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Years of LeadMain articles: Terrorism in Italy since 1945 and Years of Lead (Italy) See also: Italy–United States relations and Operation Gladio The Years of Lead was a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s into the early 1980s. This period was marked by a wave of terrorism carried out by both right- and left-wing paramilitary groups. It was concluded that the former were supported by the United States as a strategy of tension.[6][7][8] General Gianadelio Maletti [it], commander of the counter-intelligence section of the Italian military intelligence service from 1971 to 1975, stated that his men in the region of Venice discovered a right-wing terrorist cell that had been supplied with military explosives from Germany, and alleged that US intelligence services instigated and abetted right-wing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s.[9] According to the investigation of Italian judge Guido Salvini, the neo-fascist organizations involved in the strategy of tension, "La Fenice, Avanguardia nazionale, Ordine nuovo" were the "troops" of "clandestine armed forces", directed by components of the "state apparatus related to the CIA."[9] Any relationship of the CIA to the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the Years of Lead is the subject of debate. Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.[10] Piazza Fontana bombingMain article: Piazza Fontana bombing
Plaque in memory of the 17 victims of the terrorist bombing in Piazza Fontana The Piazza Fontana Bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on December 12, 1969 at 16:37, when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura [it] (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found undetonated.[11] In 1998, Milan judge Guido Salvini indicted U.S. Navy officer David Carrett on charges of political and military espionage for his alleged participation in the Piazza Fontana bombing et al. Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, an Italian official of the U.S.-NATO intelligence network, and "collaboratore di giustizia" Carlo Digilio (Uncle Otto), who served as the CIA coordinator in Northeastern Italy in the sixties and seventies. The newspaper la Repubblica reported that Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man in Milan, was discovered in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio.[7] A 2000 parliamentary report published by the center-left Olive Tree coalition claimed that "U.S. intelligence agents were informed in advance about several right-wing terrorist bombings, including the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place." It also alleged that Pino Rauti (current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party), a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo (New Order) subversive organization, received regular funding from a press officer at the U.S. embassy in Rome. "So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome", the report says.[12] Paolo Emilio Taviani, the Christian Democrat co-founder of Gladio (NATO's stay-behind anti-Communist organization in Italy), told investigators that the SID military intelligence service was about to send a senior officer from Rome to Milan to prevent the bombing, but decided to send a different officer from Padua in order to put the blame on left-wing anarchists. Taviani also alleged in an August 2000 interview to Il Secolo XIX newspaper: "It seems to me certain, however, that agents of the CIA were among those who supplied the materials and who muddied the waters of the investigation."[13] Guido Salvini said "The role of the Americans was ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities."[14] According to Vincenzo Vinciguerra, the terrorist attack was supposed to push then Interior Minister Mariano Rumor to declare a state of emergency.[7] Strategy of tensionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The strategy of tension is most closely identified with the Years of Lead in Italy from 1968–1982, wherein both far-left Marxist and far-right neo-fascist extra-parliamentary groups, and state intelligence agencies performed bombings, kidnappings, arsons, and murders.[1] Some historians and activists have accused NATO of allowing and sanctioning such terrorism, through projects such as Operation Gladio, although this is hotly disputed by the intelligence agencies involved and other historians.[2][3] Other cases where writers have alleged a strategy of tension include the deep state in Turkey from the 1970s–1990s ("Ergenekon"),[4] the war veterans and ZANU–PF in Zimbabwe which coordinated the farm invasions of 2000,[5] the DRS security agency in Algeria from 1991 to 1999,[6] and the State Security Service (Belgium) during the 1982-1986 Belgian terrorist crisis.[7] Contents ExamplesItalySee also: Years of Lead (Italy) From 1968–1982, Italy suffered numerous terrorist attacks by both the left and the right, which were often followed by government round-ups and mass arrests. An allegation, especially made by adherents of the Italian Communist Party, was that the government trumped up and intentionally allowed the attacks of communist radicals as an excuse to arrest other communists, and allowed the attacks of far-right paramilitary organizations as an extrajudicial way to silence enemies.[8] The veracity of parts of these allegations has been disputed; while most sources agree that elements within the Italian government were eager to use the terrorist strikes as a reason to round-up communists, the idea that the government directly worked with said communist groups is more far-fetched. In the same way, some contacts between the government and far-right organizations existed, but allegations of an explicit "green light" to perform raids and the like are considered less reliable[by whom?].[citation needed] Various parliamentary committees were held to investigate these crimes as well as prosecute them in the 1990s. A 1995 report from the Left Democrats (a merger of former center-left parties and the PCI) to a subcommittee of the Italian Parliament stated that a "strategy of tension" had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country". Aldo Giannuli, a historian who worked as a consultant to the parliamentary terrorism commission, wrote that he considered the Left Democrats' report as dictated primarily by domestic political considerations rather than historical ones: "Since they have been in power the Left Democrats have given us very little help in gaining access to security service archives," he said. "This is a falsely courageous report." Giannuli did decry the fact that many more leftist terrorists were prosecuted and convicted than rightist terrorists, though.[8] Swiss academic Daniele Ganser wrote NATO's Secret Armies, a 2004 book that alleged direct NATO support for far-right terrorists in Italy as part of its "strategy of tension".[9] Ganser also alleges that Operation Gladio, an effort to organize stay-behind guerillas and resistance in the event of a communist takeover by the Eastern bloc of Italy, continued into the 1970s and supplied the far-right neofascist movements with weapons. Ganser's conclusions have been disputed;[2][10] most notably, Ganser heavily cites the document US Army Field Manual 30-31B, which the US state department claims is a 1976 Soviet hoax meant to discredit the US.[11] In a BBC documentary on Gladio, the neo-fascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra reported that the stay-behind armies really did possess this strategy, stating that the state needed those terrorist attacks for the population to willingly turn to the state and ask for security.[12] See also
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