Piano Solo was an envisaged plot for an Italian coup in 1964, planned by then director of the military police, Giovanni De Lorenzo.
The coup plans were investigated in 1967, when the journalist Eugenio Scalfari and Lino Jannuzzi uncovered the attempt in the Italian news magazine L'Espresso in May 1967.[1] However, the results of the official investigation remained classified until the early 1990s. It was released by premier Giulio Andreotti to the parliamentary investigation into Operation Gladio. L'Espresso mentioned that some 20,000 Carabinieri were supposed to deployed around the country, with 5,000 of them taking over Rome, including publishing outlets and the Communist headquarters.[2]
The Financial Times posed the possibility that the paper coup was simply used as a way to sway coalition talks between the Christian Democrats and Socialists. President Antonio Segni was apparently running out of patience with the demands from Pietro Nenni.[3]
Cento Bull, Anna (2007). Italian Neofascism: The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation, Oxford: Berghahn Books, ISBN 1-84545-335-2