the double-edged sword, was one of the best-kept secrets
of the post-war period. The codename for the secret army
was intended to lead the resistance against any potential Soviet invasion. Now deceased, Marc Wyatt was the CIA’s number two
in Rome during the 1960s. He was the man who supplied the Gladiators
with money, training, and weapons. They established the base in Sardinia. They accepted our men to be their aides inside of Gladio,
to work and live with them. Very few people
who were American intelligence officers and were assigned to Rome knew that there was
a stay-behind operation going on, which the Americans had suggested
and accepted by the Italians. Over the years,
the Gladio network came to specialize in the control of political opponents. I remember seeing documents in which it was perfectly clear
that there were checks not only on Italian communists
but also on socialists, priests, and Catholic organizations, all those that represented progress or any progressive political
and social reform in Italy. Despite its defeat on April 25th, 1945, Italy never settled its scores
with fascism. American and British intelligence were able to lean on those who harbored
a nostalgia for Mussolini, who thrived within the army,
the Carabinieri, and the secret services. There were, for example,
members of the former fascist Salò regime, the Italian Social Republic, who held positions in the apparatuses
of the Italian state, and the Anglo-American secret services, who had never given
up on the idea of atoning for April 25th, 1945. Among them was a born leader,
Junio Valerio Borghese, seen here to the left of Il Duce. Nicknamed the Black Prince, he was the commander in chief
of Decima MAS, the elite troops of Mussolini’s army. Today, I am fighting Italians. Today, I am speaking out against Italians
when I tell you that one of our biggest enemies
is the communists, and they are Italians. However, I’m quite happy
to describe them as our enemies. It doesn’t bother me to say
that I would be happy to exterminate them because it would purge our country of the enemies living there,
who are a perpetual threat. Prince Borghese was worried in the wake
of the electoral successes of the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, which made it the most powerful
in Western Europe. Since the war, the Christian Democrats
had held all the levers of power. However, with 27% of the vote, the PCI, under the leadership
of the very popular Enrico Berlinguer, had posted its best ever result
in the legislative elections of 1968, just one year
before the Piazza Fontana bombing. In Italy, they call this period
preceding Piazza Fontana the Hot Autumn because of the widespread labor conflicts. That’s the context
in which these events need to be viewed. Factories were going on strike. The university was a tinderbox. Social protest was at its peak,
as it was all over Europe, and violence inflamed the campus. Beside the Communist Party,
the far-left movements flourished. Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio, the workers vanguard, and soon after, the Red Brigades. These extra-parliamentary left-wing groups
had not yet resorted to armed conflict. The Hot Autumn then was the background
to the massacre of Piazza Fontana. What we now know is that the bombs of 1969
aimed to cause chaos as a prelude
to a show of military strength, following the model of the coup
instigated by the colonels in Greece two years previously. The Piazza Fontana bombing
had a specific goal. It was to elicit a demand
for law and order in the emotional aftermath
of the massacre, which Junio Valerio Borghese
would use to create a coup d’etat. In December 1969, contrary to the expectations
of the plotters, Christian Democrat
Prime Minister Mariano Rumor, seen here
beside the Piazza Fontana wounded, did not declare a state of emergency. Prince Borghese’s plans for a coup d’etat
had to be postponed for one year until the night of the 7th
to the 8th of December, 1970. The Borghese coup d’etat
has always been represented as something of a soap opera, a masquerade led by someone
who was nostalgic for fascism and had a notion to overthrow
the legitimate Italian government. That’s how it was always represented. In reality, we know now
that it was a serious undertaking. That night, Borghese,
supported by numerous soldiers, deployed his men all over Italy,
especially in Rome, where they seized
the Ministry of the Interior. Before dawn, they planned to take over
the RAI television channel to inform the Italian people
that the president had been arrested. At the very last moment, I would even say the last second, their plan was called off. In Italy, it remained a mystery. We never found out why Borghese
coup d’etat was called off, just as it was about to succeed. This business of counterorder
has been much debated. There was probably a lack
of top-level support, with the Americans
failing to give their blessing to an undertaking that might be regarded
as dangerous and indecisive. It was one that did not fulfill
the necessary conditions, as had been the case in Greece. Where did this counterorder come from? Was it the Italian secret services,
the CIA, or maybe even the White House? President Richard Nixon had visited Rome
that same year of 1970 to remind his hosts
of the basic strategic framework. I shall have the opportunity
to visit the American Sixth Fleet and our NATO commanders as well,
yours and ours, and to discuss there one
of the primary indispensable principles of American foreign policy. That principle is to maintain
the necessary strength in the Mediterranean and to preserve the peace against those
who might threaten it. The Nixon administration did not trust
the irremovable Christian Democrats, and certain accommodating voices
with regard to communists deepened their fears. It’s like that of Aldo Moro,
one of the party’s leading voices, then current Minister of Foreign Affairs
visiting Washington in 1974. He earned the wrath of US Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger. “If you do not cease
these conciliatory policies,” “you will pay a high price.” The American strategist
apparently told him. The Italian democracy was stuck. This was in the middle of the Cold War. Aldo Moro was trying to usher
the Italian Communist Party into the Democratic mainstream. The communists
had a presence in parliament and could debate important measures
alongside the majority party. Moro instinctively wanted to take things
one step further and establish the PCI
as part of the democracy. A politically paralyzed Italy was plunged
into a low-intensity civil war, caught between
an increasingly violent far-left and a far-right instigating
further random attacks along the lines of the Piazza Fontana bombing. In July 1970,
a bomb occurred on a train in Calabria. Six died and 50 were injured. In May 1973, a grenade occurred
outside Milan Prefecture. Four died and 52 were injured. In 1974, a bomb occurred
on the Italicus train between Rome and Brenner. Twelve died and 44 were injured. Then came Brescia, an antifascist demonstration
against the outbreak of violence. [Italian spoken audio] When my wife and I arrived on the square,
we were looking for our friends. We spotted them beside a column
where there was a trashcan. A few meters away from them,
a friend stopped to ask me something. At that point,
my wife and I were separated. [Italian spoken audio] A bomb! Everybody, stay calm
and stay where you are. At first, I thought it was a firecracker,
a cardboard bomb. As it exploded, I saw the column shatter, and the whole crowd went down. I threw myself into the crowd
of wounded bodies. I searched for my wife and found her. I realized that something serious
had happened. When we reached the hospital, a nurse told me
right away that she was dead. I couldn’t understand how it was possible. Alongside Livia and Milani, seven other demonstrators
died on the square of the Piazza della Loggia. A further 102 were injured. It was a new chapter
to add to the bloody litany. The investigation began
with the objective of destroying evidence. One hour after the massacre, the firefighters were sent in
to wash the square. In doing so, they removed a series
of extremely important pieces of evidence. The investigation was confused,
obstructed, and stonewalled, as had been the case
for the Piazza Fontana and other attacks
during the Strategy of Tension. Secret protection ensured the impunity
of the true perpetrators of this terrorist plot. A small fascist group called Ordine Nuovo,
New or A New Order, was a veritable nerve center
of black terrorism. Let’s talk about the massacres in banks,
railway stations, on trains, and in squares. They were all the work of the New Order. They were not acting as neo-fascists,
neo-Nazis, or far-right activists but rather as part of a hidden structure linked to the Italian
and American secret services. What emerged from the inquiry,
which was absolutely new, was that the New Order activists
in Venezia, having trained in how to handle weapons
or make bombs, came and went
to and from certain American bases where they were treated almost as allies. Militant activists attended the funeral
of their idol, the Black Prince Junio Valerio Borghese. What about Mussolini’s fascism? He did the impossible
to make a country great. Among them was Pino Rorty,
the founder of the New Order. His name crops up in the legal documents dealing with all the bloodiest attacks
of the period. What will the party do
if the communists come to power? We shall examine the situation and do whatever the situation demands. Meaning? We shall use any means necessary, including legal means. Ten years earlier, in 1965,
in the salon of a Roman hotel, Pino Rorty took part
in a founding congress captured on film. The cream of the far-right gathered
to discuss the best way to contain the Red Peril. It was a meeting
of all the coup instigators from the Italian army, who gathered around them
a team of promising youngsters. These weren’t soldiers, but they would write
the history of subversion for many years to come. Among these promising youngsters
was Guido Giannettini, who would later be implicated
in the Piazza Fontana bombing. Along with Rorty,
he endorsed the principles of the OAS, the anti-revolutionary secret army
that led the war in Algeria. It was the model that underpinned
the Italian neofascist movement and the Strategy of Tension. The OAS had a dramatic role in Italy. The OAS was a model,
the inspiration for the Italian far-right, and their battle
against international communism. Bologna railway station,
Saturday, August 2nd, 1980. The summer holidays were just starting. At 10:25 AM, in the second class passenger
waiting room, a bomb exploded. Eighty-five people died
and more than 200 were injured. My mom was right above the waiting room,
where the bomb had been planted. At 10:25, she was there at work. I was at home, and I heard about it on TV. The clocks overlooking the square stopped, as did the lives of 78 people… My naive reaction was to run
to the telephone and dial 372221 in desperation. I can still remember it. It was the phone number
for the office where my mom worked. She was the last one they found because she had stayed
upstairs in the office, which had not collapsed. I was told the following day at 2:00 AM. Behind the bloodiest attempted attacks
of the Years of Lead can be found the same far-right nebula. It would take another 15 years
and the persistence of the victim families to bring the material perpetrators
of the attack, a couple of neofascist activists,
to justice. The truth is inevitably
only part of the story, a legal ruling
on who actually committed the crime. We believe that a piece is missing
with regard to the political initiators. That’s to say, those who supported,
assisted, and allowed, one way or another,
the act to be committed. If the instigators of the massacre
were never discovered, it is undoubtedly thanks
to the maneuvers of this man, convicted for obstructing justice
in the course of the inquiry. Licio Gelli was the Venerable Master
of a masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2. Here, he is filmed under house arrest
at his Tuscan villa. From Borghese’s attempted coup
to the Bologna bombing, the shadow of Gelli looms large
over every despicable news story in latter day Italy. He was driven by a single motive: to keep the communists
away from the government. A priority objective
for Italy’s American friend as well. When I went to interview Licio Gelli
at Villa Vanda, I have to say
I was extremely disappointed. I expected a diabolical intelligence,
a fascinating character, some kind of Beelzebub figure. What I found, though, was an old man babbling on about
a very authoritarian political system. He showed me photographs of Mussolini,
whom he greatly admired. He was basically a fascist. Gelli emerged from the shadows in 1981 during investigations
into the collapse of a bank, implicating the Mafia,
the Vatican’s banker, and P2. A Carabinieri searched his villa
and discovered a treasure. It contained 179 gold lingers and, more importantly, a list of 962 names
affiliated with the Masonic Lodge. There were the names of three ministers: the Minister of Justice
and 40 or so members of Parliament. There were several Carabinieri and high-ranking police officers, including the Commander General
of the Financial Police. Among the Carabinieri
were two of the three generals commanding the three Italian divisions. There were the names of almost
all the people within the secret services that had obstructed
the magistrate’s investigations to find those responsible
for the bombings. A parliamentary committee charged
with investigating P2 turned up several names, such as that of Gianadelio Maletti,
the head of Italian counterintelligence. Convicted of misleading the investigation
into the Piazza Fontana bombing, he fled to South Africa. Another P2 member
was Maltese Superior General Vito Miceli, head of the SID who was implicated
in Borghese’s attempted coup. Also on the list
were the names of several industrialists, newspaper editors, and a member who, in the early 1980s,
was a modest entrepreneur. The parliamentary committee
concluded its work by describing a pyramid with another upside-down pyramid
sitting on top of it. One pyramid above and one pyramid below. Gelli was at the apex,
where the pyramid summits met. The pyramid below
was made up of P2 members. The pyramid above
was the part of the establishment that agreed with the thoughts
and actions of P2. Many people thought
they had finally identified the brains behind all the horrific
and criminal goings on that had beset Italy
during the post-war period. From Mafia activities to terrorism. In reality, what was P2? It was a protected
secret covert Masonic lodge that acted as a haven
for the most Orthodox Atlanticism. Shadows, traps, manipulation,
and conspiracy. The tragic strands
that Pier Paolo Pasolini was trying to pull together
in one of his final newspaper columns, just a few months
before his mysterious murder on the beach in Ostia in autumn 1975. Pasolini was a writer, filmmaker,
left-wing sympathizer, and Italy’s guilty conscience. Pasolini’s murder
is one of Italy’s great mysteries. At the time, Pasolini was writing
a front-page column for the Corriere della Sera that the subversives,
the state apparatuses, and the protagonists in this story
did not wish to hear. “I know.” “I know the names of those
behind the bombing in Milan” “on December 12th, 1969.” “I know the names of those
behind the bombing in Brescia” “during the first months of 1974.” “I know the names of those
that make up the summit of the pyramid.” “I know the names of those
who implemented the Strategy of Tension.” “I know it because I am an intellectual,
and my job is to analyze facts.” “I know, but I can provide no proof
or even evidence.” They shut him up forever, and his massacred body
became the symbol of an Italy that through a series
of murderous attacks, had been massacred
to prevent the truth from coming out. The truth. Italy is still waiting
for the judicial truth. Aside from the Bologna bombing, none of the perpetrators
of the far-right attacks have ever been convicted. Is their identity concealed here,
behind the walls of the National Archives? Among the thousands of pages
still stamped Top Secret, which the government
has promised to declassify. When will some light be shed
on another chapter in the Italian trauma, a crime from which the country
has never fully recovered? I’ll try to get closer to see what happened. Here is the car with the bodies of the bodyguards. The honorable Aldo Moro
has been kidnapped. An hour after the Villafane slaughter, the Red Brigades
claimed the abduction of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democrat president. That morning, he was on his way
to the Chamber of Deputies to solve an unprecedented
government crisis and ratify his vision
of the compromesso storico, or historic compromise, an agreement between his party
and the communists. Two years earlier, in 1976, the legislative elections
were a triumph for the PCI. Polling at 34% of the vote
from 11 million voters, it was well placed to pressurize
the Christian Democrat government. Berlinguer, head of the Communist Party,
had been making conciliatory noises with regard to NATO. The Communist Party
was a totally democratic party, while the Christian Democrats
were Italy’s first party, the popular party. It was an important moment
in Italian politics. The implacable front of opponents
to the historic compromise was unwavering. The United States, the P2 Masonic Lodge,
and the far-right. However, it found on the far-left
an objective and decisive ally, and it remains one
of the country’s biggest mysteries. In the mid-1970s, black had given way
to red on the terrorist stage. Red as in the brigades of the same name
that had taken up arms. At the instigation of their leader,
Mario Moretti, the Brigate Rosse plunged the country
into a spiral of violence. Moro was alive,
but the photograph of him looking haggard, positioned in front of the 5-pointed star
of the leftist terrorist, Petrified Italy. His incarceration lasted 55 days,
while the nation held its breath. Forty years on, a parliamentary committee
is still exploring the mystery. The 64,000-dollar question is, “Were the Red Brigades manipulated?” The Red Brigades talked about the CIA, Israeli participation, and the KGB
with Czechoslovakian ramifications. They spoke about white and black. Did anybody else
work with the brigades on the kidnapping? Ninety-one shots were fired,
49 of which came from just one gun. The five-man escort was murdered,
while Moro escaped unharmed. The military blitz was orchestrated
by skilled professionals. It is simply not credible
that only brigade members were involved. However, there is one incontestable fact. That morning, a certain Colonel Guglielmi
was in the area. Who was Colonel Guglielmi? He was a Gladio instructor
who taught ambush techniques in Sardinia to the special unit’s training
at Capo Marrargiu. Another coincidence. Do you see how they mount up? The Moro affair is full of coincidences. Some coincidences and a lot of mysteries. Aldo Moro was incarcerated in an apartment
in the south of Rome. While there,
he was forced to answer questions from his prosecutor, Mario Moretti,
leader of the Red Brigades. Every evening,
Moretti crossed the whole city to return to his hideaway
at 96 Via Gradoli, in the north of the city. It was a hell of a risk
for the most wanted man in all of Italy. It was almost as if he knew
he could come to no harm. Right across the road
at 89 Via Gradoli lived a Carabinieri NCO. An officer in the military secret service. Moretti was seen speaking
with this officer. He was clearly an informant
for the intelligence services. Even more troubling,
one month after the kidnapping, this Red Brigade’s hideout in Via Gradoli
was discovered. However, the authorities alerted the press instead of closing in
on the brigade members, who had plenty of time to escape. Twenty thousand mobilized men,
37,000 house searches, the aptly titled Plan Zero
wore its name well. It also seemed there had been
a large-scale mobilization. After one month of captivity, the Red Brigades’ sixth communiqué announced that the People’s Court
had tried Moro and that he had been sentenced to death. In his cell, Moro wrote. He wrote a lot, almost 100 letters,
trying to influence his fate. These letters are addressed
to close family and friends, senior politicians,
the representatives of institutions, the president of the Republic,
the president of the Chamber of Deputies, and Prime Minister Andreotti. In them, Moro asked
for his release to be negotiated. The terrorists announced their readiness
to exchange Aldo Moro for the release of 13 Red Brigades members whose trials
had begun a few weeks earlier. “If you do not intervene,” “a terrible page in Italian history
will be written.” “My blood will fall on you, on the party,
and on the country.” Despite demonstrations of support for Moro
right across the political spectrum, his prophecy failed
to sway his influential friends. The government
under Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, along with the Communist Party,
took a hard line and refused to negotiate. The hypothesis of a negotiation
was unworkable. It was unworkable
because the members of Moro’s escort, Carabinieri and policemen,
had been killed. That made it very difficult and delicate
to open negotiations. War has been declared in the state. This democratic state has responded
with a declaration of war. The decision to adopt a firm line
was perhaps also influenced by the knowledge that, in captivity,
Moro was writing not only letters. It is our duty! He was also writing his memorial, a kind of civil and political testament. Then there is the business
of the memorial. That’s to say,
Moro’s writings are in captivity. A tight copy of them
was found in October 1978. Not until 1990
were photocopies of the manuscripts found. Still today, the originals are missing. Where are the originals? Who hid them? Yet another mystery. Do they contain the key
to Moro’s tragic fate? I’m not able to say
to what extent secret information relative to state security was passed on by Moro to the Red Brigades. I’m not able to do that. The memorial contains
some explosive material. It talks about Gladio. It says a lot about the general workings
of the secret services in relation to the Italian state. He says a lot of not very nice things
about Giulio Andreotti. Andreotti was the historic
Christian Democrat and head of the government, whom Moro accused of having links
with the Americans and the secret services. It was Andreotti himself
who eventually revealed the existence of Gladio in 1990. Did he fear that the prisoner,
once released, would disclose embarrassing secrets? Was Aldo Moro sacrificed
for reasons of state? Hello, who is calling? The Red Brigades. -Do you understand?
-Yes. You must convey the following information
to the family. They will find the body of Aldo Moro
on Via Caetani. I repeat, Via Caetani. -All right?
-Yes. The body is in the trunk of a red 4L. The registration number begins with N5. N5… Should I call the family? No, you must go there in person. I can’t. You can’t? Unfortunately, you have to. Please, no! I’m sorry. You must find the family
of the honorable Moro. His last wish was for his family to recover his body. The body of Aldo Moro
was found in the trunk of a Reynold 4. It was symbolically parked halfway
between the headquarters of the Christian Democrat Party
and the Communist Party and was riddled with bullets. More than the Red Brigades, it was the Italian state
itself that needed a martyr before bringing Moro’s political strategy
of working with the left to a bloody end. “The gondola of revolution sails
along a river of blood,” said the revolutionary liturgy. The Red Brigades’ bloody madness
inflicted upon Italy dozens more murders and kidnappings. However, with the execution of Moro,
they signed their political death warrant. The murder of Moro sounded the death knell
for historic compromise and fatally poisoned
the Christian Democrat Party. The shock wave also swept away the hopes
of the Communist Party. History would do the rest. Some years later, a man would emerge from the ashes
of the Years of Lead to prosper and begin another chapter
in Italy’s tragic tale.
Italy’s “Years of Lead” (1960s-1980s): A era of extremism, bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. Key events: 1969 Piazza Fontana explosion, 1978 Aldo Moro murder, 1980 Bologna massacre. Suspected state and foreign involvement in this low-intensity civil war still haunts Italy 40 years later.
