History of Italy (1970s-1980s)

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Italy crossed a period a political turmoil in the 1970s, which progressively ended in the early 1980s. Known as the "years of lead" (anni di piombo - "years of bullet"), this period was characterized by widespread social conflicts and terrorism acts carried out by extra-parliamentary movements. The assassination of the leader of the Christian Democracy (DC), Aldo Moro, in 1978 by the Second Red Brigades lead by Mario Moretti, put an end to the negotiations of a "historic compromise" between the DC and the Communist Party (PCI).

Contents 1 Overview 2 Social protests 3 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing 4 The Golpe Borghese 5 Assassination of Luigi Calabresi 6 1972 Peteano attack 7 1973 bombing against Mariano Rumor 8 An attempted neo-fascist coup in July 1974 9 1974 Arrest of Vito Miceli, chief of the SIOS 10 1974 arrest of Red Brigades leaders and dissolving of far-left groups 11 Aldo Moro's 1978 murder 12 The strategy of tension 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 See also 16 External links

[edit] Overview

The shrinking support for the Christian Democracy eventually caused the single main event in the First Republic, the entry of the Socialist party in the government in the sixties, after the reducing edge of the Christian Democracy (DC) had forced them to accept this alliance; attempts to incorporate the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in the Tambroni government led to riots, and were short-lived. A left-wing autonomist movement, in the wake of student unrest ("Sessantotto"), lasted from 1968 until the end of the Seventies.

This period came to be known as the anni di piombo ("years of lead" - [bullets] anni di piombo) because of a wave of bombings and shootings — starting with the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing by neofascists — attributed to far-right, far-left and secret services actions. According to statistics by the Ministry of Interior, 67,5% of the violences ("brawls, guerrilla actions, destruction of goods") committed in Italy from 1969 to 1980 are imputable to the far right, 26,5% to the far left, and 5,95% to others. Furthermore, 150 persons were killed in terrorist actions carried out by the far right, and 94 by far left bombings ^[1].

[edit] Social protests

Social protests, in which the autonomist student movement was particulary active, shook Italy during the 1969 autunno caldo (Hot Autumn), leading to the occupation of the Fiat factory in Milan. Mario Capanna, associated with the New Left, was one of the many important figures of that movement, along with the members of Potere Operaio and Autonomia Operaia (Antonio Negri, Oreste Scalzone, Franco Piperno, etc.), Lotta Continua (Adriano Sofri, etc.), etc.

[edit] 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing

Main article: Piazza Fontana bombing

In December, four bombings struck in Rome the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II (Altare della Patria), the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, and in Milan the Banca Commerciale and the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura. The later bombing, known as the Piazza Fontana bombing of 12 December 1969, killed 16 and injured 90, marking the beginning of this violent period.

The police immediately arrested 4,000 people in left-wing circles, among whom Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist who was initially blamed for the bombing, as well as Pietro Valpreda. This was hotly contested by left-wing circles, especially the estudiantine movement, very strong in those years in Milan's universities, who considered the bombing to be of fascist brand. Lotta Continua 's newspaper accused the state security services of being behind the bombing, and, following the "accidental death" of Giuseppe Pinelli (title of Dario Fo's piece, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, first staged in 1970) who was defenestrated on 15 December 1969 while illegally detained by the police, the radical left-wing newspaper initiated a campaign accusing police officer Luigi Calabresi of having murdered Pinelli. Meanwhile, anarchist Valpareda was detained for three years, judged and sentenced to prison for the bombing. After 16 years, he was released, the Italian state recognizing a miscarriage of justice.

Lotta Continua 's guess was proved to be correct, but only after many years of difficult investigations. The neofascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra was finally arrested in the 1980s for the bombing, and confessed to magistrate Felice Casson that this false flag attack had been intended to force the Italian state to declare a state of emergency and become authoritarian. Vinciguerra explained how the SISMI military intelligence agency had protected him, allowing him to escape to Franquist Spain. Neo-fascist terrorists from Ordine Nuovo were then accused of the crime, and a US Navy officer suspected of being involved in it ^[2].

[edit] The Golpe Borghese

Main article: Golpe Borghese

In December 1970, a neofascist coup dubbed the Golpe Borghese failed. It was organized and planned by several far right figureheads with the support of armed forces and police officers and the backing of right-aligned entrepreneurs and industrialists. The "Black Prince", Junio Valerio Borghese himself, took part in it, as well as the neofascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie (the latter, engaged in a world crusade against Communism, had contacts with Pinochet's DINA, ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie and with anti-Castro terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles).

[edit] Assassination of Luigi Calabresi

Violent demonstrations took place in Pisa on May 5, 1972, when youth, called upon by Lotta Continua, tried to prevent a meeting from the neofascist MSI. During the confrontations, a young anarchist, Franco Serantini, was heavily hit by police batons, and died two days later while in prison, deprived of care. On May 17, 1972, police officer Luigi Calabresi was assassinated in Milan. Authorities first pointed out towards some people related to Lotta Continua, before indicting in 1974 two neofascist activists, Gianni Nardi and Bruno Stefano, along with the German girl Gudrun Kiess. They were finally released. Sixteen years later, Adriano Sofri, Giorgio Petrostefani and Ovidio Bompressi were arrested in Milan, accused of the crime on the grounds of a confession provided by a pentito. Highly controversed, the trial concluded, after an alternance of convictions and acquittals, to their guiltyness. Historian Carlo Ginzburg wrote for the occasion The Judge and the Historian. Marginal Notes and a Late-Twentieth-century Miscarriage of Justice, in which he criticized the complete lack of evidence and the judgement carried out on the sole words of a controversial pentito. In any cases, Calabresi's death was the first political assassination of the 1970s.

[edit] 1972 Peteano attack

Two weeks later, three carabinieri were killed in Peteano in a bombing, at the time blamed on Lotta Continua by officers of the carabinieri (some of them were latter indicted, and even convicted, for having sent false trails to hamper the investigations) ^[3] Years later, neofascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra confessed of having carried out the May 31, 1972 Peteano attack. Magistrate Felice Casson found out in the 1980s that the bombing had been carried out by military C-4 explosive, the most powerful explosive at the time, which came from a Gladio (NATO stay-behind anticommunist network during the Cold War) dump located near Verona.

"Casson's investigation revealed that the right-wing organization Ordine Nuovo had collaborated very closely with the Italian Military Secret Service, SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa). Together, they had engineerred the Peteano terror and then wrongly blamed the militant extreme Italian left, the Red Brigades. Judge Casson identified Ordine Nuovo member Vincenzo Vinciguerra as the man who had planted the Peteano bomb... He confessed and testified that he had been covered by an entire network of sympathizers in Italy and abroad who had ensured that after the attack he could escape. 'A whole mechanism came into action', Vinciguerra recalled, 'that is, the Carabinieri, the Minister of the Interior, the customs services and the military and civilian intelligence services accepted the ideological reasoning behind the attack.'" ^[4][5]

[edit] 1973 bombing against Mariano Rumor

Despite these provocations, Interior Minister Mariano Rumor (DC) refused to proclaim the state of emergency. During a ceremony in honour of Luigi Calabresi, where the Interior Minister was present, on 17 May 1973, an alleged anarchist, Gianfranco Bertoli, threw a bomb killing four and injuring 45. End of 1990, it was discovered that Bertoli, who had been convicted for the bombing, was in fact a SID informant and member of Gladio. The secret services claimed it was only an homonimy, while it was found out that, a short time before his death, Luigi Calabresi had opened up a file concerning Bertoli. A magistrate in charge of the investigation concerning the assassination attempt of Mariano Rumor found out that Bertoli's files were incomplete ^[3].

Ten years later, General Gianadelio Maletti, in charge of the SID from 1971 to 1975, was convicted in absentia in 1990 for obstruction of justice concerning the Mariano Rumor case. The investigations revealed that he had known of the attack before-hand, but had deliberately failed to prevent it. Testifying in 2001 for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing (with a special immunity accorded), General Maletti declared:

""The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], 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... I believe this is what happened in other countries as well...Don't forget that Nixon was in charge and Nixon was a strange man, a very intelligent politician but a man of rather unorthodox initiatives"^[6]

Maletti further declared that:

"Among the larger western European countries, Italy has been dealt with as a sort of protectorate. I am ashamed to think that we are still subject to special supervision."

[edit] An attempted neo-fascist coup in July 1974

Count Edgardo Sogno revealed in his memoirs that in July 1974, he visited the CIA station chief in Rome to inform him of the preparation of a neo-fascist coup. Asking him what the US government would do in case of such an operation, Sogno wrote that the CIA responsible for Italy answered him that: "the United States would have supported any initiative tending to keep the communists out of government." General Maletti declared, in 2001, that he had not known about Sogno's relations to the CIA and had not been informed of the coup, known as Golpe bianco (White Coup), and prepared with Randolfo Pacciardi ^[6].

[edit] 1974 Arrest of Vito Miceli, chief of the SIOS

General Vito Miceli, chief of the SIOS military intelligence agency from 1969 on, and head of the SID from 1970 to 1974, was arrested in 1974 on charges of "conspiration against the state." Following his arrest, the Italian secret services were reorganized with a 24 October 1977 law in a democratic attempt of regaining civilian and parliamentary control of them. The SID was divided into the current SISMI, the SISDE and the CESIS, which had a coordination role and was directly led by the President of the Council. Furthermore, an Parliamentary Commitee on Secret services control (Copaco) was created at the same occasion.

[edit] 1974 arrest of Red Brigades leaders and dissolving of far-left groups

In 1974, the leaders of the Red Brigades (founded in 1970) including Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini, were arrested. The year before, Potere Operaio had disbanded itself, although Autonomia Operaia carried on some of its ideas. Lotta Continua also dissolved itself in 1976, although the magazine continued to exist for several years.

[edit] Aldo Moro's 1978 murder

Main article: Aldo Moro

Christian democrat Aldo Moro was assassinated in May 1978 by the Red Brigades, a militant leftist group then led by Mario Moretti. Before his murder, Aldo Moro, a relatively left-leaning Christian democrat, several times Prime minister, was trying to include the Communist Party, headed by Enrico Berlinguer, as well in the government, with a deal called the historical compromise. At this point, the PCI was the largest communist party in western Europe, and remained such for the rest of its existence. This was largely due their non-extremistic and pragmatic stance, to their growing independence from Moscow and new eurocommunism doctrine. The communist party was especially strong in areas like Emilia Romagna, where they had stable government positions and matured practical experience, which may have contributed to a more pragmatic approach to politics. The Red Brigades notably met fierce resistance among the Communist Party and the trade unions, even if a few left-wing politicians used the condescending expression "comrades who do wrong" (Italian: Compagni che sbagliano). The circumstances of Aldo Moro's murder have never been clarified, although the consequence was clear: the PCI didn't ascend to executive power.

Investigative journalist Carmine Pecorelli was assassinated on March 20, 1979. He had drawn connections in a May 1978 article between Aldo Moro's kidnap and Gladio ^[7].

Moro's assassination was followed by a large clampdown on the social movement, including the arrest of many members of Autonomia Operaia, including political philosopher Toni Negri, Oreste Scalzone, etc.

[edit] The strategy of tension

Main articles: Strategy of tension and Operation Gladio

One of the last and largest of the bombings, known as the Bologna massacre, destroyed the city's railway station in 1980. This was found to be a fascist bombing, mainly organized by the NAR, who had ties with the Roman criminal organization Banda della Magliana. Four years later, on December 23, 1984, another bombing in a train between Florence and Rome killed 16 and wounded more than 200. The mafiosi Giuseppe Calo and four others defendants were convicted to life imprisonment in 1989 for the latter. According to the prosecutors, the far-right had conspired with the mafia and the Camorra to carry out this attack ^[8][9].

Many aspects of the "lead years" are still shrouded in mystery, and debate is still going in regard to some aspects. There were many who spoke, especially among the left, of the existence in those years of a strategia della tensione. According to the theory, occult and foreign forces were involved in this "strategy of tension", among whom Gladio, a NATO secret anti-communist structure, the P2 masonic lodge, discovered in 1981 following the arrest of its leader Licio Gelli, and fascist "black terrorism" organizations such as Ordine Nuovo or Avanguardia Nazionale, Italian secret services as well as the United States. The existence of the masonesque lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2) was discovered in 1981, in the midst of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and following the 1982 assassination of Roberto Calvi, nicknamed "God's Banker" as the Vatican Bank, presided by Paul Marcinkus, was the main share-holder of Banco Ambrosiano. In 1981, the police found in Licio Gelli's villa on the Côte d'Azur in France the list of more than 900 members of P2, including 30 generals, 38 members of parliament, 4 cabinet ministers, former prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, newspaper editors, TV executives, businessmen, bankers, 19 judges, and 58 university professors. Among them: Silvio Berlusconi, General Vito Miceli (arrested in 1974 for "conspiration against the state"), Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, Maurizio Costanzo, Fabrizio Cicchitto, investigative journalist Carmine Pecorelli, etc.

This theory reemerged in the 1990s, following Prime minister Giulio Andreotti's recognition of the existence of Gladio before the Parliamentary assembly on 24 October 1990. Furthermore, juridical investigations concerning the Piazza Fontana bombing and the Bologna massarce, in particular by Milan prosecutor Guido Salvini — who indicted a US Navy officer, David Carrett, for his role in the Piazza Fontana bombing, and surprised in 1995 Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man in Italy, searching for information concerning the case in the mid-1990s — and several parliamentary reports pointed towards such a deliberate strategy of tension.

In 2000, a Parliament Commission report from the Olive Tree left-of-center coalition concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country".^{[10] [2] [11]}

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio (dir.) Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970's (2006) ISBN 978-1-904350-72-9

[edit] See also

• History of the Italian Republic
• Strategy of tension

[edit] External links

• Italy's Invisible Government, Rosella Dossi, CERC (Contemporary Europe Research Centre, University of Melbourne)