The Octopus at the Vatican

# 8 - May 10, 1978 - Rome - death of Aldo Moro

On May 10, 1987, two months after Aldo Moro's murder, Alessa Lombardi went to the Fendinebbia where a few journalists and admin staff were having discussions. The body of Moro had been found, the day before in the boot of a car which had been symbolically parked between the HQ of the CD and the ICP, to point to the real perpetrators of the crime.

"It's got the sophist trademark of the Brigade members! We didn't kill anyone. You are the oppressors, you killed your accomplice Moro by refusing to free our thirteen courageous comrades you kidnapped and tortured in concentration camps."

"Yes, it's in the style of their nine convoluted press releases. It's a surreal propaganda gruel. All of life's complex situations must, willingly or not, fit into their thought patterns."

"All the same, it's awful for his family. Two months of suffering! Have you read his letters? They are poignant. He's asking his CD colleagues to negotiate his release in exchange for the release of Brigade members. All along his colleagues pretended not to have heard anything. They could have saved him."

"State reasons. To negotiate with the Red Brigades is to recognize them politically. To release ideological terrorists would risk the stability of society, already weakened. Can the rule of law give in to blackmail without destroying itself slowly?"

"You make me laugh with your high political principles! Neither Andreotti nor the Home Secretary Cossiga nor Paul VI lifted a finger to negotiate and save Moro! He was the leader of the left wing of the CD, the creator of the historic compromise with the ICP, an ideology Andreotti and the Pope were far from sharing. Moro's death didn't bother them much."

"The CIA would have been involved, having infiltrated and manipulated the Red Brigades."

"The CIA is no choirboy. But from there to see their hand everywhere. The far left is spreading these rumors. Only the CIA can commit such a base action! Our brave and pure Brigade members could never do such a thing! When we all know what they are capable of. Their brothers are doing it in Cambodia: two million dead in three years! The Maoist far left is worse, while appearing as innocent as a pastor boy. Have you spoken to the wives and kids of the five men murdered on March 16!?"

"It's still odd that the security services didn't find out where Moro was being held."

"Yes, it's making a lot of people wonder what went on. A good explanation is often the simplest. But one gets treated like an idiot who understands nothing. The hideaway? An ordinary flat in Rome. A needle in a haystack. If the Brigade members apply the security criteria of a network in a hostile country, it works. Militarily speaking, the attack on March 16 was faultless. The escape, too. They disappeared within Rome on that day. That's what the police assumed from the beginning. If the terrorists don't make a mistake, if there are no snitches, if the police don't have informers in the area, it's very difficult to spot. The Red Brigades are trained to stay in hiding. They train in the USSR, in China, in Bulgaria, who knows? The cartridges were from Czechoslovakia."

"It has been said that the hideaway was found and they deliberately didn't intervene. To allow Moro to be killed."

"Say what you like, it's your choice. But again, I think it's absurd. Can you imagine the kudos of the government had they managed to free Moro and arrest the Red Brigades? This hypothesis is as unlikely as that of the CIA. The culprits can only be the authorities, the Church or the CIA. Whereas in fact, the Red Brigades have a utopian ideology, that of the Khmer Rouges. We must avoid giving them any leverage. The government had to decide. Abandon Moro to a certain death, to nip it in the bud so as not to let it develop as it has elsewhere. Andreotti and Cossiga, not my favorite people, had no choice. Take Chamberlain and Churchill before the war. Chamberlain, looking for peace and humanity, and to avoid war, allowed Hitler to grow. We know what happened then. Leaders are sometimes made to accept one death to prevent others."

"Your cold cynicism is pretty disgusting. Can you imagine what Moro went through during the two months? The attitude of the government and of Berlinguer was cruel."

"Yes, hugely cruel. To avoid even more cruelty. Horrid. It was about choosing between a certain, immediate murder and hundreds of thousands of uncertain deaths. We'll never know."

"In other words, a moral dilemma? It reminds me of Lorenzaccio by Musset or Dirty Hands by Sartre."

"We are talking a lot about Moro, but we are not mentioning Peppino Impastato's murder only yesterday. "

"Who?"

"A young and courageous Sicilian idealist. He had decided to stand up to the Mafia in his town, Cinisi near Palermo. He had founded a radio station where he mocked the local godfather and mafiosi. He was standing for the local elections due in a week. Against the CD supported by Andreotti, and by Cosa Nostra. He died yesterday, in the middle of the election campaign. His blown-up body was found on the railway line. The exiting municipality states that Peppino Impastato was trying to blow up the line and got it wrong; no-one believed that, of course. He was from a mafiosi family, from Father to Son. As a young man, he saw his uncle's remains spread about a dozen fruit trees; he was traumatized. If that's what the mafia were like, he wanted nothing to do with it. Until last year, he was still protected by his father, a mafioso who begged the local boss to spare his son. To get peace, the godfather had the Impastato father taken out last year. Then he could blow up his son without being bothered by his father's whining. Sicily is like that: it's worthy of our Roman dramas, don't you think? I'm off there tomorrow, to write a paper. I hope to come back alive. Otherwise, come to my funeral, all of you, bearing anti-octopus's slogans."