CIA Endorsed Italy Bombings In 1970s

Subject: Ex-Spy Alleges CIA Endorsed Italy Bombings in 1970s
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 15:47:14
From: Sid Shniad
(Reuters)
Archives.Econ.Utah.Edu

Rome - An Italian secret service general said on Friday that the CIA gaveits tacit approval to a series of bombings in Italy in the 1970s to sowinstability and keep communists from taking power.

"We cannot say that the CIA had an active and direct role in thebombings, but it is true that they knew the targets and culprits," GeneralGianadelio Maletti told la Repubblica newspaper in an interview from Johannesburg, where the former spy is in self-imposed exile.

Maletti said the military secret service division he headed in the1970s found out explosives were being sent from Germany to the Italianneo-fascist paramilitary group Ordine Nuovo (New Order).

Three Ordine Nuovo members were charged with the bombing ofMilan's Piazza Fontana in 1969, which killed 16 people.

Maletti said the explosives' discovery had been reported to hissuperiors but nothing happened.

"We made the discovery and pointed out that the explosives used in Piazza Fontana came from one of those cargoes (of explosives fromGermany)," he told the paper in the interview conducted in a Johannesburg park.

Maletti did not explain why the explosives came from Germany or who sent them. But he did say West Germany hosted a powerful CIA base at the time.

The Piazza Fontana bombing, now into its eighth trial, is one of themany unsolved crimes which plagued Italy during the height of bloodyurban guerrilla activity from the late 1960s to early 1980s. Italy's Nobellaureate Dario Fo based his play "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist"on the outrage.

SOWING TERROR:

Italian secret services and the CIA were alleged to have colluded in a strategy to keep Italy's increasingly popular Communist Party at bay and the conservative Christian Democrats in power by sowing terror and instability in Italy.

The spy networks were alleged to have supported extreme-right activities and turned a blind eye to killings by extreme-left groups,thereby encouraging the climate of fear.

"The CIA wanted, through the birth of an extreme nationalism and the contribution of the far right, particularly Ordine Nuovo, to stop (Italy)sliding to the left," he said.

Maletti said Italian secret agents were largely aware of what was going on.

Top politicians also knew, he said, but felt it better to look theother way.

"It is obvious they knew, even though there will never be enough evidence to make a conviction stick...The real blame...lies in the fact thatno one (top politician) took any action," Maletti said.

Maletti, on the run over various charges in Italy, including allowing two neo-fascist suspects to flee the country, spoke out following the 20th anniversary of the Bologna railway station bombing, which killed 85 people and injured 200 others.

Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said at a Bologna bombing commemoration on Wednesday he felt "humiliated" by the state's complicity with the crimes committed in those years and by its failure to punish those responsible.