#StrategyOfTension
16 entries tagged StrategyOfTension.
People (7)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 (4)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 (4)
- 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.