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"Strategy of Tension" in Italy Was Made in London

The "unspeakable truths" of Italian postwar terrorism are presented in a new book by one of Italy's most famous prosecutors, Rosario Priore, and journalist Giovanni Fasanella. Over the past 30 years, Priore has dealt with major cases of terrorism, from the left-wing and right-wing attacks of the 1970s, to the assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro (1978), from the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II to the 1980 downing of a civilian airliner over Ustica. In all his investigations, Priore achieved remarkable results in terms of securing the material executors of terrorist crimes but, as he says in the book, there is a "political truth" which you cannot prove in court, and an even higher one, the "historical truth". Thus, in Intrigo Internazionale, the book presented in interview form, Priore and Fasanella – the latter himself a terrorism expert – vent such "unspeakable truths".

To understand terrorism, the international context is key. In post-war history, it was characterized by the global East-West conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, Priore says, but there were other regional conflicts, involving other powers such as Britain or France. At the end of the war, Britain controlled all major accesses and nodal points to the Mediterranean: Gibraltar and Suez, Malta and Cyprus, as well as all major oil sources in the Middle East.

Then, Italy began interfering and even downsizing Britain's position, with the support of the U.S.. The main shifts were in 1956 at Suez and in 1969 with Qaddafi's coup in Lybia. That coup was planned in a hotel in Abano Terme, Italy, and supported by the Italian secret services. "For the military parade after the coup, we sent them shiploads of tanks," Priore explains, even at the cost of dismantling Italian Eastern defenses.The first thing Qaddafi did after the coup was to kick the British out of Lybia, and Italy soon became Libya's No. 1 economic partner. Note that the architects of Italy's Mediterranean and African policy were Enrico Mattei and Aldo Moro, respectively killed in terror attacks in 1962 and 1978.

The "strategy of tension" terrorist bombings started in December 1969, a few months after the coup in Lybia, Priore says, and remarkably enough, the term "strategy of tension" first appeared in British media. The right-wing groups used for the operation belonged to the British-connected neo-fascists led by Prince Valerio Borghese, and former State President Giuseppe Saragat even named the British by name. One year later, the British attempted a counter-coup against Qaddafi, but Italian intelligence informed the Libyan leader and the coup was quashed. Priore also mentions recently declassified Foreign Office papers showing that, in 1976, the British government seriously considered organizing a coup d'Etat in Italy, but the plan was opposed by Chancellor Schmidt, who agreed that the PCI should be kept out of the government, but maintained this should be achieved with political, not military, methods.

When François Mitterrand came to power, France renewed the "Entente cordiale" policy with Britain, aiming at weakening Italy. Hundreds of Italian terrorists fleeing from justice found refuge in France, and even more shocking, the explosion of the Itavia jet over Ustica in 1980 was most probably the result of a French attempt to kill Qaddafi and overthrow his regime. With the help of American military experts, Priore collected evidence that two French fighters intended to attack a Libyan aircraft that was flying in the radar shadow of the Itavia jet, but hit the civilian airliner instead, killing all 81 people on board. French authorities refused to cooperate with Priore, while Italian institutions even manipulated and destroyed evidence, and about ten witnesses died in mysterious circumstances.

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