Secrets and Bombs:

The Piazza Fontana bombing and the Strategy of Tension - Luciano Lanza

Secrets and Bombs 21: TIMETABLE – A

Basic Chronology (with video links)

January 29, 2012 //

1

2 Votes

Gladio (Italian section of the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by SHAPE (Supreme

Headquarters Al ied Powers, Europe)

1969

25 April — Two bombs explode in Milan: one at the FIAT stand at the Trade Fair and another at the

bureau de change in the Banca Nazionale delle Communicazione at Central Station. Dozens are

injured but none seriously. AnarchistsEliane Vincileone, Giovanni Corradini, Paolo Braschi, Paolo

Faccioli, Angelo Piero Della Savia and Tito Pulsinelliare arrested soon after.

2 July — Unified Socialist Party (PSU), created out of an amalgamation of the PSI and the PSDI

on 30 October 1966, splits into the PSI and the PSU.

5 July — Crisis in the three-party coalition government (DC, PSU and PRI) led by Mariano Rumor.

5 August — Rumor takes the helm of a single party (DC — Christian Democrat) government.

9 August — Ten bombs planted on as many trains. Eight explode and 12 people are injured.

7 December — Corradini and Vincileone are released from jail for lack of evidence.

Gladio

12 December — Four bombs explode. One planted in the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in the

Piazza Fontana in Milan claims 16 lives and wounds a further hundred people. In Rome a bomb

explodes in the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, wounding 14, and two devices go off at the cenotaph

in the Piazza Venezia, wounding 4. Another bomb — unexploded — is discovered at the Banca

Commerciale in the Piazza del a Scala in Milan. Four hours later, ordinance officers blow it up.

Numerous arrests are made, chiefly of anarchists. Among those arrested is the anarchist Giuseppe

Pinelli.

15 December — Anarchist Pietro Valpreda is arrested at the Milan courthouse and taken to Rome

that evening. Around midnight, Pinelli ‘falls’ from the fourth floor at police headquarters in Milan.

In Vittorio Veneto, Guido Lorenzon visits lawyer Alberto Steccanella to report that a

friend, Giovanni Ventura, may have been implicated in the 12 December bomb outrages.

16 December — Taxi-driver Cornelio Rolandi identifies Valpreda as the passenger he ferried close

to the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricolturain the Piazza Fontana on the afternoon of 12 December.

17 December — Press conference by Milan anarchists at the Circolo Ponte della Ghisolfa. The

Piazza Fontana massacre is described as a “State massacre”.

20 December —Nearly 3,000 people attend Pinel i’s funeral.

26 December — Steccanella takes an affidavit written by Lorenzon to the prosecutor in Treviso.

31 December — Treviso prosecutor Pietro Calogero questionsLorenzon.

1970

27 March — Rumor forms a four party government (DC, PSI, PSDI and PRI).

15 April — Inspector Luigi Calabresi begins proceedings against Pio Baldelli, the director of the

weekly Lotta Continua who had accused him of responsibility for Pinelli’s death.

21 May — Milan examining magistrate Giovanni Caizzi asks that the file on Pinel i’s death be

closed and that it be recorded as an accidental death.

3 July — Antonio Amati, head of Milan CID, agrees to Caizzi’s request to close the file on Pinelli’s

death.

22 July — Bomb on ‘Southern Arrow’ train kil s 6 and injures 139.

6 August — Emilio Colombo takes the helm of a four party coalition government (DC, PSI, PSDI

and PRI).

9 October — Calabresi- Lotta Continua case opens. Aldo Biotti, withMichele Lener representing

Calabresi, chairs the court. Baldel i’s lawyers are Marcello Gentili and Bianca Guidetti Serra. The

prosecution counsel is Emilio Guicciardi.

7 December — Prince Junio Valerio, leader of the Fronte Nazionale, leads an attempted coup

d’état. Licio Gelli, head of the P2 masonic lodge, is in charge of kidnapping the president of the

republic, Giuseppe Saragat.

12 December — Demonstrations in Milan on the first anniversary of the Piazza Fontana massacre.

Fierce clashes between police and demonstrators. Student Enzo Santarelli dies when struck in the

chest by a tear-gas canister fired by the police.

1971

13 April — Treviso examining magistrate Giancarlo Stiz issues warrants for the arrest of three

Venetian Nazi-fascists: Giovanni Ventura, Franco Freda and Aldo Trinco. The offences alleged

against them are: conspiracy to subvert, procurement of weapons of war and attacks in Turin in April

1969 and on trains that August.

28 May — The anarchists tried in connection with the bombs in Milan on25 April 1969 are acquitted.

However, some are convicted of minor offences: Della Savia is sentenced to eight years, Braschi to

six years and ten months, Faccioli to three years and six months. Tito Pulsinelliis cleared on all

counts. Al are freed from jail.

7 June — The Appeal Court in Milan accedes to a request by the lawyerLener that Judge Biotti be

discharged from the Piazza Fontana investigation.

16 July — Death of taxi-driver Rolandi, the sole witness againstValpreda.

4 October — A fresh inquest into Pinelli’s death is held as a result of a complaint brought by his

widow Licia Rognini. Milan-based examining magistrate Gerardo D’Ambrosio brings voluntary

homicide chargers against Inspector Calabresi, police officers Vito Panessa, Giuseppe

Caracuta, Carlo Mainardi, Piero Mucilli, and carabinieri LieutenantSavino Lograno.

21 October — Judge D’Ambrosio orders Pinelli’s corpse to be exhumed.

24 December — Giovanni Leone is elected president of Italy.

1972

17 February — Giulio Andreotti forms his first government: it is made up exclusively of Christian

Democrats.

23 February — Piazza Fontana massacre trial opens in the Court of Assizes in Rome. Judge

Orlando Falco presides. The prosecution counsel is Vittorio Occorsio. The accused are Pietro

Valpreda, Emilio Bagnoli, Roberto Gargamelli, Enrico Di Cola, Ivo Della Savia, Mario Merlino,

Ele Lovati Valpreda, Maddalena Valpreda, Rachele Torri, Olimpia Torri Lovati and Stefano

Delle Chiaie. After a few hearings the court declares that it is not competent to hear to hear the

case.

4 March — Treviso magistrates Stiz and Calogero have Pino Rauti, the founder of Ordine

Nuovo and journalist with the Rome daily Il Tempo, arrested on charges of involvement in the

subversive activities of Freda and Ventura.

6 March — Piazza Fontana trial is relocated to Milan.

15 March — Death of publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. His bomb-mangled body is discovered at

the foot of an electricity pylon in Segrate, Milan.

22 March — Venetian magistrates Stiz and Calogero indict Freda andVentura for the Piazza

Fontana massacre in Milan.

26 March — The investigation by Stiz and Calogero is passed to the Milan district authorities. It is

handled by examining magistrateD’Ambrosio to whom public prosecutor Emilio Alessandrini is

seconded.

24 April — Judge D’Ambrosio frees Pino Rauti for lack of evidence.

7 May — Early elections. Rauti is returned as deputy on the MSI ticket. Il Manifesto puts up

Valpreda as a candidate but he is not elected.

17 May — Inspector Calabresi is shot dead in Milan.

31 May — A bomb concealed in a car goes off in Peteano (Gradisca d’Isonzo) three carabinieri are

kil ed and one wounded.

26 June — Andreotti remains PM by forming a government with the DC, PSDI and PLI.

13 October — The Court of Cassation transfers the Piazza Fontana case to the Catanzaro

jurisdiction.

10 November — A weapons arsenal is discovered in an isolated house near Camerino.

15 December — Parliament passes Law No 733, known also as the “Valpreda Law”.

30 December — Valpreda and the other anarchists from Rome’sCircolo 22 Marzo stil in custody

(including Gargamelli) are released. Merlino is also freed.

1973

15 January — Freda loyalist Marco Pozzan is smuggled out of the country by the SID.

9 April — Guido Giannettini, Agent Zeta, is smuggled out of the country by the SID.

17 May — Gianfranco Bertoli throws a bomb at Milan police headquarters: 4 people lose their lives

and nearly 40 are injured.

7 July — Rumor returns to the government, supported by the DC, PSI, PSDI and PRI.

28 September — Enrico Berlinguer, head of the Italian Communist Party, publishes his first

article in the communist weekly Rinascita broaching the “historic compromise”.

1974

14 March — Rumor forms his fifth government with DC, PSI and PSDI support.

28 May — a bomb explodes in Brescia’s Piazza della Loggia during a demonstration organised by

the United Antifascist Committee and the trade unions: 8 people are kil ed and almost 100 injured.

30 May — Federico Umberto D’Amato is replaced as head of theBureau of Confidential

Affairs at the Interior Ministry.

20 June — Giulio Andreotti, Minister of Defence, reveals in an interview with Il

Mondo that Giannettini is a SID agent, while Corriere della Sera reporter Giorgio Zicari is an

informant.

4 August — A bomb explodes on board the Italicus train on the Rome-Munich line as it passes

through the San Benedetto Val di Sambro (Bologna) tunnel, kil ing 12 people and wounding 48.

8 August — Giannettini surrenders himself to the Italian Embassy in Buenos Aires.

22 November — Aldo Moro forms a DC-PRI coalition government.

1975

27 January — Piazza Fontana case opens before the Court of Assizes in Catanzaro. The accused

are: Franco Freda, Giovanni Ventura, Marco Pozzan, Antonio Massari, Angelo Ventura, Luigi

Ventura, Franco Comacchio, Giancarlo Marchesin, Ida Zanon, Ruggero Pan, Claudio Orsi,

Claudio Mutti, Pietro Loredan, Gianadelio Maletti, Antonio Labruna, Guido Giannettini,

Gaetano Tanzilli, Stefano Serpieri, Stefano Delle Chiaie, Udo Lemke, Pietro Valpreda, Mario

Merlino, Emilio Bagnoli, Roberto Gargamelli, Ivo Della Savia, Enrico Di Cola, Maddalena

Valpreda, Ele Lovati Valpreda, Rachele Torriand Olimpia Torri Lovati.

1 March — Bertoli is sentenced to life imprisonment for the 17 March 1973 bomb attack outside

police headquarters in Milan. This sentence is upheld on appeal on 9 March 1976.

27 October — Milan magistrate D’Ambrosio closes the file on the Pinel i death. According to the

finding, the anarchist died as the result of “active misfortune”. The ‘misfortune’ resulted in his

having fallen out of the window. Al those indicted for his death are absolved.

1977

1 October — Freda flees to Costa Rica. He wil be arrested and extradited in August 1980.

23 November — General Saverio Malizia, legal adviser to Defence Minister Mario Tanassi is

convicted by the Court of Assizes in Catanzaro of perjury and is freed shortly afterwards.

1979

16 January — Ventura flees to Argentina.

23 February — The Catanzaro Court of Assizes returns its first

verdict. Freda, Ventura and Giannettini are sentenced to life imprisonment for mass murder,

outrages and justifying crime. Valpreda, cleared on the basis of insufficient evidence, is sentenced

to four years and six months for criminal conspiracy. Merlino receives the same

sentence. Gargamelli is sentenced to 18 months for criminal conspiracy. Bagnoligets a two year

suspended sentence. The perjury charges againstValpreda’s relations and Stefano Delle

Chiaie are thrown out; Malettiis sentenced to four years for aiding and abetting and

perjury; Labrunagets two years and Tanzilli gets one year for perjury.

1980

4 April — Francesco Cossiga forms a DC-PSI-PRI government.

30 July — The Potenza Court of Assizes acquits General Malizia after the Court of Cassation’s

repeal of the 23 November 1977 verdict of the Catanzaro Court.

2 August — Bomb explodes in Bologna railway station kil ing 85 people and injuring dozens more.

18 October — Arnaldo Forlani forms a four-party (DC-PSI-PSDI-PRI) coalition government.

1981

20 March — The Catanzaro Court of Appeal

acquits Freda, Ventura, Giannettini, Valpreda and Merlino on grounds of insufficient

evidence. Freda and Ventura are sentenced to 15 years each for conspiracy to subvert the course of

justice, for the bombings of 25 April 1969 in Milan and for the train bombs of 9 August 1969.

Charges against Maletti andLabruna are dismissed.

28 June — Five-party coalition government (DC-PSI-PSDI-PRI-PLI) forms under Giovanni

Spadolini.

24 August — A commission of inquiry drops the charges against Giulio Andreotti, Mariano

Rumor, Mario Tanassi and Mario Zagari accused of laying false trails by the SID.

1982

10 June — The Court of Cassation assigns a second appeal case to a court in Bari,

leaving Giannettini out of the reckoning.

1985

1 August — The Appeal Court in Bari clears Freda, Ventura, Valpredaand Merlino of the charge of

massacre on the grounds of insufficient evidence, but upholds the 15-year sentences

on Freda and Ventura, and further reduces the sentences on Maletti (one year) and Labruna(ten

months).

1986

1 August — Craxi re-elected as premier of a five-party government.

1987

27 January — The first section of the Court of Cassation, with Corrado Carnevale presiding, rejects

al appeals and upholds the verdict passed by the court in Bari on 1 August

1985. Freda, Ventura, Valpreda andMerlino are at last left out of the judicial reckoning.

1988

13 April — Ciriaco De Mita heads a five-party (DC-PSI-PRI-PSDI-PLI) government.

2 July — Leonardo Marino, formerly with Lotta Continua, surrenders to the carabinieri in La

Spezia. After 24 days he confesses his guilt to the carabinieri in Milan, naming himself as the

getaway driver in the murder of Inspector Calabresi. He also accuses Ovidio Bompressi (another

ex-member of Lotta Continua) as the actual kil er, and at Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani,

the two leaders of that extra-parliamentary organisation, as having ordered the killing.

1989

January — Examining magistrate Guido Salvini launches a new investigation into rightwing

subversion and the Piazza Fontana massacre.

20 February — The Catanzaro Court of Assizes clears Delle Chiaie andMassimiliano Fachini of

charges in connection with the Piazza Fontana massacre.

1991

12 April — Seventh Andreotti government, a four-party coalition (DC-PSI-PSDI-PLI).

5 July — The Catanzaro Appeal Court upholds the verdict clearingDelle Chiaie and Fachini of

involvement in the Piazza Fontana massacre.

1994

11 May — Silvio Berlusconi forms a centre-right government including the FI, AN, LN and CCD.

For the first time in post-war Italy the AN orAlianza Nazionale (formerly the MSI) is in government.

1995

13 March — Judge Salvini orders proceedings to be instituted againstNico Azzi, Giancarlo

Rognoni, Mauro Marzorati, Francesco De Min, Pietro Battiston, Paolo Signorelli, Sergio

Calore, Martino Siciliano, Giambattista Cannata, Cristiano De Eccher, Mario Ricci,

Massimiliano Fachini, Guido Giannettini, Stefano Delle Chiaie, Gianadelio Maletti, Sandro

Romagnoli, Giancarlo D’Ovidio, Guelfo Osmani, Michele Santoro, Licio Gelli, Roberto Palotto,

Angelo Izzo, Carlo Digilio, Franco Donati, Cinzia De Lorenzo and Ettore Malcangifor

involvement in Piazza Fontana massacre.

April — Fol owing the order for proceedings tabled by Judge Salvini,Grazia

Pradella and Massimo Meroni are appointed prosecution counsel. D’Ambrosio is to supervise

them.

1996

17 May — Romano Prodi forms a centre-left government including the PDS, PPI, RI, and UD, the

Greens and supported from without by the RDS. For the first time in post-war Italy (since the

governments in the immediate post-war years) the Democratic Left Party [PDS], formerly the PCI, is

in government.

1 August — Death of Federico Umberto D’Amato, former chief of theBureau of Confidential

Affairs at the Interior Ministry.

4 October — Acting on behalf of Judge Salvini, the expert Aldo Giannuli finds 150,000

uncatalogued Interior Ministry files in a cache on the Via Appia on the outskirts of Rome.

1997

22 January — Sofri, Pietrostefani and Bompressi are finally convicted of kil ing Calabresi (this is

their sixth trial) by the Court of Cassation and sentenced to 22 years in prison. Charges

against Marino are thrown out.

2000

5 October — The Court of Cassation throws out the application for a review of the trial that led

to Sofri, Pietrostefani and Bompressi being sentenced to 22 years in prison. It closes the

‘Sofri Case’ and marks the launch of a campaign for clemency.

11 March — Milan’s fifth court of assizes sentences Carlo Maria Maggi, Francesco Neami, Giorgio

Boffelli and Amos Spiazzi to life imprisonment for their part in the bomb attack at Police HQ in

Milan on17 May 1973. Gianadelio Maletti is sentenced to 15 years for destroying and concealing

evidence.

28 November — death of Gianfranco Bertoli.

2002

30 June — Milan’s second court of assizes sentences Delfo Zorzi,Carlo Maria

Maggi and Giancarlo Rognoni to life imprisonment for thePiazza Fontana massacre of 12

December 1969. Stefano Tringali is sentenced to three years for aiding and abetting. Pentito Carlo

Digilio receives a mandatory sentence.

7 July — death of Pietro Valpreda.

27 September — Appeal court Carlo Maria Maggi, Francesco Neami, Giorgio Boffelli and Amos

Spiazzi of the 17 May 1973 bomb attackon Milan police HQ. Gianadelio Maletti’s conviction is

overturned.

2003

11 July — The Court of Cassation reverses the acquittals of Carlo Maria Maggi, Francesco

Neami and Giorgio Boffelli, and orders a fresh appeal hearing in relation to the attack on Milan

police headquarters on 17 May 1973. Amos Spiazzi and Gianadelio Malettiare final y absolved

and acquitted.

2004

12 March — Milan court of appeal overturns the verdicts of 30 June 2001 which sentenced Delfo

Zorzi, Carlo Maria Maggi and Giancarlo Rognoni to life imprisonment for the Piazza Fontana

massacre. Now nobody is to blame for that massacre. Not even these three neo-nazi relics. Nobody

planted the bomb in the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura. We need scarcely be surprised. The

first verdict, back in 2001, came as a surprise, as did the first verdict in Catanzaro. The verdict of 23

February 1979 that — for that first crime — passed life sentences on Franco Freda, Giovanni

Ventura and Guido Giannettini. Those two verdicts were, in fact, an anomaly. If, as I believe I have

shown, Piazza Fontana was a state massacre, why on earth would the state want to sit in judgment

on itself? Let alone the actual perpetrators? The Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia

Nazionalemilitants were the witting-unwitting pawns in a game bigger the one that they were

playing. The neo-Nazis wanted to change the social and political order in order to introduce an

authoritarian, hierarchical regime that would make a clean sweep of “bourgeois democracy”,

whereas those in power wanted to cling to that power, not hand it over to the Left. It will be a topic of

conversation again in a few years, once nearly forty years have gone by since the massacre. By

then it wil be nothing but history. Revised and amended, in accordance with the dictates of the

revisionism that now rules the roost. However, the verdict from the Milan appeal court contains some

spectacular contradictions. First, there is the crude contradiction. At the first trial, Stefano

Tringali was sentenced to three years for aiding and abetting; now his sentence has been reduced

to one year. How can he stil be guilty of aiding and abetting when the main accused have been

acquitted? What aiding and abetting could he possibly have done if no crime was committed?

A mystery, one of the many mysteries created by the Italian judiciary. In essence, Milan’s magistrates

have declared that the pentito Carlo Digilio is an unreliable witness because he has repeatedly

contradicted himself and made mistakes. True he has made some — after suffering a stroke that has

left him somewhat impaired — whereas the other pentito, Martino Siciliano, is to be heeded, even

though he has supplied “hearsay” evidence which cannot be used for the purposes of trial. A pity no

notice was taken of the fact that the magistrate who laid the groundwork for this trial, Guido Salvini,

did not draw the line at the evidence laid by the pentiti but looked for — and found — specific

confirmation of what Digilio and Siciliano had been saying. It wasn’t enough that Zorzi (initial y

defended by Gaetano Pecorella, chairman of the Chamber of Deputies’ Justice Commission, a man

who also defended Silvio Berlusconi), had repeatedly threatened and pliedSiciliano with bundles

of cash to retract. Siciliano was, in fact, a “wavering” pentito, but in the end, in the courtroom, he

confirmed each of the charges. That was not enough. The acquittal of the trio underlines the old

formula of insufficient evidence — which formal y no longer obtains. The Milan judges then tacked on

this real “gem” in explaining the reasoning behind their acquittal verdict. Retracing the sequence of

the 1969 outrages, they concede that Giovanni Ventura and Franco Freda may wel have been

behind the Piazza Fontana bombing a nd not just the bomb attacks of 25 April in Milan and the train

bombings on 9 August, for which they had already been sentenced to 15 years. The last laugh came

in Milan. The two culprits identified by the Treviso investigating magistrate – Giancarlo Stiz (See

Chapter 15 – On the Trail of the Fascists) could be the real culprits even though there is

insufficient proof of their connections with the Ordine Nuovo group in Venezia-Mestre and Milan.

However, there is this smal detail: Freda andVentura were finally acquitted on 1 August 1985

and thus could not be charged with that offence.

Then (years ago) the upper echelons of the Italian state — the Christian Democrats and Social

Democrats, who for years have effectively been working in cahoots with the Italian and American

secret services (using rightwing extremists as their cohorts) in order to preserve the status quo in

Italy, even at the price of bombs and outrages — were dropped from the case. Pietro Valpreda died

on 7 July 2002. So many other protagonists are now dead too, and many of their confederates have

also left the stage. Developments in the case have been fol owed vaguely by leading newspapers,

and it was only the acquittal verdict that was given any real prominence. No one is to be guilty of the

“mother of all outrages”. That is how “reason of state” wants it to be. Luckily, there are some who

refuse to play bal . Every 12 December many thousands of 15-18 year old students demonstrate in

so many squares around Italy and in Milan, and the Milan procession ends in the Piazza Fontana.

That outrage remains an indictment of the criminality of the powers that be. What may be covered up

in the courtrooms is “fact” for many. Very many — that has to count for something.

VIDEO LINKS:

LA STORIA SIAMO NOI

1: Piazza Fontana

2: La Pista Anarchica

3: Ordine Nuovo

4: Servizio Secreto

5: The Trial

6: Report on Terrorism

7: The Strategy of Tension

8: Nucleo di Difesa di stato

9: The role of the United States

10: The Borghese Coup

11: The Death of Pinelli

12: The Death of Calabresi

13: Calabresi’s crimes

1

4: Calabresi – First Victim

15: Gladio

THE BLACK ORCHESTRA (1-9)

L’Orchestre Noir 1

L’Orchestre Noir 2-9

L’Orchestre Noir 3-9

L’Orchestre Noir 4-9

L’Orchestre Noir 5-9

L’Orchestre Noir 6-9

L’Orchestre Noir 7-9

L’Orchestre Noir 8-9

L’Orchestre Noir 9-9

GLADIO

Episode 1: The Ring Masters 1992

Episode 2: The Puppeteers 1992

Episode 3: Foot Soldiers 1992

DIARIO DI UN CRONISTA — TERRORISMO NERO

Diario di un cronista – Terrorismo nero – parte 1

Diario di un cronista – Terrorismo nero – parte 2

Diario di un cronista Terrorismo nero parte 3

PIAZZA FONTANA: Una strage lunga quarant’anni.

Parla Roberto Gargamelli 1/2.

Parla Francesco Piccioni. 2/2

Piazza Fontana – Strategia della tensione (magistrato Pietro Calogero sulla strage di Piazza Fontana 12 dicembre 1969)

ANNI SPIETATI

Anni spietati – Milano – prima parte (69)

A

nni spietati – Milano – seconda parte (72)

A

nni spietati – Milano – terza parte (75)

Tags25 April 1969, active misfortune, Adriano Sofri, Agent Zeta, Alberto Steccanella, Aldo Biotti, Aldo Giannuli, Aldo

Moro, Alianza Nazionale, Amos Spiazzi, Angelo Izzo,Angelo Piero Della Savia, Angelo Ventura, Antonio

Amati, Antonio Labruna, Antonio Massari, Banca Commerciale, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Banca Nazionale

dell’Agricoltura, Bianca Guidetti Serra, Bureau of Confidential Affairs, Carlo Digilio,Carlo Mainardi, Carlo Maria

Maggi, Cinzia De Lorenzo, Circolo 22 Marzo, Circolo Ponte della Ghisolfa, Claudio Mutti, Claudio Orsi, Cornelio

Rolandi, Corrado Carnevale, Corriere della Sera, Cristiano De Eccher, Ele Lovati Valpreda, Eliane Vincileone, Emilio

Alessandrini, Emilio Bagnoli, Emilio Colombo, Emilio Guicciardi,Enrico Berlinguer, Enrico Di Cola, Enzo

Santarelli, Ettore Malcangi, Federico Umberto D’Amato, Francesco Cossiga, Francesco De Min, Francesco

Neami, Franco Comacchio, Franco Donati, Franco Freda, Fronte Nazionale, Gaetano Tanzilli,General Saverio

Malizia, Gerardo D’Ambrosio, Giambattista Cannata, Gianadelio Maletti, Giancarlo D’Ovidio, Giancarlo

Marchesin, Giancarlo Rognoni, Giancarlo Stiz,Gianfranco Bertoli, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Giorgio Boffelli, Giorgio

Pietrostefani,Giorgio Zicari, Giovanni Caizzi, Giovanni Corradini, Giovanni Leone, Giovanni Spadolini, Giovanni

Ventura, Giulio Andreotti, Giuseppe Caracuta, Giuseppe Pinelli,Giuseppe Saragat, Grazia Pradella, Guelfo

Osmani, Guido Giannettini, Guido Lorenzon, Guido Salvini, historic compromise, Ida Zanon, Il Manifesto, Il Mondo, Il

Tempo, Inspector Luigi Calabresi, Italian Communist Party, Italicus train bombing, Ivo Della Savia, Judge

Biotti, Judge Orlando Falco, Licia Rognini, Licio Gelli, Lotta Continua, Luigi Ventura, Maddalena Valpreda, Marcello

Gentili, Marco Pozzan,Mariano Rumor, Mario Merlino, Mario Ricci, Mario Tanassi, Mario Zagari, Martino

Siciliano, Massimiliano Fachini, Massimo Meroni, Mauro Marzorati, Michele Lener,Michele Santoro, Nico

Azzi, Olimpia Torri Lovati, Ordine Nuovo, Ovidio Bompressi,P2 masonic lodge, Paolo Braschi, Paolo Faccioli, Paolo

Signorelli, Piazza della Loggia, Piazza Fontana, Piero Mucilli, Pietro Battiston, Pietro Calogero, Pietro Loredan, Pietro

Valpreda, Pino Rauti, Pio Baldelli, Prince Junio Valerio, Rachele Torri, Rinascita, Roberto Gargamelli, Roberto

Palotto, Ruggero Pan, Sandro Romagnoli, Savino Lograno, Sergio Calore, SID, Silvio Berlusconi, Southern Arrow

bombing, state massacre, Stefano delle Chiaie, Stefano Serpieri, Stefano Tringali,Tito Pulsinelli, Udo Lemke, Unified

Socialist Party (PSU), United Antifascist Committee, Valpreda law

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 20 : YEAR ZERO

January 29, 2012 //

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Judge Francesco Morel i

Rome, 3 May 2005. In a monotonous drone, in the courthouse in the Piazzale Clodio, the chairman

of the second criminal section of theCourt of Cassation (Supreme Court), Francesco Morelli, reads out a historic verdict: and turns down the appeals against the verdicts brought in by the

Appeal Court in relation to the Piazza Fontana massacre. Acquittals al round, the TV and newspaper headlines read. In fact, the Court of Cassation endorsed the verdicts acquitting Carlo

Maria Maggi, Giancarlo Rognoni and Delfo Zorzi, all three of them characters (and, at the time,

members of the neo-Nazi Ordine Nuovo organisation) in the never-ending story that began on the afternoon of 12 December 1969. A historic verdict in two senses: because that massacre was carried

out thirty six years earlier and because it rings down the curtain on an affair that has (by altering it)

written Italy’s history in the blood of its sixteen dead (to which number must be added one more who

passed away years later as a result of injuries received) and the almost one hundred injured (the

eighty-six official y recorded, plus another ten or so who opted to leave the Banca Nazionale

del ’Agricoltura and seek treatment elsewhere).

The “State massacre” has reached the end of the line. From now on no magistrate is going to dare

delve any further into that undergrowth. Back in 1989, Milan’s investigating magistrate Guido

Sa

lvini took us to task for lifting the lid off that “state mystery”. That year he inherited a very superficial investigation into rightwing subversion from within ( eversione). He probed. Questioned.

Listened. Ordered inspections of the records of the police, study centres and state administrations.

Singling out individuals who up until that point had never been mentioned in investigations into the

12 December 1969 outrage. An unprecedented and yet at the same time tired old vista took shape.

A gang from the Venezia-Mestre Ordine Nuovo, headed by Zorzi, and with Carlo Digilio serving serving as its “quartermaster” (under the supervision of Maggi), can be linked to the activities of

another, Padua-based neo-Nazi group, the gang of Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura. A body blow! Yes, because Freda and Ventura were acquitted back in 1985 and again in 1987 of al charges

relating to the Piazza Fontana but given fifteen year terms for two attacks (on 25 April in Milan and

the train bombings of 9 August) that amounted to “dummy runs” for the 12 December bombing.

Acquitted in those two verdicts, Freda and Ventura, together with SIDinformant Guido Giannettini,

were nevertheless sentenced on 23 February 19790 by the Court of Assizes in Catanzaro to life

imprisonment for the Piazza Fontana outrage. A body blow, then. Pigeons coming home to roost.

Investigations by a Treviso magistrate, Giancarlo Stiz, had, way back in the early 70s, identified those truly responsible for the massacre. Making nonsense of the charges framed by two Rome

magistrates – Vittorio Occorsio and Ernesto Cudillo – who were “resolutely convinced” that the outrage had been carried out by Pietro Valpreda, an anarchist, and a dancer to boot. The perfect culprit.

At which point, on foot of the Salvini inquiry, they had merely to proceed to trial and, the trail of

evidence gathered from confessions obtained could not have helped but lead to conviction of the

neo-Nazis and the placing of a legal seal in the hal s of justice upon what many people – so very

many people – already knew.

In fact, on 30 June 2001, the Milan Court of Assizes, chaired by Luigi Martino, passed life

sentences on Maggi, Rognoni and Zorzi, plus a three year term for Stefano Tringali for aiding and

abetting Zorzi.

But there is a but. The judges of lower court convicted them in spite of prosecuting attorneys Grazia

Pradella and Massimo Meroni. Put simply, the pair of them were il -prepared for trials of such

intricacy: nothing more was to e heard from them and they returned to the limbo from which they had

been sourced. It looks as it Pradel a and Meroni were chosen in order to hobble the Salvini

investigation. In which they were successful.

On 12 March 2004 the Milan Court of Appeal in fact acquitted Maggi, Rognoni and Zorzi. With this

curious footnote: it slashed Tringali’s sentence from three years to one year, he having been found

guilty of aiding and abetting Zorzi. A detail that only some “hair-splitting” jurist could explain, logic

dictating that where there was no offence committed there could not have been any aiding and

abetting.

In essence, the judges in Milan held that the pentito Carlo Digilio(whose role as pentito earned him

immunity from prosecution for his activities as quartermaster to the Venezia-Meste Ordine Nuovo

group) is an unreliable witness in that he repeatedly contradicted himself and made mistakes. True,

he made them after having suffered a stroke that left him somewhat impaired (albeit that his medical

reports, which were not taken under consideration, insisted that he was ful y in control of his mental

faculties). The other pentito, Martino Siciliano, on the other hand, is a credible witness but offers

“hearsay” evidence unusable in a trial context. It was not enough that Zorzi (a very wealthy clothing

industrialist-turned-Japanese citizen whose initial defence counsel wasGaetano Pecorella, a deputy

for Forza Italia and subsequently for the PDL, a man who was also defence counsel to Silvio Berlusconi), had repeatedly threatened Siciliano and offered him loads of money to get him to

retract. And, to be sure, Siciliano has been a “wobbly” pentito but, in he end, inside the courtroom,

he has stood by all of his accusations. Not enough. The acquittal of the trio hammered home the old

formula about insufficiency of the evidence, a formula that has now been formal y done away with.

The Milan judges then tossed in a real “gem” by way of a grounding for their acquittal decision.

Reconstructing the sequence of attacks in 1969, they acknowledged that Giovanni

Ventura and Franco Freda were responsible for the Piazza Fontana and not just for the bombings

in Milan on 25 April and the 9 August 1969 train bombings: “The acquittal of Freda and Ventura is a

mistake, the result of a state of familiarity with the facts superseded by the matters adduced in this

trial.”

In short, the ultimate hoax was mounted in Milan. The two culprits singled out by Stiz (see  Chapter

XVI

:  On the Trail of the Fascists) are supposedly the people responsible for the massacre, but, as to their relations with the Ordine Nuovo members from Venezia-Mestre and Milan, there is

insufficient proof. Also closing off any involvement byStefano Delle Chiaie, the then leader of Avanguardia Nazionale in Rome, which is to say, of the group that provided the logistical back-up (and not just logistical back-up) for the bombings on 12 December 1969, of the Cenotaph (four

dead) and the Banca Nazionale el Lavoro in the Via Veneto (fourteen dead). After years as a fugitive

from justice, Del e Chiaie returned to Italy and was final y acquitted in 1991.

Then again (many a long year ago) the upper reaches of the Italian state … those Christian

Democrats and Social Democrats who effectively acted in cahoots with the Italian and US secret

services (and with rightwing extremist henchmen) .., in order to uphold the status quo in Italy, bombs

and massacres or no bombs and massacres, have final y been cleared.

What both the right and (albeit for different reasons) the left want is for us al to forget or to be left

bewildered. Through a strategy mounted on the basis of reports from the Massacres Commission

released towards the end of 2000. First came the report from the DS (Democratic

Left)parliamentary group. A reading (or re-reading) of the years of the bombings, outrages and coup

attempts. The DS has come up with what seems at first glance to be a reconstruction sufficiently

under-pinned by facts and verdicts and scrutiny. The upshot is that the spotlight focuses on the role

of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organisations, on the protection they enjoyed from the machinery of

state, the courts, the secret services and on the prominent role played by the CIA and NATO secret

services. The novelty in all this was the spotless image that the Italian Communist Party (PCI)

donned in the 60s and 70s: the party of Luigi Longo andEnrico Berlinguer is depicted as the great stalwart, standing by democracy in Italy. In short, the highest self-praise.

Then came the retort from the parliamentarians Alfredo Mantica andV

incenzo Fragalà back in the

days of Alleanza Nazionale. In two brief but fantastic reports they turned the spotlight back on to the anarchists. “In the investigation into the Piazza Fontana there was more and worse to come: any

clue that might have pointed to the anarchist line of inquiry was simply ignored.” According to

Mantica and Fragalà, in fact, the real culprit behind the 12 December 1969 massacre in Milan was

Pietro Valpreda. And Giuseppe Pinelli, entangled in the matter (and maybe even a police informer) supposedly took his own life after the screws were put on him. Furthermore, in relation to bombs, the

Milan anarchists allegedly had a history which, they argue, reaches right back into the early 1960s. It

is therefore only reasonable that those responsible for the strategy of tension should be sought in

those quarters. Al under the aegis of the Soviet secret service: the KGB.

A cack-handed gambit, not even seriously documented and replete with contradictory inferences, but

which has a specific political purpose: to show that the history of those years is open to diametrical y

opposite interpretations. And if none of them is wrong, then none of them is right. Better therefore to

let it go and resort to the all too Italian practice of starting with a clean slate.

The aim was clear: to wind up the Massacres Commission following the 2001 elections (in which the

centre-right were the victors). Thereby conceding that the 1960s and 1970s had been dire. But now

we need to leave them behind and send everybody home again, al blameless.

That past is a hot potato for both political camps. The right is involved in it up to its neck, so much so

that it wiped its hands of an electoral pact with Pino Rauti and his MSI-Fiamma tricolore. He would have proved an unduly uneasy al y on account of his having been heavily involved in the era of

outrages: Ordine Nuovo, of which Rauti was the leader back then, was in many instances the sword

arm of that strategy. To say nothing of Giorgio Almirante’s M

ovimento Sociale and their dal iances

with black terrorism. And the Gianfranco Fini who was Almirante’s ultra-loyal young admirer back then, would have us forget his past. In 2005, in fact, the Al eanza Nazionale rebranded itself as the

“democratic right”. So extremist posturing has to be left behind. Hence the centre right’s need to lay

to rest an uncomfortable and decidedly unpalatable past.

In a way it is a similar story with the centre-left, especial y its main component part, the DS

(Democratic Left, these days known as the PD, Democratic Party). Its fore-runner, the PCI, used (to

adopt a more schematic viewpoint) the facts about the state massacre (which it knew) to boost its

own own access to power. In practice, it put a price on its silence. How? By putting the squeeze on

the Christian Democrats, a huge political melting-pot wherein pro-coup elements lived cheek by jowl

with “democratically more presentable” personnel. The famous tactic of “I am in the know but I’ll say

nothing if we can come to some arrangement”. A tactic that also prospered in part because – in the

PSDI {Italian Social Democratic Party) – the Christian Democrats had an al y committed to drawing

a veil over the role of the US secret services. The “American party” operating in the Italy of the

1960s and 1970s (it being no accident that it came into being in 1947 with substantial funding from

the CIA via the AFL-CIO union conduit).

Again in 2000, there were other magistrates on the same wave-length. Libero Mancuso, a public prosecutor in Bologna, was something of a prophet: in fact he argued that dwel ing on the Piazza

Fontana amounted to indulgence in “judicial archaeology” in that nothing would ever come of it.

It was no coincidence that Judge Salvini was forced to defend himself against charges level ed by

fel ow magistrates, especial y by his Venetian col eague Felice Casson, with help from the reporter Giorgio Cecchetti from La Nuova Venezia and La Repubblica, the source of a number of

scoops relating to news that was stil top secret. In the end, Salvini was cleared both by the Higher

Bench Council and by the Court of Cassation. He had been charged with “contextual compatibility”

(i.e. the charge was that he ought never to have worked for the court in Milan and with violating the

obligations of the bench (having used SISMIagents to unearth information about Martino Siciliano).

The entire affair throwing up a far from irrelevant issue: anybody who looks into the Piazza Fontana

and raises questions about the “official version” is an irritant.

In 2000, in September to be exact, senator-for-life Paolo Emilio Tavianimade significant statements fol owing those he made in 1997 to the Massacres Commission. In May 1974, he had been Interior

minister and it was Taviani, no less, who dismantled Federico Umberto D’Amato’s Confidential Affairs Bureau (Ufficio Affari Riservati). This was a significant move, for D’Amato had been one of the leading elements directing inquiries away from rightwing subversives and the 12 December

massacre (not only that, but he was indeed the puppet-master of certain schemes). The senator-for-

life told members of the carabinieri ROS that he had learned in 1974 that the bomb planted in Milan

had not been meant to claim any lives and that a SID agent, Rome lawyer Mateo Fusco di Ravello,

had been on the brink of leaving Fiumicino airport for Milan with the mission of preventing the

attacks. He was about to board his plane when he heard that the bomb had already gone off.

Fusco’s daughter Anna (Fusco died in 1985) confirms that her father had long been working for

the SIFAR and then for the SID and that he had, on several occasions, spoken to his daughter about the abortive attempt to prevent the Piazza Fontana massacre. Which is yet another morsel showing

how the most mportant state agencies were au fait with the planning of the attacks and had tried

only at the eleventh hour to soften their impact. In that regard Fusco, whose daughter has stated that

he was very close to Rauti, was one high level contact between the military and the secret services

and Ordine Nuovo. But Taviani did not stop there. He said that among the institutional officials

actively shifting the blame towards the left was an officer in Padua, Manlio Del Gaudio. And who might this gentleman be? Why, Lieutenant-Colonel Del Gaudio, the then commander of the Padua

carabinieri, allegedly the serviceman to whom the SID’s GeneralG

ianadelio Maletti entrusted the

task in 1975 of “shutting off the Turkish tap”, i.e. source Gianni Casalini, an Ordine Nuovo member and SID informant who intended to “unburden his conscience” and lift the lid on everything he knew

about the group’s responsibilities in relation to the train bombings of 8 and 9 August 1969. But the

Milian Assize Court refused to listen to Taviani in April 2001 (Taviani then died on 17 June) or Fusco

di Ravello. How come? Their evidence had surfaced at a point when the proceedings were close to

a conclusion: and anyway, it was not regarded as “absolutely necessary”. Just one of many things

that highlight the state provenance of the many outrages that punctuated the 60s and 70s. And many

another could be mentioned. Al pointing in the same direction.

http://espresso.repubblica.it/multimedia/24226612/1/2

Nowadays the climate is better suited to letting an issue as bothersome as the Piazza Fontana fade

into oblivion. Pietro Valpreda died on 7 July 2002. So many of the other protagonists are also dead,

just as so many of their confederates have also left the stage. And the verdict handed down by the

Court of Cassation has set the seal on a de facto situation: no one is to be held to blame for that

slaughter.

So how did this tangled tale, starting with anarchists only to arrive at Nazifascists, Italian and

American secret services, and now closed up with “acquittals al round” al begin? Plainly, we need to

turn back to that notorious 12 December 1969.

NOTE: List of fascists who travelled to Greece as guests of the Greek Junta’s secret services

TagsAlfredo Mantica, Alleanza Nazionale, Carlo Digilio, Carlo Maria Maggi, Delfo Zorzi,Ernesto Cudillo, Federico

Umberto D’Amato, Felice Casson, Forza Italia, Franco Freda, Gaetano Pecorella, Gianadelio Maletti, Giancarlo

Rognoni, Giancarlo Stiz,Gianfranco Fini, Gianni Casalini, Giorgio Almirante, Giovanni Ventura, Grazia Pradella, Guido

Giannettini, Guido Salvini, Libero Mancuso, Manlio Del Gaudio,Martino Siciliano, Massimo Meroni, Ordine

Nuovo, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Piazza Fontana massacre, Pietro Valpreda, SID, SIFAR, SISMI, Stefano Delle Chiaie.

Avanguardia Nazionale, Vincenzo Fragalà, Vittorio Occorsio

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 19: State Massacre

January 16, 2012 //

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On 5 December 1969 the Piazza del Duomo was packed with left-wingers, rather than the expected fascists

Mariano Rumor wasted no time. The day after the bombings of 12 December 1969, the prime minister cal ed a meeting of the secretaries of the Christian Democrats, the Socialist Party, the

Unified Socialist Party (the name used by the social democrats after the socialist split on 2 July

1969) and Republican Party. His aim was to rebuild a four-party coalition cabinet.

It was to take them over three months to come up with a new government line-up. The overall

impression was that although the socio-political situation might be dramatic, in the palaces of Rome

they were stil using the same old alchemy in the allocation of ministerial portfolios likely to assuage

the various political camps.

Mauro Ferri and Mario Tanassi, the two leaders of the new social democratic party, were behind a strong government that — riding the wave of emotion triggered by the bombs — sought to impose

an authoritarian stamp on the country. They spoke for that “American party” (as it was known) which

vehemently opposed Italy’s progressive drift leftwards.

Rumor’s real intention was to establish a centre government ofChristian Democrats and the Unified Socialist Party that would crown, at policy level, the strategy that had led to the Piazza Fontana carnage. But the enormous turnout of trade unionists and left-wingers at the funerals in

Milan forced him to think again.

The situation that had developed since 1968 was worrying to broad sections of the middle and

entrepreneurial classes. First the student unrest and then the labour unrest had fuelled their

paranoia about the “red menace”. The traditional unions had for many months been unsuccessful at

keeping their members’ struggles within the parameters of the usual demands. So much so that on 3

July 1969 a general strike cal ed to press for a rent freeze witnessed the FIAT workers in Turin’sMirafiori plant chanting an ironic slogan that had a threatening ring as far as the ruling class

was concerned: “What do we want? Everything! ”

Striking workers at the FIAT Mirafiori plant (1969)

That slogan had immediately taken off. Soon it was being chanted with growing insistence on

marches. And in fact 1969 recorded 300,000 hours lost to strikes as compared with the 116,000

average for the 1960s. Labour costs were on the rise, from 15.8 per cent (or 19.8 per cent in

industry), increasing the wages component of the gross national product from 56.7 up to 59 per cent.

A discernible shift in earnings was under way. A threat to the privileged classes of society and to

those who only a few short years before had been the beneficiaries of the “economic miracle”.

A seemingly pre-revolutionary situation existed in the country. Even though the revolution for which

most students and a segment of the workers yearned for was not merely a distant prospect, but a

practical impossibility, but what did that matter? Many honestly believed it was just around the

corner, and many more were afraid that that was the case.

Even though the advocates of the radical transformation of society were a tiny minority compared

with the total population, the nation’s political axis was shifting to the left. Although harshly criticised

by the extremist fringe, the Communist Party was preparing to expand into new areas. Caught on

the hop by the student demonstrations at the start of 1968, the Communist Party leaders from the

Via Botteghe Oscure quickly deployed to make up the lost ground, especial y in the field of

institutional politics — parliament. So much so that on 28 April 1969 the debate began on disarming

the Italian police in an attempt to turn them into British “bobbies”. It only took the bombs in Milan

on 25 April to consign that scheme to utopia.

The strategy of tension was under way. This phase involved a revamping and synthesis of what

had already been devised in theory and put into practice since the mid-1960s by leaders of the far-

right and important elements in the armed forces. Italian Nazis and fascists were eager to eradicate

the “communist contagion” and in this they were aided, abetted, monitored and, ultimately, directed

by the Italian andAmerican secret services.

The CIA had been operating in Italy since the end of World War Two. In 1947 it had funded —

through the AFL-CIO — the breakaway socialist party led by Giuseppe Saragat and helped by anti-Stalinist revolutionaries, the Iniziativa Socialista, led by Mario Zagari. Apart from the ideological motives that drove Saragat and Zagari, the CIA’s dollars successful y undermined the Popular Front

and facilitated the victory of the Christian Democrats on 18 April 1948 when they took 48.5 per cent

of the votes and won an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

That victory had almost been written off. On 20 March 1948, George Marshall, the US Secretary of State, had warned Italians that in the event of a communist victory al US aid to Italy would dry up. In

1969 the CIA found its activities facilitated — the Italian president, Saragat, was a man who owed

them a favour.

April 21, 1967: The Greek Colonels launch their US-led coup d'état

The CIA had one great foe — communism, just as the KGB used every method available to it to

combat the West. But whereas in the Third World the two agencies fought on almost equal terms —

with the KGB having the edge — in the west the CIA brooked no interference. So much so that in

1967 it came up with a bril iant resolution to the Greek crisis by instal ing its own man, George

Papadopoulos in power by means of a coup d’état. From this point on the “coup-makers” held the upper hand in the Agency in Europe — and would continue to do so right up until the mid-1970s.

After Greece it was Italy’s turn and within the US-dependent SID the coup-maker faction was in the

ascendant. From 1966 — the year he took office — Admiral Eugenio Henke led the SID and D

Bureau was headed by Federico Gasca Queirazza, one of those who had been briefed in 1966 by

agent Guido Giannettini on what the Venetian NazisFranco Freda, Giovanni Ventura and Delfo

Zorzi were planning.

Gasca Queirazza passed this information on to his superior, Henke, who in turn forwarded the

information to Interior Minister Franco Restivo. Did Restivo pass on this information to his party col eague and prime minister, Mariano Rumor? No? That takes some swallowing, if only because

the repeated unbelievable attacks of amnesia suffered by Rumor during the first trial in Catanzaro

provoked such hilarity, in spite of the dramatic setting.

When Vito Miceli took over from Henke in 1970, the coup-maker faction was no longer simply

diligently coordinating the attacks mounted by the far-right, it had taken the initiative as a direct

organiser and Junio Valerio ’s coup attempt was part and parcel of this new dynamic. Miceli was also

to stand trial for this later, but, as ever, nothing came of it.

When they struck on the night of 7 December 1970’s men were not nostalgic old codgers. They had

substantial cover and assistance. Miceli briefed Defence Minister Tanassi on what was happening,

as did the chief of staff, Enzo Marchesi. In fact, Restivo knew everything even before the plotters held part of his ministry for a few hours. But when questioned in parliament on 18 March 1971, after

the news had broken, Restivo denied everything. Natural y.

The history of the coup in Italy remains unfinished business, as is the case of Piazza Fontana.

History repeated itself in April 1973 with theRosa dei Venti conspiracy, which involved even greater

heavyweights who were much better prepared than Borghese had been — officers such as  Colonel

Amos Spiazzi (who had been around the block earlier, on 7 December 1970).

The man who oversaw this proliferation of attacks and coup preparations was a leading engineer by

the name of Hung Fendwichwhose office was based in Rome’s Via Tiburtina. But it was not located in the sort of secret lair that one might imagine; it was in the offices of theSelenia Company, part of

the STET-IRI group, for which he worked.

Fendwich was the typical eminence grise who studied and refined plans, drew up analyses of the socioeconomic and political situation, but left the operational work — the “dirty work” — to men of

more modest rank, men such as  Captain David Carrett attached to the FTASE base(NATO

command in Verona from 1969 to 1974), or his successor (up until 1978), Captain Theodore

Richard based in Vicenza.

Sergio Minetto, one of the CIA’s top Italian informants, led these men. Minetto was the man to whom Carlo Digilio, their plant inside theOrdine Nuovo group in Venice, would have been reporting. As an operator it was he who prepared the explosives and trained Delfo

Zorziand Giovanni Ventura in the group’s powder magazine — an isolated house in the Paese

district near Treviso.

The bomb attacks that erupted in Italy between 1969 and the mid-1970s (although they continued

after that date) were regarded as overtures to a coup d’état. Indeed, although the coup never

happened, it was always in the air and indeed had a precise function. It sent out a clear and

menacing message to the opposition — i.e. the Communist Party.

But it was no coincidence that following the coup in Chile in September 1973 — which brought the

number of military regimes around the globe to 47 — PCI secretary Enrico Berlinguer floated the idea (from the columns of the review  Rinascita) of an “historic compromise” — i.e. for a government agreement between the Christian Democrats, the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist

Party. But it was to take another 23 years before the Democratic Left Party, the PCI’s heir, entered

the government as part of a centre-left coalition.

The bombings crystal ised the institutional political situation and in response the left presented the

prospect of armed struggle. The ongoing outrages and the threat of a coup, among other things,

drove many extra-parliamentary militants underground, including people such as the

publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.

All this gave rise to a vicious circle, which, to some extent, served as an a posteriori excuse for the

theory of “opposing extremisms’. The only hope was to trust whoever was in power at the time —

that is, the men who were rubber-stamping and providing the cover for what the Interior

Ministry’s Bureau of Confidential Affairs and the SID were doing under instruction from the CIA.

From the ministers came the directives and the secret services carried them out — and added more than a little initiative in the process. It was no coincidence in 1974, when SID officers

brought Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti (in the fifth Rumor government) the recordings made

by Captain Antonio Labruna with industrialist Remo Orlandini, a man who had been caught up in

the coup attempt. Andreotti’s advice was that they “do a bit of pruning”. Translation? Purge the tapes

of the most important names, which is to say the names of high-ranking military personnel implicated

in the failed coup attempt.

This behaviour was similar to that of his predecessor, Mario Tanassi(defence minister with the fourth Rumor government). In the summer of 1974  Judge Giovanni Tamburino asked the SID for information about the pro-coup activities of  General Ugo Ricci whom he considered one of the men behind the Rosa dei Venti. The SID, who knew al about Ricci’s activities, reported that the general was a man of unshakable democratic beliefs. But before forwarding that report the SID chief

forwarded the judge’s request to Tanassi who returned it with the annotation: “Always say as little as

possible.”

The practice of saying nothing or tel ing lies continued through the years. On 13 October 1985 the

weekly Panorama published extracts from a document by Bettino Craxi, the prime minister, inviting the men of the secret services “to abide by a policy of noncooperation” with the magistrates

questioning him.

Craxi never denied the veracity of that report. How could he? But he did bring pressures to bear on

the judges to ignore it. So the politicians knew al about the secret service plots — and were often

the prime movers behind it. They knew that the fascists were being used to further the strategy of

tension and they were either jointly responsible for this or direct promoters of it, like Restivo.

So there was raison d’état behind the 12 December 1969 bombs — a matter of opting for terrorism

as a means of holding on to power.

“12 December 1969 signal ed a watershed in the history of the republic, in the history of the left, in

the history of movements […] because in effect on that date, along with 16 ordinary individuals there

perished a significant portion of the first republic — a substantial portion of the machinery of state

consciously plumped for illegality. It set itself up as a criminal power while continuing to man

essential institutions and was permitted to do so (the ‘State servants’, policemen, judges, secret

agents, politicians, secretaries, ministers, pen-pushers and henchmen who cooperated in the

implementation of this crime and its cover-up by the laying of false trails, obstruction and ensuring

the crime remained unpunished are numbered in the thousands). Since then, Italy has ceased to

represent a constitutional democracy in the fullest sense”, wrote the political scientist Marco

Revelli in his book Le due destre.

That political analysis is borne out and documented in the investigation carried out by Judge Guido

Salvini: ” The protection afforded members of the Venice cel […] was absolutely vital, insofar as the

caving-in of even one of the accused would have led the investigators, level after level, right to the

highest powers who had made the operation on 12 December feasible, and the repercussions from

that might wel have proved incompatible with the maintenance of the country’s political status qu o.”

Such widespread col usion also raises doubts. How much did the main opposition party —

the Italian Communist Party, now the Democratic Left Party — know about the Piazza Fontana

massacre? A lot, to be sure. But how much? And to what extent did the fear of bombs and coup

d’états taint the PCI’s positions? To what extent was it induced by such fear to propose its historic

compromise and then embrace coexistence? The answer to that can be found only in the archives in

the Via Botteghe Oscure, which are as impenetrable as the Vatican’s.

But we can offer one answer, an answer which — given the guilt that lies at the highest levels — can

only be that the massacre of Piazza Fontana was a State massacre. And the State was, moreover,

the mother of al the massacres.

Tags7 December 1970, Admiral Eugenio Henke, AFL-CIO, Bettino Craxi, Bureau of Confidential Affairs, Captain

Antonio Labruna, Captain David Carrett, Captain Theodore Richard, Carlo Digilio, Christian Democrats, CIA, Colonel

Amos Spiazzi, D Bureau, Delfo Zorzi, Enrico Berlinguer, Enzo Marchesi, Federico Gasca Queirazza,Franco

Freda, Franco Restivo, FTASE base, General Ugo Ricci, General Vito Miceli,George Marshall, George

Papadopoulos, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Giovanni Ventura,Giulio Andreotti, Giuseppe Saragat, Guido

Giannettin, Hung Fendwich, Iniziativa Socialista, Italian Communist Party, Judge Giovanni Tamburino, Judge Guido

Salvini,Junio Valerio Borghese, KGB, Marco Revelli, Mariano Rumor, Mario Tanassi, Mario Zagari, Mauro

Ferri, Mirafiori plant, Piazza Fontana massacre, Remo Orlandini,Rinascita, Rosa dei Venti conspiracy, Selenia

Company, Sergio Minetto, SID, STET-IRI group, Strategy of Tension, Unified Socialist Party

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 18: The Carnevale

Verdict

January 15, 2012 //

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Rome, Feb 1972: Pietro Valpreda, Roberto Gargamel i and Emilio Bagnoli — and nine others (Piazza Fontana trial presided

over by judge Orlando Falco)

The proceedings had been under way for only a few days before everything ground to a halt. The

scene was the Court of Assizes in Rome and the trial, which opened on 23 February 1972, was that

of the anarchists from the Circolo 22 Marzo, of Pietro Valpreda’s relations and, in his absence, the

Nazi-fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie for giving perjured evidence on Mario Merlino’s behalf.

But the judges, however, soon realised that the matter was not within their competence. Prompted

by some of the anarchists’ defence lawyers — Francesco Piscopo, Giuliano Spazzali, Placido La

Torre andRocco Ventre — court president Orlando Falco chose to rid himself of what had become a hot potato of a trial. Even the public prosecutorVittorio Occorsio tried to pin the shortcomings and partiality of the investigation on his col eague, examining magistrate Ernesto Cudillo.

It was as though he wanted it forgotten that he had launched the investigations. It was he who had

arranged the identification by taxi-driver Cornelio Rolandi. Again, it was he who — in the indictment presented to the courts, as if to salvage the only piece of evidence on which he had built his

indictment — had denied the glaringly obvious.

Occorsio wrote:

“What Rolandi claimed in the preliminary section of the identification document — ‘I was shown by

the carabinieri in Milan a photograph that I was told must the person whom I should recognise’ —

should be taken to mean that when Rolandi was shown Valpreda’s photograph at police

headquarters, the taxi driver was asked to identify him — yes or no, of course — as the person he

had carried in his taxi. Any inference in this connection regarding supposed and implicit solicitation

of positive recognition is quite gratuitous.” And in order to hammer home this convoluted reasoning,

he concluded: “Indeed if the word ‘should’ was used, the obligation implicit in that very term refers to

the judicial burden of the act of identification rather to the results thereof.”

Faced with such untenable positions the Court in Rome switched everything to Milan on 6 March.

The trial had returned, as judicial logic would have it, to the city where the massacre had occurred.

But Milan prosecutor-general, Enrico De Peppo, was not having that. According to him, Milan could

not offer the necessary neutrality in which to debate a matter of such delicacy. Furthermore —

according to De Peppo — the city was virtual y under the control of extra-parliamentary leftists eager

to mount actions “designed to demonstrate — regardless of due process — the al eged innocence of

Valpreda and the other co-accused.” Actions that might provoke a response from the far right. He

applied to the Court of Cassation to have the case relocated again, and on 13 October the case was

placed under the jurisdiction of the Catanzaro Court of Assizes.

But it did not begin immediately. It was not until 27 January 1975 that proceedings opened,

proceedings that would find the anarchists —Pietro Valpreda, Emilio Bagnoli, Emilio, Roberto

Gargamelli, Ivo Della Savia and Enrici Di Cola; Valpreda’s relations — Maddalena Valpreda, Ele

Lovati, Rachele Torri and Olimpia Torri — in the dock beside the indescribable Mario Merlino, the

Nazi-fascists: Franco Freda, Giovanni Ventura, Stefano Delle Chiaie, Marco Pozzan andPiero

Loredan di Volpato del Montello; fascists working for the secret services: Guido

Giannettini and Stefano Serpieri, and SID officers:Gianadelio Maletti, Antonio

Labruna and Gaetano Tanzilli.

Emilio Alessandrini (Milan magistrate)

Why this motley crew? The Catanzaro court combined two trials that led to irreconcilable results —

the investigation byOccorsio and Cudillo and the later investigation by Milanese

magistrates Gerard D’Ambrosioand Emilio Alessandrini. The latter case also relied on inquiries

conducted by magistrates in Treviso and Padua and elsewhere — inquiries that had brought to light

the part played by the fascists and secret services in the bombing strategy.

The first verdict was returned on23 February 1979, nearly ten years after the attacks. Three life

sentences — for Freda, Ventura and Giannettini, for the massacre and outrages. But Giannettini

was the only one in court: Freda was on the run in Costa Rica and Ventura in Argentina. Maletti was

sentenced to four years for procuring perjured testimony and Labruna and Tanzillieach got two

years. Valpreda and Gargamelli were cleared of massacre, on grounds of insufficient evidence and

convicted on the count of criminal conspiracy. Valpreda was sentenced to four years and six months

and Gargamelli one year and six months. Bagnoli was given a two year suspended sentence for

criminal conspiracy; Merlino was cleared on grounds of insufficient evidence, but got four years and

six months for criminal conspiracy.

Rome, 29 December 1972: Roberto Gargamel i

The treatment doled out to Valpreda’s relations— who had supported the anarchist’s alibi — was

somewhat ambiguous and the perjury charge was thrown out. The same line was taken with Delle

Chiaie. And what ofElena Segre, Valpreda’s friend, who had also confirmed the anarchist’s alibi?

She had vanished from the records. Another mystery.

The findings handed down in Catanzaro amounted to a contradictory sentence: it recognised the

guilt of Freda, Ventura and Giannettini, but was stil partly rooted in the case prepared by Judges

Occorsio andCudillo — hence the decision to dismiss the case against the anarchists and

conspiracy convictions on the basis of insufficient evidence.

But something else cast an ambiguous light on the verdict. Faced with reticence on the part of some

of the VIP witnesses, the judges in Catanzaro opted not to take action themselves, and referred the

trial records relating to ex-premiers G

iulio Andreotti and Mariano Rumor, and former ministers Mario Tanassi (Defence) and Mario Zagari(Justice) back to Milan. The judges did, however, have grounds for pride in the contradictions into which  General Saverio Malizia, Tanassi’s legal adviser, blundered and had him arrested in the courtroom. He was tried immediately and

sentenced to one year, but was soon released. This was followed by the usual outcome — the Court

of Cassation annul ed the trial and referred the case to the Court of Assizes in Potenza who

cleared Malizia on al counts on 30 July 1980.

To the aid of the politicians came the judge from Milan, Luigi Fenizio (to whom the investigation had

passed when Alessandrini was kil ed by members of the underground Prima Linea

organisation on 29 January 1979) who forwarded an order declaring their innocence to the parliamentary commission of inquiry. On 24 August 1981 the commission closed the file on the

accusations against Andreotti, Rumor, Tanassi and Zagari and al four politicians were dropped

from the investigation.

But the real sensation came at the appeal hearing when, on 20 March 1981, the Catanzaro court

cleared the fascists and the anarchists on the count of massacre. So now no one was to blame for

the Piazza Fontana. Freda and Ventura were sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to subvert and

for the bomb attacks of 25 April 1969 and 9 August 1969. In effect, the judges unpicked the logical

continuity — underpinned by the evidence — which linked the three main 1969 attacks. They

absolved Giannettini on grounds of insufficient evidence and reduced the sentences passed

on Maletti and Labruna.

The court of Cassation had this in mind when, on 10 June 1982, it entrusted a second appeal to

Bari, to put paid once and for all to the proceedings against Giannettini, who was able to announce:

“The implication of myself was prompted by political motives. The intention was to strike at the SID

through me.”

The same ritual was played out in the appeal court in Bari (Puglia) — with one outstanding

difference: the prosecutor, Umberto Toscani, asked that Valpreda be found not guilty. But the

judges chose to stick with tradition: doubt should serve the fascists as wel as the anarchists.

Meanwhile, they reduced Maletti’s sentence — who was on the run in South Africa — to one year,

and that of Labruna to ten months.

With that verdict on 1 August 1985 the curtain was to be brought down on the Piazza Fontana

massacre. The final act came in the Court of Cassation in Rome, which rejected every application

for a new trial (the Cassation was in fact the central prop of this courtroom farce). It was the highest

levels of the judiciary that had taken the initial investigation away from Milan and entrusted them to

Rome. They were the ones who had argued that Milan was ungovernable and that the trial should be

heard in Catanzaro. They had also conjoined the cases against the anarchists and the fascists.

On 27 January 1987, the first section of the Court of Cassation put paid to a trial that had spread out

to occupy time and space. It was Judge Corrado Carnevale (who was later to earn fame as the

“verdict-quashing judge”) who was in charge of the most important section of the Court of Cassation

and who distinguished himself as the “king of the nit-pickers”, who put Mafiosi, terrorists and

bankrupts back on the streets.

Judge Corrado Carnevale

Mario Tutti

Here are a few examples of this: on 16 December 1987, Carnevale annulled theItalicus

massacre case, the main accused in which were the neo-fascists Mario Tutiand Luciano Franci.

Earlier he had repealed the life sentence passed on the Greco brothers who had been found guilty

of ordering the murder ofJudge Rocco Chinnici. On 25 June 1990 Carnevale repealed the life

sentence passed on Raffaele Cutolo, head of the mafioso Nuova Camorra Organizzata. He also

cleared Licio Gelli, on 15 October 1990, on charges of subversion and membership of an armed

gang. On 5 March 1991 he ordered a retrial in the case of the 2

4 December 1984 bombing of

t he Naples-Milan express in which 16 people were kil ed and hundreds injured. The upshot of this was the repeal of the life sentence passed on mafia boss Pippo Calò. Such frantic activity could

scarcely pass unremarked and in 1995 Judge Carnevale’s performance was the subject of a

book, La giustizia è cosa nostra ( Justice is Our Thing).

Mario Tuti and Luciano Franci

Carnevale has repealed 134 life sentences — 19 of which were passed on the mafioso Mommo

Piromal i — plus 700 years’ imprisonment for 96 people charged with mafia membership, drug-

dealing and murders.

In short, now the massacre was the subject of new court proceedings following the arrest of Delle

Chiaie, Carnevale was the very man for the Piazza Fontana case. And so, on 26 October 1987, the

seventh trial relating to the Piazza Fontana massacre — not counting the two aborted by the Court

of Cassation — opened with Del e Chiaie and Massimiliano Fachini together in the dock. After 90

sittings, both men were cleared of involvement on 20 February 1989, a verdict confirmed by the

Court of Appeal on 5 July 1991

Tags24 December 1984 bombing, 29 January 1979, addalena Valpreda, Antonio Labruna, Catanzaro Court of

Assizes, Circolo 22 Marzo, Cornelio Roland, Ele Lovati,Elena Segre, Emilio, Emilio Alessandrini, Emilio

Bagnoli, Enrici Di Cola, Enrico De Peppo, Ernesto Cudillo, Francesco Piscopo, Franco Freda, Gaetano

Tanzilli, General Gianadelio Maletti, General Saverio Malizia, Gerard D’Ambrosio, Gianadelio Maletti,Giovanni

Ventura, Giuliano Spazzali, Giulio Andreotti, Greco brothers, Guido Giannettini, Italicus massacre case, Ivo Della

Savia, Judge Corrado Carnevale,Judge Rocco Chinnici, La giustizia è cosa nostra, Licio Gelli, Luciano Franci, Luigi

Fenizio, Marco Pozzan, Mariano Rumor, Mario Merlino, Mario Tanassi, Mario Tuti,Mario Zagari, Nuova Camorra

Organizzata, Olimpia Torri, Orlando Falco, Piero Loredan di Volpato del Montello, Pietro Valpreda, Pippo

Calò, Placido La Torre,Prima Linea organisation, Rachele Torri, Raffaele Cutolo, Roberto Gargamelli,Rocco

Ventre, Stefano delle Chiaie, Stefano Serpieri, Umberto Toscani, Vittorio Occorsio

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 17: The Wild Goose

Chase is the Important Thing

January 14, 2012 //

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Puppetmaster: Federico Umberto D'Amato

When the Milan anarchists from thePonte Della Ghisolfa circleaccused the Interior Ministry of

covering up for those guilty of the Piazza Fontana massacre at their press conference on 17

December 1969, the reporters present were incredulous and scoffed. They wrote about “youngsters

reeling from the shock of recent days”. But the facts have shown that that accusation was not

without foundation.

In fact, we need to take a much closer look at what was being done in the 1960s and 1970s by the

Interior Ministry’s Bureau of Confidential Affairs, a powerful security-cum-espionage centre run byFederico Umberto D’Amato. Born in Marseil es in 1919 of a Piedmontese father and Neapolitan mother, D’Amato had risen to prominence in his youth when, in 1945, he had handled contacts with

the intel igence services of the Salò Republic to recover the archives of the OVRA (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism), Benito Mussolini’s secret service. He joined

the Viminalein 1957 as an ordinary official and rose through its ranks to head the Bureau of Confidential Affairs.

D’Amato was replaced on 30 May 1974, following the slaughter in Brescia, but he stayed on at the Viminale and in fact stil control ed the bureau — just as he did when his formal superiors, Elvio

Catenacci andAriberto Vigevano were the directors.

D'Amato was replaced fol owing the May 1974 Brescia outrage

He was obliged to retire in the mid-1980s, moving a lot of important secret files built up over decades

abroad. These were tangible evidence of the power he had wielded over many Italian politicians,

entrepreneurs, senior managers and intel ectuals. But D’Amato was not just a super-spy — he was

a man who appreciated the delights of the table and it was in that capacity he edited the weekly food

column ‘La tavola’ in L’Espresso and the Guide to the Inns and Restaurants of Italy, published by

the same paper. His passion for wine and good food caused his cirrhosis of the liver, and he died in

August 1996.

When the student revolts erupted in 1968, D’Amato — who described himself as a sbirro (a plod)

but was in fact a skil ed double- and even triple-dealer and never let an opportunity go a-begging —

was not worried about “students playing at revolution”. His target was, as ever, the Communist

Party.

Stefano Del e Chiaie (D'Amato's facilitator in Avanguardia Nazionale)

It was his idea to commission the publishing of thousands upon thousands of pro-Chinese leaflets,

which he entrusted to Stefano Delle Chiaie for distribution through Avanguardia

Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo members. The latter stuck them up on wal s in nearly every town in Italy. By providing a helping hand to the PCI’s main competition on the left, D’Amato’s aim was to stir

up problems for the largest Communist party in the western world.

But D’Amato’s activities did not stop there. Through his connections with Del e Chiaie and many

other Nazi-fascist leaders, he was well placed to manipulate the far-right groups. In

practice, D’Amato remotely controlled Delle Chiaie, the Avanguardia Nazionale leader.

The man from the Viminale was also Italy’s representative in theAtlantic Alliance Security

Office — NATO’s espionage wing, and was therefore able to control the activities of men such

as Carlo Digilio, the quartermaster of Ordine Nuovo’s Venice group and an agent of the CIA and NATO’s security service. It was  Digilio who fed Delfo Zorzi with the explosives that were used in the bombs on 12 December 1969. Digilio, a conscientious fellow, reported back regularly to his

superiors, as was his duty. D’Amato was, therefore, constantly informed as to the activities

of Zorzi, Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura — as wel as being a sleeping partner in them.

So who was ultimately responsible for the Piazza Fontana massacre? And if D’Amato control ed

Delle Chiaie, is it conceivable that he was unaware of the latter’s part in the bombings in Rome on

12 December 1969? The idea that D’Amato was implicated is anything but a fantasy, given that

the Bureau of Confidential Affairs stepped in to protect the activities of the Freda-Ventura group.

An answer in the affirmative seems convincing. It was Catenacci, who posted flying squad

boss Pasquale Juliano far from Padua just as he was about to arrest Freda, before Pasquale could

complete his task. It was also Catenacci who immediately after Giuseppe Pinelli’s death — having been promoted to deputy chief of police — conducted a secret inquiry in Milan police headquarters

and took evidence from the police officers present at Pinel i’s “flight”.

Then, having given them absolution, he prepared the groundwork forJudge Giovanni Caizzi’s dismissal of the charges against the police. Final y, it was D’Amato, the protector, who al owed Delle

Chiaie to go on the run for 17 years.

D’Amato was one of the most powerful men in Italy and it may not have been a coincidence that the

famous 150,000 files uncovered towards the end of 1996 came to light after his death.

In its strategy of chasing political wild geese and conjuring up false evidence or mounting

provocations, the Bureau of Confidential Affairshad a sound al y, but one with whom it had serious

differences, as happens in the world of espionage. That partner occupied the Palazzo Barachini,

the headquarters of the SID.

General Vito Miceli (SID chief 1970)

G

eneral Vito Miceli held the top job at the SID on 18 October 1970, having taken over from  Admiral Eugenio Henke who went on to become army chief of staff. In June 1971General

Gianadelio Maletti arrived to take over D Bureau at the SID — its most sensitive department —

from Colonel Federico Gasca Queirazza. For top secret operations he established a base under the cover of theTurris Film Company at 235 Via Cecilia, a street off the famous Via Veneto, and it

was from these offices that one of his men, Antonio Labruna, head of the NOD, the SID’s operational wing, operated.

General Gianadelio Maletti (head of SID's 'D' Bureau)

When a discernable fascist lead surfaced in connection with the Piazza Fontana massacreand it

become increasingly less concealable, the new bosses of the Italian secret services played their role

well as misleaders and provocateurs. First they came up with false documents, which they fed to the

judges in dribs and drabs. They then cobbled together a larger-scale operation. The carabinieri in

Camerino, under  Maletti’s supervision, discovered a huge arms dump near that town on 10

November 1972.

SID Captain Antonio Labruna (left) with lawyer.

The dump contained three categories of weapon: World War Two matériel; a second category

intended to give a left-wing signature to the dump — catapults, glass marbles, spray cans, bottles,

cork stoppers, paraffin and sulphuric acid — the ingredients for making Molotov cocktails. The last

category comprised 25 MK2 pineapple-style hand grenades (US-made), TNT, high-powered

explosives (pentrite), an anti-tank mine and detonators, fuses and German-made timers. Al

accompanied by upwards of 600 blank identity cards and a coded card index.

The day after the discovery an article appeared in the daily Il Resto del Carlino — a newspaper

belonging to the  Attilio Monti group — over the by-line of  Guido Paglia, an Avanguardia Nazionale member who had recently become a journalist. The article claimed that the coded card

index discovered in the cache was “incontrovertible proof of the subversive and paramilitary activities

of certain leftwing extremist groups”.

But Paglia did not stop there. Even although the coded documents had yet to be examined and

deciphered, the reporter seemed to know already that the arsenal belonged to leftwing extremists

from Rome, Perugia, Trento, Bolzano and Macerata. On 3 January 1973 four left-wingers from these

places were charged. The only one missing was the terrorist from Rome.

What was it that led the Carabinieri to these four individuals? The answer was simple, if bewildering.

The coded pages (every page was topped by an explanatory key) contained a list of 31 activists

from the extra-parliamentary left. But Paglia, however, in a frantic hurry to get his scoop as wel as

complete his provocation, had jumped the gun somewhat. And knew about things that even the

carabinieri were not yet in a position to disclose to him. Furthermore, the owner of the isolated house

where the cache had been found had been there only a few days prior to the discovery — and there

had been no weapons there at the time.

Briefly, this was the sort of set-up that would col apse even while the charges were being prepared.

However, it took until 28 April 1976, three years later, for the matter to be brought to closure, with a

postscript in the Macerata Court of Assizes when the Ancona prosecutor-general chal enged the

dropping of the charges. The accused’s dealings with the courts finally ended on 7 December

1977 when they were cleared on al counts.

Meanwhile, light was being shed on the roles of Labruna and especial y of Captain Giancarlo

D’Ovidio, commander of the Camerino carabinieri who was to move on to the SID’s D Bureau.

They were put in the frame by secret service Colonel Antonio Viezzer, a P2

member, on trial for

passing secret material to Licio Gelli.

The Labruna-D’Ovidio trail came to nothing, the examining magistrates having dropped the

charges on the basis of legal arguments that many other jurists regarded as irrational.

But, in 1993 further significant evidence came to light regardingD’Ovidio’s role as the organiser of

this provocation and the part played by Guelfo Osmani, an SID “asset”. The Camerino affair, while it failed to have the effect the secret services had been looking for, it at least generated serious

differences and divisions within far left groups with, for example, Italian Maoists being accused of

“adventurism”. General Maletti jotted down, in his own hand, in the margins of the report on

Camerino the comment: “Good result”.

Soon afterwards, Maletti’s men faced even more taxing missions because their involvement in the 12

December 1969 bombings; lots of other terrorist activities were about to emerge into the harsh light

of day.

Marco Pozzan (Freda loyalist)

In January 1973, Freda loyalistMarco Pozzan fled to avoid an arrest warrant issued by the Treviso magistrates. Massimiliano Fachini, who had overseen so many operations on behalf of his comrade

Freda, contacted D Bureau. Fachini was well known and Pozzan vouched for him and accompanied

the fugitive to the offices of the Turris Film Company in Rome where he was met

by Labruna and Guido Giannettini.

Labruna took Pozzan under his wing and had a false passport made out for him in the name

of Mario Zanella (a name that turns up in t he list of members of the P2 masonic lodge). On 15

January, Labruna escorted Pozzan to Fiumicino airport where he handed him over tomaresciallo

Mario Esposito and the pair travel ed to Madrid. On arrival in the Spanish capital, Esposito took

back the false passport and flew back to Italy.

Giovanni Ventura

In March 1973, Giovanni Venturawas in Monza prison being questioned by the Milan

judgesGerardo D’Ambrosio andEmilio Alessandrini. Ventura was looking for a way out and was

beginning to confess. The easiest solution was an escape, somethingMaletti left toGiannettini to

organise. Delfo Zorzi told Carlo Digilio to help Giannettini arrange Ventura’s escape: “Arrange for

him to escape. Otherwise Ventura is going to talk.”

Agent Zeta, Giannettini’s code name, contacted Ventura’s sister, Mariangela and his

fiancée, Pierangela Baretto and persuaded them his escape plan would work. He gave them two

keys that — as was later established in court — opened the prison doors. He also gave them two

cans of spray, which the D Bureau had obtained from a firm in Berne to dope the guards.

Once out of prison, Ventura was to be smuggled out to Spain, but he did not trust Giannetini,

fearing perhaps that his real destination was not Madrid but that he was to be eliminated once and

for all during the breakout. But that was not the end of it; he would escape later, on 16 January

1979, during a stay in Catanzaro, when things were better organised.

Guido Giannettini (journalist and SID agent)

Giannettini’s turn came in April 1973. Agent Zeta, a SID officer since 1966 who operated under the

cover of journalist, was now firmly in the sights of Judge D’Ambrosio who had been pressing

the SID, unsuccessfully, for information about Giannettini. The latter, a key contact between the

secret services and the Freda-Ventura groupcould not afford the luxury of answering questions that

would hold his role up to scrutiny, so he chose to go on the run.

Using the SID’s “travel bureau” he slept overnight in the Turris film company’s apartment and was

escorted out of the country the fol owing day by the ubiquitous maresciallo Esposito. But with one

difference, on 9 April the pair stopped off in Paris where Giannettini was due to fly on to Madrid, and

from there to Buenos Aires.

He escaped just in time. The Milan magistrates had Giannettini’s Rome apartment searched in May

and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Agent Zeta in January 1974.

Before leaving France, Giannettini gave an interview to journalist Mario Scialoja from L’Espresso in the spring of 1974 to let his bosses know how loyal he was (in case they abandoned him to his fate).

He stated: “The sole aim behind naming me as a SID agent is to implicate military circles, especial y

the SID, in the Freda case. I will have no truck with this gambit.”

But events were moving quickly. In an interview published in the 20 June edition of Il Mondo, Giulio

Andreotti told journalist Massimo Caprarathat Giannettini was an SID agent and that Corriere

della Sera reporterGiorgio Zicari was an established informant. That was a direct signal to Giannettini that he should no longer feel safe — not even in Buenos Aires.

Giulio Andreotti giving evidence in the Piazza Fontana case

On 8 August Giuseppe Derege Thesauro was made Italy’s ambassador to Argentina. At the Catanzaro trial the diplomat declared: “Giannettini did not hide it from anybody at the embassy that

he was running scared and required protection.” Brought back to Italy, Giannettini stuck to his tactics

to the end and refused to talk. He made vague al usions by way of signals to his superiors that he

would keep mum as long as they stood by him. Hence the statements and depositions

from SID chiefs and ministers hell bent on playing downAgent Zeta’s record — the man who had

kept them informed about the terrorist activities in which he participated along

with Freda and Ventura.

The gamble paid off and the puppet-masters behind the outrages threw Giannettini a few crumbs to

stop him talking. He was rewarded for his silence when the Court of Cassation final y dropped

proceedings against him in 1982. But he was not left unemployed for long, being taken on by the

rightwing financier and publisher Giuseppe Ciarrapico.

Tags17 December 1969, Admiral Eugenio Henke, Agent Zeta, Antonio Labruna, Atlantic Alliance Security

Office, Attilio Monti group, Avanguardia Nazionale, Bureau of Confidential Affairs, Camerino affair, Captain Giancarlo

D’Ovidio, Carlo Digilio,Colonel Antonio Viezzer, Colonel Federico Gasca Queirazza, D Bureau, D Bureau at the

SID, Delfo Zorzi, Emilio Alessandrini, Federico Umberto D’Amato, Franco Freda,General Gianadelio Maletti, General

Vito Miceli, Gerardo D’Ambrosio, Giovanni Ventura, Giuseppe Pinelli, Guelfo Osmani, Guide to the Inns and

Restaurants of Italy,Guido Giannettini, Guido Paglia, Il deposito di Camerino, Il Resto del Carlino, Italian Communist

Party, Judge Giovanni Caizzi, Licio Gelli, Marco Pozzan, Mario Zanella,Massimiliano Fachini, Nato Intelligence

Service, Ordine Nuovo, P2, Pasquale Juliano, PCI, Pierangela Baretto, Ponte della Ghisolfa circle, Salò

Republic, Servizio Informazioni Difesa, SID, Stefano delle Chiaie, Turris Film Company

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 16: ‘Inspector Window’

January 13, 2012 //

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Inspector Luigi Calabresi (17 May 1972)

A shot from a pistol, then another, echoed through the Via Luigi Cherubini, near the corner of the Via

Mario Pagano in Milan, then a man walked briskly from the scene, got into a car, and disappeared

leavingInspector Luigi Calabresi dead on the pavement. It was 17 May 1972.

Milan, Via Luigi Cherubini, 17 May 1972: Calabresi murder secene

So ended the life of the policeman that much of the left held responsible for Giuseppe Pinelli’s

death. While many of the newspapers of the extra-parliamentary left, especial y the weekly Lotta

Continua, openly accused the inspector, the most often repeated slogans during protest marches

were: “Calabresi — assassin” and “Pinelli, I will be avenged.” The walls of many cities were covered

with posters depicting Calabresi with blood on his hands.

The writing on the wal

As far as a substantial sector of public opinion was concerned, the inspector, born in Rome in 1937,

was no longer a glittering and decorated public servant, always dapper with his designer jumpers

and claiming to be a “liberal” who voted social democrat. He had become a protagonist in the

strategy of tension.

Lotta Continua’s press campaign became even more outspoken when reporters monitoring

developments at the Palace of Justice learned that the investigation into Pinel i’s death was about to

be wound up, with the police found blameless.

Lotta Continua's anti-Calabresi campaign

In fact, acting prosecutor Giovanni Caizzi closed the file on 21 May 1970. The intention of the

editors of Lotta Continua was to provoke Calabresi — who had been rechristened as “Inspector

Window” — to get him to sue the paper in order to reopen the “Pinelli case” before the courts. On 15

April, Calabresi brought charges against Pio Baldelli, Lotta Continua’s editor-in-chief, for “ongoing

and aggravated defamation through attribution of a specific act”, to wit, responsibility for Pinel i’s

death.

But Milan’s prosecutor-general, Enrico De Peppo, delayed for over a month before assigning the

case to a magistrate for investigation, and pressed Caizzi to finish his examination in the meantime.

The trial was to begin once Caizzi had declared Pinelli’s death an accident.

The courtroom confrontation between Calabresi and Baldel i opened on 9 October 1970. It was a

trial heavy with expectations and was prefaced in September by an appeal published in the

weekly L’Espresso and signed by Italian intel ectuals, university lecturers and politicians

(including Elvio Fachinelli, Lucio Gambi, Giulio Maccacaro, Cesare Musatti, Enzo Paci, Carlo

Salinari and Mario Spinelli). Their public letter opened with a challenge: “Railway man Pino Pinelli

died on the night of 15-16 December 1969 as a result of a fal from a window at Milan police

headquarters. How, we do not know. Al we know is that he was innocent.”

Marcel o Guida

After criticising the closure of the file on his death and the application to have the suit brought by

Pinelli’s loved ones against police chiefMarcello Guida (who had libelled the anarchist) set aside,

the signatories concluded: “We owe the magistrate our respect, but we cannot help but hold him

jointly responsible for the death of Giuseppe Pinel i, a second time, by ascribing to him crimes not of

his doing — and bearing the grave responsibility of murdering our faith in a justice that is no longer

justice when it fails to reflect the conscience of its citizenry.”

But there was also a film that was enjoying great success —Investigation of a Citizen Above

Suspicion — directed by Elio Petriand featuring Gian Maria Volonté, with a soundtrack by Ennio

Morricone. Audiences immediately identified the inspector played by Volonté as Inspector

Calabresi.

In court, Michele Lener defended Calabresi, and Marcello Gentili andBianca Guidetti Serra acted

for Baldelli. The judge was Carlo Biottiand the prosecuting attorney was Emilio Guicciardi. The

court was surrounded by an impressive deployment of police and carabinieri.

The opening session was packed to overflowing, with people shouting out “murderer” when

Calabresi entered to give evidence.

Calabresi giving his evidence in court

The inspector spoke of Pinel i as a decent fel ow with whom he had swapped views. He had even

made the anarchist the gift of a book(Enrico Emanueli’s Un milione di uomini) and Pinelli had

reciprocated with a gift of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology. He had handled Pinel i’s

interrogation because he was under orders and inquiries were being made in every direction. In

short, Pinel i’s questioning on 15 December had been relaxed, and only once did he utter the

phrase: “Valpreda has talked.” But that was as far as it went. And when Pinel i

jumped, Calabresi was in the office of his senior officer, Antonino Allegra.

Calabresi failed to mention the threats he had been making for months against Pinel i when he

realised he could not count on him to col aborate.

“During a picket mounted in San Vittore in September to demand the release of the anarchists

arrested for the bombings on 25 April, Calabresi had approached Pinel i and — after an exchange of

words — told him angrily: ‘I’m going to make you pay’ ” recal ed Cesare Vurchiofrom the Ponte

della Ghisolfa circle, an eye-witness to that exchange.

The other police officers trooped through the court during the succeeding sittings. The script never

varied, down to use of the same phrases and terminology: ‘ calm and relaxed”; “launched himself into

the void”; “I received the news”. They gave the clear impression that they were al going through a

lesson committed to memory.

Popular newspaper cartoon depicting requirement of visitors to Calabresi’s office to wear a parachute

But there were noticeable departures from what they had told Judge Caizzi previously. The times

had altered. The interrogation had not ended at midnight but at 11.30 p.m. The window had not been

wide open, but closed on one side. Savino Lo Grano, newly promoted carabinieri captain, originally

said he had watched Pinelli throughout and saw him throw himself from the window. Now, in court,

he claimed he had seen no such thing: he had been looking at the open window while two police

officers, trapped behind the shutters, had been unable to stop the anarchist.

The greatest absurdity, however, came in the statement of brigadiere Vito Panessa. He

contradicted himself and allowed his mouth run away with him, first admitting things, then denying

them. Finally he issued a denial that had the ring of an unwitting confession: “I have said that I am

not in a position to provide details but, broadly speaking, bear in mind that there was no agreed

story and it was, therefore, a matter for investigation … Each of us went before Judge Caizzi and

gave out the story that.”

Judge Biotti suddenly interjected: “Signor Panessa, you are rambling! ” before asking Panessa:

“What is this business about an agreed story? ” Panessa answered: “It is not the case that there was

an exchange of views between those of us who had been present: the following day we each went

before the judge and told him what we could remember.”

The case dragged on along similar lines for five more months, but in the end Baldelli’s defence

lawyers scored their first victory. Pinelli’s bodywas to be exhumed and undergo fresh forensic

examination.

What were Gentili and Guidetti getting at? They wanted to check if Pinel i’s body stil carried any

sign of a karate chop delivered while under interrogation, the sort of blow that might have left Pinel i

irretrievably disoriented and leading to the fal from the window. And that was precisely

what Lener did not want to hear.

Change of scene.

Lener moved that Judge Biotti be removed from the case and, on 7 June 1971, the Appeal Court

dismissed him. On what grounds? The judge had spoken with Calabresi’s defence counsel on 21

November 1970 when he allegedly said something about pressure from upstairs to ensure the case

ended with Baldel i’s acquittal, and he had supposedly told him that “both he and the other two

judges were convinced that the famous karate chop had broken Pinel i’s spinal column.”

The removal of Biotti was the ace card played by Calabresi’s defence at a point when it was

perhaps stil possible to establish — in spite of a year and a half’s having passed — how Pinel i died.

The trial quickly became bogged down.

A further investigation was launched into Licia Pinelli’s — Guiseppe’s widow — complaint to

examining magistrate Gerardo D’Ambrosiowhich led to manslaughter charges being brought on 4

October 1971 against the police team which had interrogated Pinel i: Calabresi, Lo

Grano, Panessa, Giuseppe Caracuta, Carlo Mainardi and Pietro Mucilli. D’Ambrosio had the

anarchist’s body exhumed on 21 October. But, as lots of scientists and physicians had argued, given

the advanced state of decomposition, it was by then hard to discover anything.

Licia Pinel i during a legal hearing

Things moved on to the verdict passed on 27 October 1975. Calabresi— no longer a deputy

inspector but now a ful inspector — was by then three years dead. The verdict focused on “active

misfortune” as the cause of Pinelli’s death. D’Ambrosio cleared al the accused on the grounds that

“the total lack of evidence that something happened is, under our procedural system, as wel as

under the system of other more progressive states, tantamount to evidence that a thing has not

happened.”

But the “Calabresi case” refused to go away. On17 May 1973 a monument to the

inspector was unveiled in the courtyard of Milan police headquarters to mark the first anniversary of

his death. The ceremony was attended by Interior minister Mariano Rumor.

Gianfranco Bertoli, having recently returned to Italy from Israel, threw a bomb at the entrance to

the headquarters. His intention — as he declared after his arrest — was to get the authorities paying

tribute to Calabresi, but a police officer had kicked the device away and it had ended up among the

crowd. Carnage ensued: four lives were lost and nearly 40 people were injured.

Gianfranco Bertoli

Bertoli claimed he was an individualist anarchist. But nearly all the press described him as a fascist

and cited a series of previous actions (attacks on leftwing party premises and others) that were to fal

through during the trial.

Born in Venice in 1933, Bertoli — a member of the PCI’s Youth Federation up until 1952 — had a

record as a petty criminal and had been in and out of jail for years. He was sentenced to life

imprisonment on 9 March 1976.

From 1993 Bertoli enjoyed an open prison regime. But his case stil held a few surprises in store. It

would seem (the conditional tense is de rigueur in this tale) that fresh information has since surfaced

regarding those who had somehow incited him to carry out his deed — protagonists of the strategy

of tension, perhaps.

So who kil ed Calabresi? There was silence on that front up until 2 July 1988 when Leonardo

Marino, a former FIAT worker and ex-member of Lotta Continua, gave himself up to the carabinieri

in La Spezia (he sold crepes from a kiosk in nearby Bocca di Magra). He wanted to come clean

about his and his colleagues’ part in the Calabresi murder.

But 17 days were to elapse before he signed a statement. Why? That remains a mystery. He was

taken to Milan, and it was a further seven days before he made a full confession. Another mystery.

On 28 July, in addition to Marino, Adriano Sofri, Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio

Pietrostefani were arrested. Sofri had been the unchallenged national leader of Lotta

Continua and Pietrostefani was the movement’s leader in Milan.

Calabresi's assassins: (top l/r) Leonardo Marino, Adriano Sofri, Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani

A lengthy procession through the courts began. The charges were based exclusively on Marino’s

confession that he had driven the getaway car, Bompressi actual y committed the

murder. Sofri andPietrostefani had given the go-ahead. The initial verdict was handed down in July

1991. They were al found guilty as charged. The conspirators and perpetrator received 22 year

sentences, Marino 11 years. On 23 October 1992, the Court of Cassation dismissed the verdict on

the basis of insufficient motive. So, on 21 December 1993 the Appeal Court of Assizes cleared them

al . The verdict was thrown out again on 27 October 1994, and a third Appeal Court confirmed the

22-year sentences passed on Sofri, Bompressi and Pietrostefani, whileMarino, thanks to

extenuating considerations, saw his case dismissed. On 22 January the Court of Cassation had the

final word and confirmed the convictions.

Tags17 May 1972, Adriano Sofri, Antonino Allegra, Bianca Guidetti Serra, brigadiere Vito Panessa, Carlo Biotti, Carlo

Mainardi, Carlo Salinari, Cesare Musatti, Cesare Vurchio, Edgar Lee Masters, Elio Petri, Elvio Fachinelli, Emilio

Guicciardi, Ennio Morricone, Enrico De Peppo, Enrico Emanueli, Enzo Paci, Gerardo D’Ambrosio,Gian Maria

Volonté, Gianfranco Bertoli, Giorgio Pietrostefani, Giovanni Caizzi, Giulio Maccacaro, Giuseppe Caracuta, Giuseppe

Pinell, Inspector Luigi Calabresi,Inspector Window, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Judge

Caizzi,L’Espresso, Leonardo Marino, Lo Grano, Lotta Continua, Lucio Gambi, Marcello Gentili, Marcello

Guida, Mariano Rumor, Mario Spinelli, Michele Lener, Ovidio Bompressi, Panessa, PCI’s Youth Federation, Pietro

Mucilli, Pio Baldelli, Ponte della Ghisolfa circle, Savino Lo Grano, Spoon River Anthology, Un milione di uomini

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 15: On The Trail of the

Fascists

January 12, 2012 //

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Pasquale Juliano tried but it blew up in his face.

Franco Freda (one of the authors — with Ventura — of the Piazza Fontana bombing of 12 December 1969)

In the spring of 1969, the head of the Padua flying squad, Pasquale Juliano, developed an

interest in the activities of a neo-Nazi group operating in the city. Some of his informants — Niccolò

Pezzato andFrancesco Tomasoni — had told him that the people responsible for the attacks on the

homes of police chief Francesco Allitto Bonannoon 20 April 1968 and the office of university

rector Enrico Opocher on 15 April 1969 were part of a group headed by Franco Freda.

Massimiliano Faccini (Quartermaster)

Juliano organised a stakeout on the home of Massimiliano Fachini, convinced he was the

quartermaster in charge of the group’s weapons and explosives. One June evening, thanks to his

usual sources, Juliano surprised Giancarlo Patrese (another member of Freda’s group) at the

house in possession of a bomb and a revolver. He ordered the arrest of Patrese, Fachini

and Gustavo Bocchini, grandson of Arturo Bocchini, the one-time chief of police under the

fascists. Juliano believed he had made a start on breaking up the bomb team, but instead he found

himself caught up in an “affair” bigger than he was. Patrese confessed he had received the arms and

explosives from none other than Juliano’s own informant, Pezzato, who had entered Fachini’s house

with him.

Pasquale Juliano (former head of Padua's Flying Squad)

This account of events was denied by the building’s concierge, Alberto Muraro, a one-time

carabinieri. Patrese had entered on his own and left on his own, but his evidence was insufficient

and Juliano was accused of having entrapped the three fascists.

The director of theconfidential affairs bureau of the Interior Ministry, Elvio Catenacci then

suddenly and unexpectedly intervened. Catenacci — the same official who conducted the

investigation at police headquarters in Milan following Pinel i’s death — ordered Juliano’s immediate

suspension from duty without pay and it was to be two years before he was reinstated and

reassigned to Ruvo di Puglia, and it was not until 1979 that Juliano was final y cleared.

A campaign of dissuasion fol owed. Pezzato and Tomasoni, the informants, were jailed and placed

in the same cell as Patrese, who persuaded them to retract. Meanwhile, on 13 September, the

conciergeMuraro was found dead at the foot of some stairs. Accidental death, investigators

concluded, without so much as an autopsy, as would be normal in such cases. ‘ One of these days

you’ll drop by looking for me and I’l be found with my head caved in in the cel ar or in the lift shaft”,

Muraro had confided to his friend Italo Zaninello shortly before his death.

Alberto Muraro

Muraro had been due to present himself before the magistrate looking into the Juliano case two days

later, on 15 September. The confidential affairs bureau had yet again intervened efficiently: Freda was not to be obstructed.

Notwithstanding the protection he enjoyed, Freda found someone else making inquiries about him —

carabinieri marescial o Alvise Munari.

The examining magistrate in Treviso, Giancarlo Stiz, had commissioned Munari —whose family had

worked the land around Bassano del Grappa for generations — to investigate a lead resulting from a

statement made by a teacher of French in Marrada, Guido Lorenzon, a member of the Christian

Democratic Party.

Vittorio Veneto, 15 December 1969. Lorenzon visited Albert Steccanella, a local lawyer who told

him a long and convoluted story about a friend of his, Giovanni Ventura, a publisher and booksel er

from Castelfranco Veneto. Ventura, Lorenzon said, had mentioned the12 December bombings to

him on the afternoon of 13 December, after returning from Milan or Rome and showed sufficient

familiarity with the events and places involved as make an impression on Lorenzon.

Lawyer Steccanella sensed Lorenzon’s story might lead on to significant revelations, so he asked

him to set it al down in a memorandum, which he did and delivered to him three days later. On 26

December, having realised the gravity of the facts provided by Lorenzon, the lawyer visited the

Treviso prosecutor and related everything that his client had told him: that there was in the Veneto a

subversive organisation which might just have been implicated in the massacre. Count Pietro

Loredan backed this organisation from Volpato del Montello.

Conte Pietro Loredan (centre)

On 31 December Lorenzon called on the public prosecutor in Treviso, Pietro Calogero and told him

about Ventura’s confidences. The publisher had planted a bomb which had failed to go off, in a

public office in Milan, in May; he had funded the August train bombings; he knew the underpass at

the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro where the bomb went off on 12 December like the back of his

hand and could not understand how on earth the bomb in the Banca Commerciale in Milan had

failed to explode. Also, in September, Ventura showed him a battery-operated timer. Furthermore, he

was constructing a device for use against US president Richard Nixon during his forthcoming visit

to Italy.

These were important revelations. On 12 February 1970, the examining magistrate in

Rome, Ernesto Cudillo, was due to hear this witness from Venice, but he did not impress him. Even

so, he could not completely ignore this encounter: on the afternoon of the fol owing day, at the

conclusion of the questioning of Pietro Valpreda, he asked the anarchist if he knew anyone by the

name of Giovanni Ventura or Guido Lorenzon. “I don’t know anybody of that name. The only two

Venturas I have ever met and known are both dancers”, was Valpreda’s response.

Lorenzon was so overcome with guilt at his betrayal of his friend Ventura that on 4 January 1970 he

told him that he had approached the magistrates. Ventura and Freda then put the French teacher

under pressure to change or retract his statement. A seesaw of statements and retractions fol owed,

but anomalous retractions at that, as Lorenzon himself later confessed to the judges: “It occurred to

me to retract something which I had never stated. I had mentioned things that I had heard, things

which I had never actual y seen, but I had never stated, say, that Ventura had gone to the Piazza

Fontana and that Ventura had planted the bombs on the trains, but he stil told me everything that I

later recounted. In my retraction, however, I therefore retracted something that I had never said,

secretly hoping that that statement might then be taken for what it was, to wit, false. It was only a

way of buying time because at the time the magistrate was away and I had to face Ventura on a

daily basis.”

Investigators final y kitted Lorenzon out with a tape-recorder to be used secretly in conversations

with Ventura. The tapes were then forwarded to Rome, to Cudillo and his col eague Vittorio

Occorsio, the prosecuting counsel who found nothing of interest in them. Occorsio, however,

ventured the fol owing statement: “Lorenzon’s charges are without foundation. In the lengthy taped

conversations the only point of note is that Ventura offered no confidences of the sort and therefore

spoke in terms that plainly show that he had nothing to do with the events. There is nothing to

suggest that Ventura was, even marginally, an accomplice in the outrages of 12 December

1969.” Cudillo andOccorsio found Ventura “a decent guy” and Freda “a gentleman”. In short, they

were two upstanding citizens who had been unfairly slandered by Lorenzon.

Vittorio Occorsio (prosecuting counsel)

The Treviso magistrates did not share these opinions. When the tapes were returned to Stiz at the

end of 1970, there was a change of tune. After listening careful y to the taped conversations, Stiz

immediately sent for Lorenzon who confirmed everything to him. Stiz continued with his inquiries,

careful y scrutinising the book Justice is Like A Tiller: It Goes Where It is Steered, written by

Freda as an attack on Juliano’s investigation. He listened to other witnesses and on 13 April 1971 he

indicted Freda, Ventura and Aldo Trinco for conspiracy to subvert the course of justice and, above

al , for the bombings in Milan on 25 April and for the 9 August train bombings. But the trio’s defence

lawyers petitioned for the case to be heard before the judges in Padua on grounds of territorial

competence. The accused were released.

A further change of scene. On 5 November, during restructuring work at the home of Giancarlo

Marchesin, a leading socialist in Castelfranco Veneto (Treviso), builders discovered a crate fil ed

with weapons behind a wal . When questioned by Stiz, Marchesin admitted that the crate had been

given to him by Franco Comacchio on behalf of Giovanni Ventura. The crate (which Comacchio

had received from Ruggero Pan, an assistant in Ventura’s bookshop doing his military service at the

time) had initially held explosives too, but Comacchio had hidden these in the countryside near

Crespano.

On 7 November Comacchio went with some carabinieri from Treviso to col ect the explosives. But

without warning the carabinieri unexpectedly blew up the 35 sticks. But sticks of what? Judging by

the characteristic smel of bitter almonds after the explosion, it must have been the by now famous

gelignite.

Later statements by Carlo Digilio indicated that from 1967 the Ordine Nuovo groups in Padua and

Venice had had a dump in the Paese area (near Treviso) where they had stored a large quantity of

explosives and weapons in the use of which they were instructed by Digilio himself. It was later

discovered that the few weapons shipped to Marchesin’s home were a tiny, tiny part of the two

groups’ arsenal, which had been divided up after the Piazza Fontana massacre.

Questioned by magistrates, Pan began talking. Weapons and explosives had been passed to him

by Ventura. Why? In 1968 Pan had worked in Ventura’s bookshop and on 10 March 1969 he had

been hired, throughFreda’s influence, as an attendant at the Configliaschi Institute for the Blind.

The concierge there was Marco Pozzan, one of Freda’s most loyal fol owers. Freda had tried to

draw the young Pozzan into his group and confided a number of things to him regarding the attacks

being mounted in Padua and in other cities. Al of these details wound up in an affidavit that Pan

wrote in jail, heavily implicating Ventura and Freda, especial y in the train bombings.

At this point in the investigations the name of Ordine Nuovo founder and Il Tempo reporter Pino

Rauti came up — along with another journalist, Guido Giannettini (an important figure of whom

more anon.) Rauti was also the author of the book Red Hands on the Armed Forces, published

under the nom de plume Flavio Messalla.

Guido Giannetini ('journalist' and secret service agent) with Franco Freda

Marco Pozzan implicated Rauti in subversive activity, along with Fredaand Ventura. Pozzan

insisted Rauti had taken part in a meeting of the group in Padua on 18 April, during which the

bombings in Milan on 25 April were approved). Stiz and Calogero dispatched marescial oMunari to

Rome on 4 March 1972 to arrest Rauti on charges of massacre. On 22 March, Freda and Ventura

were indicted in connection with the Piazza Fontana outrage.

Invocation of that crime obliged the Treviso magistrates to hand its case over to their Milan

col eagues and from then on it was in the hands of examining magistrate Gerardo D’Ambrosio.

Gerardo D'Ambrosio

Rauti denied al charges and Pozzan retracted — and was promptly smuggled out of the country to

Spain with the aid of the SID. Renato Angiolillo, Il Tempo’s publisher, and a number of editorial staff

insisted that on the day in question, 18 April, Rauti had been at work in the editorial offices. So, one

month later, on 24 April, D’Ambrosio freedRauti on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The

parliamentary elections were held on 7 May and Rauti was elected on the MSI ticket. The likelihood

is that Pozzan implicated Rauti on Freda’s instructions in order to have someone in the frame

someone who could mobilise the MSI on Rauti’s, and thereby also on Freda’s behalf.

But D’Ambrosio was more fortunate with Ventura who admitted involvement in the May 1969

attacks in Turin and those in July in Milan. More importantly, he implicated his friend Freda in the

attacks. It was from Freda, the Padua lawyer, he had taken delivery of the bombs. Again, it had been

Freda who had announced the August bombings before they happened. Point by point, everything

in Lorenzon’s confession in 1969 was confirmed — almost four years after the event.

But something else emerged from the interrogations by the judges in Treviso and Milan, something

considerably more serious for Ventura. It was proved he had definitely been in Rome on the

afternoon of 12 December 1969. Ventura final y admitted this, but clung desperately to a weak alibi

that was to soon be demolished — that he had gone to the capital because he had been informed

the previous day his brotherLuigi, a resident of a Catholic boarding school, had suffered a serious

epileptic fit. The incident was true, but the date was false. According toDon Pietro Sartorio, the

bursar of the home, Luigi Ventura had his attack at 12.30 p.m. on 14 December (on the Sunday

rather than the Friday). Don Sartorio cal ed a Red Cross ambulance and a physician who checked

the boy over and said that no resuscitation was necessary — the fit having passed. The bursar

informed the Ventura family of the fit and expressed his regret that he had not been advised of the

boy’s state of health.

Ventura had been caught out — but there was more. He claimed that on the afternoon in question,

after phoning the school and discovering Luigi was feeling better, he had visited a family

friend, Diego Giannolla in his law chambers. He then went to the Lerici publishing house to meet

his partner Rinaldo Tomba — alibis which both denied. In the end he claimed he had spent the

evening of 12 December in the home of a friend, Antonio Massari who put him up for the night.

But that was not the only night Ventura had spent in Rome. According to the register of the Locarno

hotel, he had stayed in Rome from 5 to 8 December as wel as on the night of 10-11 December, only

returning home on 13 December. Meeting up with Lorenzon that afternoon, he was excited about

what had happened in Milan and Rome and initiated the loose talk that — after Lorenzon had

reported it first to Steccanel a and then to magistrates in Treviso — implicated Ventura and Freda in

the bombings.

Tags12 December bombings, Albert Steccanella, Alberto Muraro, Aldo Trinco, Alvise Munari, Antonio Massari, Arturo

Bocchini, Banca Commerciale, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Carlo Digilio, Christian Democratic Party, Confidential

Affairs Bureau of the Interior Ministry, Configliaschi Institute for the Blind, Count Piero Loredan, Diego Giannolla, Don

Pietro Sartorio, Elvio Catenacci, Enrico Opocher, Ernesto Cudillo,Flavio Messalla, Francesco Allitto

Bonanno, Francesco Tomason, Franco Comacchio, Franco Freda, Gerardo D’Ambrosio, Giancarlo

Marchesin, Giancarlo Patrese, Giancarlo Stiz, Giovanni Ventura, Guido Giannettini, Guido Lorenzon,Gustavo

Bocchini, Justice is Like A Tiller: It Goes Where It is Steered, Luigi Ventura,Marco Pozzan, Massimiliano

Fachini, Niccolò Pezzato, Pasquale Juliano, Pietro Calogero, Pietro Valpreda, Pino Rauti, Red Hands on the Armed

Forces, Renato Angiolillo, Richard Nixon, Rinaldo Tomba, Ruggero Pan, SID, talo Zaninello, Vittorio Occorsio

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 14: Stick it to the

anarchist!

January 11, 2012 //

1

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Inspector Luigi Calabresi of the Milan Special Branch

FASCISTS PL

ANTING B

OMBS. Police arresting anarchists. That is the traditional view of this story.

The orders came from above. The left had to be hit and the man in Milan to do it was Inspector

Luigi Calabresi. Like his Roman political squad colleague, Umberto Improta, Calabresi carried out

these orders with the utmost diligence. On the afternoon of the 12 December bombings, Calabresi

was quick to zero in on “that criminal lunaticValpreda”. After all, it had worked for him after the 25

April bombingswhen he had jailed anarchists for the bombs at the Fair and at Central Station in

Milan. But he was not happy when, only a few days earlier, on 7 December, Antonio Amati, the

head of the Milan investigation bureau, had been obliged to free two of them — Giovanni

Corradiniand Eliane Vincileone — for lack of evidence. Now, faced with carnage of the Piazza

Fontana, Calabresi was not going to make do with youngsters like Paolo Braschi and his friends.

He needed an adult and Valpreda, at 36, was the right age. He needed someone like Valpreda who

had had dropped his characteristic irony and self-mockery and was now given to hotheaded talk.

Hanging out in bars in the Brera (once Milan’s artists’ quarter) Valpreda would launch into long,

heated speeches, which were increasingly tainted with a flavour of “fire and brimstone”. The Brera

was also teeming with police informers, and the value of an informant is determined by the “quality”

of the intelligence he can pass to police headquarters. Valpreda’s speeches grew more exaggerated

in the tel ing and re-telling. Was Valpreda al for confrontations during demonstrations? He was for

urban guerril a warfare. Did he ever talk about “exemplary actions” carried out by a handful of

people, but capable of galvanising the masses? He wanted outrages carried out.

Valpreda laid himself wide open with his increasingly “purple” statements and when he joined forces

with two young anarchists, Leonardo Claps, aka Steve, and Aniello D’Errico to launch the

duplicated bul etin Terra e libertà, the organ of the I Iconoclasti group, group (that is, those three),

he wrote a piece for the first (and only) issue in March 1969 entitled “Ravachol is back”.

The arrest of Ravachol at the Restaurant Very, Paris (Flavio Costantini)

This was seized upon by the police to substantiate their thesis that Valpreda was bomb-

crazy. Ravachol was the pseudonym used by a French anarchist, François-Claudius Koenigstein,

guillotined in 1892 and renowned in late 19th century Paris for his dynamite attacks on the high

bourgeoisie. In the public’s col ective imagination Ravachol was the very stereotype of the anarchist.

Yet, in that article, after listing a succession of smal attacks (nearly al of them using something

reminiscent of a letter-bomb, or big fire-crackers rather than real explosives), Valpreda had closed

his article with this comment: “Hundreds of youngsters are ready to organise in order to take their

places as enemies of the State and to cry out ‘No God and No Master’, with Ravachol’s dynamite,

Caserio’s dagger, Bresci’s pistol, Bonnot’s machine-gun, and the bombs of Filippi and Henry. Quake,

bourgeois! Ravachol is back! ”

If such mind-boggling prose left the police in ecstasy, it infuriatedGiuseppe Pinelli. “I booted that

twat Valpreda out of the Ponte [della Ghisolfa]”, he told his comrades from the Bandiera Nera

group. After that, from the beginning of 1969 on, relations between Pinel i and Valpreda had cooled.

And when Pinel i attended the Gruppi di iniziativa anarchica (GIA) — one of the three strands

which made up Italy’s organised anarchist movement alongside the Italian Anarchist Federation

(FAI) and the Federated Anarchist Groups (GAF) (theBandiera Nera group to which Pinel i

belonged was linked to the GAF) — convention in Empoli on 2 November 1969, the friction between

them worsened. After the convention the anarchists gathered in a trattoria. Valpreda said hello to

Pinelli but got no response. Indeed Pinel i used this chance to tel him that he did not regard him as a

friend and therefore had no reason to acknowledge his greeting. Valpreda, his dignity offended in

front of everyone, flew off the handle and threw a salt-cel ar at Pinel i. It was the last time they set

eyes on each other.

In Rome, Valpreda fell out with the anarchists from

the Circolo Bakuninwhom he cal ed too staid and only good for making speeches. He argued on

more than one occasion that the students and workers were shrugging off the old regime so time to

strike was now. And so, with a group of youngsters in tow — Roberto Mander, Roberto

Gargamelli, Enrico Di Cola, and another, Emilio — he set up the Circolo 22 Marzo. This was the

group joined by Mario Merlino, official y formerly of the Avanguardia Nazionale, and by “comrade

Andrea”, i.e. Salvatore Ippolito, a public security agent. These two ‘plants’ were to be

complemented, on and off and from the outside, by Stefano Serpieri (one of the founders ofOrdine

Nuovo with Pino Rauti and since the mid-1960s a regular SIDinformant). Serpieri’s role was

marginal but he wanted to ingratiate himself with his superiors. After all he stil had to justify the

retainer that he was paid by the SID.

Under such surveil ance, the members of the Circolo 22 Marzo set about engaging in “politics”. To

them this meant taking part in demonstrations which usual y ended in clashes, carrying out token

actions such as — under Merlino’s leadership — 7 October, throwing a petrol bomb at the door of

the MSI branch in Col e Oppio). In short, raising their profile.

Circolo 22 Marzo

Valpreda was the oldest and could boast a sound command of anarchist thought. It was natural,

therefore, that he became the most visible member of the Circolo 22 Marzo. The police of course

knew this. After the 9 August bomb attacks Valpreda was picked up a dozen times. The police also

tried to get him to crack by offering money (98,000 lire) and held out the prospect of his getting a

contract with RAI TV. But Valpreda refused to bite and told the police to get stuffed. So surveil ance

on the group was stepped up, even though it was not doing any more than many other extreme

leftwing groups. Why all the attention? The answer is simple: Valpreda was being targeted. He would

make a good scapegoat, should the political situation require one. It was not important that he was

not doing anything particularly serious: he — an anarchist and a member of a group which in

practice had cut itself off from other Rome anarchists — regularly made inflammatory speeches and

claimed to have thrown the odd Molotov cocktail. His image fitted the bill. That he was innocent did

not matter.

Only by using that sort of reasoning can we comprehend how, in the immediate aftermath of the

bombings, Calabresi came to pester every arrested anarchist for news about “that criminal lunatic

Valpreda”. Calabresi knew about the fal ing-out between Pinelli and Valpreda, just as he knew that

the Rome anarchist Aldo Rossi was not wel disposed towards “t hat guy from Milan who makes a

mess of things unaided.” Maybe he believed that levelling the massacre charges at Valpreda would

not bring any response from the anarchists. The charges against him might not do their image any

good, but after al the only people indicted would be Valpreda and one or two others from the Circolo

22 Marzo. But the inspector was mistaken. In part because there was also the matter of our having

lost Pinel i.

An unforeseen event occurred. A tiny movement numbering only a few thousand supporters across

Italy mobilised with a speed and determination that almost defied belief. A counter-information

campaign was launched that — while it found the anarchists out on their own to begin with — had,

within a few weeks drawn in ever-widening sectors of the left until it even engaged the un-politicised.

By the end of January 1970, tens of thousands of Milanese were taking to the streets to demonstrate

opposition to the repression in the wake of the Piazza Fontana massacre.

But the phrase “State massacre” had yet to enter the vocabulary of the left. Indeed, on 24 March

1970, the Milanese anarchists were on their own when they demonstrated under that catch phrase.

But over the succeeding months, other demonstrations, rallies, debates, public declarations by

intellectuals and cultural figures set the seal on a profound change in the attitudes of many people.

Valpreda turned from being a guilty party into an innocent and “the accidental death of an

anarchist” became a Dario Fo farce that toured Italy and abroad, holding the police account up to

ridicule. Virtual y every Italian director signed up to a documentary on the various hypotheses that

could have led to Pinel i’s demise. These al read like an indictment of the police — above al

of Calabresi. In short, the massacre was becoming a burden upon police, magistrates and secret

services.

After three years, on 15 December 1972, parliament got around to voting on law no 773 (which

came to be known as the “Valpreda law”) that freed Valpreda from prison. Article 2 of this law

al owed the granting of “temporary release to the accused who finds himself in preventive custody

[…] even in instances where binding arrest warrants have been issued.” Which are precisely the

circumstances in which anarchists from the Circolo 22 Marzo found themselves. Acquitted with

Valpreda on 30 December were Borghese, Gargamelli and Merlino. Mander had been freed

several months earlier and Di Cola escaped to Sweden where he was welcomed as a political

refugee.

Enrico di Cola of the Circolo XX Marzo (on the run in Switzerland)

The monthly A-rivista anarchica (which in those days was sel ing upwards of 10,000 copies)

published an editorial in January 1973 entitled “Our Victory:” “Valpreda, Gargamel i and Borghesi are

Free! […] The government has budged under pressure from ‘respectable’ segments of democratic

public opinion. It would be crass triumphalism for us to argue that we, the anarchists, the

revolutionaries, got it to shift. Yet we are convinced, without bragging, that it represents a victory for

us, not the democrats. First of al because we shook that democratic public opinion out of its

customary slumber, we forced it to feel scandalised, to feel indignation. Secondly, because, in spite

of everything, the repressive structures of the ‘democratic’ State have, in the eyes of the public,

emerged bruised from the affair, albeit given a fresh coat of democracy. The victory is ours, we say

again, and we do not accept the defeatist pessimism of those who look upon the discharge from

prison as merely a shrewd move by the authorities. It is that as wel , to be sure […] but the release

of Valpreda, Gargamel i and Borghese remains substantially a defeat for the State and a victory for

us.”

However, the progress of the trials arising out of the Piazza Fontana carnage, which would conclude in 1991, were to show that whoever it was, within the State, who had devised the strategy

of tension — he had certainly not acknowledged defeat.

Tags25 April bombings, A-rivista anarchica, Aldo Rossi, Aniello D’Errico, Antonio Amati,Avanguardia

Nazionale, Bandiera Nera group, Circolo 22 Marzo, Circolo Bakunin,comrade Andrea, Dario Fo, Eliane

Vincileone, Empoli, Enrico Di Cola, Federated Anarchist Groups (GAF), François-Claudius Koenigstein, Giovanni

Corradini,Giuseppe Pinelli, Gruppi di iniziativa anarchica (GIA), I Iconoclasti group, Inspector Dr Luigi

Calabresi, Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI), law no 773, Leonardo Claps,Mario Merlino, Ordine Nuovo, Paolo

Braschi, Piazza Fontana massacre, Pietro Valpreda, Pino Rauti, Ravachol, Roberto Gargamelli, Roberto

Mander, Salvatore Ippolito, SID, state massacre, Stefano Serpieri, Steve, Terra e libertà, the accidental death of an

anarchist, Umberto Improta, Valpreda law

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Secrets and Bombs 13: 25 April 1969 —

With Murderous Intent

January 10, 2012 //

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1975, Catanzaro: Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura arrive to be tried for their role in the Piazza Fontana bombing

BACK T

O TH

E BO

MBING, that is, back to 1969. The Milan bombs on 25 April 1969 injured only a

few people. The same was true of the train bombing on 9 August. These devices had al used the

same sort ofRuhla brand timer. The same brand, which a strange fel ow had bought in batches of,

three and four from the Standa store in Treviso. But the first one put to the test had failed.

On 24 July a bomb in Milan’s Palace of Justice failed to explode so the terrorists cal ed in an

expert. Franco Freda had an electrician Tullio Fabris (who had instal ed some chandeliers for

Freda in his studio in the Via San Biagio in Padua) explain to him how to connect up an alarm clock

to a resistor that would then light storm lamps. Fabris gave Freda a technical run-down, which he

tested out on the trains. The experiment worked: eight out of ten bombs exploded. The two, which

failed to explode, had used Ruhla timepieces.

The next step was to switch to timers. Freda, through Fabris, ordered 50 60-minute timers

from Elettrocontrolli in Bologna. On 19 September Freda travelled to the Bologna with Fabris to

col ect the Junghan-Diehl timers.

New gear, new trials. Lesson one: Fabris showed Freda (even prior to buying the timers) how to

connect the battery, chromium-nickel wire and storm lamp to a timing device. Having seen the

results for himself, Freda had Fabris buy a length of the wire. Lesson two: after collecting the

timers, the electrician gave Freda and Ventura a quick run-down on timing devices and their use.

Freda studiously took notes. Lesson three: Under Fabris’s supervision, Freda and Ventura twice

assembled a device. The trial went perfectly. Everything was now ready for the big one. In fact the

bag containing the unexploded bomb left at the Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan’s Piazza del a

Scala was found to contain the dial from a Junghans-Diehl timing device. The bag was one of a

batch made by the German firm of Mosbach-Gruber and imported into Italy. The bags used in the

bombings were of two sorts: the brown City 2131 and the black Peraso 2131 models, and in Italy

only three firms sold both sorts — Biagini in Milan, Protto in Cuneo and Al Duomo in Padua.

When the owner of the Al Duomo luggage shop, Fausto Giuriati, saw the photo of the bag in the

newspapers and on television, he rang police headquarters. It took a few days before someone from

the police cal ed at his shop. Loretta Galeazzo, his shop assistant, said she had sold four bags of

that sort to a well-dressed young man on the evening of 10 December. The Padua police forwarded

a report to Milan police headquarters and to the confidential affairs bureau at the Interior Ministry, but

it was three years before anyone cal ed back to the Padua city centre shop. Even then it was not on

any instructions from Milan or Rome. Who came to cal ? It was Carabinieri Alvise Munari, making

inquiries on behalf of examining magistrate Giancarlo Stiz in Treviso.

Let us remain in Padua — the day before the bombings. Here is a reasonable reconstruction of

events based on what we know so far. Freda, by now an expert thanks to Fabris’ training, put the

explosive devices using the gelignite obtained by Delfo Zorzi, and wired them up to the Junghans-

Diehl timers. He placed them in the bags bought from the Al Duomo shop in Padua and in another

bag. He then passed the bags to the people whose job it was to transport them. Zorzi then left for

Milan where members of Giancarlo Rognoni’s La Fenice were waiting for him. They were to

provide the operational base, a flat near the Piazza Fontana. Ventura on the other hand travel ed to

Rome to deliver his device to comrades from the Avanguardia Nazionale, answerable to Stefano

Delle Chiaie.

On the afternoon of 12 December 1969 two bags containing two gelignite bombs wired up to

Junghans-Diehl timers were planted in theBanca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in the Piazza Fontana

and theBanca Commerciale Italiana in the Piazza del a Scala. A further device was planted in the

underpass at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Rome and two more at the tomb of the Unknown

Soldier in the Piazza Venezia. The Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale members had

carried out their mission almost to the point of perfection.

The only hitch was the failure of the device left at the Banca Commerciale in Milan, but lo and

behold, along came expert Teonesto Cerri, as we have seen, who destroyed the incriminating

evidence. But not completely. In the confusion he forgot to blow up the dial of the timer left behind in

the bag.

It was that timer that would betray the Freda group and its partners. Only five were ever used, the

others were passed to Cristiano De Eccher to hide them.

Cristiano De Eccher

De Eccher, a descendant of a noble family of the Holy Roman Empire, had a castle in Calavino near

Trento. In 1969 he was 19 years old, a member ofAvanguardia Nazionale, a Padua University

student and in close contact with Freda. He was one of the few people with whom the aristocratic

Freda used the familiar form of address, perhaps because of De Eccher’s ancient aristocratic

lineage. So De Eccher was a point of contact between the two Nazi groups. De Eccher hid the

timers, but he was more loyal to Delle Chiaie than to Freda and was never to hand the timers over

again. So much so that he provoked fury in the Paduan prosecution counsel who complained to a

fascist col eague, Sergio Calore, “about being let down by a baron of the Holy Roman Empire”.

Since Freda could not deny having bought the timers, he claimed that he had passed them to a

certain Captain Hamid from the Algerian secret services that supposedly asked for them to use in

attacks on Zionist targets. Spectacularly, the judges believed this, not at all disturbed by the fact that

the Israeli secret service, Mossad, stated that no Captain Hamid existed. The judges appeared to

believe that it was perfectly plausible that an Algerian agent should have approached a law officer in

Padua to obtain timing devices.

Meanwhile the electrician Fabris made only partial admissions to the court. Why? He had been

threatened three times into keeping his mouth shut — twice by Massimiliano Fachini and again by

Massimiliano Fachini in the presence of Pino Rauti.

In fact the timers had not gone to Algeria. They remained in the care ofDe Eccher who was under

the protection of carabinieri Colonel Michele Santoro. Some ended up with the La Fenice group in

Milan and some with Avanguardia Nazionale in Rome, which had used a few in the attacks on

the Reggio Calabria express trains on the night of 21-22 October 1972.

Giangiacomo Feltrinel i (1926-1972 - probably murdered!)

In 1973 La Fenice group militants prepared a plan to plant a few of these timers in a house

belonging to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (found dead in Segrate in March 1972) The house — in fact it

was a chateau in Vil adeati in the Monferrato— was the property of the Feltrinel i family who scarcely

ever used it. A few militants from Giancarlo Rognoni’s group were to break into the chateau and

hide the timers before tipping off the carabinieri. The purpose of al this was to steer the Piazza

Fontana investigations back to the “red trail”, at a time whenD’Ambrosio was zeroing in on the

fascists. But the scheme had to be shelved because Rognoni found it too far-fetched.

Two years earlier, Martino Siciliano and Marco Foscari from theVenice Ordine Nuovo had turned

their attentions to Feltrinelli. Foscari had a family home in Paternion in Carinthia (Austria), not far

from a chalet belonging to Sibilla Melega. Feltrinelli, whose was on the run at the time, often hid

out in the chalet and it occurred to the two Ordine Nuovo members that they might kidnap him, ferry

him back to Italy and leave him for the police to find.

So, armed with hunting rifles, behind the wheel of an off-road vehicle and accompanied by Foscari’s

gamekeeper, a former Waffen SS member, off they went to grab Feltrinel i. They also had a bottle of

ether to help them subdue the publisher, rope to tie him and a trunk in which to ferry him over the

border.

But their plan was improvised and they were out of luck: “We had no problems locating the property

where the chalet was, but Feltrinelli was nowhere to be seen and, anyway, the chalet appeared

locked up. So we abandoned the plan as readily as we conceived it”, Siciliano recal ed.

So much for the timers. Now to the gelignite. The bombings on 12 December 1969 did not use al

the explosives; some were used later by the Venice Ordine Nuovo group.

Mestre, 27 October 1970. Siciliano was putting together a time bomb, but unsure as to whether or

not he had primed it correctly, it occurred to him to connect to a shared fuse wired to the

gelignite. Piero Andreattaplanted the device, which exploded, outside the Coin store in the Piazza

Barche.

But the gelignite was used also in more telling and more lethal bombings. Delfo

Zorzi handed Marcello Soffiati from the Verona group a bomb assembled using some of the

explosive which he took to Milan where he handed it over to members of the Milanese Squadre

d’azione Mussolini (SAM) (Mussolini Action Squads) who, in turn, sent it on to Brescia.

Piazza del a Loggia. Brescia, 8 May 1974: bomb explodes during a demonstration sponsored by the Brescia United

Antifascist Committee and local trade unions

This bomb exploded at 10.20 am on 28 May 1974, during a demonstration sponsored by

the Brescia United Antifascist Committee and the trade unions in the Piazza della Loggia in

Brescia. It went off during a speech by Franco Castrezzati the provincial secretary of the FIM-CISL.

Eight people died and nearly a hundred people were injured. This incident triggered a fal ing-out

in Ordine Nuovo ranks and relations between Zorzi and Soffiati deteriorated to the point where

they became enemies. Soffiati could not forgive his Venetian col eague for implicating him in an

operation of such significance, especial y one that departed from the strategy adopted hitherto —

planting bombs that could be blamed on the left.

Tags25 April 1969, 27 October 1970, 28 May 1974, Algerian secret services, Alvise Munari, Avanguardia

Nazionale, Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Brescia United Antifascist Committee, Captain

Hamid, Colonel Michele Santoro, Cristiano De Eccher, Delfo Zorzi, Elettrocontrolli, Fausto Giuriati, Franco

Castrezzati, Franco Freda, Gerardo D’Ambrosio, Giancarlo Rognoni, Giancarlo Stiz,Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Holy

Roman Empire, Junghan-Diehl timers, La Fenice group, Loretta Galeazzo, Marcello Soffiati, Marco Foscari, Martino

Siciliano,Massimiliano Fachini, Mosbach-Gruber, Mossad, Mussolini Action Squads, Ordine Nuovo, Piazza della

Loggia bombing, Piero Andreatta, Pino Rauti, Reggio Calabria express train attacks, Ruhla brand timer, Sergio

Calore, Sibilla Melega, Squadre d’azione Mussolini (SAM), Stefano delle Chiaie, Teonesto Cerri, tomb of the

Unknown Soldier, Tullio Fabris, Venice Ordine Nuovo

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

2: 13 December, 1969 — ‘Open up! This is

the police!’

December 29, 2011 //

1

1 Vote

, Socorrorso

Inspector Dr. Luigi Calabresi, anarchist specialist of Milan’s Special Branch

‘Horrific massacre in Milan’ ran the headline in the Corriere del a Sera’s edition of 13 December.

‘Foul provocation’, screamed the front page of Il Giorno. ‘Massacre in Milan. A terrorist plan for Italy?’

asked La Stampa. ‘Horrific attack leads to awful massacre in Milan. Fits in with fascist provocations

and reactionary intrigues’, suggested L’Unità.

But whereas the major newspapers confined themselves to reporting the facts — on the front page

at least, and were not yet venturing any hypotheses, except for the PCI newspaper — there were

already clear ideas emerging as to the identity of the perpetrators and brains behind the previous

day’s massacre.

On the evening of 12 December itself, the prefect of Milan, Libero Mazza, sent Christian Democrat

prime minister Mariano Rumor, a telephone message that did not beat about the bush:

“Credible hypothesis that immediate inquiries should focus on anarchoid groups as well as extremist

fringe. Fol owing consultation with the judicial authorities, strenuous steps already underway to

identify and arrest those responsible.”

The suggestion was plain. And it certainly would not find the officers in charge of the investigation al

at sea. Inspector Dr. Luigi Calabresi, deputy head of Special Branch at the Milan Questura (police headquarters), was already targeting leftwing extremists. Motive? Look at the targets: banks and the

war monument.

As far as he was concerned they were a dead giveaway. His immediate superior, Antonino Al egra,

was even quicker off the mark. The running of the investigation seemed to be fol owing a ready-

made script. Indeed, those arrested were primarily anarchists and members of the extra-

parliamentary left, with only a few far right activists.

Paolo Finzi, 1970

THAT 12 DECEMBER Paolo Finzi was in bed with a temperature. A touch of ‘flu. Barely 18 years old

he was a student at the Giosuè Carducci liceo (high school) in Milan where he was active in the

school anarchist group. Another member was Fabio Treves who was to acquire celebrity several

years later as a musician and city council or.

Shortly before midnight there was a knock on the door of the Finzi household. It was the police.

Paolo’s anxious parents, Matilde and Ulisse, were told bluntly: “We are taking your son to the

Questura because because he a main suspect in the Piazza Fontana massacre.”

Matilde Bassani Finzi was not the sort of woman to shock easily. She was 51 years old and had

been an active antifascist since the late 1930s, as a member of Soccorso Rosso (Red Aid) in her native town, Ferrara. From 1943 she played an active role in the resistance in Rome, working with

the Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) groups. She was a woman tempered by her past.

But that night Matilde Bassani worried for Paolo, the youngest of her three children, who had been

taken to the fourth floor in the Via Fatebenefratelli, the offices of Milan’s Special Branch. The

premises were crowded with leftwingers, mostly, except for four fascists who were chatting with the

police.

Paolo spotted Giuseppe Pinelli. He knew him as one of the ‘old hands’ from Milan’s Ponte Del a

Ghisolfa anarchist group and founder of theCroce Nera Anarchica (Anarchist Black Cross). But there was another anarchist there, older even than Pinel i and whom Finzi knew as a friend of his

parents: Virgilio Galassi. Galassi had been a militant in the libertarian movement since the war, but

by 1969 he was no longer active. Yet he too was among the suspects rounded up. Why?

Meeting of the Ponte del a Ghisolfa anarchist group

The reason is as straightforward as it is laughable: he worked for the training section at the Banca

Commerciale Italiana, where the unexploded bomb had been discovered. But he didn’t remain long

at the Questura and was released after the bank’s president, Raffaele Mattioli, intervened on his

behalf.

The hours passed. The prisoners were summoned into another room, one at a time, where they

were interviewed. It was the usual routine. Alibis were checked, opinions sought on what had

happened and one final question:

“Who do you think it was?”

But the question was superfluous; the police had assumed from the start that the bombing was the

work of anarchists.

The detainees were then moved downstairs to the holding cel s. By the afternoon of 13 December it

was all over and nearly everyone released.

But the police continued with their inquiries — or, rather, arresting leftwing militants. Unlike Paolo

Finzi, Fausto Lupetti was not a boy: he was 26 years old, but was in the frame. A member of the

Italian Marxist-Leninist Party which a few years earlier had split into two factions, a black (libertarian)

and a red (Marxist), Lupetti, a publisher, belonged to the latter. What is more, this “pro-Chinese” was

unusual inasmuch as he lived in a commune in a large apartment in the Via Mosso, off the Via

Padova in Milan.

At 6.00 am. on 13 December the members of the commune were wakened by the arrival of the

police. Everyone was taken to the station for questioning. Lupetti also saw Pinel i who was probably

the best known anarchist ‘face’ in leftist circles in Milan.

“I remember the ground in front of him was strewn with cigarette butts”, recal ed Lupetti who was

taken later that evening to the San Vittore prison where he remained until 29 December, along with

Pasquale Valitutti known as ‘Lel o’, a young anarchist, and Andrea Valcarenghi, the leading light of

the Onda Verde (Green Wave) group and, from 1971 onwards, the man in charge of the monthly Re

Nudo.

On 15 December the front page of the Corriere del a Sera carried the splash headline: ‘Twenty

seven extremists held in San Vittore. Most are members of neo-anarchist groups tied to international

organisations’. The thrust of the article, written by Arnaldo Giuliani, says much about the climate

being created at the time:

“At the end of the first forty hours on inquiries, the investigation into the Piazza Fontana massacre

can be summed up as follows: 1) so far, upwards of one hundred and fifty suspects drawn from

opposing extremes have been arrested; 2) at 8.00 pm. yesterday, 27 youngsters most of them

members of anarchoid groups suspected of connections with international anarchist movements

were being held in San Vittore.”

The anarchist trail was explored in greater depth in the inside pages. A headline on page five read:

‘Anarchist old hands from the Diana among those rounded up in extremists’ dens’. The author of this

report, Enzo Passanisi, profiled the Milan anarchist movement, as if to familiarise readers with the

ambience in which the outrage might have been hatched:

“Italian anarchists are gathered together into a federation, the FAI […] But most of Milan’s

anarchists, numbering up to two thousand — with active members and sympathisers — espouse an

autonomous line. They consist of circles and groups, only one of which, the Sacco e Vanzetti group

whose members are mostly older anarchists, is affiliated to the FAI. The other dozen groups are

broken down according to their respective fields of activity.

“For example, the Lega anarchica Milanese (Milan Anarchist League), which is active in the

university sector, has members in eight institutions of higher learning. There is also the anarchist

trade union. It is worth stressing that the policy line espoused by the movement […] preaches

subversion of society and the seizure of power by the masses directly through popular assemblies

and labour communes, eschewing both government and parliament after the example of the

Ukrainian Republic set up during the struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Russian Whites.”

Having described the ‘likely’ perpetrators, Passanini went on to describe the bomb. But not the one

in the Piazza Fontana, but the one at theDiana theatre on 23 March 1921.

As an ‘historical precedent’, Passanisi had raised this matter with some anarchists from the Ponte

della Ghisolfa. The answer he got was:

“A mistake. The intention was to strike at the magistrates staying in the hotel adjoining the theatre:

the judges who were holding Malatesta in prison without a trial. Agents provocateurs from the police managed to get the target altered at the last minute and there was a massacre. A massacre that we

have always deplored.”

This left the door open for Passanini to comment:

“There is always a margin for error between the attack that is acceptable to the anarchist line and

the one that it repudiates. Could there have been a mistake made last Friday too?”

But the comparison between the bank bombing and the Diana bombing had been made as early as

the evening of 12 December by Alberto Grisolia in the Corriere del a Sera, the daily newspaper run

by Giovanni Spadolini, who was more of an historian than a journalist.

“It’s akin to the Diana”, Grisolia told Giulio Polotti, class of 1924, the then secretary of the UIL in

Milan a socialist deputy. (In the 14 December edition of the Corriere del a Sera Grisolia wrote: “In

terms of the seriousness of the attack, the only precedent in Milan is the Diana attack theatre attack

[…]”.)

Polotti, chairman of the Fondazione Anna Kuliscioff, recal ed that Friday afternoon:

“There was a meeting of the three unions at the CISL premises in the Via Tadino to discuss plans for

the strike over renewal of contacts. The news of the explosion reached us at around 5.00 pm., and

so, in my capacity as a deputy, I made my way immediately to the Piazza Fontana to see what had

happened. I stepped into the bank concourse and, horror!, trod on the arm of one victim. Then I

climbed to the first floor, where the mayor Aldo Aniasi, prefect Libero Mazza, questore Marcel o

Guida and Cardinal Giovanni Colombo also arrived. By that point it was unmistakable — there had

been a bomb. I telephoned Antonio Giolitti in Rome who told me there had also been explosions in

the capital. After my telephone cal I bumped into Grisolia who spoke to me of the bombings having

an historical precedent in the Diana outrage.”

There was a similar atmosphere in Rome. The Corriere del a Informazione wrote in its 14 December

afternoon edition:

“Extremists of every hue did not sleep undisturbed last night. Throughout the city, police carried out a

massive round-up of extremists of every persuasion, individuals involved in movements that have

never made any secret of their subversive intentions.”

Further on the author of the article, Fabrizio De Santis, adjusted his aim: “These are clearly people

who wil shrink from nothing. They seek not only to strike fear into the population and signal their

existence as challenging revolutionary elements. They seek to kil .”

The psychological and social climate was in place. Al that was required was a monster to plaster al

over the front pages.

TagsCroce Nera Anarchica, Diana Theatre, Errico Malatesta, Giuseppe Pinelli, Mariano Rumor, Paolo Finzi, Ponte

della Ghisolfa, Soccorso Rojo, Virgilio Galassi

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

I: 12 December 1969 — An Explosive Day

December 28, 2011 //

1

2 Votes

MILAN, December 12 1969: Banca Nazionale del 'Agricultura, Piazza Fontanta

The dapper, middle-aged gent who boarded Tram 23 at the Piazza Missori stop did not give the

impression of some pop-eyed individual talking to himself, or haranguing the crowd in disjointed

sentences. Yet, immediately after paying his 70 lire fare he stared straight ahead and exclaimed:

“What was that? A burst boiler — or a bomb?”

A few of the passengers on the tram trundling towards Porta Romana continued either poring over

their newspapers or chatting among themselves. Those closest to the middle-aged gent, however,

gazed at him, partly stupefied and partly intrigued. The unsolicited speaker started again: “Coming

from the Piazza Fontana, an inferno … there are ambulances, police, carabinieri there … there’s

been an explosion at the Banca dell’Agricoltura …”

No one on board the tram, which was, moving away from the centre of Milan, knew anything as yet.

The time was a little after five o’clock on the afternoon of another Friday in the run-up to Christmas.

But this was no ordinary Friday. This was Friday 12 December 1969 and less than half an hour

earlier, at 4.37 pm., a bomb had taken the lives of 14 people (a further two died in hospital) and

injured about one hundred. It was a massacre, as the first helpers to reach the scene were to say.

The Piazza Fontana bomb was not the only one. Another device was found close to the Banca Commerciale Italiana in the Piazza della Scala. At 4.25 pm., an employee of the Banca

Commerciale, Rodolfo Borroni, spotted a black bag abandoned near the entrance to a lift and picked

it up in the belief that it belonged to some absent-minded customer. The bag was heavy. Borroni

opened it, together with some col eagues, and discovered a metal box inside, a rectangular plastic

envelope and a black disc with graduated markings from 0 to 60.

Nothing else. Someone suggested it could be a bomb. Brigadiere Vincenzo Ferrettino took the bomb

into the court-yard and placed on the ground. It was a crucial piece of evidence, but four hours later,

at 9.00 pm, Teonesto Cerri, engineer and ballistic expert, attached a TNT charge to the lock and

blew the bag up.

Guido Bizzarri, an army NCO and bomb-disposal officer with more than forty years of experience

behind him would later tel reporters: “I would have defused it, but nobody asked me to. There was

more danger in blowing it up than in opening it.”

This was one of the first mysteries of that 12 December, one which was quickly fol owed by another.

Almost two months later, on 7 February 1970, it emerged that in the bag containing the bomb there

was a piece of coloured glass that the Milan police forwarded to the Criminalpol in Rome for forensic

examination. Analysis showed the glass was similar to that used in Pietro Valpreda’s workshop in Rome where he manufactured liberty lamps. Valpreda was a Milanese anarchist who had recently

moved to the capital.

Milan, 12 December 1969: Banca del ’Agricoltura Piazza Fontana

The sequence of explosions on that incandescent day ended in Rome. Between 4.40 pm. and 4.55

pm, in an underground corridor at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in the Via Veneto, an explosion

injured 14 of the bank’s staff. Within the space of ten minutes, after 5.20 pm., two less powerful

devices exploded at the National War Monument in the Piazza Venezia. This time only four people

were injured — one carabiniere and three passers-by.

And so ended that day of massacre. Radio and television broadcast their first reports while

newspaper sub editors decided on the banner headlines for the fol owing day’s editions.

TagsGiuseppe Pinelli, Pietro Valpreda, state massacre, Strage di Stato, Strategy of Tension

CategoriesGladio, Italy, Piazza Fontana, State Massacre, Strategy of Tension

Document Outline

- Secrets and Bombs 21: TIMETABLE – A Basic Chronology (with video links)

- Secrets and Bombs 20 : YEAR ZERO

- Secrets and Bombs 19: State Massacre

- Secrets and Bombs 18: The Carnevale Verdict

- Secrets and Bombs 17: The Wild Goose Chase is the Important Thing

- Secrets and Bombs 16: ‘Inspector Window’

- Secrets and Bombs 15: On The Trail of the Fascists

- Secrets and Bombs 14: Stick it to the anarchist!

- Secrets and Bombs 13: 25 April 1969 — With Murderous Intent

- 2: 13 December, 1969 — ‘Open up! This is the police!’

- I: 12 December 1969 — An Explosive Day

Table of Contents

Secrets and Bombs 21: TIMETABLE – A Basic Chronology (with video links)

Secrets and Bombs 20 : YEAR ZERO

Secrets and Bombs 19: State Massacre

Secrets and Bombs 18: The Carnevale Verdict

Secrets and Bombs 17: The Wild Goose Chase is the Important Thing

Secrets and Bombs 16: ‘Inspector Window’

Secrets and Bombs 15: On The Trail of the Fascists

Secrets and Bombs 14: Stick it to the anarchist!

Secrets and Bombs 13: 25 April 1969 — With Murderous Intent

2: 13 December, 1969 — ‘Open up! This is the police!’

I: 12 December 1969 — An Explosive Day