#Italy
35 entries tagged Italy.
People (16)
- Adriano Sofri Adriano Sofri was the leader of Lotta Continua who was convicted in the 1990s of ordering the 1972 murder of Milan police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, in a case that became one of Italy's most contested criminal proceedings.
- Aldo Moro Aldo Moro was Italy's five-time Prime Minister and Democrazia Cristiana president who was kidnapped and murdered by the Brigate Rosse in March-May 1978, with his abduction occurring precisely on the morning he was to present a coalition government incorporating the Italian Communist Party - a political development that Gladio-linked investigators and the Red Brigades themselves sought to prevent.
- Bettino Craxi Bettino Craxi was the Italian Socialist Party secretary from 1976 and Prime Minister from 1983 to 1987 who was the only major political figure to publicly advocate negotiating for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, and who fled Italy in 1994 to avoid Tangentopoli corruption prosecution, dying in self-imposed exile in Tunisia.
- Enrico Berlinguer Enrico Berlinguer was the General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1972 until his death in 1984, the architect of Eurocommunism and the historic compromise with the Democrazia Cristiana, and the most successful communist party leader in Western Europe with the PCI achieving 34 percent of the Italian vote under his leadership.
- Felice Casson Felice Casson is the Venetian magistrate who reopened the Peteano bombing case in 1984, obtained access to SISMI archives, and in 1990 discovered the documents that forced Prime Minister Andreotti's parliamentary disclosure of Operation Gladio.
- Francesco Cossiga Francesco Cossiga was Italy's Interior Minister during the Aldo Moro kidnapping in 1978 who resigned after Moro's murder, Prime Minister during the Bologna railway station bombing in 1980, and President of the Republic from 1985 to 1992, who became an increasingly outspoken whistleblower on Gladio and Italian intelligence secrets in his final years.
- Giorgio Ambrosoli Giorgio Ambrosoli was the Italian lawyer appointed as official liquidator for Michele Sindona's bankrupt Italian banking empire whose methodical documentation of Sindona's fraud was completed just weeks before he was shot dead outside his Milan apartment on July 11, 1979, on the orders of Sindona.
- Giulio Andreotti Giulio Andreotti was Italy's seven-time Prime Minister and dominant Democrazia Cristiana figure who refused to negotiate for Aldo Moro's release in 1978, disclosed the existence of Operation Gladio to parliament in October 1990, and was acquitted of Mafia association charges after an eight-year trial.
- Giuseppe Santovito Giuseppe Santovito was the Director of SISMI from 1978 to 1981 who was simultaneously a member of the P2 Masonic lodge, one of three heads of the Italian intelligence and security apparatus whose membership in P2 was exposed by the March 1981 list discovery.
- Junio Valerio Borghese Junio Valerio Borghese was the Italian naval commander of the Decima Mas commando unit, sheltered from war crimes prosecution by OSS officer James Angleton in 1945, who became the leading figure of Italian postwar neofascism and organized the December 7-8, 1970 Borghese coup attempt against the Italian government before dying in exile in Spain.
- Licio Gelli Licio Gelli was the Venerable Master of the clandestine Italian Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2) from 1967 whose membership list of 962 senior Italian officials, politicians, and financiers was discovered in March 1981, and who was convicted of political conspiracy and fraud related to the Banco Ambrosiano collapse before dying in Arezzo in January 2015.
- Luigi Calabresi Luigi Calabresi was the Milan police commissioner present during Giuseppe Pinelli's fatal fall from a fourth-floor window during Piazza Fontana interrogations in 1969, who was subsequently murdered in 1972 in an assassination ordered by Lotta Continua leaders Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani.
- Michele Sindona Michele Sindona was a Sicilian financier, P2 member, and Vatican Bank associate known as 'the Pope's Banker' whose acquisition of Franklin National Bank produced its 1974 collapse - then the largest U.S. bank failure - and who was murdered in Voghera prison by cyanide poisoning in March 1986 while serving sentences for fraud and for ordering the assassination of Italian liquidator Giorgio Ambrosoli.
- Roberto Calvi Roberto Calvi was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank, and a member of Propaganda Due whose bank collapsed in June 1982 with a $1.3 billion deficit after his offshore shell company network - backed by guarantees from the Vatican Bank - was exposed; he was found hanging from scaffolding under London's Blackfriars Bridge on June 18, 1982, eight days after fleeing Italy on a forged passport.
- Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media magnate and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy three times (1994-1995, 2001-2006, 2008-2011); he appears in this vault primarily as a member of the P2 masonic lodge exposed by Italian authorities in 1981, through which he was connected to the Gladio network and the strategy of tension, and as a figure whose political rise intersected with the Italian intelligence and organized crime dimensions of the broader vault topics.
- Vincenzo Vinciguerra Vincenzo Vinciguerra was the Ordine Nuovo member who carried out the 1972 Peteano bombing, then provided voluntary confessions in 1984 describing in explicit detail how neofascist operatives worked within the protection of Italian military intelligence and the Gladio stay-behind network to execute the strategy of tension.
Organizations (10)
- Banco Ambrosiano Banco Ambrosiano was Italy's largest private bank, founded in Milan in 1896, whose chairman Roberto Calvi used a network of Vatican Bank-guaranteed offshore shell companies to export $1.3 billion from the bank before its June 1982 collapse - the largest bank failure in Italian history - which coincided with Calvi's death under London's Blackfriars Bridge.
- Brigate Rosse The Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) were an Italian far-left terrorist organization active from 1970 to the late 1980s whose most significant operation was the 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and whose role in Italian political violence was manipulated by the Gladio-linked strategy of tension to justify state security measures and prevent a communist-Christian Democrat coalition government.
- Democrazia Cristiana Democrazia Cristiana (DC) was Italy's dominant postwar political party, governing continuously from 1945 to 1994 with CIA support during the Cold War, whose leading figures included Alcide De Gasperi, Aldo Moro, and Giulio Andreotti, and which dissolved in 1994 under the weight of the Tangentopoli corruption investigations.
- Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was Western Europe's largest communist party, achieving 34 percent of the Italian vote in 1976 under Enrico Berlinguer's Eurocommunist leadership, whose proposed historic compromise with the Democrazia Cristiana was ended by Aldo Moro's murder in 1978 and which dissolved in 1991 to become the Democratic Party of the Left.
- Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was Italy's third major postwar political force, which ran a joint electoral front with the Communists in 1948 before gradually moving to center-left autonomy, reached its peak of influence under Bettino Craxi's prime ministership from 1983 to 1987, and was destroyed by the Tangentopoli corruption investigations in 1992-1994.
- Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari The Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) was the Italian neofascist terrorist group whose members Massimo Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro were convicted of the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing, the deadliest postwar Italian terrorist attack, with P2 and SISMI personnel convicted separately for the subsequent cover-up.
- Ordine Nuovo Ordine Nuovo was an Italian neofascist organization whose members Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura were convicted of responsibility for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, Italy's opening strategy of tension attack, and whose operational relationship with SID military intelligence personnel was documented in subsequent parliamentary investigations.
- Propaganda 2 Propaganda 2 (P2) was a fascist secret society linked to the Golpe Borghese coup attempt a decade earlier.
- Propaganda Due Propaganda Due (P2) was a clandestine Italian Masonic lodge headed by Licio Gelli from 1967 whose 962-member list discovered in March 1981 included the heads of all three Italian intelligence services, senior military officers, magistrates, politicians, and financiers including Roberto Calvi and Silvio Berlusconi, and which Italian parliamentary investigators linked to Operation Gladio and the strategy of tension terrorist bombings.
- SISMI SISMI (and its predecessor SID) was Italy's military intelligence service whose personnel were documented participants in the strategy of tension, the cover-up of the Piazza Fontana and Bologna bombings, and the Gladio stay-behind network.
Programs (1)
- Operation Gladio Operation Gladio was the Italian component of a NATO-sponsored network of secret stay-behind armies established across Western Europe by the CIA and British intelligence after World War II to conduct resistance and sabotage operations in the event of a Soviet invasion, whose members in Italy were linked to the right-wing terrorist bombings of the 'strategy of tension' from the late 1960s through the 1980s, exposed publicly by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in October 1990.
Events (5)
- Achille Lauro 1985 cruise ship attack described as an Israeli black propaganda operation designed to portray Palestinians as terrorists.
- Bologna railway station bombing The Bologna railway station bombing of August 2, 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 200 in Italy's deadliest postwar terrorist attack, was carried out by the neofascist Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari with the knowledge of elements of P2 and Italian military intelligence, with Licio Gelli later convicted of obstruction of justice for his role in concealing responsibility.
- Golpe Borghese The Golpe Borghese was a fascist coup attempt in Italy on the night of December 7-8, 1970, organized by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese and the Fronte Nazionale, involving several hundred armed men who seized the Interior Ministry's armory before Borghese abruptly called off the operation.
- Peteano bombing The Peteano bombing of May 31, 1972, in which three Carabinieri were killed by a booby-trapped Fiat 500 near Gorizia, was carried out by Ordine Nuovo member Vincenzo Vinciguerra, whose subsequent confessions in 1984 directly implicated the Italian stay-behind network and led magistrate Felice Casson to uncover the Gladio documents that forced Andreotti's 1990 parliamentary disclosure.
- Piazza Fontana bombing The Piazza Fontana bombing of December 12, 1969, in which a bomb at the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan killed 17 people and wounded 88, was the opening act of Italy's strategy of tension and was ultimately attributed to the neofascist network Ordine Nuovo operating with the knowledge of elements of Italian military intelligence.
Concepts (1)
- Fascism Fascism was the authoritarian nationalist ideology of interwar Europe that American sympathizers attempted to import in the 1930s via the Business Plot and other efforts, and whose remnants were recruited into U.S. intelligence via Operation Paperclip.
Places (2)
- Italy Italy appears throughout this vault as the location of CIA-backed Stay-Behind network Gladio, the center of the P2 Masonic lodge scandal connecting intelligence services to organized crime and far-right terrorism, and a hub for Vatican Bank (IOR) financial flows connected to the BCCI network and money laundering.
- Rome Rome is the capital of Italy and home to the Vatican; it appears in this vault as the location of P2 Masonic lodge operations, the Vatican Bank (IOR) financial flows connected to BCCI and CIA-backed anti-communist programs, and the base of Italian intelligence services whose Cold War activities intersected with Gladio and the strategy of tension.