Appendix A: The circle of friends

Close links between German industry and commerce and the Nazi party go back to 11 December 1931 when Walter Funk, later wartime president of the Reichsbank (German central bank) approached Baron Kurt von Schroeder to arrange for Hitler to meet potential supporters among German industrialists. Wilhelm Keppler, a small businessman, was given the job of calling together a group of capitalists who could advise Hitler on what to offer the industrialists in order to win their support. This became known as the Keppler Kreis (Keppler Circle), which later developed into the Reichsfuhrer SS Circle of Friends supervised by the SS and Gestapo boss Heinrich HimmIer.

Twenty days after the abortive attempt on Hitler’s life by von Stauffenberg on 20 July 1944, a meeting was held in great secrecy at the Hotel Maison Rouge in Strasbourg. Present were sixty-seven members of the Circle of Friends representing the most powerful industrial, political and commercial interests of the Nazi power structure. The meeting was the culmination of a years planning by Martin Bormann following the crushing of the German armies at Stalingrad. (The Strasbourg conference was documented in great detail and its files were discovered later by United States army counterintelligence.) The conference chairman, Dr Scheid, declared: Germany has already lost the battle for France. Henceforth German industry must prepare itself for the economic campaign which will follow the end of the war. All industrialists must strengthen their contacts and companies abroad, each on his own account and without drawing attention to himself. And that is not all. We must be ready to finance the Nazi party which is going to be driven underground for some time.

After a lengthy discussion the conference agreed on a plan providing for the transfer to neutral or nonbelligerent nations of a significant portion of the funds of the major companies of the Third Reich. It is estimated that at their disposal the Circle of Friends has some $800 million. It was also estimated, in 1973, that of the world’s total known gold reserves of 75,000 tons, some 93 tons were still in Nazi hands.

In 1946 the US Treasury Department published their report on the outcome of this conference: German industrialists and Nazi leaders transferred part of their wealth abroad. Straw men in their service set up companies and opened secret bank accounts.

750 companies were set up in this way throughout the world by Germans using Nazi funds: 112 in Spain, 58 in Portugal, 35 in Turkey, 98 in Argentina, 214 in Switzerland and 253 in various other countries. An inventory discovered in 1945 among papers belonging to RHSA VI (Nazi foreign intelligence) showed cash paid out to leading Nazi agents including an amount of five million gold reichsmarks charged against Cash Office and signed for by Otto Skorzeny.

Appendix B: Parco dei Principe

By early 1965 the leaders of the Rose of the Winds organization began to prepare the ground for their long-term plans. For three days in May that year, the third to the fifth, the Parco dei Principe Hotel in Rome was the venue for an anticommunist conference on the theme of Revolutionary Warfare Instrument of World Expansion which was to prove the pivotal point which led inexorably to the tragic events of subsequent years.

Discreetly financed by the counterintelligence bureau of the Italian secret service, the conference was organized under the egis of the Alberto Polli Institute for Military and Historical Studies, a rightwing think tank. The papers submitted at the conference were published a few months later by the extreme rightwing publishing house Giovanni Volpe.

The three-day event was chaired jointly by a general commanding the parachute regiment and the president of the Milan court of appeal; its ideological stars were a group of extreme rightwing journalists. Although all of them were to play a crucial part in subsequent events, one is of particular interest in the context of this story Guido Giannettini.

The proposals outlined by the neofascist journalists at the Parco dei Principe conference were directed at: preparing a military instrument capable of facing up to the techniques and expansion of revolutionary warfare an instrument encompassing the setting up of standing defense groups capable of resisting clandestine penetration by revolutionary warfare and which will give battle without hesitation and with all necessary energy and ruthlessness, even in the least orthodox of circumstances. The defense groups were, of course, to be drawn only from known and trusted anticommunists.

So impressed were the Italian general staff with the ideas proposed by the Parco dei Principe team that they promptly commissioned them to compile a report outlining communist infiltration and subversion of the armed forces. Ten thousand copies of this report were printed, but at the last moment it was realized its publication might have precisely the opposite effect to that desired and all copies were hurriedly recalled. The document was eventually published under the pseudonym Flavio Messeler ten years later by the Rome publishing house Savelli with the title Red Hands on the Armed Forces. Interestingly enough a similar confidential study entitled Communist Propaganda in the Armed Forces was published by the Greek army general staff in September 1967 in justification for the coup the previous April.

Effectively, the Parco dei Principe conference established the credentials of the neofascists and the extreme right as experts in the theory and practice of counter-revolution. All of the Parco dei Principe team were recruited into the Italian secret service, directly responsible to its new head, Admiral Hencke, and established as men of confidence and key advisers within the Italian military infrastructure. They were now in a position both to manipulate state policy and to be manipulated!

Appendix C: NATO and civil emergency planning

Since 1962 (when the McConnell plan was formulated with its league table in which NATO countries are ranked according to the strategic significance of their geographic location), Civil Emergency Planning (CEP) had been topmost in the minds of NATO planners. Following the success, in 1965, of the Parco dei Principe conference, NATO ministers approved a secret report on Civil Emergency Planning. Under the terms of this secret NATO agreement, all of the countries of the Alliance were to establish an organization composed of trustworthy and able individuals endowed with the necessary means and capable of intervening effectively in case of an invasion. In Germany, Belgium and Britain these organizations were set up within the framework of the regular and reserve forces. In Italy this auxiliary force was made up of specialists recruited because of their anticommunist reliability. The function of these forces was to establish secret bases, arms dumps and equipment caches and to go into action within the framework of the current NATO survival plan in the event of external socialist aggression or internal political upheavals. In the Italian context it was this NATO report which led directly to the recruitment of fascist terrorists who could act with impunity and under official cover as part of a legitimate military back-up force. In May 1976 the Rome weekly L’Europeo (circulation over 100,000) revealed the existence of a special training camp (weapons, explosives, psychological warfare) established, presumably by the Italian General Staff, at Alghero in western Sardinia in 1968, where training was given to members of the Delle Chiaie organization. La Maddalena, northern Sardinia, is also the HQ of NATO Southern Land Forces.

In the British context it is interesting to note that the details of the existence of this Third Force type of organization Civil Assistance Unison only emerged in the early seventies following the miners strike of 1974, under the command of General Sir Walter Walker, ex-Commander in Chief of NATO Forces, North Europe. Although both the Home Office and the Ministry of Defense instructed members of the forces and civil servants not to join such groups in 1974, Walker claimed that although these directives made things awkward he still had an extensive intelligence network and he had been assured by retired and serving members of the security services and Special Branch that his organization would have their fullest support if the chips were down. Walker claimed his organization could call on 100,000 volunteers. In 1976 General Walker stated that Unison could call a national conference of at least 5,000 delegates. Another semisecret Third Force organization in Britain is the paramilitary Legion of Frontiersmen of the Commonwealth (address: Records Officer, 284, Broadway, Bexleyheath, Kent, tel: 01-303-6288). Founded in 1904 by Captain Roger Pocock, it was officially recognized as an auxiliary branch of British Military Intelligence in 1906. Frontiersmen have fought in a number of wars, transporting themselves to the front line under their own steam.

The first British casualties of the Second World War were Frontiersmen who had attached themselves to the Belgian Army. Training is similar to that of the Territorials and duties include guards of honor on civic occasions, mounted escorts and aid to the civil power duties. Among the mainly inoffensive aims of the LFC is the following: In times of war and national emergency, to seek to aid the armed forces of the Crown in all possible ways and in particular by encouraging members of the Command and others to enlist in the armed or supporting forces. The Legion is not a part of the Ministry of Defense but it is approved by them. The President (two years ago anyway) is General Sir Rodney Moore, ex-Defense Services Secretary at the Ministry of Defense and, since 1975, Chief Steward of Hampton Court Palace. Less savory members include John Kingsley Read, John Tyndalls successor as chairman of the National Front, a sergeant in the Blackburn branch of the LFC who used it as a recruiting ground for the NF.

Another similar semiofficial organization is a covert group within the government-funded Reserve Forces Association (RFA) called the Resistance and Psychological Operations Committee (RPOC). The RFA is the representative body of British military reservists and the British component of the NATO-supported Confederation Inter Allies des Officiers de Reserve (CIOR). The RFA was formed in 1970 and is also, formally, independent of the Ministry of Defense, but its 214 individual and 90 corporate members represent all the reserve units of the armed forces and the government, according to Chapman Pincher (Daily Express, 18 July 1977), treats it as the spokesman for Britain’s reserve forces.

According to Pincher, the RPOC has been preparing the nucleus of an underground resistance organization since 1971. Close links have allegedly been formed with similar units in several European countries which are actively recruiting anticommunist resistance fighters. They are also said to have established an intelligence network which NATO chiefs regard as being of great value.

The importance given to these reservist organizations is reflected in the recognition and support given to both RFA and CIOR at both national and NATO levels. CIOR was given formal recognition by the NATO Military Committee in 1977 and steps were being taken (in 1977) to involve CIOR in NATO military activities.

More recently Admiral Lord Hill Norton, former Chief of the Defense Staff and Chairman of the Military Committee of NATO (19747), General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, former C-in-C NATO for Northern Europe, Air Marshall Sir Frederick Sowrey, the UK Representative on the Permanent Military Deputies Group CENTO, 1977–9, together with assorted groups of rightwing financiers and semi-psychopaths such as Sir David Wills, have launched a campaign to create a similar auxiliary defense force. Called Defense Begins at Home, the campaign hopes to build up a force of 700,000 reservists capable of crushing subversion from within.

Appendix D: Why Pinelli?

In order that the responsibility for the Piazza Fontana bombing be seen to be the work of anarchists, suitable and likely candidates had to be available in Milan. It would appear from the harassment directed against Pinelli and his friends since 25 April that he and the Anarchist Black Cross had been agreed on by the various parties to the conspiracy. So far as the security services and fascists were concerned, implicating the ABC as the political and organizational inspiration for the bombings would represent a much more convincing and plausible scapegoat than the teenagers of the Rome 22 March Group. In addition, it would permit them to implicate a man considered by the authorities of prime importance in the Italian left, the marxist publisher Giacomo Feltrinelli, who, in the eyes of the right, represented the main danger to the Italian status quo. By showing Feltrinelli to be a murderer as opposed to a highly considered leftist publisher, they would not only rid themselves of a dangerous and troublesome enemy, but would also deliver a severe blow to the Italian left.

It was Feltrinelli who had supplied an alibi for his two anarchist friends, Giovanni and Eliane Corradini, who had been arrested in connection with the 25 April bombing. The rightwing and center press had also named Feltrinelli as the main financier of the anarchist groups and the instigator of the bombing campaign.[8] Pinelli, in turn, was a close friend of the Corradini’s, who were also active in the Anarchist Black Cross, and in Calabresi’s eyes Pino was the man to tie the whole anarchist conspiracy together. If he could be induced to make the necessary statements the success of the whole operation would be assured, as Pinelli himself was in no way suspect as a man who had long repudiated political violence.

As Pinelli was a highly esteemed comrade any statement made by him concerning anarchist involvement in the outrage would be the ideal finishing touch to the whole maneuver.

The provocateurs had done their work well. They were well aware that discussions had taken place between Pinelli and the other comrades at the Ponte della Ghisolfa concerning methods of resisting what they believed to be an imminent rightist coup in which they would be number one targets. These discussions, which necessarily involved preparations for clandestine activity, could easily be presented in a damning light. The provocateurs and infiltrators had successfully penetrated the group and were stoking the fires and pushing the debate to extremes, urging the need to move from theory and the preparation of contingency plans to practice. In the meantime, terrorist actions had been carried out intended to prepare public opinion against the anarchists.

Giuseppe Pinelli was to provide the finishing touch. The interrogation followed the normal pattern of intimidation: erosion of his physical and mental resistance, and the threat of being named as one of the perpetrators of the massacre. Pinelli did not break and the interrogations moved on to the third degree. It would appear that during this more violent final phase of Pinelli’s interrogation the anarchist realized the full ramifications of the entire plot, and that, intuitively, he understood they were trying to draw him into a trap. The names and circumstances mentioned by the police would have made Pinelli realize that at least one provocateur had infiltrated the group and he would have quickly divined the connections between this man, Antonio Sottosanti, alias Nino the fascist a man very similar in appearance to Pietro Valpreda and his interrogators. Faced with the knowledge that Pinelli was fully cognizant of their involvement to the plot, the policemen present who were so involved could hardly afford to let him be released. One of the many blows was crucial and left Pinelli slumped in his chair, unconscious or dead.

With Pinelli not only unwilling to play their game but now fully aware of the extent to which at least some of his captors were involved in the conspiracy in which he was being cast in a central role, the only alternative scenario was for the honorable anarchist to appear to take his own life when it became clear to him his ideals had been betrayed. According to the statements made by the five police officers present Calabresi, Panessa, Mucilli, Mainardi and carabinieri lieutenant Sabino Logrono Pinelli’s final words as he threw himself out of the window were “This is the end (of anarchism)”. So far as the authorities were concerned Pinelli’s suicide was therefore an act of self-incrimination.

Police Inspector Luigi Calabresi was himself murdered on 17 May 1972. The killer, covering his face with a newspaper, approached his intended victim at about 9.15 a.m. shortly after he left his home in Milan’s Via Cherubini and fired three shots into Calabresi as he was about to get into his car. Patrice Chairoff (see text) claims Calabresi’s murder had nothing to do with his involvement in the death of Pinelli. Chairoff believes that Calabresi was killed because of his investigations into Mondialexport, an import-export agency which served as a cover for a section of the West German intelligence service BND known as BND II. Ostensibly dealing in bulk foodstuffs, Mondialexport, under the control of SS veteran Gerhardt Mertens, an associate of Otto Skorzeny, was in fact an important international arms smuggling operation and a source of laundered funds for clandestine BND II operations in Italy and elsewhere.

Calabresi’s murderers, all identified, were known neofascists and contract agents of the Paladin organization (see text) and BND II:

Gianni Nardi son of a billionaire industrialist previously implicated in the murder of a Milan fireman in 1967.

Bruno Stefano prominent member of Delle Chiaie’s AN organization.

Gudrun Keiss a girlfriend of Bruno Stefano and former star of Scandinavian pornographic films. Chairoff states she has worked for West German intelligence since December 1970. Believed to have driven the getaway car following the murder.

Jean Vincent Martini Avanguardia Nazionale activist from South Tyrol, recruiting agent for Angolan mercenaries and main Paladin agent in Belgium. Identified as one of Paladin’s killers in Paladin’s anti-ETA contract.

According to Chairoff, BND II is in fact the West German section of the secret intelligence organization within NATO, the Italian section of which was the Rose of the Winds. In 1977 the BND II was allegedly controlled from the main espionage center at 33 Heilmannstrasse, D-Pullach bei Munchen, by one Dieter Blotz (a.k.a. Jan Helmers). In Rome the parallel BND operated (1977) under the cover of another export-import agency in the Via G. C-boni, an address which also provided cover for the Paladin group, Aginter Press and World Service (Chairoff, as has been mentioned, actually ran the Athens-based World Service under the noms-de-guerre of Dr Siegfried Schoenenberg and N. Kalchi).

The BND II case officers in Rome in 1977 were, according to Chairoff: Herbert Schlesinger – responsible for the control and coordination of neoNazi and fascist activities, overseeing existing groups and, when necessary, creating new groups to meet the requirements of the moment.

Penkowski – a former lieutenant in German military intelligence (MAD – Militarischen Abschirmdienst, based at Bruhlerstrasse 300, MAD Cologne). Penkowski allegedly controls infiltrated cells of the Red Brigades, the NAP, the Proletari dei Quartieri, the Gioventu Proletaria and the New Partizans. (It is interesting to speculate that the order for the murder of Aldo Moro, which served primarily the interests of the extreme right in Italy, may well have emanated from this source. The rightists behind the 1964 Plan Solo plot had planned a similar end for Moro.) The Roman station chief of this section of the BND responsible for the above-named officers was, again according to Chairoff, one Erik Mullinken who reported direct to the Bavarian spy center.

Appendix E: Mario Merlino

On his return from Athens in 1968 Merlino formed the XXII March Group, after the Nanterre group of libertarians that sparked the May events in France that year. The pseudo-libertarian group, which appeared in public some days later at a demonstration outside the French Embassy in Rome under a black banner (with the Roman numerals). As the demonstration was dispersed the XXII March group burned two cars with petrol bombs and the following day Il Tempo talked about preordained plans, urban guerrilla tactics and blind violence with which thugs manipulated by the PCI damaged and set fire to the vehicles of private citizens.

However, it had been recognized as a provocation by the left, who had noted the presence of Stefano Delle Chiaie, Serafino di Luia and other well known Italian fascists. A month after its inception, the XXII March Group was abandoned and with it, presumably, any attempt at a Paris-style provocation.

Merlino then made overtures to the Maoist Avanguardia Proletaria to whom he boasted of having contacts with the publishers of L’Etincelle (Aginter), but the Marxist-Leninists were not falling for it. He next tried again with the Maoist Partita Comunista d’ltalia (Linea Rossa) where no one knew him, but he came undone when his name appeared in the papers in connection with a fascist attack on the PCI HQ in Rome. In the autumn and winter of 1968 he reemerged at the Faculty of Education in Rome where he was involved in various provocations.

In May 1969 Merlino approached a member of the Maoist Unione del Comunisti Italiani (which he tried to infiltrate), asking him a favor. It was shortly after the bombing of the Palace of Justice in Rome and he said he was afraid his place would be searched and he needed to hide some compromising material. Would the comrade hold on to it for a bit until the heat died down? The Unione man said he would and Merlino handed over the fuze wire and detonators. Two days later the police raided his house, but the wise comrade had had the good sense to get rid of it the day it was given to him. That finished Merlino so far as the Marxist-Leninist left was concerned.

In September 1969 the only sector in which he was not compromised was that of the anarchists. He passed himself off as a victim of police harassment to a young anarchist and thereby sought an introduction to the Bakunin Group in Rome.

When Merlino arrived at the Bakunin Group, the membership was already split into two factions. The majority, who were under criticism from the younger members such as Pietro Valpreda and Emilio Bagnoli, were confronted with charges of being bureaucrats, elitists and unable to adapt to the new perspectives opened up by the student and workers struggles.

Merlino quickly sided with the enragé faction and his presence was an important factor in the worsening relations between the two groups and the decision to form a new one. He even offered to raise the necessary funds, 150,000 lire, allegedly emanating from some unnamed Catholic group. In late October 1969 the differences were so great that the Bakunin Group split, with Merlino’s faction taking the name 22^nd March Group (with arabic numerals this time), again in an attempt to capitalize on the publicity surrounding the name of the 1968 Nanterre student group. With him went Valpreda, Bagnoli and about seventeen other youngsters. Most of these were genuine, but there were at least two state agents (police and security service) among them as well.

(Source: Confession/Statement given by Merlino to police following his arrest on Friday 12 December 1969.)

Appendix F: Behind Borghese and Delle Chiaie

There is little doubt that there was a more shadowy group of plotters behind Borghese and Delle Chiaie, a group which includes important factions within the Christian Democratic and Social Democratic parties, the military and, ultimately, NATO and the Americans. The influential Rome weekly L’Espresso (circulation over 300,000) noted that the head of CIA counterintelligence, the rabid rightwinger James Jesus Angleton, the American agent who saved Prince Borghese’s life in 1945 by providing him with a US military uniform and escorting him to Rome, arrived for a private visit to Italy a few weeks before the attempted coup and returned shortly after it had been aborted.

The Milan weekly Panorama (6 November 1975) reported: To further the implementation of the coup, Borghese’s National Front had long since established liaisons with the USA in the person of President Nixon, as well as with members of NATO units stationed at Malta. Before the coup proceeded, a telephone call was made from Rome; it was to have reached the American President in the USA by way of Naples and Malta. For reasons as yet unclear the call got no further than Malta. Off that island, four NATO ships of the US Sixth Fleet were standing by, ready to weigh anchor at the first command in order to carry out a mission of approach and possible support of the putschists action-maneuvers very similar to those carried out by the US navy off Santiago, Chili on 11 September 1971. According to the later claims of Remo Orlandini, a key figure in the conspiracy, President Nixon had followed all the preparations leading up to the coup through two CIA agents involved in the plot a man named Fenwich, an American engineer with the Selenia company, and an Italo-American by the name of Talenti. Orlandini claims to have heard several telephone conversations in which Fenwich personally briefed the White House on the conspirators plans. These claims are confirmed in an SID memorandum sent to judge Filipo Fiore and public prosecutor Claudio Vitalone.

Neither Fenwich nor Talenti ever answered the magistrate’s summons and it has been impossible to pinpoint their identities. However, during the 1968 US election campaign an Italian American called Pier Talenti, resident in the US since the war, had been one of Nixon’s press attachés. In 1972 the same Talenti established an Italian Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) which had the job of raising funds among Italian industrialists (in contravention of US legislation).

According to the January 1976 report of the Pike Committee of the US House of Representatives on the CIA and the FBI, one of the primary functions of the CIA from its inception was to disrupt democracy in allied or subject countries. From 1948 to 1968 the CIA and related organizations expended over 65 million dollars in Italy alone to ensure the failure of communist electoral efforts.

Italy is of immense strategic importance to NATO Southern Command. Even without Greek or Turkish bases the US Sixth Fleet and other NATO naval forces could still fulfill their function in the eastern Mediterranean. However, if Italy were to leave the alliance then it is highly probable that NATO Southern Command based in Naples on the Italian mainland and La Maddalena in Sardinia would have to withdraw from the Mediterranean altogether.

In June 1969 Enrico Berlinguer, then Deputy Secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), made a speech outlining his party’s attitude to NATO:

We are struggling so that Italy should not take part in any military or potential bloc, for its exit from NATO and the removal of NATO bases in Italy. We are fighting for a state of neutrality and for the transformation of the Mediterranean into a sea of peace.

The continuing weakness of the Italian economy and its governments, combined with a strong indigenous labor movement and the increasing likelihood of PCI involvement in government, provide both NATO and the Americans with a strong motive for neutralizing any shift to the left in Italian politics. In the view of the NATO planners, the entry of the PCI into government as urged by Aldo Moro would have far-reaching repercussions and seriously upset the balance of East-West relations. For the right, the prospect of communist involvement in government would mean the end of NATO.

Noam Chomsky has written on the subject of US destabilization at length and with some insight:

These activities are not sporadic or ‘out of control’, but are systematic, relatively independent of political changes, and in general organized at the highest levels of state. According to the Pike Committee. ‘All evidence in hand suggests that the CIA, far from being out of control, has been utterly responsive to the instructions of the President and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.’ The ‘great majority’ of its covert action projects were proposed by parties outside the CIA, that is by the civilian agencies that used the CIA, in effect, as a secret army of the Presidency.

These programs formed a part of the successful US governmental effort, abetted by the US labor bureaucracy, to split and weaken the European labor movement and in general to restore European capitalism and ensure US dominance of most of the industrial world. The Pike Committee gives this quantitative estimate: ‘From 1965 to date, 32 per cent of Forty Committee approved covert action projects were for providing some form of financial election support to foreign parties and individuals.’ The Forty Committee is the ‘review and approval mechanism for covert action’ directly controlled by the President. These efforts to subvert democracy constitute the largest covert action category of the CIA and are directed primarily against the Third World.

Indirectly, then, the Pike Committee report also leads to some interesting speculations with regard to US government policy. … Some of the CIA activities are remarkable in their cynicism. To cite one case, the CIA supported the rebellion of the Kurds in Iran while the US acted to prevent a political settlement that might have prepared a degree of Kurdish autonomy. Kissinger, Nixon and the Shah also insisted on a no win policy so that the revolt would persist, undermining both Iran and the Kurdish movement. With a shift in international politics, the Kurds were sold out. The US then refused even humanitarian assistance to its former allies and they were crushed by force. The reason was explained to the Pike Committee Staff by a high government official: covert action should not be confused with missionary work.

(The Secret Terror Organization of the US Government, in Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, Black Rose Books, Montreal, Canada, 1982.)

It would appear likely that Prince Borghese and his fellow plotters were being set, up as victims of a CIA/NATO stratagem similar to that employed against the Kurds and other manipulated minorities.

Appendix G: Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975) was one of the first members of the Austrian Nazi party in 1935 and a leading member of the Vienna Gymnastic Club, a Nazi front organization which played a prominent role in the Anschluss. At the outbreak of war in 1939 Skorzeny was running his own engineering firm when he volunteered for the Luftwaffe but was rejected on the grounds of his age. He then joined the Das Reich Division of the Waffen SS as a technical expert. In 1943 he was given command of the newly formed Oranienberg Special Purposes Regiment. Skorzeny was offered the new SS unit because of his close relationship with the Austrian SS police leader and later SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who had succeeded Reinhardt Heydrich as head of the Reich security office, the RHSA, following Heydrich’s assassination by Czech resistance fighters in May 1942.

On 12 September 1943 Skorzeny’s special forces effected the release of Benito Mussolini from a mountaintop hotel in the Gran Sasso where he was being held prisoner by the new Italian government. Although Skorzeny planned the escape operation, his insistence on accompanying the raiding party under the command of Lieutenant Von Bernlepsch placed the whole mission in jeopardy; his size and weight almost prevented the light aircraft from taking off.

In July 1944 Martin Bormann, Hitler’s Deputy, personally handed Skorzeny an order signed by Hitler calling upon all personnel, military and civil to assist Skorzeny in any way, stating that he had been charged directly with secret and personal orders of the utmost importance. During the confusion following the 20 July plot against Hitler, Skorzeny became the effective C-in-C of all German Home Forces for 24 hours and played a crucial role in ensuring the failure of the plot. It has been alleged that it was Skorzeny himself who ordered the summary executions of Colonel Ludwig Beck, Claus von Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Merz von Quirnheim and Werner von Haeften, the leaders of the plot. Skorzeny denied these charges, but it is also worth noting that until his death he also denied playing any part in the activities of the Nazi party until late 1939 and then to have had as little as possible to do with the party during the war itself; after the defeat of the Third Reich he continually denied any involvement whatsoever with the postwar Nazi and neofascist movements denials which are at odds with the known facts.

In November 1944 Skorzeny was appointed head of the sabotage section of Dept. VI of the Reich Security Office and began training foreign intelligence agents and terrorists to continue the war behind the allied lines. These agents were mostly recruited from French, Italian, Belgian and Spanish fascist and extreme rightwing organizations such as the Milice and the Mouvement Sociale Revolutionnaire. Skorzeny’s final task of the war, he claimed, was to create the nucleus of a corps to defend Hitler’s alpine redoubt at the Eagle’s Nest in the Alto Adige on the Austro-Hungarian border. In fact his task was to coordinate the escape and evasion networks of leading Nazis. The stories of a fortified zone in the Austrian Alps were part of a disinformation exercise connived at by US intelligence chief Allan Dulles and elements of the Nazi party and Wehrmacht to provide the latter with an orderly breathing space to ensure the German political and social infrastructure remained intact as a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism. SS Major-General Prince Maximilian von Hohenlohe who had been in contact with Dulles on Himmler’s orders since mid-1943 reported: Dulles does not reject the basic idea and deeds of National Socialism but he deplored its excesses. (Hohenlohe was later appointed to a top job in the Gehlen organization and made an adviser to the US State Department.)

On 16 April 1945 Otto Skorzeny and Karl Radl, his adjutant, surrendered, in uniform, to a US command post where he was charged with having contravened the Geneva Convention (by having fought in enemy uniform during the Battle of the Bulge, November 1944). Interrogated personally by OSS General William Donovan – and apparently recruited by him into US intelligence – Skorzeny was eventually acquitted in 1947 on the strength of evidence given on his behalf by British military intelligence officer Captain Yeo-Thomas. Skorzeny then applied for denazification, but there were too many intelligence reports pertaining to him; one French intelligence officer described him as an unregenerate bastard.

In 1948 Skorzeny managed to escape from the allied denazification camp at Oberursal. He was assisted in his escape by the Nazi evasion networks he had been responsible for organizing during the final stages of the war and with the connivance of the US Army’s 66^th counterintelligence corps.

Skorzeny was recruited into Reinhardt Gehlen’s intelligence organization, a creation of the newly formed CIA under Allan Dulles and Richard Helms, the then CIA Station Chief in Germany. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and Latin America on intelligence business for both Gehlen and the CIA. In 1950 he established his home base in Madrid where, under cover of an engineering and export-import business, he handled the financial affairs of the ‘Circle of Friends (having reclaimed Nazi party funds from Eva Peron), coordinated the Nazi escape and evasion networks and built up an international intelligence gathering and mercenary recruitment agency. Skorzeny was also appointed security adviser to various rightwing governments in Latin America as well as Spain where he was employed in an advisory capacity by the Interior Ministry to assist the notorious Brigada Politico Social.

In 1953 Skorzeny was invited by CIA chief Allan Dulles, through his father-in-law Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s ex-financial consultant and president of the Reichsbank, to help reorganize the security services of the new Republic of Egypt under General Neguib and, later, Colonel Nasser. Skorzeny’s salary in this undertaking was subsidized by the CIA. It was because of his involvement with the events leading up to the Suez Crisis in 1956 that Skorzeny was refused entry into Britain, in spite of a strong intervention on his behalf by at least one senior SAS officer.

Canadian journalist Omar Anderson wrote the following in an article in the Montreal Star in 1960:

Otto Skorzeny has been a leading figure in Bonn’s negotiations for Bundeswehr bases in Spain

Aggrieved German diplomats in Madrid have complained to the Foreign Office here that Skorzeny enjoys something akin to celebrity status with the Spanish government.

Skorzeny himself credits his Madrid-acquired influence to my friends from Nuremberg, a reference to Skorzeny’s incarceration as a witness for the Nuremberg war crimes proceedings against German commercial trusts. On 31 August 1960, speaking at the Delkey Literary, Historical Debating Society at the Cliff Castle Hotel in the Republic of Ireland where he had bought a house the previous year, Skorzeny commented on the question of inferior races: There should not be talk of inferior or superior races. It is clear, however, that some races are without proof of culture.

In 1964, following the escape of a major Nazi war criminal, Zech Nenntwichs, new stories began to circulate concerning Skorzeny’s involvement in various Nazi escape and evasion networks such as Die Spinne and ODESSA.

In 1969 Skorzeny was appointed security adviser to the Colombian Ministry of the Interior. The request for his assistance was channeled through the German ambassador in Bogota, Ernst Ludwig von Ror. In 1972 the Bolivian businessman and security adviser Klaus Altmann, otherwise known as Klaus Barbie, named Otto Skorzeny as the chief of the Die Spinne network which Barbie claimed commanded the loyalty of 100,000 fascist sympathizers in 22 countries and which was funded by Nazi investments controlled by Skorzeny. (Altmann, or Barbie, was the Bolivian agent for an export-import agency registered in Augsburg and was also the manager of the landlocked Bolivian navy, Transmaritima Boliviana, registered in Panama and Hamburg, a company which was entirely run by German businessmen.) Also in 1972, Otto Skorzeny met various South African generals. One of his close friends and colleagues in South Africa was Lieutenant-General Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellethin, ex-Chief of Staff of 4 Panzer Army, a director of Trek Airways, an airline which specializes in police and security charter operations in South Africa. Later investigations into the Rose of the Winds conspiracy in Italy confirmed that in the summer of 1973 Skorzeny had attended a meeting of the conspirators in the home of the fascist doctor Gian Paolo Porta Cassucia. In September 1973 the Dublin Evening Express announced that Skorzeny was seriously ill in Spain with cancer of the nervous system. This report was taken up by the Washington Post, which identified him as being a major arms broker for Portugal and an agent of the massive Interarms company based in Virginia. Skorzeny, the paper alleged, had been trafficking in arms for many years to many sub-Saharan African countries. On 6 July 1975 Skorzeny died in Madrid to be followed on 21 November by Franco.

Appendix H: Lodge P2

Freemasonry is, perhaps, the most large-scale political organization of the middle-class in every Western nation. The Grand Orient of Italy, a particularly powerful institution, is no exception. One important difference between the Grand Orient of Italy and the Grand Lodge of England the – mother lodge – is the existence in Italy of covered or secret lodges whose membership is unknown even to the council members of the Grand Orient, the ultimate masonic authority in Italy. The purpose of these secret lodges is to bring together into a single discreet body brothers who hold high public and private office and who wish to remain unknown to other (lesser) brethren while at the same time strengthening and extending a covert decision-making network within the organs of traditional power.

There are two secret lodges under the Grand Orient of Italy – P1 and P2 (P standing for Propaganda) both of which are hotbeds of corruption and reaction. P1 – of lesser importance both generally and in the present context – came under the direct control of Lino Salvini, a doctor who was elected Grand Master of Italy’s masons in 1970. He immediately used his influence to involve the Masonic movement in a series of political and financial intrigues, including moves to sabotage the amalgamation of Italy’s three main trade unions, which eventually led to an investigation of his activities by the Grand Lodge of New York (the world’s most powerful lodge with 400,000 registered members) and the breaking off of relations with the Grand Orient of Italy by the Grand Lodges of Michigan, Texas and Indiana. Salvini’s maneuvers against the Italian trade union movement had the financial backing of Fiat and Confindustria (the Italian employers’ organization) to the tune of 80 to 90 million lire a year.

By far the most important of the two secret lodges was that controlled by Licio Gelli, an old-guard fascist from the Mussolini era who fled to Argentina following disclosures that he had been involved in the torture and murder of Italian partizans. Gelli was intimately involved with the regime of the Argentinian dictator Juan Peron (1947–54) and remained in Argentina for twenty years before returning to Italy with the position of honourary Argentine consul. (Witnesses claim to have seen Peron kneel at Gelli’s feet for reasons upon which one can only speculate.)

Initiated into masonry in 1964, Gelli became organizing secretary for Lodge P2 and immediately set about restructuring it. Until Gelli came along P2 had been a lodge in decline; its membership consisted of middle-rank civil servants, junior officers and small businessmen. Within two years, through his vast international network of political, military and business contacts, particularly strong among the power elites of the Latin dictatorships, Gelli had more than doubled the lodge’s membership to 573, the majority from among the upper echelons of Italian and Argentinian public and private life. Jealous of the growing power of P2, which had acquired a reputation for complete discretion and obsessive anticommunism (with a membership which rocketed following the discovery and investigation into the Rose of the Winds conspiracy in 1974/5) the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, Lino Salvini, attempted to depose Gelli and replace him with a more compliant brother. He wrote an abrupt letter of dismissal to Gelli which concluded: I find you sympathetic, but I am discharging you. Salvini had sadly underestimated the power of his rival. Gelli made it quite clear to Salvini that unless he withdrew the dismissal notice he would have him in prison within half an hour. The threat was taken seriously. Not only was Gelli reinstated immediately, he was raised to the grade of Worshipful Master.

During the fraud investigation into Michele Sindona’s Banca Privata Italiana, a conduit for mafia, Vatican, fascist and secret service money, police searching Gelli’s villa discovered a list of 953 members of P2. The coded list included three cabinet ministers, thirty generals, eight admirals, including the head of the armed forces, the heads of two intelligence services as well as the civilian collator of intelligence, 43 MPs, police chiefs of Italy’s four main cities, the mayors of Brescia and Pavia and the editor of the influential Milan daily Corriere della Sera. Further investigation revealed a more detailed coded register indicating a membership of 2,400 brothers all powerful men in their own spheres contending to mold events to suit the national interest as perceived by the selfseeking power elite.

Solemn ex-communication by the Catholic Church for baptized believers who became freemasons has been revoked for some years now. Although the anathema still survives in canon law this too is undergoing revision, and the document from the Congregation for Doctrine and the Faith, together with a series of official pronouncements, have more or less cemented the peace between the Vatican and freemasonry.

Appendix I: Delle Chiaie’s CIA contacts

Stefano Delle Chiaie’s alleged CIA contacts:

William Jones – no details (could be William Charles Jones III, executive director Bureau of Intelligence Research, director Office Intelligence Liaison 7/73).

Ernesto M. Lancina – no details.

Richard H. Courtenaye – b Caliph 3/27/23. U Caliph (Los Angeles) BA 44, Harvard U MPA 56. US Army 4346 capt overseas. GOVT EXPER chief broadcast dept War Dept 46–47. STATE Dept 0–6 6/47. Barcelona cons off 11/47. Mexico DF pub off asst 9/48. Quito econ off 11/50, 0–5 6/51. Kobe cons-econ off 9/53. Dept. det adv econ study Harvard U 9/55, 0–4 2/57. Madrid 0–5 econ off 7/56, 0–4 2/58. Dept intell rsch spec 1/59, chief Middle Am br Off Resch-Anls for Am Reps 7/59, chief Inter-Am Pol Div 5-9/61, 12/61, dir Off Resch-Anls for Am Reps 10-12/61, 0–3 4/62. Quebec prin off 7/62 cons gen 9/62. Windsor 6/64. Tijuana cons off 8/68. Dept det Off Econ Opportunity 3/7 1. Tangier prin off 6/73. Langs Fr. Soan. (w — Norma Drew).

Richard Jerome Scott – b Ind 12/18/30. Un Noter Dame BA 58. US Army 5254 overseas. PRIV EXPER writer publ co 4558, STATE dept R-8 3158, 0–8 7158, intell resch spec 10/58. Panama cons and pol off 4/60, 0–7 2/61. Valencia cons off (Gen) 10/62. Vancouver visa off 1/65, 0–6 5/65, 0–5 4/67, FSO gen 7/67. Dept int rel off 7/68, pol-mil aff off 5/70. Bangkok 7/71. Lang. Span. (w – Dorothy Shefano).

Charles Willard Brown – b Caliph 9/6/1919. Am U BS 56. USCG, 4245. PRIV EXPER 3740, 46. GOVT EXPER 4042, with city state govts 495 1. STATE Dept GS-9 investigator (Los Angeles) 2/51, GS-1 1 spec agt 2/54, GS-12 investigator 11/55. Bonn R-5 reg admin spec 5/56, 0–5 6/56, 0–5 2/57. Dept pers off 1/59, det pub admin studies admin off 5/66, asst exec dir Bu African Aff 2168, dir Allowances Staff 3170, 0–2 5172, Nairobi admin off 2174 (w – Georgette Townsend), Foreign Service Classification List, November 1977FSO 2 Step 6 5/72.

Moffett, William Adgar III – b Caliph 11127/39. U Va BA 62. United States Marine Corps 6265 maj overseas. PRIV EXPER mgmt trainee distribtrans corp 6567. GOVT EXPER program analyst Dept of Army 6773. STATE Port-au-Prince R-7 econ-commercial officer 1/73 (w – Anne Dekle). Source: Patrice Chairoff.

Appendix J: Interview with La Bruna

Q. Captain, you’re always at the center of the most unedifying polemics. How come? A few weeks ago the fugitive fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie said, in the course of an interview with Enzo Biagi, that La Bruna, which is to say, yourself, had something to do with the Piazza Fontana bombs.

A. The usual old refrain. It has even been reported that let’s say that mission is what earned me my captains stars. But I have a cast-iron alibi. For years I have said nothing. Now let me speak out. From September 1969 to early March 1970 I was involved in another, highly delicate mission. That, too, even now is shrouded in the confidentiality which must attend our work as special agents. I am fed up. I ask those in a position to do so (i.e., my superiors) to release me from my burden of silence.

Q. The man in the street knows nothing of your affairs. Let me ask you, to begin with, how on earth you, a servant of the State, ever came to hobnob with this Delle Chiaie character, an extreme rightwing fanatic who has been wanted for years.

A. I ran across him in Barcelona, on exactly 30 November to 2 December 1972. The meeting was the idea of a journalist introduced to me by General Gianadelio Maletti, my direct superior. I and the journalist were to co-operate in ascertaining certain facts regarding the son-in-law of the oil magnate Attilio Monti. But at the last moment it fell through. However, he did put me in touch with Delle Chiaie.

Q. What did you talk about?

A. He told me of the movement which he led. When he had finished, I told him that I would be reporting back to my superiors and, on the specific instructions of Maletti, spoke this phrase to him: Rest assured that whatever may happen, the general will not lift a finger against you. Now they accuse me of having invited him to co-operate with the SID, I do not see why, if it was true, I should conceal the fact since I was only carrying out orders received from above. Anyway I never did issue that invitation.

Q. How come you did not arrest him? He was and is one of the heads of the black international. He is wanted for nearly all of the fascist outrages which have swamped the streets of Italy in blood over the past 14 years.

A. Your question is badly framed. You ought to have asked me how come they never instructed me to arrest him. Anyway, I don’t know the answer to that. If it was up to anyone to tip off the Spanish police as to where Delle Chiaie was hiding out it was them

the people in Rome. The fact remains that in his interview with Biagi, this gentleman stated that every so often he still goes home to Italy. Which means that he feels safe and well protected.

Q. A loyal executor of orders, then. Could it be, La Bruna, that like the Germans of the Nuremberg trial, you always hide behind the formula I was only carrying out orders.?

A. Yes, and I will demonstrate it. If you will permit, though, I should like to open with a premise. What was the SID? An agency which had at its head General Vito Micelli to begin with and Admiral Mario Casardi thereafter. They had the oversight of five departments

D office which handled internal security; R office dealing with intelligence from abroad; S office which gleaned from the official sources and the press

the USI office was given over to industrial security and then there was the Logistics Office. Yours truly was attached to D office under General Maletti. We in turn were subdivided into three sections counterespionage, military police and (once again) internal security. I was in command of the NOD, an operational squad comprising four men in all. It goes without saying that I could carry out only those actions determined by my superiors.

Q. NOD has been named as a sort of private gang, a SID within the SID, a cancer that had grown up inside the secret services, a deranged monster.

A. Balls. All complete balls. I have never worked off my own bat. It was Maletti who gave the orders on every occasion. Even later on when we wound up on trial. During the Piazza Fontana massacre proceedings I did no more than obey. And I have proof of what I say. I have scrupulously preserved the memoranda which the general wrote me indicating which answers I should give to the judges. I placed my trust in him because he was au fait with the whole episode in all of its complexity and did not know only the odd detail as I did.

Q. Answer this question please. Is it or is it not true that in the 1970s you helped smuggle out of Italy certain Palestinian terrorists held in prison for some very serious outrages?

A. Strictly speaking, it was not I who rescued them from prison. But it is true, I was assigned the task of escorting them abroad. Orders from above. The person who passed them to me had, in turn, received them from those involved in political activity, from parliamentarians and ministers.

Q. But is it normal practice of the secret services to set free those bandits which the police and carabinieri go to such trouble to apprehend?

A. In certain instances its the opportune thing to do. In the supreme interests of the nation. The same sort of thing goes on pretty well everywhere. There are those like me, who do the dirty work and handle things to do with foreign policy which cannot be done openly and which are off limits as far as ministers are concerned.

Q. Just one point. What did Italy get in return that time?

A. I don’t know. But in those years nothing happened to us. There were no attacks and no other terrorist acts of an international nature.

Q. In short, the PLO kept quiet. Let’s turn now from red terrorism to the black kind you covered up for, and helped smuggle abroad Guido Giannettini and Marco Pozzan, neofascists involved in the inquiry into the poor people killed that tragic 12 December in 1969 in the Piazza Fontana.

A. I wasn’t really able to help anybody. That was demonstrated at the Catanzaro trial. I shall never tire of reiterating it: I was an operative, a subordinate and it has never been the case that a subordinate is able to procure phony documents and safe conducts for his pals. Giannettini left under his own steam, using his own passport and with a plane ticket acquired from some travel agency or other. Sure, Maletti knew all about it, but he didn’t tell me to stop him. And let’s move on to Pozzan. Yes, my men escorted him to the frontier. But to leave the country he used a passport. He used one supplied by D office.

Q. In whose interests was it that these gentlemen should be smuggled out?

A. You shouldn’t be asking me that.

Q. Fair enough, but we will ask you how come your name features on the list of P2 members.

A. I joined the P2 because I was invited to join by Colonel Antonio Viezzer, the head of Maletti’s secretariat. I consulted Maletti and he answered with a phrase that dispelled any doubts I had: The carabinieri must have eyes and ears everywhere. So I went to see Licio Gelli at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome. I was escorted by Viezzer, though he denies it.

Q. None of you secret agents were absent from the P2. When did you discover that the delightful company included so many, so very, very many of your superiors?

A. Whenever the membership lists were made public. Doubtless I had had the odd suspicion. I escorted Maletti and his wife too many times to Castiglion Fibocchi, to Gelli’s firm. They would buy clothes and replace their wardrobes, all at knock-down prices I suppose.

Q. And did the Worshipful Master ever do you any favors?

A. No, unfortunately not. I did ask a favor of him when I came out of prison and was suspended from the service. I wanted him to help me find a job and rebuild my life. But all he could offer me was a chance to go to South America. I turned this down because I definitely did not want anyone saying Captain La Bruna runs away.

Q. Let us change scene. And talk about petroleum. For Italians, that means Libya. Is it true that you kept a watchful eye out for Colonel Ghedaffi?

A. Not I, the State. The SID did do the odd service for Ghedaffi

for instance, the so-called Hilton Operation. The Italian secret services blew a coup attempt devised by mercenaries who were aiming to free opponents of the Libyan regime and seize Tripoli.

Q. How did you disentangle yourselves from your triple games? If it came to your attention that your Libyan or Palestinian friends were preparing for attacks on your Israeli allies (or vice versa) what was your next move?

A. In our trade one has to be really subtle. Strategic choices are a matter for the experts, thus, a matter for the politicians and not for military men. The last word always belongs to the entourage of some minister. It all depends on what suits the country at any given moment.

Q. Another twist, another story. Unlike Maletti, you and Micelli have been named as friends of the far right. Is it coincidence that today Micelli sits in Parliament on the benches of Giorgio Almirante’s MSI?

A. Whereas I sit on the accused bench. I’ve done my time and still I face another accusation, of misrepresentation in the matter of Pozzan’s passport and also in connection with the P2 episode. To tell the truth, the idea of Maletti’s passing himself off as a democrat is one I have always found risible. If he is, if he really is one how come he did not stay here to await the findings of the magistrature? How come he decamped to South Africa, leaving me in the shit?

Q. Odd. Maletti accuses La Bruna of all manner. of nefarious deeds and decamps, La Bruna stands his ground and defends himself by pointing the finger at Maletti. But hadn’t you been such pals once upon a time?

A. There is no friendship between superior and subordinate. There are too many things which divide them-ambition, career, etc. The subordinate is dispatched into danger but by the time he realizes he has been used it is too late. I was a pal of Maletti’s. Only many years later did I learn that he, instead, had dropped me in it time and again, drafting the worst sort of reports about me and about my work. Who can say? Maybe his aim was to offload on to me the blame for his guilty conscience.

Q. What else did Maletti do to you?

A. He accused me of having supplied to the journalist Mino Pecorelli the dossiers which he had built up at the end of 1975 on the petroleum scandal which later set the Italy of the powerful atrembling. The dossier contained virtually the whole story of the immense fraud favored by high-ranking officers of the Guardia di Finanza. But I was not the one who passed them to Pecorelli. The file was in Maletti’s office safe for safekeeping. And he was the one to place it in the records shortly before he was removed from his post. I have no idea who it was who sold it to him. All I know is that after he made it public, Pecorelli was killed. And Maletti cut the cord.

Q. Weren’t there a little too many deaths in all of these stories? Apart from the attentats and the Pecorelli business, I can think of generals killed in traffic accidents that were never accounted for, or who committed suicide without any motives.

A. You have said it. Let me tell you that, when I was in the service, my own car was interfered with on two occasions. It is a miracle that I am still alive.

Q. All things considered, La Bruna, would you be a secret agent if you had it to do all over again?

A. Yes. Despite the problems and the misadventures I would do it all again. Yes. Because its something that gets into the blood. The SID was not all that much worse than other agencies. Even todays reformed agencies have their problems.

La Bruna is right. Times change but the stories are much the same. Micelli and Maletti (P2 members) were succeeded by General Guiseppe Santovito (himself also a registered P2 member). Then he was wanted and today magistrates in Trento would like to question him regarding certain arms trafficking. The interview is over. The man with the pomaded hair puts some heaps of papers into order. From these papers he will one day construct a book on his Italy, the Italy of mysteries.

Stefano Jesurum and Gian Palo Rossetti (helped by Mario Biasciucci)

Oggi no. 20, 18 May 1983

In the lead-up to the interview, there is a quote from the Francoist spy Luis Manuel Gonzales Mata: Agents, when they have no further information to report, invent some; when there are no more outrages to be prevented, they provoke some; when there is no longer any extremist organization to infiltrate, they set some up. At the foot of a photo of La Bruna and Maletti in court in Catanzaro in 1981, La Bruna is quoted as saying: Even in the courtroom I always obeyed the orders from my immediate superior Maletti. I gave the testimony he wanted me to give.

Appendix K: Mario Merlino’s address book

Bruno Bruni 42 42 180

Boffi Gianni 38 80 01

Bologna Adriano 37 04 47 Giovane Halia (MSI), son of an exprefect who belonged to Junio Valerio Borgheses Fronte Nazionale.

Biagioni Lamberto 30 75 411 National leader of the MSI (196467); Giovane Europa (neonazis); Lotta del Popolo (69). Connected with Julius Evola. In 64 did not go on summer holidays because Taradonna had told him that something big was in the pipeline.

Alfredo (Sandro Maluzzi) 47 56 38

Bruno Brandi 80 16 31

Bedetti Paolo 49 59 401

Angelo 34 96 463

Stefano Bertini 84 55 201 MSI. Ordine Nuovo. Visited Greece with Merlino.

Bartuli Mario 59 65 69

Antonio 57 28 28

Alfredo 76 45 81

Luciano Bergamini (Verona) 045/43142

De Giorgi Dario 75 36 37

Colantoni Peppe 21 14 59

Andrea Cimino 51 31 810

Coltellaci Sergio 30 70 969 MSI: Avanguardia Nazionale (one of its founders). Son of a one-time fascist gerarca (hierarch). Close friend of Stefano Delle Chiaie: he has even had Delle Chiaie as his guest in his Pescasseroli villa.

Leopoldo De Medici 87 92 49 Giovane Italia (MSI): Ordine Nuovo; Lotta del

Popolo (69).

Tito Conforti 51 24 154

Donato Pilolli 83 80 421 MSI: Ordine Nuovo.

Pierluigi Casarelli 49 55 064

Antonio Cangiano 59 43 65

Cacace Mario 43 38 33 Avanguardia Nazionale.

Giancarlo Cartocci 49 57 80 Ordine Nuovo: Movimento Studentesco in Giurisprudenza (Nazi-Maoists); Avanguardia Nazionale. In Greece with Merlino. Distributor among Rome’s fascists of the Soccorso Tricolore funds promoted by Il Borghese.

Stefano Delle Chiaie 72 65 21

Pierfranco Di Giovanni 77 64 87 MSI: Avanguardia Nazionale. Took part in the clashes which led to the death of Paulo Rossi.

Flavio Campo (illegible) Avanguardia Nazionale (one of the founders). Parachutist, ex-boxer, one of the most notorious fascist goons in Rome and at the time a clerk with the Interior Ministry.

Loris Facchinetti 72 26 77 President of Europa Civiltŕ.

Pierluigi Fioretti 80 41 19 Giovane Italia (MSI).

Noel Salvin 56 42 03

Marco Gaspare 32 04 46 Giovane Italia; infiltrator of the student movement;

Giovane Italia.

Grasso Antonio 30 36 56 Well-known goon, nicknamed IlBalilla.

Saverio Ghiacci 53 67 63 One of the founders of Avanguardia Nazionale and loyal henchman of Stefano Delle Chiaie. Noted fascist goon. Very active in the clashes in which Paolo Rossi was killed (one photograph shows him beating

Rossi with a violent punch). Many times questioned by police concerning dynamite attacks. Visited Greece with Merlino.

Franco Gelli 75 76 61

B. Giorgi 76 … 55 Member of the GAN in Reggio Emilia.

Alfredo Govoni 73 32 13

S– – – Gujos 35 63 341

Domenico Gramozio 85 86 51 Roman Youth Secretary of the MSI. Close friend of Giulio Caradonna. Noted goon.

Maurizio Giorgi 43 93 430 MSI: Avanguardia Nazionale (one of the founders). Present at the fighting in which Paulo Rossi was killed.

Antonio Jezzi 34 92 045 Avanguardia Nazionale; faithful advocate of Stefano Delle Chiaie.

Franco Jappelli 53 44 243 MSI youth leader.

Franco Morganti 48 48 61

Mauroenrico Enrico 74 43 83 Avanguardia Nazionale.

Alfredo Moriconi 68 92 80

Leonardo Molinari 84 47 302

Francesco Manemi 73 07 96

Sandro Meluzzi 47 96 70

Marco Marchetti 55 74 305 Ordine Nuovo: infiltrator of the student

movement; Avanguardia Nazionale. In Greece with Merlino.

Sandro Malagola 42 06 88 MSI youth leader.

Luciano Lago 59 45 37

Bepi Morbiato 52 60 636 Avanguardia Nazionale.

Antonio Moretti 77 70 41

Ignio Macro 76 17 827 Avanguardia Nazionale.

Giovanni Nota 76 15 342

Roberto Pascucci 83 10 618

Enzo Palasso 85 66 06

Bruno Pera 62 24 610 MSI (close to Giulio Caradonna); Lotta di Popolo.

Guido Pagua 31 5 6 32 Avanguardia Nazionale. In March 197 <fn>libcom note: Full date missing</fn> he seriously injured a girl student with a brick at Rome University.

Guglielmo Quagliarotti 51 27 940 Avanguardia Nazionale.

Alberto Questa 42 44 896 — Avanguardia Nazionale. Involved in the clashes during which Paolo Rossi was killed.

Roberto Pallotto 75 88 589 Avanguardia Nazionale member; very loyal to Delle Chiaie. Often arrested on suspicion of dynamite attacks.

Mimmo Pilolli 83 16 403 MSI (national leadership); Ordine Nuovo; infiltrated the PC d’I (linea rossa) in 1968; Avanguardia Nazionale.

Sandro Pisano 65 67 923 Ordine Nuovo. The person to whom Merlino (according to a statement he made to the police) used to pass information for transmission to Junio Valerio Borghese.

Chicco Pamphili 46 15 52

AttilioPasqualini 42 47 017 MSI youthleader.

Maurizio Piccetta 73 12 426

Francesco Pugliese 32 74 924

Luigi Presenti 42 89 59

Ernesto Roli 42 61 583 MSI youth leader.

Cesare Perri 42 43 247 Avanguardia Nazionale (a founder). Loyal to Stefano

Delle Chiaie; Ordine Nuovo. In Greece with Merlino.

Teodoro Silos-Calo 53 64 76 MSI youth leader.

Adriano Romualdi 34 86 35 MSI national leader. Son of MSI parliamentarian Pino Romualdi

Angelino Rossi 29 16 14 Noted fascist thug. Brother of Alberto, alias Il

Bava, Rossi, head of the MSIs Volontari Nazionali. The pair trained at a

paramilitary camp in Prenestino with Caradonnas squads.

Franco Spallone 62 26 596 MSI youth leader.

Franco Tarantelli 47 26 26 — MSI national leader.

Adriano Tilgher 89 27 481 Avanguardia Nazionale. Theoretician of neonazism.

Massimiliano von Stein 31 57 43