The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy's First Republic 084768878X, 9780847688784

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OPERATION CLEAN HANDS AND THE OVERTHROW OF ITALY’S FIRST REPUBLIC

STANTON Hl. BURNETT & LUCA MANTOVANI

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in the Humanities & Social § Stanton H. Burnett, Luca Mantovani. 吀栀e Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Li琀琀le昀椀eld Publishers, 1998. xii + 332 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8476-8878-4; $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8476-8877-7. Reviewed by Stanislao G. Pugliese (Hofstra University) Published on H-Italy (September, 1999)

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once confessed that although he could decipher the obscure workings of the Kremlin, Italian politics le昀琀 him completely confused. In 1992, American scholars and the general public watched in shock and dismay as an unfolding corruption scandal rocked Italy and brought down an entire political class. Beginning with a pe琀琀y kickback in Milan, the investigation uncovered a network of corruption so vast it was immediately dubbed “Tangentopoli” or “Kickback City.” It soon became apparent that the major political parties, especially the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, had colluded in illegal party 昀椀nancing. By accepting, and indeed, demanding, bribes and kickbacks for lucrative state contracts, the political parties had effectively divided the spoils of state patronage amongst themselves. 吀栀e investigation, led by a group of politically commi琀琀ed magistrates in Milan, was named “Mani Puliti” or “Clean Hands.” Politicians who had governed Italy for decades fell from power while wealthy businessmen saw their economic empires collapse. Two-thirds of the Italian Parliament stood accused of corruption and at least thirty people commi琀琀ed suicide in disgrace (some under unusual circumstances).

“pool” of magistrates were cra昀琀y and insidious zealots, radicalized by their participation in Italian politics of the 1970s. Here, the magistrates are not idealists striving for justice nor were they out to rid Italy of a corrupt ruling class, but rather they were consciously e昀昀ecting a “postmodern coup d’etat.” 吀栀at coup ended with the electoral victory of the Le昀琀 on 21 April 1996, an electoral victory that the authors contend would not have been possible without the preceding coup. For all its “postmodern” character, the authors also paint the coup in more traditional (and dramatic) terms as “a courtier plunging a knife into the back of the king” (p. 1). Having failed to bring revolutionary change through the PCI (Italian Communist Party) or its successor the PDS (Democratic Party of the Le昀琀), these magistrates usurped political power through several peculiar Italian judicial conventions. Italian magistrates are not just judges but prosecutors as well. 吀栀ey have the power to issue an “avviso di garanzia” which theoretically guarantees the rights of an individual who is to come under investigation. Burne琀琀 and Mantovani clearly and consistently document how the “avviso di garanzia” was abused: by law it was supposed to be issued con昀椀dentiality, but they were instead leaked to the press and the information was printed in daily newspapers, leading citizens to assume a person’s guilt.

“吀栀e Italian Guillotine” is a controversial book that argues against the prevailing consensus that the magistrates of “Mani Puliti” were idealists purging Italy of a cancerous growth on the body politic and in doing so were responsible for bringing about an “Italian Revolution” and the end of the “First Republic.” 吀栀e magistrates o昀琀en compared themselves to protagonists of the French Revolution and the reader may see shades of both Rousseau’s nebulous “general will” as well as Robespierre’s dangerous “Republic of Virtue” in the workings of the pool. Burne琀琀 and Mantovani argue that the Milan

While the authors take great pains to state (more than once) that they have no sympathy for the corrupt ruling class, there is a fundamental 昀氀aw in the work: the statements of the accused and their protestations of innocence are taken at face value while the statements of the magistrates are always read as self-serving, duplic1

H-Net Reviews itous, or simply out-and-out lies. 吀栀e accused are accorded every courtesy while the magistrates, especially Borselli and Di Piero, are ruthlessly criticized. 吀栀e la琀琀er, from a poor southern family, is several times described with the Homeric epitaph “swarthy” (pp. 4, 64, 118).

the same page the authors admit that “there is no reason to think” that Berlusconi achieved his 昀椀nancial success “in a manner di昀昀erent from that of other Italian entrepreneurs” (p. 160). 吀栀e authors assume that because the PCI/PDS was not intially targeted and pro昀椀ted most from the judicial investigations, the investigations were themselves politically motivated and suspect. Many observers (political scientists, journalists, historians) have argued that the communists escaped relatively well because they were “out of the loop,” so to speak; not being in power they were not in a position to award contracts so corrupt businessmen did not seek them out, but Italian communists and their successors have won election to and administered some of the most economically advanced and least corrupt provinces in Italy, especially around the “red belt” of Bologna. 吀栀ere (until a recent election which brought a center-right coalition to power for the 昀椀rst time since the end of the Second World War), “red” administrations created e昀케cient, honest, and capable governments.

For Burne琀琀 and Mantovani, Italian justice is (to paraphrase Clausewitz) politics by other means. But they fail to admit that their book is itself politics by other means: Stanton H. Burne琀琀 was a former counselor for public affairs at the U.S. embassy in Rome and is now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.; his co-author, Luca Mantovani, is chief of the “Forza Italia” Press O昀케ce in the Chamber of Deputies, one of the two house of the Italian Parliament. “Forza Italia” is a political party created by the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi in 1994 as he saw the unfolding corruption scandal o昀昀ering a golden political opportunity. With the collapse of the traditional parties, the political spectrum opened for the 昀椀rst time in 昀椀ve decades. Berlusconi, known at the time to most Italians as the owner of the phenomenally-successful A.C. Milan soccer club, converted his team’s popularity into a political force through the transformation of local soccer clubs into political cells (a fact not mentioned in the book). Berlusconi is a curious political animal–implicated in the enormous corruption of the First Republic but successfully marketing himself as an outsider, the knight in shining armor come to rescue the damsel Italy from the black knight (night) of communism. Indeed, listening to Berlusconi’s public speeches and pronouncements, one would never know that the Berlin Wall has come down, the Soviet Union has imploded, and that the Italian Communist Party long ago accepted the democratic “rules of the game.” Berlusconi rode his team’s popularity and the last of the Cold War’s rhetorical waves to power in 1994, a temporary setback to the coup that was quickly corrected when Berlusconi himself received an “avviso di garanzia.” 吀栀e con昀氀ict of interest is most pronounced in the treatment of Berlusconi: unlike the rest of the press, tied to the great industrialists and calling for blood, his media empire, the authors contend, had “notable independence and variety-of-view” (p. 57). No mention is made of the fact that when Berlusconi became prime minister, one of his 昀椀rst debacles was an a琀琀empt to add the three stateowned television stations to his privately owned 昀氀ock of three and thereby hold a virtual monopoly over Italian television in addition to his radio and publishing enterprises. 吀栀is leads the authors into an unresolvable contradiction: on the one hand, Berlusconi “was a genuinely successful showman. He needed no help …” and yet on

吀栀e authors perform a valuable service in detailing the abuses of the judicial system for political ends, but this is not something new. Like Claude Rains’s police inspector in Casablanca, they are “shocked” at this abuse. “Avvisi di garanzia” were leaked to the press and people were held inde昀椀nitely in preventive detention with the goal of breaking their resistance and forcing them to “name names.” People were considered guilty until they proved their innocence; very few actually came to trial. 吀栀e authors charge that this was a conscious policy of the judges: the issuing of the “avviso di garanzia” and the leaking of that information to the press was enough to politically destroy a man–a trial was not necessary or even advisable. 吀栀ere are other problems as well. 吀栀ere is some repetition that could have been avoided in the editing process. 吀栀e authors declare that “we must guard against guilt by association” in identifying magistrates and their association with a radical group, the “Magistratura Democratica,” but then proceed to do just that. 吀栀e twenty-seven (or thirty-three–cases were ambiguous) suicides are depicted as innocent men driven to their tragic fate by an implacable and merciless judiciary. It is assumed that the judges had a “hierarchy” of political enemies they wanted to destroy, beginning with Socialist leader Bettino Craxi and then the Christian Democrats, and that they were “so昀琀” on their friends in the PCI/PDS. It never crosses their minds that perhaps the Socialists and the DC 2

H-Net Reviews were the most corrupt and therefore deserved the special scrutiny. As the authors admit, unlike the Christian Democrats and Socialists, the communist leaders “never enriched themselves personally” (p. 143). 吀栀e accusations are o昀琀en prefaced by quali昀椀cations (“beyond the current evidence,” “cannot yet be further determined,” “the evidence … does not really permit a judgement”) that are honest yet weaken the central argument that the communists and their political heirs staged a coup to in-

herit what they could not win at the ballot. 吀栀e Italian Guillotine is necessary in stimulating debate over what exactly has transpired in Italy during the 1990s and in o昀昀ering a di昀昀erent point of view. An eighteen-page chronology and a thirty-one page “cast of characters” (and what characters they are!–enough to stock several operas) are both useful. Winner of the 1998 National Silone Prize, 吀栀e Italian Guillotine is an important yet 昀氀awed work.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: h琀琀ps://networks.h-net.org/h-italy Citation: Stanislao G. Pugliese. Review of Burne琀琀, Stanton H.; Mantovani, Luca, 吀栀e Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic. H-Italy, H-Net Reviews. September, 1999. URL: h琀琀p://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3453 Copyright © 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonpro昀椀t, educational purposes, with full and accurate a琀琀ribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial sta昀昀 at [email protected].

3

GOLPE DI PALAZZO E COMPLOTTI INTERNAZIONALI Scritto da: Gianni Petrosillo (05/06/2013) Che cosa è davvero accaduto in Italia agli inizi degli anni 90? Tangentopoli è stata ciò che ci raccontano i quotidiani e la storia ufficiale, cioè un’azione encomiabile dei togati per liberare il Paese dagli intrecci politica-affari e dalle collusioni mafiose tra apparati dello Stato e gruppi dell’antistato, oppure un complotto a più teste, autoctone e non, una macchinazione per togliere alla Repubblica quel minimo d’indipendenza nazionale di cui era ancora padrona? Secondo un libro mai tradotto in Italia, di cui parla Paolo Guzzanti in un editoriale su Il Giornale, “The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic” firmato da Stanton H. Burnett e Luca Mantovani, non ci sono dubbi, si trattò di un colpo di Stato, ma di tipo moderno, una sorta di rivoluzione colorata ante litteram, di quelle viste all’opera nei sistemi dell’est e in qualche regime mediorientale. Fu un Golpe di Palazzo eterodiretto da manine sapienti, nient’affatto pulite ma tanto tanto esperte ed intelligenti, anzi d’intelligence. Scrivono i due autori: “Un gruppo di magistrati altamente politicizzati, in larga maggioranza orientati a sinistra, agendo come pubblici ministeri, hanno usato una legittima inchiesta giudiziaria per perseguire, selettivamente, i loro nemici politici, ignorando o minimizzando misfatti simili dei loro alleati politici. L’investigazione di fondo è stata un’inchiesta su pratiche che erano andate avanti per decenni… I magistrati sono stati abbondantemente appoggiati da un gruppo di quotidiani e settimanali, tutti di proprietà di alcuni pochi grandi industriali che avevano una chiara posta in gioco nel successo del colpo di Stato”. Burnett, inoltre, rincara la dose in alcune interviste affermando che il pool di Milano, a capo delle indagini, applicò inflessibilmente la legge per i nemici graziando partiti e personaggi, pure coinvolti nelle spartizioni pubbliche, incredibilmente risparmiati dalla mannaia giustizialistica: “Il pool non si è limitato ad applicare la legge ma ha speso molte energie per eliminare il pentapartito sapendo che a beneficiare di questa operazione sarebbe stato il PDS. Per questo si chiama golpe. [ ...] Con l’eliminazione del pentapartito tutti davano per scontata la presa del potere del PDS alle elezioni del 1994. Ricordo che a fine 1993 ricevetti al CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies, n.d.r.] Giorgio Napolitano e lo presentai come il prossimo ministro degli Esteri…Il primo colpo di Stato in stile postmoderno, portato a termine da un piccolo gruppo di magistrati, quasi certamente appoggiati da alcuni leader politici e da potentati economici, con la complicità degli organi di stampa da questi ultimi posseduti.” Questa versione viene confermata da un giudice che inizialmente faceva parte della procura meneghina, Tiziana Parenti, la quale ammise di essere stata allontanata per aver osato indagare sulle tangenti del PCI. Fu proprio il collega D’Ambrosio a suggerirle di considerare un “vagone staccato” quello degli illeciti a sinistra, ma in sostanza non si voleva procedere per nulla in quella direzione. Più tardi qualcuno del tribunale sibilò che non si poteva abbattere l’intero arco istituzionale poiché altrimenti si rischiava un pericoloso vuoto di potere. Salvati, dunque, non perché innocenti ma perché necessari. La Parenti è anche convinta che il PM simbolo della lotta al ladrocinio partitocratico, Antonio Di Pietro, fosse dei servizi segreti americani: “La provenienza di Antonio Di Pietro è in una struttura parallela ai servizi segreti. Di Pietro su questo non ha mai fatto chiarezza… Quello che dico– è tutto documentato in carte riservate in possesso della procura di Milano. Basterebbe indagare partendo da una domanda semplice: perché è cominciata Tangentopoli? Cos’è successo

nella procura di Milano dal ’90 al ’92? È successo qualcosa a cui le indagini del Gico sono arrivate molto vicino, ed è per questo che le vogliono fermare. È successo che prima di Mario Chiesa c’erano altri, e in particolare un imprenditore che aveva, non so a che titolo, colloqui stretti con Di Pietro e che lo teneva in contatto con certi ambienti, per così dire, ambigui, in Italia e Oltreoceano”. Ipsa dixit. Del resto, piccole ammissioni vennero anche da Gherardo Colombo, il quale sapeva che Tangentopoli aveva finalità recondite, tanto da riferire al collega Misiani che la competenza di Milano sulle inchieste non era una questione giuridica. E se non era di diritto era di utilità politica. Tertium non datur. Ed, infatti, le trame tra politica e affari avevano una origine atavica, coinvolgendo tutti nel sistema del cosiddetto consociativismo, tuttavia, soltanto dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino ed il crollo dell’URSS venne a modificarsi l’ambiente internazionale per cui come enuncia Rino Formica, ex ministro PSI: “La questione morale diventa questione politica quando cambia la storia: fino al 1989 Italia e Germania avevano presidiato la frontiera ma con la caduta del Muro si comincia a temere per la stabilità dell’Italia”. Ovvero, i vincitori della guerra fredda cambiarono i loro piani geopolitici e attuarono il “regime change” in Italia per sbarazzarsi di una classe dirigente troppo compromessa con equilibri e accordi definitivamente saltati. La II Repubblica è nata con il marchio di questa brutta bestia epocale e per questo sarà eternamente stramaledetta. Piuttosto, chiediamoci anche come mai il nano (in senso politico) di Arcore, nonostante sia proprietario di grandi gruppi editoriali e sia stato “datore di lavoro” di Luca Mantovano, co-autore di The Italian Guillotine e capo dell’ufficio stampa di Forza Italia alla Camera dei deputati, non abbia mai avuto il coraggio di fare tradurre il testo in italiano. Costui si lamenta delle persecuzioni ma non vuole indispettire troppo certi poteri che gliela hanno promessa da quando è sceso in campo. Chi è causa del suo mal pianga se stesso. PS. Che Gorbaciov fosse un venduto della Cia, dipartimento Pizza Hut, ci era ben noto. Costui dopo aver liquidato la grande potenza sovietica continua a svolgere incarichi sporchi per gli Usa, tramando in ogni angolo d’Europa. Putin sta dando un giro di vite contro i traditori che agiscono da agenti infiltrati e prendono finanziamenti dall’estero per destabilizzare il Cremlino. Ci si lamenta della mancanza di democrazia di Mosca ma se lì circolano tranquillamente personaggi come Gorbaciov vuol dire che di libertà ce n’è fin troppa. Quello che scrive Guzzanti testimoniando delle congiure internazionali verso Berlusconi, passate attraverso soggetti infidi come Gorbaciov ["un uomo che è sempre stato rifiutato dai russi e che non è mai stato eletto in libere elezioni dove prese poco più del 2 per cento, è diventato da quei lontani tempi sovietici un guru, un ambasciatore fra lobby di potere, autore di mille articoli del tutto vacui e inutili, ma influente e disposto a viaggiare. Se l'informazione è esatta, Gorbaciov si sarebbe dato un gran da fare per tessere una rete multinazionale con cui catturare ed eliminare Berlusconi. Se ciò fosse vero, è ovvio che un tale interesse non sarebbe certo dipeso da questioni di stile di vita, cene con belle ragazze ed eventuali comportamenti disdicevoli. No, se la notizia fosse solida, il movente andrebbe cercato altrove. Andrebbe cercato nelle pieghe della politica che conta, quella che sposta ricchezze gigantesche e in particolare le questioni energetiche. Che gli americani siano più che irritati con Berlusconi per la sua strettissima amicizia con Putin è un fatto certo. Ricordo un cordiale colloquio con l'ambasciatore Spogli che mi confermò questo elemento di ostilità"] non scagionano il Cav dalle sue responsabilità, anzi, proprio perchè assediato dall’interno e dall’esterno, egli avrebbe dovuto premunirsi contro i suoi nemici esercitando un migliore controllo dei servizi nostrani e puntando a rinsaldare l’amicizia con la Russia (l’unica che lo stava a sentire per sue esigenze strategiche). Invece, per pararsi il culo si è ritirato con la coda tra le gambe dal fronte, rinunciando anche alle piccole cose ottenute dalla nazione per farla franca individualmente. E, dopo vent’anni, non è nemmeno scontato che ci riesca. Si può definire coglione uno che non ha i coglioni? Sì, e fa rima con…

[32 ©

The Italian Guillotine : Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic Stanton H. Burnett

and Luca Mantovani

Published in cooperation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies ROWMAN

&. Ly

Lanham's

PILEFIELD | PUBLISHERS,

Boulder

New York

“Oxford

INC.

The Italian Guillotine : Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic Stanton H. Burnett

and Luca Mantovani

Published in cooperation with the es Center for Strategic and International Studi

ROWMAN & LIJSLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, UNC. Lanham Boulder ¢ New York © Oxford”

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Published in the United States of Ameri by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.ca 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid’s Copse Road

Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9J], England

Copyright © 1998 by Center for Strategic and International Studies

All rights reserved. No pattof this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form cy by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or orhes wis,

without the prior permission of the publishes

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

A CIP catalog record is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 0-8476~-8877-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8476~-8878-X (pbk. : alls. paper) Printed in the United States of America

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UNIVERSHA’ DE BOLOGNA DIPARTIMENTO DI ORGANIZZAZIONE E SISTEMA POLITICO

INV, N.GSL0__ Contents

ix 1

Preface 1. What Happened to Italy?

9

2. The Thesis 3.

14

The Arena

4. The Politics of the Magistracy 5. The Lessons of History

27

7. The Politics of Justice

55

36

6, The Decline and Fall of Due Process

62

8, The Launching of the Coup

9. The Scandal Touches the Political Summit 10, The Establishment Cracks

11, Setbacks for the Government and the Parties 12.

13.

Differences in Treatment: Cagliari and Romiti

Parliament Confronts the Pool

14. The Red Togas and Their Thought 15, Death by Clean Hands 16, The Cusani Trial 17.

74 81 92

101

110

118

128 143 157

Berlusconi

163

18. The Biondi Decree-Law 19,

45

The Pool Attacks the Prime Minister

|. "The Resignation of Di Pietro

. Intermission: The Magistrate As Eliot Ness vii

177

190

200

viii ~~ Contents

22. Interregnum: Between Counterrevolution and Endgame

23. The Final Act? 24,

Conclusion

Chronology

The Cast of Characters Index About the Authors

205 214

239 273

293 325 332

Preface

hat this analysis of Italy’s great political change of the 1990s should receive its first publication not in Italy but in the United States deserves a word of explariation. The authors believe that

suspension initial publication in Italy is impossible because of the detofacto one topic: any

of freedom of expression there today. when it comes reconstruction-and-analysis of Operation Clean Hands that does not

conform to the official version.

of ‘Yet the freedoms of speech and press are guaranteed by the letter about

Article 21 of the Italian constitution. The right of Italians to know

the events described here is further supported by the Universal Declara-

tion of Human Rights (1948), wherein the UN General Assembly focused

specifically on the right to receive information, without interference, across international borders. The authoritative Italian political commentator Arturo Gismondi tells

us, instead, that today in Italy “‘a real flood of accusations, lawsuits, and

often damage claims has for some time battered Italian journalism. Very of defamait involves criticism raised, in the resulting charges, to the level

tion and thus running the risk of damage claims for large sums. It’s right to fear that such proceedings, put into the hands of a judicial power which

is often poorly disposed toward critical or dissonant voices, will result

in the creation of a climate of intimidation, will induce writers to self-

censorship."

It is especially the case that the magistrates who tan Operation Clean Hands consider every critical analysis of that operation to be defamatory. In this connection, Roman law professor Romano Vaccarella has noted the irony that in Italy, “the cradle of citizen’s rights,” a magistrate who

wants to press criminal charges must go to a Court of Appeal outside his own district. However, “the magistrate who opts for a civil procedure can

do it by trning to a colleague two doors down the hall.” We describe ix

“x om Preface

~ the unbelievable slowness of Italian criminal justice in this book; but damage suits pushed by “offended” magistrates are on a very fast track. Both the events analyzed in this book and the hurdles faced in its publi-

cation should be weighed in the context of the most important develop-

ment in today’s Europe: the creation of the new united Europe. Italy, which intends to remain at the core of this historic union, does not yet

have a magistracy that has truly absorbed the fundamental concepts of the

European Human Rights Convention that became Italian Law 848 on

_ August 4, 1955. The sense of that convention (confirmed in February 1997

by the European Court of Human Rights) is that information that is cor-

rect and verifiable cannot be defamation. Yet during the time we were

writing this book, the editorial staff of I! Giornale, a distinguished daily

that is today the most important voice of the political opposition in Italy,

published an article on its front page that declared the newspaper’s own

fear, “really a terror: that freedom of the press is finished in our country.”® The newspaper knew, and subsequent proceedings have proven it

correct, that one is not being judged by an independent and impartial tribunal, as required by Article Six of the Human Rights Convention,

when—as has been the case when certain magistrates, protagonists in this book, felt themselves offended—the adjudicating is being done by “a colleague two doors down the hall.” So this book was put together with the collaboration of Persons who are not mentioned in the acknowledgements. We give them no credit in the book for their research, their documentation, their own testimony,

because they fear reprisals in Italy. If this book succeeds in illuminating for the reader a dramatic and transforming period in the life of a nation that has been a crucial ally of the United States for more than half a century, then the authors will have fulfilled their debt to unnamed colleagues.

BR

oe

Most of the writing about Italian politics and society in the 1990s, outside Italy at least, impresses the reader with how bad the corrupt old system

of the First Republic was (whether or not the writer is optimistic about

improvements) or, with more focus, how extravagant and widespread that

corruption was. In fact, a round of serious comparative analysis of the Italian practices of clientelism and corruption would be useful for getting

at questions of cause that remain unanswered, although everyone has an

opinion.

How the First Republic should be judged also remains an open question, It is easy to forget its virtues and accomplishments, These have been

well documented in Joseph LaPalombara’s Democracy Italian Stylet and elsewhere. This book necessarily engages in some description of the First Republic’s corruption, but for another purpose. And here is where we fear mis-

Preface > xi

understanding. If we expend little effort on impressing the reader with

the evil done by the politicians and businessmen caught in the trap of Operation Clean Hands, it is not because we are blind to the fact that

every bribe or kickback robs the Italian citizen of resources that he or she needs. If we trace the destruction—political, psychological, or physi-

cal—of a leader of the old regime it is not to exonerate that leader of any of the damage done to the country by every “favor” granted to a “client” that took the place of competition by merit and service to the common

good.

But those who corral bad guys are not necessarily good guys, except in

old Westerns. They do not necessarily act out of pure motives. Vandals who drive out Huns are still Vandals.

This book is not a defense of the old order or of its corrupt operators.

It presents evidence, instead, that a downfall that may have been richly

deserved was brought about by a small group of hard political warriors who do not necessarily represent less of a threat to Italian democracy and the security and well-being of its citizens. When we began writing, we felt quite alone. Friends and colleagues in America could not believe that the magistrates were doing what we claimed, nor could many Italians. But while the book was in final editing,

the president of the Italian Republic, in his (usually platitudinous) New

Year's message (1998), stunned his fellow citizens by leveling exactly the

most serious of the charges made in this book: that preventive detention ng has been used to say “either you tall or you stay inside;” that “rattli handcuffs in the face of a person being questioned” is being used as ‘“tor-

ture?’ that notifications to citizens that they are being investigated are being regularly given to the press before the citizen xeceives them, “ ‘a

clear violation of investigatory secrecy;” and that “the season of grave and

and illegitimate acts” is not finished in Italy.” All commentators, Left

Right, said that the president was clearly referring to the actions of Antonio Di Pietro and the Milan Pool, protagonists of this book. So we are no

longer alone, The president has now confirmed our description of what happened. This book analyzes why it happened. Tt had its genesis in a study on which the authors had long been working concerning the political thought of the revolutionaries of the 1960s

and 1970s in Italy, young people devoted to burning down the old regime. Like most observers, we thought that their enterprise had been a forlorn

and bloody failure. And then some familiar names started cropping up in

the halls of the Milan Palace of Justice. The earlier drama was about to have an extraordinary final act. The failed revolutionaries had been writ-

ten off too soon,

a

xii ~~~ Preface

‘The wisdom of James Miller, Charles Loveridge, and John Holmes made

this a better book than it otherwise would have been. They are responsible

for none of the errors, for which the authors will, of course, blame each other.

Our gratitude goes also to James Dunton, CSIS’s Director of Publicaand guidance. And special thanks go to Roberta Howard, Kathleen M. McTigue, Shirley Collamer, and Eve Burnett for crisis management. tions, and to our editor, Susan McEachern, for their unfailing support

Notes

1, Arturo Gismondi, “Con le querele il regime normalizza la stampa,” I Gior2. Imerview with Romano Vaccarella in Andrea Marcenaro, “Borrelli ¢ i suoi amici, giudici e parti in causa, lavano le offese con un mucchio di bigliettoni,” Panorama, 6 November 1997. 3. Comitato di Redazione, “Temiamo che nel nostro Paese sia finita la liberta nale, 12 November 1997,

di stampa,” J! Giornale, 10 November 1997, 1.

4. Joseph LaPalombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1987).

What Happened to Italy? I February 1992, police burst into an office in Milan where the chair-

man of Pio Albergo Trivulzio, a leading charitable institution, was in

the process of pocketing a bribe, He was charged with taking a kiick-

back for the delivery of every cadaver that went from the charity’s oldpeople’s home to the “correct” lucky funeral parlor. The raid had been ordered by a dynamic, unpredictable, workaholic Milan magistrate, Anto-

nio Di Pietro, an ex-cop whose open collar and five-o'clock shadow would soon be featured on hot-selling T-shirts throughout Italy. A few months later, polls showed that he was the most popular man in Italy. Four years later, on April 21, 1996, without a whimper from the allied

capitals that had fought against it for forty years, the successor to the Italian Communist Party won a national election that made it the domi-

nant partner in the coalition that, a few weeks later, began to govern Italy.

The old party, before its transformation, had been the largest Communist

party in the West, the largest Communist party never to have taken power. ‘The first event led directly to the second. The path between the two swas charted by a small group of bitterly determined people who had never

|

~ been elected to anything. In the end, we will be able to justify labeling that path a coup d’état, a coup whose methods were new but whose fun-

damental character differs little from a courtier’s plunging a knife into the | back of the king. That the king (in our case a large group of political and business leaders) was corrupt and perhaps richly deserved the dagger might have changed the act in the eyes of God, but the modern observer

is left with the cold fact of a nondemocratic overthrow of the regime that

had governed the fourth largest industrial power of the West. ‘The thesis stated in the next chapter contradicts the common understanding of what happened to Italy. We are not alone in proposing it: ‘There already exists a body of literature by observers and analysts, mostly 1

2e~ Chapter 1

Italian, that gives indications of the political game being played but rarely acknowledges it explicitly. We will cite some of these.

One reason many shy away from our thesis is a misunderstanding of it

that we expect. The problem is that questioning the motives of the magis-

trates who decapitated the oligarchy of the Italian First Republic is likely to be talcen as a defense of the old order, a suggestion that the old political rogues were merely innocent victims. So we must state at the outset that there is no question about the involvement of almost all of Italy’s political

class, and many of its business leaders, in a system of bribes and kickbacks that was clearly illegal. No defense will be mounted for this involvement

because there is no defense that would not be shameful. In most of the places where the magistrates claimed to have found cor-

ruption, they really did find corruption. The questions are why they acted when they did, against long-standing practices; what methods they used;

why they tenaciously weeded out evidence of some wrongdoing while ignoring other crimes and even blocking investigations leading in certain directions; with whom they acted; and toward what end.

In fact, this book will present evidence that the illegality involved some

political and business leaders who, for interesting reasons, have not been brought to any sort of punishment. We will use the word coup when referring to the whole of these events,

although the reader will not have all the evidence to justify that word until the end. But revolution is too far from the mark; and a phrase such as the

events of 1992-1996, too cumbersome. So we use coup for purposes of brevity, not brow-beating.

oe

‘The calm that prevailed in Washington and around Europe as the coalition

led by the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) took power was mostly the

result of the USSR’s collapse and of the perceived threat of international Communism. It was also partly a product of the fact that the old Italian Communist Party had split and its more moderate wing had transformed itself and been accepted into the Socialist International and European polite society, But it was also very much the product of the common understanding of what the Western media now call the Italian “revolution.” In

a nutshell, here is what they understood,

Italy, according to this version of history, had been misgoverned almost

since the end of World War II. The vaunted resilience! of its clever citizens allowed it to achieve its “economic miracle,” an astonishing rise from

the ashes of wartime defeat. The Italians managed their miracle despite a political culture dominated by corruption, a too-close relationship to the Catholic Church, and the continual threat of political radicalism.

Radical politics took the form of (1) a huge Communist party that

almost overtook the Christian Democrats at the polls in the 1970s and (2)

What Happened to Italy? >

3

the bloodiest epidemic of terrorism in Europe, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Somehow, we understand, the italians—although they had

sacrificed one of their political leaders, Aldo Moro—both defeated the

terrorists and staved off the Communist Party. The State was less success

ful against the Mafia, but that phenomenon was understood to be mostly

confined to Sicily (which was too poor to be a real part of the postwar Italian.success story) and to Brooklyn, Having accepted, in the 1960s, the idea of an “opening to the Left” (i.e, the participation of the Italian Socialist Party in governing coalitions), Washington and the other capitals had no trouble accepting Socialist leader Bettino Craxi as prime minister in the summer of 1983. Indeed,

Craxi seemed a more dynamic and “modern” political figure than the old guard of the Christian Democratic Party. His political courage had been

the chiefly responsible for the West’s ability to face down the Soviets in“Jast great missile standoff of the early 1980s, which was, for many, the great battle of the Cold War.”

Craxi was able to stay in office longer than most Italian primed tominishave

ters, His two terms, the latter lasting until April 1987, appeare broken the back of some of Italy’s most damaging practices, such as wage

indexing.

‘Then two things happened that seemed to be connected. The Cold War ended, so none of us had to worry further about a now-ruined international Communist movement. And the old corrupt Italian political system started coming apart at the seams. The upshot of these two events was

_ that suddenly all the old familiar Italian faces and parties were no longer

of in the news reports, unless they were being investigated for decades on had malfeasance. Some scholars and journalists told us that a revoluti

taken place, d Before we set forth the thesis of this book about what really happene in ttaly, the reader may find it useful to note some benchmarks in the | “zevolution’s path as it was reported outside Italy. Tn 1991 the Italian Communist Party (PCI) split into two unequal

parts. About two-thirds of the leadership (and rank and file) transformed | itself into the Democratic Party of the Left. The hammer and sickle did

not disappear from its flag, but they were shrunk and buried in the roots

of a symbolic oale tree. The “new” party worked hard, and successfully,

to gain acceptance within the mainstream of the European social demo- cratic movement. Those old hard-liners (called “Stalinists” by the moder-

ates), who could not swallow this transformation were ghetto-ized into a

_ small splinter party, the Communist Refoundation. It was then widely

believed that any future Left coalition would not need this unrepentant

splinter for its parliamentary majority. Although the wily old warhorse of the Christian Democrats, Giulio

4 =~ Chapter 1

Andreotti, returned to power (for his sixth and seventh premierships)

after Craxi, Craxi’s shadow seemed to be working most of the levers.

What transpired became an open secret: A deal was cut that would return Craxi to office while the supposedly honorific presidency of the Republic would go to a malleable Christian Democrat to replace the outspoken maverick Francesco Cossiga.

The old system, we were told, started to teeter in February 1992, when

a zealous band of magistrates in Milan began opening the windows on

the foul air of Italian politics, Italians had long known that the air was foul, but they were stunned by the revelations of bow foul. One skeleton seemed to follow another, without pause, out of the Italian political closet. Observers had the impression that all of the old great historical figures were winding up on the stand in court. (Only a careful foreign reader would have noted that these figures were mostly witnesses, that

they never seemed to come to trial themselves.) The operation that decapitated Italy became known as Mani Pulite, or Operation Clean Hands. The stable it cleaned out was Zngentopoli:

Kickback City (or Bribe City). The city was not just Milan but all of

Andreotti, who appeared caught in cross-fire as magistrates in Palermo accused him of Mafia connections, and as magistrates in the center of Italy accused him of commissioning the murder of an investigative journalist, They “gov” the leaders of all the small parties who had been partners in governing coalitions since the war. They appeared to spare the former

Communists, but that seemed logical since most of the accusations related

to taking kickbacks from businessmen, not 2 normal Communist sin.

Many celebrated business leaders also bit the dust, but those who escaped

are a revealing part of the story.

From this mother-of-all-political-cleanups two new names emerged. One was the swarthy, hyperactive, tough-talking, sleeves-rolled-up crusading magistrate who had cracked the funeral parlor scam: Antonio Di

Pietro, also known as ““Ionino.”

Then, in the middle of this transformation of Italian political life, the

second new figure exploded on the scene, mostly on television screens.

This individual was already well known to Italians as the media magnate

who had brought Dallas and American pizzazz to Italian television. 'To

the rest of the world, Silvio Berlusconi, a smiling George Raft type in a

tailored double-breasted suit, strode without warning onto the political stage, formed a political party in a matter of days, and won a national election in the spring of 1994. He became prime minister that summer.

Berlusconi appeared to dramatize the success of the crusading magistrates by being totally unlike the slippered, secretive, corrupt old codgers of

one

Italy. The magistrates “got” Craxi, who fled to exile in Tunisia. They “got”

What Happened to Italy? ~~ 5

Italy’s Christian Democratic past. Readers were confused by a few reports

that Berlusconi actually owed his business success to the fallen Bettino Craxi, or that the same crusading magistrates seemed interested in Berlus-

coni’s own businesses.

With that, the transformation of Italy appeared to have run its course, and international news stories became less prominent but more confusing.

"The investigating and insinuating that dogged Berlusconi did not let up,

and he fell from office after only seven months. Having followed the brief premiership of a government of technocrats under a banker, Berlusconi

was then succeeded by what appeared to be another such government

under another banker, And the scandals continued. Finally, in 1996, a new spring election swept a Left coalition to power.

The fact that the coalition was numerically dominated by the Commu-

nist-successor PDS was largely lost in the interest directed to the fusty Bologna economics professor who actually took the prime minister’s chair, Romano Prodi. Most outsiders were, by this time, more concerned with Italy’s struggle to meet the Maastricht convergence standards than in trying to figure out how the ongoing kickback scandals might relate to the birth of Prodi’s odd governing combine, named “the Olive Tree.”

In fact, what most outside observers missed as they took passing note of the occasional news item was high political drama, a new brand of political warfare, and changes in a major Western industrial power that

went deeper than was understood. These changes were also of a different

character than was understood, but they left some of the old elements of

Tralian political culture alive and astonishingly robust.

One who follows the path of the magistrates’ investigations, surveys the handling of these investigations by the Italian press, looks into the political past and current statements of the star magistrates, and calculates

who suffered most and who benefited most will arrive at the conclusion

that we present as the thesis of this book. A few more words about the

context will lead to a statement of the thesis.

"The leaders of the PDS had, of course, grown up politically in the mater-

nal embrace of Italian Communism. They spoke not of errors of the past but of the political convenience of wearing a new face. And they did not

advance their own party secretary as leader of the new Center-Left coalition that came to power in 1996, Polls showed them that doing so might have caused significant voter resistance. But they laid down a marker for the future by suggesting chat their shrewd, ironic, mustachioed party secretary, Massimo D’Alema, was a little young and a little green in the leadership position to head the electoral list “this time.” (The two problems were intertwined. D’Alema’s lack of stature meant that he offered no help with the “weals legitimation of the PDS,”? nor could he ride the

party’s coattails because of this weakness.) On the other hand, hey made

6 ~~ Chapter 1 certain that the man who would carry the coalition banner into the April election did not come from the ranks of any of their coalition partners either. And so, when Prodi, the gentle bourgeois economics professor

from Bologna, pushed himself forward, the PDS, desperate for someone

who did not look the apparatchik, accepted this convenient fig leaf. Prodi had been chairman of the giant state holding company, the Institute for

Industrial Reconstruction, through the 1980s and again in 1993-1994, but

he was not exactly drafted by the PDS for his new job. He had a campaign bus painted up and rode it throughout the country in a most unusual Tralian version of barnstorming, His modest demeanor and immodest selfadvancement worked because they coincided perfectly with the PDS’s interests. Romano Prodi became the new prime minister of Italy. When asked, in Washington, about four months before the election,

whether he was not in the difficult position of being a fig leaf for the PDS,

Prodi shrugged and said that “the numbers are what they are.”

How had the ex-Communists achieved this dramatic turnaround? It is

not that they suddenly found the key to electoral victory over the parties

that had kept them out of office for half a century. Rather, the answer is that, being consistently unable to defeat those forces at the polls, and with no prospect that this losing streak would end, the Communists inherited what they could not win: They benefited from the total destruction, be-

fore the election ever took place, of all those forces that had opposed

them for the life of the “First Republic.” Their old opponents lay in the ashes of Italy’s postwar regime, victims of a coup that, as we shall see, had been carried out by a few members of the Italian judiciary. Fewer than a dozen Italian magistrates destroyed all the parties of government, some of which traced back to the founding of the Italian state in the nineteenth century, parties that had given Italy a democratic recov-

ery from the sickness of Fascism and had managed an Italian economic

miracle. The Socialists, chief tormentors of the Communists in the 1970s

and 1980s, are out of business. The most successful and longest-ruling

Italian prime minister of recent years, Bettino Craxi, sits in his villa in

Hammamet, Tunisia, unable to return from exile. The Christian Demo-

crats, the core of the governing majority since Alcide De Gasperi’s 1947

government, have been wiped out, their old leadership utterly destroyed politically, And the Republicans, traditional guarantors of the spirit of the Italian constitution, have disappeared, as have the Social Democrats and

the Liberals,

‘Those were the five parties that, in varying combinations, had governed

Italy since 1949.

What was left, either to oppose or to team up with the PDS, were (1) a secessionist party, the Northern League; (2) a nationwide network of support clubs (in no sense a real political party) for Berlusconi; and (3) the

What Happened to Italy? = 7 ex-Fascists who, facing the same challenge of respectability as the Communists, had done the same thing: changed the party name and hacked off a small band of extremists (who ran in the last election as “The Flame”). A coup d’état had taken place.’ A recent tide of books and articles in

Italy call it a revolution, and with some reason. ‘There were deaths, top-

to-bottom transformations of the political stage and its actors, and, as we

shall see, revolutionaries. But the less dramatic term coup d’état is more

appropriate.

‘A strong case can be made by those scholars and journalists, writing

earlier in the Italian drama, who believed they were witnessing a revolu-

tion. Almost the entire nomenklatura of the First Republic was erased. Four-fifths of the parliamentary seats changed hands in 1994, going to people who had never sat in Parliament before. That, in itself, is not necessarily a sign of anything but a landmark election, like the U.S. congres-

sional election of the same year, Sometimes voters simply throw the

rascals out, though rarely in such numbers, In Italy, however, all of the

parties that ran the First Republic have died, splintered, or transformed

themselves, Party financing, the center of Italy’s kickback scandal, will never again be done in the same way, at least while memories of these

years endure—not because the political culture has changed profoundly

but because politicians and businessmen will be afraid. Indeed, the party

|

activities will probably be so different that nothing like the old level of | financing will be necessary. But the Italian constitution stands. Changes are being considered now,

but through an orderly process involving a bicameral committee. The vio-

lence that occurred was quiet and behind closed doors; it was not the

violence of mobs or armies in the piazzas. Nor was there any sort of

socioeconomic overturning. In fact, we will see old money and culture, symbolized by Gianni Agnelli, emerging strengthened from the death or weakening of such “new money” figures as Raul Gardini and Berlusconi—men considered, by the old families, as upstarts without cultural

roots. In this sense, the change was Lampedusan: It was change that was

necessary in order to prevent change. If there was, then, no real revolution, do the events in Italy constitute a

true coup d’état? The story we are about to follow suggests exactly that.

Within the context’ of the enduring constitution, the majority of politi-

cians sitting in both houses of Parliament and the city councils of the

most important northern cities were destroyed politically without losing

an election." This happened because all (except one) of the old political forces of the First Republic were burned to the ground in a conflagration

© that was ignited, fanned, and controlled by a small group of people who had declared, twenty years earlier, that they would make a revolution.

8 e~ Chapter 1

The parties chat had shared in the governing of Italy since 1948 were de-

stroyed in a matter of months.

‘As with many coups in history, the turning points of the drama took place in a palace—in this case, the Milan Palace of Justice. The coup-

plotters moved quietly at first, struck cruelly, and then announced each step of the overthrow to a cheering crowd. The crowd was mere audience,

not, as in revolutions, actor. The fact that the political victors won an

election (after a false start in 1994) does not refute our label, given that

the opposition that had always defeated them was erased before the election, Many coups in history were subsequently ratified by election. If we prefer the more moderate term coup to revolution, it is because of

the “style” with which the First Republic. was overthrown, and because most revolutions are more genuinely democratic than most coups.

oH

8

‘There are several theories about what happened in Italy and why. The

two most popular, whose spirit infused our résumé of these years, are the End of the Cold War Theory and the Honest Sheriff Theory. We will

ultimately see how they measure up against the facts.

This book, then, is an effort to analyze and understand the events that

began in a funeral parlor in 1992 and had their denouement at the polls on April 21, 1996. No revolution or coup goes smoothly or lacks unintended consequences, and Italy’s drama was no exception. Victory came two years later than scheduled and in a more complex form. But the coup was,

in the end, a success: Its driving forces achieved the rough result that had been sought. This analysis may also help us decide whether we should

celebrate.

Notes

1, Resilience is a favorite descriptive word for Italians. 2. The term is Piero Ignazi’s, from “I] PDS, I’Ulivo, i governo,” I! Mulino, Vol. 369, January-February 1997, 259. 3. Arturo Diaconale, Tecnica del colpo di stato postmoderno (Milan: Spirali-Vel, 1995). 4. The major parties experienced a few electoral losses in the spring of 1992, before the scandals were at full speed, but not enough to constitute a real shift in Italian politics, as we will see.

The Thesis he only understanding of the magistrates’ role in the making of the Italian coup that is consistent with the evidence that does not

build on the unlikely assumptions that we will examine in the final

chapter, and that is in tune with what we already know about Italian political culture is one that sees it not as a morality play about corruption and law enforcement but, rather, as a political struggle, a usually (but not always) bloodless political war, As in most wars, gaining advantage became, to some of the warriors, more important than the rules. A few magistrates so badly trampled the civil liberties guaranteed in the Italian constitution that they drew the

attention of Amnesty International, the Vatican, and the Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme.'

Between twenty-seven and thirty men (there are three ambiguous cases), from modest mid-level managers and politicos to two of the coun-

try’s most celebrated business magnates, reacted to hounding and impris-

onment-without-trial by taking their own lives. We will look in detail at two of these cases: Gabriele Cagliari and Raul Gardini. Now, however, it

is time to state our understanding in its boldest form.

There is compelling evidence that a group of highly politicized, mostly

left-wing magistrates, acting as prosecutors, used a legitimate judicial in-

quiry to persecute, selectively, their political enemies, while ignoring or

downplaying similar wrongdoing by their political allies. The basic investigation was an inquiry into practices that had been going on for decades.

The evidence shows, further, that the magistrates were slavishly sup-

ported by a group of newspapers and magazines, all of which were owned by'a few major industrialists with a clear stake in the success of the coup. These industrialists had the most to fear both from the new era of competition opened by the Maastricht treaty and from the increasingly exopbg

10 ~~ Chapter 2 tant demands for financial “contributions” from political parties. They had the greatest cause for dissatisfaction with the governments of the First Republic and with the regime itself. And finally, of all those in the Italian management sector, they had the longest experience of doing whatever

‘was necessary in order to have their own way in Italy.

Those magistrates further violated the law and the Italian constitution

by systematically leaking derogatory information and unproven allegations, which. should have been kept secret, to their supporters in the

media, The support they received was uncritical and involved making ac-

cusation and inference appear to be guilt.

‘The final suggestion of the evidence may surprise readers not already

familiar with Italian political culture, but it is clear and unsurprising to most Italians. This is the idea that the chief intended beneficiary of the

coup was the PDS, the successor (except for the breakaway splinter of unreconstructed Stalinists) to the largest Communist Party outside the Communist bloc. One does not have to posit a giant conspiracy, replete with secret meetings and plotting, to acknowledge the facts that tie the party closely to the coup. It has long been recognized that, throughout much of the First Republic, the economic interests supporting the coup found it easy to work with the Communists. The same industrialists preferred dealing with the official Communist labor union and party chiefs as opposed to the unpredictable “autonomous” labor and political movements. During the First Republic, a large part of the Italian establishment was involved, with the Communists, in the system of cooperation known

as consociativismo (see Chapter 7), which linked, principally, the Com-

munists with certain powerful factions of the Christian Democratic Party, sharing a significant body of statist ideas about government and economics, sharing prerogatives of local and national power, doing mutual favors. The same press that was now cheering on the magistrates had long been

ca

oriented toward a greater role for the Communists, and had mostly supported the idea of the Historic Compromise in the 1970s.

‘The makers of the coup (and the PDS) knew with absolute clarity that

the PDS would be the beneficiary. Because of that knowledge, it is fair to

say that the PDS was the intended beneficiary.

‘Along with others, the “grand old man” of Italian journalism, Indro

Montanelli, had been calling for magistrates to investigate Italy’s political corruption for decades, without success. But, he wrote recently, “when

the magistrate-commandos finally emerged, they did so not in the service

of justice, but in the service of ideology.’

‘Tiziana Maiolo, who, until the April 1996 elections, chaired the Justice

Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, put it most simply: “A political

class was destroyed. All of it, or almost. But fully alive is the PCI-PDS,

with its people and structures undamaged, hardly touched. by the judicial

The Thesis >

11

investigations.” In fact, there is evidence that parts of the Italian magistracy have carried out a political action with clear partisan aims;-seeking to achieve what former Italian President Cossiga has called “the judicial road to socialism.” oe

In 1968 and throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, key. magistrates in

the coup located themselves publicly on the extreme Left (the Communist Left or, often, the extraparliamentary Left). Many of the radicalized magistrates of that era are today closely tied to the PDS or the Rete (Network) Party.’ Others remain well to the left of the PDS. A radical political faction of magistrates was founded, complete with name, publications, and conventions, the Magistratura Democratica (MD). Its young founders, not inclined to consider overturning the First Republic through external action against the State, concluded that an effective “restructuring of power” (to the detriment, of course, of the gov-

erning parties) could be carried out from within, through administering

justice according to eminently political criteria and carrying out, in some

cases, what amounts to summary justice (using methods that we describe

later). For some of the magistrates, these ideas constituted an assertion that the Italian Commuunist Party (PCI) had so completely accepted the

constitutional system that it would not be an engine for revolutionary

change. ‘A group within the Milan Pool of magistrates used Operation Clean

Hands to stage a coup. Some are clear supporters of the political Left,

uyt

4

especially the PDS. Gerardo D'Ambrosio, Number Two in the Pool, has

often made public statements supporting the PCI/PDS.> Number One in the Pool, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, is considered the leader of the Partito

delle Toghe, ot Judges’ Party (judges? robes are called togas in Italy), and is

responsible for some limited incidents of tension with the PDS. Although Borrelli has occasionally told D’Ambrosio to shut up—“D’Ambrosio? I

very much esteem him. .. . But if he would just keep quiet!”—these “factions” can normally work very smoothly together, and they do not see their political ends as seriously in conflict, Moreover (and this is a fact ignored by most coverage of the Pool), Borrelli himself was one of the founders of Magistratura Democratica.

‘Two of the magistrates stood outside these factions. Tiziana Parenti,

/ | though active in movements of the extraparliamentary Left when she was

younger, followed where her investigations led her, including the PCI/ PDS doorstep, no matter what the political consequences. One conse-

quence, as we shall see, was a public suggestion by her colleagues that if

she could not accept their goals she must surely need a psychiatrist; an-

other was her departure from the Pool. The internationally celebrated

Antonio Di Pietro also walked out of the Pool, in a dramatic gesture

whose meaning we will examine later.

12. ~ Chapter 2 ‘The Milan Pool of magistrates, which, under Borrelli, ran Operation Clean Hands, so obviously abused the use of detention, using it to extort

confessions and finger-pointing, that its acts have finally attracted international attention and may eventually erode the enormous public support the Pool has enjoyed.

‘The actions of some parts of the media have constituted a powerful

effort of intimidation against the powers that are supposed to control the magistracy and defend the Constitution—namely, the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM), the Constitutional Court* and various powers

of the executive and legislative branches. Relative to the Parliament elected in 1992, a serious assault on popular government was carried out (in the name of justice, naturally) with the formula, repeated and given currency

by the Pool magistrates, that “the Parliament is illegitimate,” and with unconstitutional acts.”

The Pool had not targeted some crooks; it had targeted the First Re-

public.

s

8

#

‘The best way to understand “prerevolutionary” (First Republic) Italy is to see it as a traditional, deep-rooted patronage system, onto which the modern mass party was grafted. This marriage produced modern Italy’s successes (the economic miracle; a strong and genuine postwar democ-

racy), its failures (massive corruption; a state and parastatal apparatus, a

welfare system, and a protectionism that endanger Italy’s rendezvous with the new Europe), and, eventually, the coup itself: Any account of the First Republic must also focus on a central thread that linked the real rulers of Italy, stretching mainly from some factions of the Christian Democratic Party to the Italian Communist Party—a thread known to Italians as consociativismo. After the coup, this connec-

tion appeared to be dead because its principal operators were mostly gone, But now there is talk of the birth of “the New Center,” under the

aegis of President Scalfaro himself. It would knit together the Christian

Democratic splinters that had joined the Center-Right coalition, the Christian Democratic rump that remains with the Center-Left coalition, and the “Italian Renewal” party of former Prime Minister Lamberto

Dini, These efforts to blunt the battle of Left versus Right, to return to

an amorphous Center in which deals, cooperation, and shared benefits are more important than the pluralistic combat of a healthy Western democracy, show how resistant the political culture is to this change, and how strong remains the appeal of the old ways,

So each time the Center-Left feels its majority is at risk (because of

disagreements with the prickly, but numerically necessary, Marxists of

Communist Refoundation), new formulas emerge for cooperating, even governing, with the Center-Right opposition.

The Thesis >

13

These may not be signs of backsliding. They could constitute movement back to a pre-

Craxi centrism, with the time, making the coup a truly Lampedusan effo PDS calling the shots this rt to effect change in order to avoi

d change. A conclusive judgment here should be part of this book’s story, but it is too carly.

Notes

1. US, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has also commen due process in Italy, regarding both long-standing problems and ted critically on the coup. See La Stampa, 18 November 1994, 6, He remmed those relating to the question of Italian justice in an interview with the Itali (very critically) to See “Scalia: “Avrei paura dei tribunali italiani’ " 11 Messaggeanro,wire service ANSA 2. Indro Montanelli, “Magistratura e porti delle nebbie,” 8 November 1997, Corviore della Sena (hereafter Corrieve), 12 January 1997, 27, 3, Tiziana Maiolo, Introduction to Giancarlo Lehner’s grafia” di wn inquisivore, (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995). Borrelli: “Ausobio4. Rete is a Sicilian party led by rmo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando. Starting as a breakaway from the Mafia-connecPale ian Christian Democrats, it poses as the voice of opposition to the Mafia. tedReteSicil sits the parliamentary lef. o. Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno di spifferi”on Prim a Comunicazione, April 1994, 6. The role played by the U.S, Supreme Courtis, in Italy, divi ded between two panels, The Corte Costituzionale has only the job of eval uati ng the constitution, ity of laws. The Corte di Cassazione represents the thied level of Passes judgment on the sentences of the Court of Appeals (sec adjudication: It ating, on a formal level, whether defendants’ and plaintiffs’ ond level) by evalu. s were respected, 7 ot example, Gherardo Colombo (unconstitutionally) right orde confiscate within the Chamber of Deputies documents that red the police to Public library. And Pool Chief Borvelli attacked the Parliamewere available ae any nt publicly when ic voted down the lifting of Crexi’s immunity. 8. PCT is the Italian Communist Party that became the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS),

The Arena

The Unique Italian System of Justice

y i

hose who grew up within any of the other legal systems of the Western world will be astonished at what a group of magistrates in Italy have been able to accomplish. Part of the explanation lies

in the way Italian justice works. To understand the Italian drama of the

1990s, we must look at the shape of the arena and the rules of the game. We are about to see some extraordinary political dangers—in particular, a serious threat to elective democratic politics—made possible by the most extreme independence enjoyed by the judiciary in any Western country.!

In all Western judicial systems, judicial independence from partisan politics is considered a necessity. Judges are settlers of disputes, with en-

forcement muscle behind them. They should not have significant links to

any of the parties to the dispute. That’s easy for civil cases. But criminal cases are disputes in which one of the parties is the State. Therefore it is important that the judge be as little connected to the State as possible, although the independence is never complete. Quite apart from defending their own independence, in Italy some

members of the judiciary themselves broke the barriers by becoming ac-

tively involved in legislation and talking openly about the need for judges

to govern when the executive branch is incapacitated (by the judges them-

selves, in this case).

The roots of the system will detain us only briefly; what follows is a

fast sketch of the arena for the conflict of the 1990s. The Italian judicial system with which the “First Republic” began in 1947 was a mixture, 'The basic structure and mode of operation of the magistracy came from Piedmont, the state that guided Italy to nationhood

in the last century; the code of criminal procedure, on the other hand, 14

‘The Arena >

15

was a product of Fascism. Some Fascist eleme were weeded out, but |_ many were left in place, ironically, by Palmiro nts att, the great postwar | leader of Italian Communism who was justicTogli e minister right after the 4

|" war.? So the suspect who finds himself in the vise of the Italian judicial

system faces a mixture of these procedures and new penal procedures

from the postwar liberal democracy.

Whereas the days following the war's end were bloodied by a rash of lynchings—historians agree that between 10,000 and 15,000 fascists, collaborators, and others whom somebody wanted out of the way died by summary “justice” before order was restored—the official, orderly purge of Fascism that was supposed to take place was mostly a joke. Virtually

all the senior judges in Ttaly’s postwar courts had been left in place from their service under Fascism. ‘The central fact in the new structure created (on paper—on ly later did

the reality catch up) by the postwar constitution is simple to state, It estab lished the magistrate as the key figure throughout the new system.

Italian magistrates are the survivors of examinations on knowledg e of the law. The reputation of these examinations is mixed, They are consid-

ered stiff and rather frightening, prompting some phenomenal cramming, On the other hand, the amount of time spent judging the s is often scandalously brief and there are many stories of favoritism. result Many magistrates themselves say that there are two ranks of candidates, those who put a Herculean effort into preparing and passing, and those with friends or family connections in the right places. Nevertheless, this examinatio n

route is the only way one becomes a magistrate, and it is all that is required All commentators agree that nothing in the exami nation process touches on questions of balance, maturity of judgment, general cultural

knowledge or sensitivity, or anything else

d to fitness to apply the law to real cases involving human beings in relate real y, On the contrary, the exam is based exclusively on the candidate's societ technical knowledge of the law

and of civil and penal jurisprudence, with no kind of attitudinal test that would indicate a potential for prejudices (polit ical, racial, sexual,

regional, or otherwise), a lack of balance, or a general incapacity for sound judgment. In this respect, it may be roughly comparable

examination; but the latter qualifies one to become a lawye to a U.S. bar r, not a prosecutor or a judge. The path to those jobs in the United States and els ewhere usual

ly involves interviews, past history, politics, sometimes electi o Mellin has calculated the amount of time spent by the examining commission on each

on, Regarding even the material the examination is supposed to cover, Maur

round, divided by the number of candidates in the round, and found thar the oral examination of each candi date, including

reading what he has written, consultations among the members of the

16 =~ Chapter 3

commission, the asking of any further questions, and so on, averages out to two minutes and forty-four seconds per candidate, Mellini suggests

that a good recommendation might be a more certain path to success than a good examination performance.

‘As indicated by the small body of scholarship looking at what this

process produces, the examinations are totally incapable of distinguishing candidates having the personal characteristics one would want in a magis-

trate from those who do noté A candidate who knows the law but does

not respect it would not be weeded out; neither would a candidate harbor-

ing poisonous prejudices or a candidate who was an ideologue intent on

using the system for partisan ends, Once past the exam, the new magistrate cannot be transferred from any

post he occupies nor undergo any disciplinary procedure or investigation

without the consent of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM),

the magistrates’ organ of self-government, which (since the majority of

its members are elected representatives of the serving magistrates) normally takes positioris supportive of magistrates. The importance of all this will become apparent as we trace the coup; but the central fact is that Italian magistrates are almost entirely self-governing. They do not report to the justice minister, and he in turn cannot move or remove them, Even

their organ of self-government, the CSM, has acted only in rare and bi-

zarre cases of near-criminal behavior. The magistrate guilty of, say, a con-

sistent pattern of ideological conditioning of his work cannot be touched. The magistrates’ relationship to the other branches is not one of checks

and balances, American style. Nobody from the executive branch appoints or promotes magistrates, and no legislature confirms them. In any stand-off; denizens of the other branches are personally vulnerable; the magistrates are not.

Political commentator and former ambassador Sergio Romano stated the problem as follows: “I do not think that a country can indefinitely accept a state of judicial emergency or allow State officials, chosen through public exams, to have a right of supervision and veto on the policy of the government.” ‘The criteria established by law for evaluating the magistrates have become purely formal. G. Di Federico narrows these down to one: “In reality, the simple satisfying of the requirements of seniority provided for in the law has become the sole criterion that controls the career of the magistrates.” Salary and status are, for the magistrate, “separated from

the work [that] judges [magistrates] are actually performing.”

Even at

the top levels, “selection for higher judicial office came to be based princi-

pally on seniority rather than merit." ‘The corps of magistrates provides the judges as well as the prosecutors in the Italian system. The same magistrates do not play both roles on the

The Arena > 17

same case (as some press accounts have had it), but they are both on the same career track,

people who have been arrested can go to ask for their freedom, In this role, Ielo passed

judgment on many cases presented by suspects in Opera~ tion Clean Hands. Such instances arose so freq uently that the Consiitutional Court, in a recent decision

, has ruled that magistrates who were involved in the investigation of a susp ect may not be included in the trib. nal that judg

es him. But this ruling came too late for the cases we will

consider here.

This unity of prosecution and judgment, plus trates are self-governing, means that Italy “is the cratic polities, in which the same corps of care er full independence both judicial and prosecutoria l

the fact chat the magisonly case, among demomagistrates performs in functions,’”!?

So the prosecutor (pubblico ministero) is a magistrate. He, not the police, controls the

investigation; the police involved in the case report to him. The judge who hears the case will be yet another magistrate, It is important to note, for what follows, just what this arrangement means: that, in any given case, the judge and the prosecutor are usually much closer, personally and professionally, than are the judge and the attorney for the defense.

Guarnieri has luded that the prosecution is strongly favored in Italy.!* And Justice conc Minister Giovanni Conso judged, after one year of operation of

Operation Clean This general imbalance may have been amplified in Oper ation Clean Hands by the collaboration even of

lacked “that necessary parity between the two Hands, that Italien justice parties of the Pprocess,””"* some of

the defense attorneys involved, but this suggestion is not confirmed by the evidence. The last important element of the combat arena is the fact that, having passed the examination and put on that first judicial toga, the magistrate is never thereafter questioned as to competen ce this is the exception that became crucial—the or fairness unless—and magistrate is the subject of an inspection ordered by the justice minister, The magistrate can be disciplined by the CSM for

such acts e-taking or cutting deals with suspects in return for favors, but theas brib gene rally incompetent or biased magistrate would have to commit

to face possible sanction.!”

some specified “abuse of official action”

Like most provisions of the Italian Postwar constitution, these arrangements required the passage of laws to impl ement them. In 1958, legisla~ tion created the CSM ." It would

ty years before laws had finally been passed implementing bemostanotofherthe twen constitutional provisions in this area,

thereby completing the judicial arena for the struggle to come,

etreeeer

It may be difficult to see the significance of this combinin

g of two roles into one career, But in 1992-1993, for example, a current prosecutor in the Clean Hands Pool, Paolo Ielo, was a judge on the court to which

18 ~~ Chapter 3

Politics and Reforms

a great round “Today's thirty-three” members of the CSM gather aroundthemse lves magtable in the Palazzo dei Marescialli in Rome. Twenty are

Italian istrates, elected by their colleagues—a majority that helps make the are judiciary so incomparably independent and self-governing. Ten others s who elected by Parliament. These are usually law professors and lawyer reThe are either distinguished or well connected (occasionally both).

Republic, the maining three members of the CSM are the president of l theprosec utor.

first president of the Court of Cassation, and the genera they What's interesting is not who the parliamentary ten are but how if So . got there. Selection requires a 60 percent majority in both houses and oppoanyone is to be elected, the parties in Parliament, both majority always sition, are forced to strike a deal. Thus all the major parties are

represented in proportions matching their parliamentary seats.

ian The result of these arrangements has been summarized by histor

the judiciary a Spencer Di Scala: “The legal system’s organization makes includmore independent power than it is in other Western democracies, , as iality ing the United States.”™® But independence does not mean impart proven by the fact that the magistrates soon began creating their own political factions, So dividing the self-governing body of the magistracy on the basis of affiliation, either to political party (in the case of the nond magistrates) or to judicial “party” (in the case of the magistrates) cohere perfectly with the normal doing of political business in Italy.

rates) ‘Atthe end of the 1980s, the Italian Left (the parties, not the magist

cians were rebegan taking a greater interest in the judiciary, The politi The strugsponding to the fact that magistrates were making more news. little star quality. gle against terrorism had given some of them aduring a big banking Meanwhile, other magistrates had made headlines scandal and the discovery of an ambiguously subversive Masonic Lodge (P2).

‘All commentators agree (some approving, some not) that a significant

face of rise in judicial activism occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. In the

aloud about the this activisra, politicians and columnists began worryingbeliev ed that they procedural elements left behind by Fascism. Some also

were seeing a more overt politicization of the magistracy. Battle lines were drawn in the 1980s, with the Socialist Party as the chief foe of'a more ian politicized judiciary, and the Communists and left wing of the Christ

unists Democratic Party being more supportive of the judiciary.*' (Comm Communists

are overrepresented in the judiciary probably because many was once felt that a brilliant career in the executive branch of government

precluded.)

‘There may appear, however, to be one important control over magis-

The Arena => 19

trates. By law, the question of what gets investigated and prosecuted is not discretionary. The law says that if an allegation of a crime com es to a

investigating the alleged crime, even if the file never again sees the light of day. There is no system by whi ch he accounts for his choices bec ause,

Suppose You Were Arrested... Once a magistrate has completed the preliminary steps of an inv estigation, he tales the results

to anothe conclusions, orders arrests and r magistrate, who, if he agrees with the the opening of proceedings against the At this point, the suspect faces a countries. There is no real habeas stickier situation than in other Western cor brought to demand either the releas pus in Italy, no writ that can be e of the defendant or a speedy tria l, (As in other European countries, often no bail is allowed in cases whe bail would be normal in the United re States.) In the trial phase, even if the Stat innocent, an acquittal can be appeal e loses and the defendant is found ed, not just a conviction. So a findin of innocence in the 1973 Bolzano trial of a priest accused of killing g housekeeper did not end the priest’s his adventure, The prosecution’s appeal heard in ‘Trento, resulted ,

in another acquittal. But the Cou rt of Cassation ordered yet another erial, In an appellate court in Venice, the pro secutors got their guilry verdict and a

fourteen-year sentence, And there were two

20 ~~ Chapter 3

more trials before a court in Brescia, nine years after the first trial, acquit

ted the priest because of lack of evidence. One’s jeopardy is almost limicless. In Italy, there is no Fifth Amendment protection. Self-incriminationalsois

permitted, often “encouraged.” (Plea-bargaining in the United States constitutes serious pressure toward self-incrimination.)

to Nor is there exclusion of hearsay evidence. The distinction common

other courts between what a witness swears actually to have seen and what

the witness merely heard about, with the normal exclusion of the latter

from the jury’s consideration, is not made in Italy. Currently in that another, country, one can be convicted based on an accusation made in ation, and related trial: The accuser can refuse to undergo cross-examin

the full weight his statements are included in the new charge andlastgiven weakness may have that had been given them in the original trial. This key witnesses

been corrected: A. reform (of procedural code 513) to bring into the courtroom, available for cross-examination, passed its last legisla amend r furthe tive hurdle at the end of July 1997, although there may be ments to allow for the protection of Mafia pentiti. Tt is an understatement to say that in Italy there is no guarantee of a speedy trial. Justice moves slowly, as in many other countries. But where ns, magistrates have reasons to stall, as in the Clean Hands investigatio delay is made easy. In fact, the rhythm considered normal is three heara ings per year per case, but so many judges schedule only one session of phase year that the average is about two. Since the initial investigative any case normally requires at least ten hearings, three years is the fastest ly pace one can expect for the preliminary phase, before the trial actual starts. The pace is entirely in the hands of the magistrate serving as judge the in the case.2* "There is always a long line of cases waiting to get on

court docket. Reforms to cure this well-recognized ill, mainly through

of statutes of limitation, have simply resulted in large numbers of releases suspects who never came to trial.

The Italians’ favorite example of theit own slow-motion justice is a Sardinian case begun in 1858 that was finally settled in 1981. By current or estimates, a short trial takes six years to resolve, an average trial, nine ten years; and a complicated case, as many as twelve to fifteen years.

‘The untried prisoners in Italian prisons usually outnumber convicted

criminals by two to one. Of those waiting, a large percentage are probably 0 innocent, Paul Hofmann of the New York Times reported that “of 203,00

defendants in criminal trials in 1986, fewer than 114,000 were found guilty

and received prison sentences or were fined; more than 89,000 were ac-

midquitted.® Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser estimated in 1themillio n 1980s that 1.5 million criminal cases were pending, plus over

civil cases By 1993, the pending criminal case backlog had topped

The Arena ~> 21 2,700,000.% In 1993, there was a backlog of 113,000 civil cases in Milan alone.” Italian nati

onal television reported in July

1996 that the civil case backlog stood at two million. In Operation Clean Hands, much of the political and business leadership of Italy joined the ranks of those spending time in prison without ever having come to trial, They all, dur ing the first three years of our story, went to the same prison. It is character in the Italian coup: Mila now time to introduce a principal

n's forbiddin

g San Viteore prison, Seen from the outside, San Vittore’s int imidatingly high walls seem never to end.

A precise accounting of conditions in Italian prisons can be found ina Council of Europe report, published in a volume that also contains an interview by Entico Deaglio with Luigi Pagano, director of San Vittoves The main document is the official report of five expert inspectors sent out by the Council’s Committee for the Pre ven man or Degrading Sentences or ‘Treatme tion of Torture and of Inhunt (CPT)” The committee was chaired by an internationally renowned Italian law professor, Antonio Cassese, who more recently

has been given the task of presiding over the ex-Yugoslavia war crimes trials, The rt took a year to compile after the inspections were completed; it wasrepothen delivered to the Italian —

s distinguishe

d credentials, the government delayed publication for two more years. Deaglio commented: “One can help being struck by the long time that pass ed between the inspection and the authorization to publish. Three year s. Three years in which a lot of things have happened, many of them invo lying the prison world," Here is Deaglio’s summary of the repo rt; The CPT delegation had ly seen over-population equal to what it found in San Vietore in Milan.rareThis on had. an seal capacity of 800 prisoners; its official capacity was 1,29pris 5. At the moment of the [inspectors’] visit) the prison housed about 2,000 prisoner He ey 10 describe in detail the deplorables. spec... The CPT belies units delegation in most of the cells. ... The situatiotacle that met the eyes of n they found calcd for

‘When the Justice Ministry ored the report, and as San Vittore continued to be the destination of ign thos e bei ng que sti oned shor: Tangentopoli, Deaglio reported that “on February 13, 1995, Dr. Pagano, ins message to the Justice Ministry, war

ned that the prison he ran was no lon ger able

22 om Chapter 3 to accept a single prisoner, having crossed the line of livability. The direc-

tor, in effect, declared San Vittore to be ‘full.’ This news received little

the case play in the press, and no editorial comment. Such was generally rates.

with news that would have been uncomfortable for the magist So Pagano played host to much of the business and political leadership of Italy, A Neapolitan who took over the prison in 1979, he holds a law stradegree with a criminology specialization. One enters prison admini

tion the same way one becomes a magistrate: by passing an examination.

a buge San Vittore was Pagano’s third prison assignment. Behind his desk, print depicting San Vittore takes up the entire wall. (The print was made

acin 1879, the year the prison was built.) San Vittore was constructed

Phila~ cording to the latest American models of the time, especially thatfirstof notice delphia, In his interview, Pagano recalls that when he sent his

about overcrowding, “Corrieve della Sera published the news with a page one headline. But today they put it back in the local news section. And to think that we had 600 fewer prisoners [back in 1992].**

Deaglio: “Three years ago the CPT inspectors defined the situation as

‘deplorable’ and ‘a failure.” What's your opinion of their report?”

Pagano:.“It’s right, of course. But I'd go farther than that and define the situation in San Vittore as obscene and indecent. . . . In cells of nine square meters {less than ten feet by ten feet] six prisoners spend most of their day. They sleep on mattresses on the floor. Defendants

awaiting trial, and therefore presumed innocent, live together in the

same cell with convicted prisoners. "The healthy with the AIDS-inarefected, We're unable to change the blankets. In cases, and they frequent, of little epidemics of scabies, the blankets should be burned, but we can’t allow that because we don’t have new ones. Where there are stacked bunks they are so narrow that prisoners

break their legs falling from them. Every day they have to live, in

tiny cells, with withdrawal crises, hepatitis, the risk of contagion.

Any object whatever gets apart, a new television set the walls of 1879. There’s impossible to stay clean. human beings.”

ruined immediately: is out of action after a shortage of soap . . . What increases

the mattresses come a week. The walls are and toilet paper. It’s is the degradation of

The government had made some serious improvements in many Italian prisons following the publicity that convicted terrorists gave, in the 1970s and 1980s, to poor conditions (nothing as bad as San Vittore) in two Roman lock-ups. But for the chief use the Milan Pool made of San Vittore, these frightening conditions had a positive advantage: If the soft bourgeois politician or businessman was terrified by San Vittore, and

The Arena >

23

given no indication of when he mig ht get out if he refused to name nam and point fingers, then the es worse

the prison conditions were, the more effective detention would be as a stimulus.

a

es

“In December 1969, a bomb planted in the Banca Nazionale dell’ AgricoltFontana

in Milan killed sixteen people and wounded

"returned to the streets, at incalcula ind the demands made on Italy’s thrble cost to the security of the public

ee police

forces, Like the legal systems in other civil law countries (ie, the Latin coun-

rucial for the law’s predictability: the rule of precedent. Each judge “fresh, in each case, in his interp starts retation of the law and how it applies to

Besides the fact of lowere

d predictability, the absence of a rule of precelent obviously increases the ind ependent power of the magistrat e. Spotts

24 ~~ Chapter 3

this lack to shape deciand Wieser note that Italian magistrates have used sions according to their political outlook.** the same body of magisBecause judges and prosecutors come from tionship we have detrates, and therefore normally have the cozy rela human relationships tips heavily scribed, the weight of both process and lusi this imbalance, plus toward the prosecution. Di Scala’s conc on is that causes the Italian systhe problems of “due process” we have mentioned, ts." tem to be characterized by “insensitivity to civil righ rtiality on the part The most that a citizen can hope for, then, is impa will be important to of the magistrates who will fill all the positions that But that impartiality that citizen’s fate if he ever has to enter the process. ics and the system is is lacking if the judicial system is entangled in polit er, writing in 1986, used to advance political programs. Spotts and Wies ciary is precisely its found that “the principal defect of the Italian judi

immersion in politics and ideology.”

Notes

1, Carlo Guarnieri, Magistratura e Politica in Italia (Bologna: Mulino, 1991), 115. trates remaining {rom Fascism, issuiityng 5. Togliaui defended the senior magiscrime s went unpunished. His top prior dest an amnesty under which many Fasci stream of Italian consticutional yas to fi che Communist Party into theri main was about to deny him by ousting all nocracy, a goal that Alcide De Gaspe rnme nt. For information regarding the Communists and Socialists from his gove unist doctrine, see the Stanton Bur relation between Togliatt’s actions and Comm utionnett and Massimo Pini, Taking Paradise by Storm: Adventures of the Revol ary Illusion in Italy (forthcoming). 3. Guarnieri, Magistratura, 85. s suggesting moral fitness, but it is used 4 There is Gne line in the regulationconvi only to check for a record of crimiisnalindicatedctionin s.Chapter 22 of this volume. The 7. “Mellini’s authoritativeness 11 golpe dei giudici (Milan: Spirali-Vel, 1995) material used here is from Mellini’s li-Ve . and Antonio Di Pietvo (Milan: Spira l, 1996) ssionali del corpo giudiziario,” profe ioni 6. G, Di Federico, “Le qualificaz zione, 1985, 30. Rivista trimestrale di seienza dell’amministraonal s,” paper prepared for the 7, Sergio Romano, “Italy's Constituti ], Crisi the Center for Strategic and Inconference of Johns Hopkins University, [SAIS on, ternational Studies, and the Istituto per gli Affari Internazionali, Washingt D.C., Summer 1996. postwar judicial @ ‘The most substantial body of scholarship dedanalybyzingCarlothe Guarn ieri at the system, and the effects of its structure, is provi seniority is all chat matters for University of Bologna. For the conclusionca that , No. 4, magistrates” promotion, see his “Geopoliti della magistratura” in LiMes

The Arena “> 25

1994, 102. The steps leading to this situat ion were a series of regulations issued between 1966 and 1979, 9. Di Federico, “Qualificazioni ,” 21-60,

10. David Nelken, “A. Leg al Revolu

tion?” in The New Italia the Fall of the Berlin Wall to n Republic: From Berlusconi, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds. (London: Routledge, 1966), 195, Every magistrate, after twenty-eight years of service, has a grade and

salary al to those ef a magistrate on the highest court, no matter what actual function equ he is car ryi ng out, See Gua rni eri , Magistratura, 96, 11. Nelken, “Revoluti

on,” 195, 12. Carlo Guarnieri, “The Jud ary in the Italian Political Cri pean Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1, Janici sis,” West Eurouary

model, with the magistracy as a branch of1997, 160. For the original Piedmontese tke executive, see Guarnieri, Magistra~ tura, 83, 13. Guarnieri, “Geopolitica,” 102, 14. “Conso cerca ‘la soluzione politica ,’ 15. Frank

Cimini, for nineteen years the judCoriciriealre, 26 Febriiary 1993, 4, correspondent of Naples’ I/ interviewed by the professional journal of

Mattino, was Italian journalism. He felt that in Operation Clean Han ds even the defense attorneys were often tied to the prosecution:

Q."Vorviting? . 2”

Cimini:

lawyers who are rea just part of the sys , They'd do ter to put their feith in public lly defenders. With Operattem ion Clean Lecfe it bet seems to me Interview with Fra ini in Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno | Prima Comunicazione,nk AprCim di spifferi,” il 1994, AS. For examples, see mano Canosa , Storia della Magistratura in Italia (Milan: BaldinigeCastoldi, Ro 199 6), 6976, 12. There is one important case of suc h “abuse” in postwar Italian history: 1982 the CSM ousted fro m the pro fes sio n a magistrate, Domenico Pone, who didIn favors for the leader of the infamoiis _ _ “ere punished with Pone, and four Masonic Lodge P2, Licio Gelli, Two others li) 5 18. The CSM began functi were censured, See Canosa, Storia, 113-120, inin195g9, It was actu a revly Hon created in 1907-1908, See Guaon ival of an instinyrnieri, Magistratura, 85, al

26 =~ Chapter 3 19. At the beginning, there were sixteen.

20. Spencer Di Scala, Italy: From Revolution to Republic (Boulder: Westview,

1995), 287.

21. Guarnieri, “The Judiciary,” 9. 22. Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 155-156.

23, Lorenzo Tornielli, “Giustizia civile, tempi incivili,” Corriere, 29 December

1993, 37. 24. Paul Hofmann, That Fine Italian Hand (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 63.

25, Spotts and Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy, 155.

26. “Tre milioni in arretrato,” Corriere, 15 December 1993, 14.

27. Tornielli, “Giustizia civile,” 37.

28. Deaglio is a journalist who came out of the radical group Lotta Continua

and is now affiliated with the PDS. He hosted a popular television program called Milano, Italia.

29. This document was originally published on 31 January 1995.

30. Rapporto al Governo italiano circa la visita effertuata dal Comitato europea

... in Italia (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 31 January 1995).

31, Rapporto degli ispettori europei sullo stato delle carceri in Italia (Palermo:

Sellerio Editore, 1995). 32. Ibid.

33. Ibid. 34, Ibid. 35. Ibid,

36. This case was transferred from Milan to Rome because of an exemplary

piece of judicial reasoning, ‘The terrorists had planted three bombs timed to go

off at about the same time. The Milan bomb exploded at 4:30 in the afternoon, the Rome bomb went off at 4:55, and the second Milan bomb was defused by

police specialists at 5:30, The ruling was that it was all one single crime, and that

jurisdiction should be based on where the crime “concluded.” The second Milan bomb was written off: Since it never exploded, there could be no assurance as to whether it would have exploded, what injuries it might have caused, or whether it was even a genuine bomb. Thus the actzal crime “concluded” with the Rome explosion, and jurisdiction in the Milan case was passed to Rome.

Later, jurisdiction was passed back to Milan when an appeals court, never dis-

agteeing with the convoluted reasoning about the “conclusion” of a crime, found that the second Milan bomb did, in fact, deserve the dignity of being called a bomb. Therefore, the crime had “concluded” in Milan, 37. Stefano Zurlo, “Le toghe hanno abusato del codice,’”// Giornale, 6 December 1996, 7.

38. Spots and Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy, 152.

39. Di Scala, Italy, 287. 40. Spotts and Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Democracy, 153, 158.

4 weer

The Politics of the Magistracy / C

ollusion between judges and politicians goes far back in Italian history. It was already established practice when the postwar re. public was founded.

=

I

But in the late 1950s, a phenomenon developed which can be found, in milder form, in other

Latin countries of Europe. The magistrates orga~ - nized themselves into political factions of their own, By the middle of the 960s, some facti

ons had at least embryoni

c organization charts and their _ own publications. Although they were know n clearly to be of the Left, / Right, or Center, and although one of them had active relations with an

artly because personal relationships were close r and more important to ‘Teoruitment and solid

arity. The factions that have succeeded in gaining

In Guarnieri’s estimation, personal ties are quite important for some of the magistrates’ “par

ties,” whereas MD js purely ideological? Although ‘many in the MD, especially in the early days, considered themselves to be 27

28 ~~ Chapter 4 ‘TABLE 4.1

Elections to Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM) by factions (1976-1994): Votes, Percentages, and Seats*

Left




Right Others Voters

Year

Unita per la Magistratura Magistratura Movimento Costituzione Indipendente Democratica perla (MD) Ginstizia (MG) (UC) (Mi)

1976

755 13%

2526 42%

2156 36%

506 %

5943

803 14%

2557 43%

2263 38%

297 5%

5990

= 1107 19%

2517 41%

2078 34%

402 6%

6159

9

2

1981

3 1986

9

3

8

8

9

7

1

1

1990

1337 22% 4

714 12% 3

2236 36% 8

1828 30% 5

6115

1994:

1620 24%

1133 16%

2854 42%

1230 18%

6837

5

4

8

3

Seats refers to the twenty seats allotted to the magistrates. Movimento per la Giustizia may elsewhere be termed Movimenti Rinniti, MG is not listed before 1990 because it was formed from splinter groups of UC and Ml. Source: Adapted from Carlo Guarnieri, ‘The Judiciary in the Italian Political Crisis,” West European Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1997, 163. to the left of the PCI, the ties between MD and the PCI were many and

long-standing. The two most important links are a large degree of ideo-

logical harmony and important personal connections, a pattern that con-

tinues with the PDS. Gerardo D’Ambrosio, second in command in the Clean Hands Pool, openly identifies with the PDS. As will become clear,

not all of the original Pool were radical leftists or close to the PDS, al-

though the combination of resignations and new recruitment has moved

the Pool closer to pure ideological leftism.

‘The key exceptions are the Milan Pool’s star, Antonio Di Pietro (despite his having joined a Center-Left government and then accepting to

run for the Senate in a safe PDS stronghold), Tiziana Parenti, and, per-

haps, Piercamillo Davigo. The chief, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, is fre-

quently described as the leader of the so-called Magistrates Party, meaning that what he seeks is greater power for the magistrates, including a heavy role in ruling the country, since the politicians have supposedly

Politics of the Magistracy ~~ 29 demonstrated their incapacity to govern. But it would be wrong to see Borrelli as a mere

apolitical seeker of more power for was one of the founders of Magistratura democratica. his institution, He And his performance during the Italian

coup does nothing to suggest that he does not still harbor his earlier leftist radicalism. Still, Borrelli’s public political statemen

ts have been more discreet than those of D’Ambros io and others. It is interesting to note a sharp increase in the number of magistrates who were PDS candidates or ran on the Olive ‘Tree ticket as part of the coalition dominated by the PDS, Of the sixteen magi strates sitting in the current Parliament,’ fourteen are on the Left. Alessandro Pizzorusso, author of standard work s on the theory and organization of Italian justice, is a leader in prov iding philosophic justification for the MD’s appeal to principles that are abov e the law and barely articulated in the constitution. Pizzorusso is one of the PDS’s “representatives” on the CSM. Thus the MD, formally allotted a certain number of CSM seats, actually has a larger representation beca use some of its supPorters occupy PDS seats in the group of “politic al” members of the

Council.* The tilt on the CSM has become clear enough to allow Silvio Berlusconi to say simply: “The CSM has become a political summit captured by the Left."5

‘The result has been analyzed by Mario Patrono, one of the lay (nonmagistrate) memb

ers of the CSM. His findings show a stra

tegy of inf. tration by the MD and Movimenti Riuniti, crea ting a Left “axis” with the PCI/PDS (and, originally, with the Christia n Democratic Left). The undersecretary of justice in the Ciampi governme nt, Enzo Binetti, a former magistrate, has described “the long march of the judicial Left”:

The policy of infiltration of the Left has gone from the cultural-legislative level to the most incisive level of the judiciary, getting into its bloodstrears through the CSM, Ie has infiltrate d the cruci al areas of recru itmen supervision . «. especially among the young, who are the most t, training, malleable, in order to put the purest true believers in the key posts,” Even politico long active in the PCI/PDS, Napoleone Colajanni, ac-

Knowledges that the PDS formed and continues to operate a lobby of exmagistrates,®

The creation of these judicial factions led to greater judicial activism on behalf of the principles espoused by the adhe rents. This was especially, but not exclusively,

true of Magistratura cratica. For example, a tallying point of Magistratura Indipendente Demo (MI) is opposition to the activ. ism espoused by the MD.’ MI

e involvement of the magistrates in politics will necessarilyaversmeanthattheiractivsubs ervience to political ideology, even to party strategies, meaning the actual reduction of the magistrates’ independence,

30 «~~ Chapter 4

ed "table 4.1 shows the growth of Magistratwra Democratica. MD doubl

it more. its votes among the magistrates in the eighteen years covered, and , MD doubled than doubled its seats on the CSM. (During the same period

ssional its vote total for the Central Committee of the magistrates’ profe onal Magistrates association, the Associazione Nazionale Magistrati [Nati

e the ‘Association], going from 729 votes to 1,513."9) Seven years befor Costituzitable begins, moderates in the MD split away to form Impegno

l rump left behind onale, which was actually slightly larger than the radica the remaining, more in MD; so the numbers on the table reflect only

part of extreme wing of MD. (Most of the moderates eventually became Unita per la costituzione.) was The first split in Magistratura Democratica was related to what

marked the behappening elsewhere in Italy in 1968-1969. ‘This period nts and, unique ginning of serious unrest among both workers and stude

the considto Italy (cxeept for brief moments during the 1968 Paris riots), s were not erable alliance between radical workers and students, Magistrate

er magisimmune, especially in the north and especially amongleft.young By the end of trates, a factor “driving many of them to the extreme

as basic the 1960s the judiciary was split from top to bottom over issues as the nature of law and the role of judges.”""

of the In this context, MD stood for emphasis on the political role be unusual magistrate. ‘The starting point of its line of thought would not was the in any Western democracy: MD’s declared primary interest the achievement of equality before the law, a magistracy that would resist gained influence of the powerful in Italy. And the event by which it first ianotice as an identifiable faction within the National Magistrates Assoc had artion was a laudable public criticism of a Roman magistrate who Potere rested (on the basis of a surviving Fascist law) a young radical of broadoperaio (Workers’ Power) for having published a “revolutionary” the Western side. (Young radicals were doing the same thing throughout om of the world in 1968.) When MD voted a resolution supporting freed iapress and of thought, the Roman magistrate resigned from the Assoc endence tion, claiming that MD’s public criticism interf ered with his indep Demoas a magistrate. MI supported him. The moderates in Magistratura

cratica resigned from the group, leaving the radicals in control. The split d. between radical activists and the rest of the magistracy had opene

The absence of its moderates allowed the MD then to go a great deal

ry interest further. Members used its podium to announce that their prima

magiswas MD’s link to the radical social and political forces outside the transtracy, so that they could wage together the “struggle for the social formation of the country.” Although some of its members were far more its radical than the Italian Communist Party, from 1969 on MD made

Politics of the Magistracy ~-> 37

links with the PCI explicit, though alwa ys being careful to include other movements of the Left,2 MD magistrates pledged to base their work on the idea that the capitalist system itself was guilty, chat the syst em’s evils would be their special target, and that the class struggle was just as important as “technical” questions of guilt or innocence of a part icular crime, ‘The example often used concerned the mugging of a mem ber of the management class by a member of the working class,

There were two crimes to be considered here, The first was the mugging, constitu ting perhaps, a technical guilt that could be determined by the

application of “positivistic” principles of law. But the incident occurred in the context of a larger, ongoing crime, that of the bourgeoisie against the working class, and this larger, more contextual crime would also be weighe d by the “democratic magistrates,” According to these magistrates, there was a need to be “less positivistic” in applying the law.

MD magistrates went beyond criticizing individual sions handed n by their less radicalized colleagues. They brought deci onto the bench by making its battle lines the dividing the cless struggle line among magistrates. The statement adopted by the Mil an chapter of MD in 1971 is as follows: “A bourgeois judge, as such, cannot constr uct socialisin”"4

The Rome section, bidding to out-radical their Milan comrades, issued a statement that gave priority to linking up with the revolutionary struggle being fought “outside”

the magistracy.

Later in the same year, MD met in Rome and declared (on the nati onal level) that judicial problems must not be trea

ted as mere technical proble

ms, discussed among legal professionals, but instead must become a part of the radical Left political movement, (Italy is not, of course, the only countr

y harboring judicial activism. But in the United Stat es, for example, the accusation that an activist justice of the Suprem

e Gourt was systematically pursuing a party ©* ideological line is a heavy char ge that would be heatedly denied These were open acknowledgme by the MD militants acknowledgments both of their ideologints cal com mitment and of their im tention to follow that commitment on the cases that came officially befo re them. They were stated with pride, not shame, As sum mar ized by jurist Federico Mancini, the view of the MD magistrates was this:

AM laws should be interpreted with this yardstick: part and neutrality a misconception or a fraud; so is independisanship is a virtue ences a judiciary cloaking itself with these sham values isa servant of power and ought to be ate with the labor movement, act as a countervailing forc e vis-a-vis the political and industrial government."

32 35

17, David Nelken, “A Legal Revolution?” in The Italian Republic, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds. (London: tledge, 1966), p, 16, 18. Spotts and Wieser, Italy: A Difficult Rou Dem ocracy, 160, 19, For bac kgroun

d on this event, see Guarnieri, Mag istratura, 128-133, 20, Guarnieri, “The Judiciary,” 6. 21. Romano Canosa, Storia dell a magistratura in Italia (Milan; Baldini&Castoldi, 1996), 97. A magist

rate and early mem

ber of MD, Canosa is an excellent witness to the movement’s developme nt, 22. Joseph LaPalombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1987), 227, 23. Ibid., 228,

24, Guarnieri, “The Judiciary,” 16.

25. The Camorra is the principal Neapolita

n crime family, Naples the same way that Cosa Nostra prevails in Palermo.

holding sway over

The Lessons of History r |

recent 4 he Milan magistrates started with detailed knowledge of uctive, Italian history. They learned from two previous, and instr

battles fought on judicial fronts.

e of its Avni di Piombo, “Twenty years carlier Italy had been in thecracmiddl y waged a war against ter-

the Years of Lead, Its constitutional demo

t on Italian rorists of both Left and Right who had mounted an assaul of the terrorist democracy that, in terms of duration, lives lost, and size

einhof Gang armies, vastly exceeded the exploits of Germany's Baader-M rist ry over terro or the Basque separatists of ETA. The decisive victo Moro,

Aldo squads that, at the time of the abduction and murder of rsally disunive seemed invincible (by an Italian state whose efficacy was paraged) was made possible through the use of pentiti. characA pentito is someone who is repentant. His or her other main espes, other at teristics are a willingness to talk and the ability to point

s high-firecially upward. Italian authorities blunted the offensive of Italy’

ist. The power terrorists by starting, usually, with one captured terror to center hero of those days, and the man who brought the use of pentifi He became a masstage in Italy, was General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.

ter of the use of pentiti.

of Lead, Our main interest here in the bloody and fascinating Years t to those well documented elsewhere, concerns the lessons they taugh

which who made the coup of the 1990s. For the fight against terrorism,

long shadow over extended from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, casts-a

cesthe Italian political warfare of our time. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro’s prede ter minis sor as president of the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, was interior during some of the war on terrorism, resigning after the murder of Aldo

of state was Moro. A conservative Christian Democrat, Cossiga as chief

y, as responsible for a series of outbursts that made him appear, alternatel 36

a great candid truth-teller and

Lessons of History ss 37

out-of-control eccentric. At a time when the shape of the coup of 1990san had ome apparent, Cossiga reflected __ on how the Milan magidizates of todabec y were using the lessons from the © Years of Lead:

feel repentant. We've arri at the cult of secret accusati ons, atthe canonization of the collaboratorved s with just ice {i.e stoo l pige partly my fault. Tl confess one thing to you: every nigh oncl, And irs baving contributed, during the 1970s, to the diffusion t I do penance for justice. T was at war then, but this is a cancer which of this way of pursuing system, « «+ Italian justice is made completely out of is killing the judicial secret accusations. . You know, {'m thinking of intr masrmus, whispers, tion to change things: I'll take the rules of Torque oducing draft legisla, translate them into modern Italian. They have more mad's Inquisition and guaranteed protections than our code of criminal procedure.! From the war against terrorism, the mag _ lesson about the need for a certain kind istrates also received a dramatic of public support: The anti-terrorist units faced two kinds of public -support problems, The first was _ that the terrorists, both Left and

t, did represent the politieal passions _ of certain parts of the Italian popRigh ulation. There was certainly a “black” terroris

m, which used indiscriminate bom places. And there was a much larger gro b attacks on trains and public

up of angry workers, disaffected students, and radical-chic dilettantes who made up a rooting section for the Red Brigades, Prima Line

other Leftist terrorist gro Both _Were, of course, minorities. A a,morand e widespread attitude was heaupsvy. pess imism, a lack of confidence that the State could win against the terrorists. The Red Brigades, especially, seemed to go from success to success, each one more humiliating for the forces of order. In fact, we know now that this sense of invi

ncib

ility was a magnet in the Red a and that whe n it disappeared the recruiting nose-d Brigades’ ived,

recruiting,

The sympathy that existed, especially among many workers, for the

Poor,

38 er Chapter 5

‘The State began winning the battle of public sympathy, but the public

still doubted that it, this notoriously inept Italian State, could defeat the

invincible Red Brigades. That was the other half of the public-support

problem.

For this difficulty there was no remedy except success. The State (specifically, the police and magistrates) simply had to win a few so that the terrorists did not scem to be holding all the cards. The State held one

card: It had General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, and the general had a

strategy. General Dalla Chiesa was a carabinieri general who was the son of a carabinieri general. (The carabinieri is one of three Italian national law enforcement bodies. The image of the carabinieri was perfect for the occasion: The most trusted of the three, it was thought to have the highest

morale, and to be filled, in its lower grades, with sons of workers and farmers, or the impoverished, especially the Southern poor.) Handsome

and leathery (the author of a book on the Red Brigades thought he had

the look of a bulldog,? but De Sica in the film Generale Della Rovere may

be closer to the mark), Dalla Chiesa fought with the Resistance in World

War I, then studied law under Aldo Moro. As a colonel fighting the Mafia

in Sicily, he made a point of getting publicity for the anti-Mafia actions of the carabinieri. He was “tough and resilient,” and, though accused of

being heavy-handed, “he was not a brutal man and could justify relentleop-ss determination and ‘protagonism’ as necessary” to defeat his ruthless ponents, whether mafiosi or Red Brigades. Dalla Chiesa first became the hero of anti-terrorism through a string of successes logged by his Turin carabinieri unit. Then, in the summer after

Moro was murdered (1978), Dalla Chiesa took over the nation’s anti-ter-

rorism effort. He was especially adept at converting romantic young revo-

lutionaries

(usually

new

recruits,

not seasoned

veterans)

into

stool

pigeons. His successes did not come about through delicacy of method, For Dalla Chiesa, who appears to have been a master of the hot-and-cold

psychological pressure of abusing a prisoner and then becoming gentle

father-confessor, each captured terrorist was the key to many others. A

new law soon allowed him to offer reduced prison terms for those who

collaborated with the state? So the central figure in the strategy was the

pentito, who would, in different ways, also have a starring role in both the

war against the Mafia and the coup of the 1990s. Pulling on one strand of

the web led to others, with more pentiti along the way, until virtually the

entire cast of Red Brigades and other bloody bands were put behind bars. By early 1983, 1,350 terrorists were in jail. Dalla Chiesa had won his war.

Another asset was the extraordinary tendency of the Left terrorists to write everything down. On those occasions when a pentito led Dalla Chiesa to a cove, one of the safe houses (usually city apartments) used

»

Lessons of History > 39 by terrorist cells, his men would, inevitably, find there lists intended targets, other addresses, diaries of activities, even of comrades, expense ac,

of all the Red Brigades, Margherita Cago l, retained her aura by being killed ina shoot-out with Dalla Chiesa’s men in 1975.) The lessons of the struggle against terroris m were evident to other

standards of defendants’ rights, even those norms spel the law, so long as this public and political support ledis out precisely in strong enough, Except for one case of serious physical torture (by five police office trying to extract a confession from the kid

nappers of American General James Dozier’), the magistrates found that were not called to account for being heavy-handed; in most sectors they of Ital y they were applauded, Finally, they learned that the assiduou s use of pentiti would allow them to follow a web from one strand to anot her,

This fairly conventional use of stool pigeons would be expanded in icily. The fight against the Mafia was the other great textbook that the Milan magistrates would study. Alexander Stille has recently made it easier for read grasp the lessons of the fight against Cosa Nostya in ers of English to Sicily with kis book ‘xcellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Dea th of the First Italian Repub-

40 ~~ Chapter 5

tian Democrats able to expose the details of the relationship between Chris how the old and organized crime in the south, it will help us understand the strong system worked. But up to now, neither the Andreotti case nor s and the Neties that have been revealed between the Christian Democrat

t chain leading apolitan Camorra fit clearly into the direct cause-and-effec

to the Italian political coup. the Despite Stille’s subtitle, which he properly qualifies in the book, als.

ern scand end of the First Republic was mainly a product lexof thein itsnorth origins, OperaAlthough great political change is always comp s and centering tion Clean Hands, ran by the Milan Pool of magistrate is clearly the on the financing of Italy’s political parties and politicians, guillotine that decapitated Ttaly’s old political leadership and some of its

business elite. s. In the Stille describes, with great verve, some heroes, genuine heroe ul to painf is it s, glow of this recent heroism of the Sicilian magistrate

e motives write about magistrates of a different stripe, magistrates whos -

ff trying to clean up Tomb may not have been those of the honest sheri faced comparable physical danstone and whose efforts to show that they

ger will prove to be a sham (see Chapter 21). change was In particular, Stille shows how a mundane organizational

trates. The standard crucial to the successes enjoyed by the Sicilian magis acting as investigators, is operating procedure for most magistrates, when

to do the work in to be assigned a case, to take possession of it, and

l to other relative isolation. Information turned up that might be usefu them. magistrates working other beats is not necessarily shared with been fatal for Maintaining this compartmentalized approach would have sticated a battle against an organization such as Cosa Nostra, with its sophi activity on organization and ability for simultaneous and coordinated many fronts. s asSo the Sicilian magistrates adopted a pool approach. Magistrate the

effort, such as signed to the pool of investigators working on a large time, worked. preparation of maxi-trials of a number of maftosi at the same i-

mal organ without walls between the individual magistrates. Their infor everything to zation met regularly, almost continually, communicating arrangement everybody within the pool. Simple and logical as this and some would sounds, it is novel in Italian government bureaucracies, a rarity in Italian society.$ But it worked, and the lesson

say that it is Milan for the northern magistrates was too obvious to be missed. The ized themmagistrates who were to bring down the First Republic organ selves into a pool. rtant As in the fight against political terrorism, public support was impo are the in Sicily. Of the two elements that make up that support—-Who

good puys? Who will win?—it was the second that was crucial in the war

Lessons of History => 41

against the Mafia. Italians had long believed in the invincibi lity of the Mafia.’

: A

a A

|

Time and again, as Stille and oth ers tell talk to the magistrates depended on their State was really committed to the struggle, and had any chance at all of win ning some

it, the willingness of pentiti to view as to whether the Italian would support the magistrates, battles, if not the war.

In Sicily, pentiti were utilized not jus building virtually the entire case against t for developing leads but for a sus

pect. This practice went well beyond the use of informers tha t is standard throughout the West, The Sicilian magistrates tried repeatedl y, with good success, to get con based on little more than the victions of ex-mafiosi. Many believed some of the pentiti showed signswords that of having been coached, especially in

i

id

finger at smaller fish but not say anything about important figure s, especially politicians, until they bec ame convinced that the Magist rates had enough support to win. One other lesson came from Sic oped great skill and keen intere ily. Giovanni Falcone, especially, develst in tracing money routes. He felt that

working on the same

case, Di Pietro believed the latter to be especially true relative to Andreotti and the Christian Democrats , The Christian

Boe

og ‘The three historic struggles being considered—anti-terr orism, and

anti-Mafia, Operation Clean Hands—all hav e the sa me cen tra l cha racter: he penuito. In the last case, however, the wo rd pen tit o, th ou gh co reporting of Operation Clean, mmon to the Ha

nds, is a less perfect fit. Cer tainly, informers were key to the eff ort, But many of these did not even pretend to repent, Some claimed, often bel ligere

ntly, thar they had only done everyone did and, in even str what onger language, that they cou ld not have

42 ome Chapter 5 not survived without involvement in bribes and kickbacks, Some, though ed deliberately fingering their friends and colleagues, unwittingly involv conance them in the course of their own confessions. The idea of repent

the palace of jures an image of a remorseful felon knocking at the door of

for the justice to turn himself in. But that image is not an accurate one polititerrorists and mafiosi, and is even less so for the businessmen and came to cians who were caught in the grasp of the Milan magistrates and names despair of ever seeing daylight again unless they named some of the the magistrates wanted to hear. to Such finger-pointing by trapped comrades is, of course, not unique on Italy. It is central to the American practice of plea-bargaining, which, paper, does not exist in Italy. Indeed, finger-pointing, in the United States eviand elsewhere, often provides leads in investigations or corroborative dence, But in Italy, during the Clean Hands sweep, the statements ofa “repentant” suspect would often be the entire case possessed by magis-

trates.

Ina few cases, the Milan Pool had near-smoking gunsButin in themostformcasesof funds stashed in Swiss banks or damning wiretap tapes. the mighty would fall after nothing more than the receipt of an avviso re-di garanzia based only on the testimony of someone else who had also

ceived such a notification. They were brought down by the full publicity

given to the accusations, matched with little press attention to the strength or weakness of the evidence. Giuliano Amato, who, as prime minister,

iewer was careful never to criticize the Milan Pool, told a television interv Pool, the that when anyone (in that year, 1993) received an avviso from

there was immediate talk of the “fall of a man and the consequence of this

talk is, in fact, the fall of the man. Thus, he who receives an avviso, instead

received a kind of of having a guarantee [garanzia), a protection, has not working right guilty conviction. ‘Ihere’s really something that’s

here.””?

‘Another lesson learned from history, and clearly used by the Milan

Pool, has gone unremarked even in Italy. At the time of the Years of Lead,

magistrates were not always able to develop strong cases against some of the leaders of the revolutionary Left, even with the heavy use of pentiti. This was especially true in the determined efforts to put out of action some of the leadership of nonterrorist groups (although these groups often sponsored civil disobedience and some public acting-up). The most noted was the main figure in the Autonomia operaia (Workers’ Auton-

ogy proomy) sector of the radical Left, ‘Toni Negri, a charismatic sociol magistrates

fessor. Frustrated by lack of evidence to prove the unprovable, brought the old technique of guilt by association into play. Ina complex

Caand fascinating set of maneuvers by Padua Judge Pietro Calogero, A doclogero Theorem was developed (mostly in PCL headquarters, as later

|

Lessons of History ~~ 43

" umentation showed) that linked together all the revolutionary gro ups, ignoring the fact that some of the m, such as the Red Brigades and Neg ri’ Autonomia, were engaged in a vir s ulent Pro-or-con debate over terror _ that continued in prison, Negri ism was made out to be the teacher and puppet-master of a wave of terrorism thar was quite alien to him. So Judge Calogero, through a series of spe eches and unfounded assertions, aged to portray a social and pol manitical phenomenon as a criminal associa-

(Calogero won: Negri was impris oned. The Radical Party then put him on its electoral list, and he was ele cted to the Italian Parliament, The rules of parliamentary immunity allowe d him to leave prison in order to attend sessions of the house, He used the occasion to skip the country, whi ch

cash, in his Parisian

at was just, since he had been framed; but the inasmuch as Negri continued to receive, and to exile, his par

liamentar

y paychecks.) This lesson was not lost on the pol iticized magistrates of Mani Pulite ,

©

J. tide Tiberga, “Tonino, pit debole per che pis libero,” La Stampa, 19 April #1995, 2. Robert C. Meade, Jr. Red Brigades (Ne w York St Martin’s, 1990), 55, 3, This law has become increasingly contro The Pain Suspended sentences, received by versial becnuee of the light senithe Parliament debates measures ensuring some terrorists and maf, Each time ct pe,centence, some magistrates campaign that pentiti would serve at least a mini. against the proposals, fearing the loss _ of pentiti cooperation, 4 Romano Canosa, Storia della Magiserat ura in Talia (Milan: Baldini&eCastoldi, 1996), 108-112. 5, Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First ‘talian Republic (New York: Pantheon, Op a country-wide level, a National1995)Ant “ether, but Guarnieri acknowledges explicitl imafia Direetion was also put toy, and Stille implicitly, that this move

=

_

44. ~~ Chapter 5

should not be overvalued, It was the local organization of a pool in Palermo that

made the difference.

7.

See Cirillo, Ligato e Lima, Nicola Tranfaglia, ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1994). 8. Conversation with Stanton Burnett, July 24, 1995. 9. “L’avviso ora @ una trappola,” Corriere, 1 April 1993, 5.

6

—) The Decline and Fall of Due Process D

uring the scandals of Tangentop , as in the Years of Lead, authorities would be astonishinglyolisucc essful at getting suspects to

adept at taking advan

also had the facilitation of investiga tion as the top priority. The Milan Pool transformed the new code into an instrument of the investigator Pithout dependable guarantees for the citi zen being investigated. The uae father of the new code was Giandomen ico Pisapia, an Italian specialist in anyone who would recall to Professor Pisapia his parenthood of the new rules of the game, he wou ld answer with bitterness: “I kno w, I know.

They'll throw it in my face as long as I live .”

The real respon:

to the pubblico ministero, the magistra te acting as prosecutor,

the favorite of authoritarian regimes: det ention or the threat of detention, accompanied by the belief that the onl y way out of detention is to confess one’s own missteps and, most important , to point the finger at others, The cell door opens

faster if the ger-pointing is directed upward, Is this an exaggeration? In 1995, one finvict im of this practice by the Milan Pool of magistrates said simply: “One just has to tell some story in order to get out of jail.” In this case, it was a general of the Finance Police who 45

46 ~~ Chapter 6

so neatly summarized the standard use of preventive detention by the

Pool,

The use made of detention by the Milan Pool would attract the atten-

tion of civil libertarians, non-Italian jurists such as U.S,

Supreme Court

Justice Antonin Scalia, and, eventually, some of those Italians who, at the beginning, had been part of the cheering section for the magistrates. Sc-

alia, never known for being soft on defendants, believed that in Italy the

protection of defendants’ rights was weal: and too generalized.’

In the fall of 1994, Gaetano Pecorella, president of the Italian criminal lawyers’ guild, described the pressures at work on the arrested citizen:

“[H]aving just been arrested, he is confronted with the fact that he will

not get out of prison unless he not only admits his own responsibility, but also discloses new [to the magistrates] facts and eventually points the finger at others. ... Another fairly recurrent practice is that of letting the

suspect know, at the first questioning, that he will have nothing more to

do with the prosecutor, that he will not be officially interviewed any further, unless he signals to the magistrates that he is ready to collaborate

with them, ... The prisoner thus finds himself in a psychological situation

of great wealkness, The idea of being abandoned in a jail cell without the

magistrate’s paying him any attention certainly triggers a state of panic or

desperation.”

The story of the making of the Italian coup, however, constitutes a use of the advantages of prosecution in Italy that goes much further, in both

breadth and severity, than had been seen in Italy’s First Republic—

indeed, further than has been the case in any established Western democracy for many decades—and we will see that this advantage was used in

the service of political goals. This fact was recognized and written about

early on, but in a place where it did not come to the attention of most

Italians: Some of Italy’s more distinguished law professors, with no political axe to grind, rendered their judgments in professional journals and lectures that had no reverberations in the larger public. One example is the view of Luigi Ferrajoli, author of important studies of penal justice.

Itis summarized, with agreement, by Vito Marino Caferra, a former magistrate now on the law faculty of the University of Bari: Ferrajoli doesn’t hesitate to point out the weakening of constitutional

guarantees and the culture of Inquisition that dominates in today’s magistracy and especially aniong the prosecutors, and the collapse of guarantees that happened in the Zangentopoli investigations, where jailing-without-trial was used as an instrument of pressure on the suspect in order to get confessions or the implicating of others?

The magistrates could anticipate, before the coup actually got under

way, only two serious difficulties. One was the constitution, and the other

was the question of public (and therefore political) reaction.

Decline and Fall of Due Process “> 47

The first problem was that the authority poss essed

by the magistrates for these detentions did not extend to the use they intended to make of , the practice. Their aim was to use this Power to make people talk, and ~ that

is exactly what they did, authority or no. Preventive detention was _ regularly employed to extort confessions and to extort accusations against _ others. This use of detention has been admitted by some of the magis-

_ trates and never seriously denied by any of them. In a La Repubblica interview with Piercamillo __|

Davigo, one of the stats of the Milan Pool, about its excessive recourse to Prev entive detention, Davigo exclaimed: “Bxc

ess? The excess is having too few people in jail, not too many. Self-incrimination by

Suspects was important to the Pool’s effe ctive ness. This record is clear, a record that includes letters from prisoners, analyses

by investigative journalists, and, most telling, interviews. and statements by the magistrates them

selves, who have sometimes been more candid than their colleagues might have wish cases of, among others, managers and busi ed. There is a long list of nessmen who passed many

_ months in prison beca

use “they refused to cooperate” (a phrase used fre_ quently by the magistrates) or, more brutally, because they “weren't talking.”

ments in the laws governing “due

Process,” but noted that 40 percent of _ the Italian prison population had neve been sentenced. The report also focused on preventive detention by ther Pool . Ie said, in strong language preventive detention, as the report notes elsewhere, “can be imposed only for crimes punishable

P

by y a maximum sentence of not less than four ;

Teally don’t see why one ld be scandalized by the fact that restricting people’s freedom while anshou inve stig atio n is goin g on can be an inecntie t4 mend theis ways and collaborate with justice. . . I think T'd also say thee all this shouldn't be said explicitly inthe dialogue between inve stig ator and suspect, but theta person . .. thinks, maybe without any need for anyo ne to Suggest it to him, that confessi ng coul d gain him some credi t with the forc es of justice, and so he might natural order of things.” go free earlier. All this seems to me to be in the “If

situations, emergencies, come about, ion of individual rights is indispensable in which a reain order to put

48 ~~ Chapter 6 law and order back on its feet, in the common interest, then I’m all for

restrictions on individual rights.” Under the new code (the 1989 Vassalli Code of Penal Procedure), incarceration before trial is called for only for the most serious offenses, and only in exceptional cases where the need is demonstrable. The legal au-

thority contains two strict limitations. The first is that detention (without formal charge) cannot last longer than three months. And second, incarceration can be done only on the basis of an authorization signed by a judge who is unconnected with the case at hand. This individual is desig-

nated the “Judge for the Prelimiriary Investigations” (GIP). The GIP, according to the Vassalli Code, is a neutral figure with respect to the

prosecutor and the defense attorney, and must authorize or deny the

prosecutor's request to make an arrest. Sadly, the GIP has offered no protection in Operation Clean Hands,

‘Almost all the requests for detention made by the Poo! had, until the summer of 1994, come to the same judge, Italo Ghitti, And Ghitti approved virtually all the requests for incarceration.t Tiziana Maiolo affirmed that Ghitti “has been ‘coopted’ by the prosecutors, and has treated

hundreds of hypotheses of different crimes as though they were part of one procedure.” Even Justice Minister Giovanni Conso, trying to stay above the battle in his early days in office in 1993, said that “the GIP isn’t working, he’s lost his impartiality.”

Unfortunately for the Milan magistrates, Judge Ghitti, perhaps a little

clumsy politically, is one of those who has revealed much in interviews. Ghitti said that it was all “a problem of method. Applied to a person who collapses at the first difficulty in prison, a method was applied which has borne fruit. The same method was not adequate for people who had been chosen for leadership in the Communist Party.” We must not underestimate the impact of the experience of imprisonment in Milan’s San Vittore Prison’ for the citizen who does not come

from a criminal or clandestine world. (The conditions there were de-

scribed in chapter 2) and are sharply sketched by Giancarlo Lehner, a

journalist who, for a study of Borrelli, examined the Clean Hands incarcerations in historical context:

‘The pain, the humiliation, and the test of endurance must, in fact, be makeing modern history. Here in the West at the beginning of the third millennium the deprivation of liberty, especially in the conditions that prevail in Italian prisons, rather similar to those of some unfortunate Third World country, if not worse with regard to, for example, the “legal” practice of sodomy, is equivalent (if measured by the degree of suffering) to flogging or the exposure of the naked body to foul weather, and to other corporal punishments which enjoyed favor a few centuries ago.”

i

Decline and Fall of Due Process “> 49

‘These were the conditions in Italian prisons generally, As we have seen, San Vittore’s horrors were notorious even in this context. Lehner notes further that the journalists supporting the magistrates knew all this per~

fectly well, but pretended ignorance. An exce ption to the silence was Angelo Panebianco, a professor

/columnist who had the courage to write that jailing to extort confessions was a fact about which “we can be certain”

elementary principles of liberal civil justice.” Against the idea that onethe mig ht be making too much of roup of magistrates, Panebianco,

ho fell victim to Operation Clean,

at of “an immense and substan-

country possesses.”14

m of the citizens in the hands of i a Capacity for pressure on legitiother entity or category in the

In fact, Operation Clean Hands brou ght about (up to now) between twenty-seven and thirty suicides (thre e cases are ambiguous) by those who were experiencing,

trial.

or immediately threatened by, detention without

ented” to emphasize some different event within the overall charge, so | that the victim would be received

back in prison _ free, facing another ninety days of dete ntion,

on the day he was set

the Pool and Judge Ghitti was sufficie ntly close that documents that came to light in 1997 contained notes bet ween Di Pietro and Ghitti in which Ghitti coached Di Pietro

on how to frame his requests. Referr ing to a

Suspect with, and suggested a better crime, one that would permit Ghitti

to grant the request.'s

Many of those investigated by the Pool have spent, owing to the magistrates’ use of these tactics, six mon ths

or more if a prison cell, Drawing only on cases developed in this book, cases involving men so prominent

50 ~~ Chapter 6 +

that the magistrates can be presumed to have been less high-handed than with “quieter” cases, the examples include Sergio Cusani (five months), Gabriele Cagliari (five months), Claudio Bonfanti (three months), and

| ~ Giuseppe Cerciello (nine months). All were in San Vittore except General

| Cerciello, who was held in the Peschiera military prison. "|

‘The other legal limitation on such detentions was ignored by the Milan

magistrates. This limitation is contained in the clear definition of the pur-

_ poses for which jailing can be used, ‘There are only three: establishment that

© the prisoner would, if free, constitute a danger to public safety; establishment that he would be likely to destroy crucial evidence; and establishment that he might leave the country to avoid prosecution. The first is absurd in the case of the white-collar “criminals” the magistrates were hunting. And

| the second is usually easily avoidable: The magistrates commonly raided

_ offices, banks, and homes, seizing and holding all the documentation they

needed right at the time they first announced their itvestigation. As for the third purpose, there may be some genuine concern that targets might flee; the biggest prize of all, Bettino Craxi, remains in his villa

_ in Hammamet, Tunisia. But this case is exceptional. In effect, Craxi re-

fused to cooperate and confessed to his full political responsibility, as we

shall see. Photos and reports of visitors indicate that Craxi has serious

_ | medical problems, but just how life-threatening is not clear, Craxi has

| requested a parliamentary committee of investigation of his case, but this

| has not been done.

When the magistrates attack, they normally lift the passports of all con-

cerned, It is true that false documents can probably be purchased by those with means. If this is the fear, detention should at least have been confined

to the wealthy who have criminal connections, the means for escape. But

| it has not been confined to that category, and clearly has not had that =| purpose. In fact, in certain cases escape was useful for the magistrates, as _.

a way, first, to delay trial and, second, to avoid having the suspect there

to fight back and thus perhaps create public sympathy. It was much easier

_ and politically safer for them to try Craxi in absentia.

The principal justifications offered by the magistrates for their methods

come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical.

| _ Pool chief Borrelli, in February 1995, said that “the shock of preventive = detention has . . . produced positive results.” Although the test of efficacy cannot be found in the penal code, the magistrates have commonly made

_ results the test of whether the trampling of civil rights is justified.* But its utility, for Borrelli, goes beyond the investigation of the case in hand: “We are not scandalized that the punishment of detention has a deterrent effect on the commission of new crimes, so are we then to be scandalized

| if it is said that detention before trial can have the effect of drawing us | closer to the truth?”” And Pool magistrate Gherardo Colombo spoke

Decline and Fall of Due Process ~—> 51 clearly about the efficacy: In a public statement on January 30, 1993, re-

ferring to the Milan Palace of Justice, he said, “[Eleryone questioned

here talks.” There is a second, even earthier, practical justification that has been vanced by the Milan Pool: If the magistrates did not jail suspects and

witnesses, and force them to talk and to name

names

tion of defendants’ rights will cause.) Another concept difficult to find in

the history of jurisprudence, this bold admission of the public and politi-

cal concerns of the Pool was actually offered publicly in a Lions Club speech'* by the implacable Piercamillo Davigo, also known as Doctor

Subtle despite his occasional use of rough language and, by reputation,

=the least diplomatic of the Pool.” Davigo, in his mid-forties and looking more like an accountant than a

_ crusading prosecutor, is from a village in the heart of

north’s industrial triangle, A magistrate since 1978, he took up his thecurrent duties in Milan about six months before the start of Operation Clean Hands, His colleague Colombo has praised his “inexorable logic,” his “absolute co-

herence,” adding that “{h]e has a great capacity for being systematic... Uwhich allows him... . to arrive immediately at the crux of a matter. With

him one talks in short-hand and everything's immediately understood." “The journalist Bruno Vespa is a more impartial observer: “Davigo always _ gives the impression of being omniscient, When he talks the condit tense never appears and when, by chance, a question mark pops out,ional you c: an be sure that the question is rhetorical.”20 Known as a man with few friends, Davigo is close only with Di Pietro

among his Pool colleagues. That could reflect polities. Davigo may be somewhat out of place among the Milan magistrates whose politics are early leftist. Lehner finds in him “a pre-modern regression, a political-

‘cultural posture of an ultra-reactionary type.’ In the spring of 1994, the

“post-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale party was rumored to have been courting

avigo with an eye towatd his possible political candidacy. This idea may wve been sparlced by Davigo’s friendship with Ignazio La Russa, a prom-

inent Alleanza leader and parliamentarian. The connection is interes ting,

in

because in 1996 La Russa chaired the body in the Chamber of Deputies

that set the guidelines for conceding or refusing magistrates’ requests to

"proceed against: members of Parliament, an important arena of battle in

the story of the coup. The day after the victory of the Center Right in

the 1994 elections, La Russa advanced Davigo’s name for ministe r of the

interior in the government that Silvio Berlusconi was to form, Althou gh

Davigo never did assume a ministerial portfolio or enter politics, these

52 ome Chapter 6 stories indicate that he did not bear the leftist stamp of his closest col-

leagues.*

‘The reason Davigo gave, however, for being the only one of the Pool to

seem happy about the victory of the Center Right in the 1994 national

elections was that “Rightists in power favor a more repressive climate." Davigo is, in fact, notably hard, even in the context of the Pool. In July

1992 he arrested a Socialist leader, Loris Zaffra, and, in trying to make

him talk, kept him in prison for so long that even Di Pietro objected.

When he went into court to have the detention prolonged, Davigo gave no facts whatsoever about the crime that Zaffra was supposed to have committed, but based his case on “the general context” of corruption, about which Zaffra “could not have not known.” That last formula, a

Davigo invention, became a Pool favorite.

Another perversion of the law practiced by the magistrates was the simple inversion of responsibility between prosecutor and citizen, so that the citizen has the responsibility for proving himself innocent. The form

this practice has most commonly taken in the case of the Milan Pool has been the assertion that he who has clean hands should not mind judicial

harassment. Borrelli responded to Silvio Berlusconi's resistance by saying

that “he who has nothing to hide does not object to [the process of ques-

tioning by a magistrate]. Anybody can come to see my bank account.” The unconventional methods used by the magistrates of Operation

Clean Hands, even if they were serving the interests of justice and not

politics, would require justification beyond the simple assertion that “they work” or “otherwise people would be ticked off” or “the must have

something to hide.” The most political of the magistrates have, in fact,

provided such justification, In a 1994 conference, the Milan magistrates set forth the Regency Theory (la teoria della reggenza). The chief spokes-

men were Davigo and Gherardo Colombo, a magistrate who would later

order the police to search the halls of Parliament for documents that were

available at any library. Compared to other Pool magistrates, Colombo might appear to have revealed more about his own politics, inasmuch as he has just published a sort of autobiography/philosophy.** The book proves to be one part

charming reminiscence of his childhood (establishing Colombo, if not as

a man of the people, at least as a man who visited farms in his youth),

one part we-justices-against-the-world polemic, and one part “political

philosophy.” The gist of the philosophy is that corruption hurts every-

body and so any means to defeat it is in the common interest. Colombo cuts the most striking figure of the Milan magistrates. He is

never seen in anything but the blue jeans he has not abandoned since his student days. His receding hait flying, he appears to be a worried Harpo

Marx behind the thick spectacles of an intellectual. He too is a northerner,

Decline and Fall of Due Process = 53

born in a village halfway between Milan and the northern lakes that bor=

der Switzerland. Now in his early fifties, Colombo has been a magistrate

_ for more than twenty years and with the Milan Tribunal for the last decade. He made his name in the investigations of the Sindona affair?” and _ the P2 scandal,” then served as a consultant to the parliamentary commit_ tees on terrorism and on the Mafia, co-authoring a book on antiMafia

legislation.

In his latest book, Colombo dramatizes the beginnings of his suspi-

cions, during the Sindona investigation, that there was systemic political corruption in Italy—a surprising assertion since every standard work on

Italian politics, foreign or domestic, had already described these practices as a central feature of the political culture” Colombo, along with 08s, Borrelli, and Borrelli’s deputy, the fatherly Gerardo D’Ambrosio,his are considered the “political brains” of Operation Clean Hands,

Davigo and Colombo proposed a new doctrine of Italia

constitutional law.. The Regency Theory runs like this. “Since the othern power s of the State,

executive and legislative, are totally delegitimized because many of

their members are the objects of investigations, or in any case will soon be inves tigated, it is left to the magistracy to assume the regency of these

powers.” In other words, despite the separation of powers prescribed by the Italian constitution, the three powers can—in fact, according to the

Milan magistrates, mast—be united in the judiciary.

If the division of power is a fundamental principle of the democratic state, as much of the West has thought since Montesquieu, the magistrates

are here issuing a serious challenge.

Notes

1. ANSA dispatch, 17 November 1994, on the Scalia press conference held on “this date. 2. L’Opinione, 29 October 1994, 3. Vito Marino Caferta, I! magistrato senza qualita (Bari: Laterza, 1996), 16. 4, Cited in “Davigheide,” /1 Foglio, 19 June 1997, 3. [| _ 5. USS. Department of State, “Italy Human Rights Practices 1995” (Washing“ton: Government Printing Office, March 1996), 4. 6. Ibid, 3. 7. “La giustizia e i suoi nemici” (dialogue with Borrell Caselli, Flick, and _ Scarpinato), MicroMega, Vol. 4, No. 95, October-November i, 1995, 8. Ghitti said that this lack of GIP-provided protection was the result of the isadvantages suffered by the defense in the Italian system, See Franco Coppola, Ghitti contro il carcere facile,” La Repubblica, 27 September 1994, 9. L’ltalia, 10 August 1994, 10. “Conso cerca ‘la soluzione politica,’ ” Corriere, 26 February 1993, 4.

54 ~~ Chapter 6

11. Marcella Andreoli, “Mani pulite vivra,” Panorama, 22 July 1994, 8. 12. Milan’s newer Opera Prison is better rated. 13. Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Antobiografia” di sn inquisitore (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 26. Lehner cites Pool magistrate Davigo in support of his judgment: “Our prison system is sickening. . .. The suffering that gocs on. .. derives from the lack of order: only in Iealy do you find the scandal of prisoners cooking for themselves in their cells. From the disorder comes the overwhelming, of the weakest by the most violent. Being deprived of personal liberty is very painful, but it is nothing compared with the rape, the promiscuity, the physical violence.” 14, Angelo Panebianco, Corriere, 16 july 1994. 15. Piero Colaprico, “Quel carteggio Tonino-ltalo,” La Repubblica, 17 June 1997, 23. 16, As we will see in Chapter 15, Davigo offers the same justification for forced confessions. 17. From Borrelli’s interview by La Repubblica, 19 February 1995.

18. From Davigo’s speech to Vigevano Colonne Lions Club, 14 July 1993. 19. Gherardo Colombo, [1 vizio della memoria (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997), 134.

20. Bruno Vespa, // duello (Milan: Nuova Eri-Mondadori, 1995), 40.

21. Lehner, Borrelli, 106, 22. But, more recently, at a conference in Forli (June 7, 1997), Davigo gave other hints of his social attitudes: “There are some suspects who, just like the Red Brigades, try to avoid trial, for example by repeating their petitions to put it off 23 times, ... The management class does not accept that it is subject to the law.” He also offered his view of Italy: “A country where there are 8-10 million tax evaders, where the typical behavior of ten million people is criminal behavior.” 23. “Davigheide 2,” 11 Foglio, 20 june 1997, 3. 24. Lehner, Borrelli, 186.

25, This conference was sponsored by the political monthly MicroMega, whose editor, Paolo Flores d’Arcais, once very close to the Socialists Craxi and Martelli is today an absolute supporter of the Milan Pool—to the extent of clashing with D’Alema’s PDS when the PDS cooled its support of extremist magistrates (see Chapter 23). 26. Colombo, Vizio, 27. Sindona was a Sicilian banker and money-launderer whose clients included the Christian Democrats, the Vatican, and the Mafia, When his empire went on the rocks, banks in Italy and the United States (Franklin National) collapsed and Sindona, fighting back, sent an American mafioso to Milan to murder Giorgio Ambrosoli, a banking expert who had cracked the case. Ambrosoli is today in the pantheon of heroic Italian lawmen, although he was really a lawyer with a commission. Sindona was either a suicide or a murder victim while in jail. 28. ‘This scandal pertains to a Masonic lodge that engaged in illegal and probably subversive activities involving many prominent, mostly right-wing Italians.

=

29. Colombo, Vizio, 10.

7

SD

The Politics of Justice I i

f the magistrates who triggered the political bloodbath that racked Italy intended to trample the spirit and, in the case of the detentions, the

letter of the Italian constitution, as they clearly have done, they

_ had to consider, before the campaign got under way, lem of how the public and the political parties would react, We thewillprob see them pre"sented, in 1990, with an Opportunity to open the same string of investiga-

tions they eventually initiated in 1992, They demurred. The conditions _ were not yet right. Some advantages were on the horizon, but not enough to constitute a green light for the magistrates. Voters were, it is true, beginning to pull

wway from some of the old parties, but the magistrates acted before events

The magistrates had never before been able to count on enough support launch a large-scale

to assault on prominent sectors of the political and business establishment. Again, however, the Years of Lead showed them how

to get this support. During that struggle, the press had accep ted the same (though less extensive) violations of civil rights that the magistrates

would now use against members of the political and business clanes, ‘The aim of the terro

rists had been to terrorize the entire population, and they succeeded, What they miscalculated was the reaction of Italian

society. Instead of becoming revolutionized, the population recoiled in horror. Media reports of each

bloody incident succeeded in converting [1 7 the image of the police and carabinier i that of an inept bunch of | Poor lads from the south who deserved from suppore but would ultimately 55

56 o~~ Chapter 7

fail—to that of knights in armor. As they started succeeding, their popu-

larity, expressed by the same dailies that had made monsters out of the Red Brigades, soared. ‘The magistrates needed the same kind of support; for with that support - would come political protection, to be amplified by precisely those political forces (largely the PDS) that would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the discrediting of the old governing parties. ‘The newspapers and magazines that acted as a largely uncritical cheering section for the magistrates were the property of the industrial giants who suffered least at the hands of the Pool. (As we shall see, when the money trails repeatedly led back to these same entrepreneurs, the cases did not move forward so long as they stayed

in the hands of the Milan Pool.) And the same publications received, every

day, detailed information about the most political of the investigations in

| progress, including the results (often the words) of interrogations, the

texts of avvisi di garanzia, the contents of accusations as they were being » developed, and unattributed versions of the current suspicions of the magistrates. It was more than enough to permit the papers to paint vile por-

traits of the old political and business leadership. What the industrialists could offer the magistrates in the way of media support was formidable in a country where the main daily newspapers

remain, even in the television era, the initial definers of all political issues,

_ . of the politically correct view of those is ‘ues, and, about the same thing, of vox populi. This was a necessary condition for the magistrates’ coup, since much of state television was in the hands of the Christian Democrats

and Socialists, and the three commercial networks were Berlusconi's, (But it is important to note for what follows that, throughout the whole first

phase of Operation Clean Hands, Berlusconi’s television networks were unsparing in launching devastating attacks at the old political class.) If one has any doubt of this role of the daily newspapers, it is enough to check the daily habits of the principal producers of the prime-time televi-

sion newscasts. These producers, lil all of Rome and Milan involved in

news and politics, first see the front pages of the dailies at thirty minutes

after midnight. This is the fix, they believe, on what the political factions

are thinking, and they will translate that into the following day’s presumption about what Italians are thinking,

Of the main national daily and weekly newspapers, the Agnelli family

(FIAT) owns one of the two great dailies of the postwar era, La Stampa, and is part of a consortium that controls the other, Corriere della Sera,

along with the newsweekly /! Mondo, a soccer newspaper (the best-selling newspaper in Italy), women’s magazines, and so on; Carlo De Benedetti, Olivetti’s chief, is the principal owner of the media group controlling

La Repubblica, the most important national daily after Corriere, and the

newsweekly L*Espresso; the main industrial association, Confindustria,

Politics of Justice ~~ 57

-owns II Sole 24 ore, the “Wall Street Journal of Italy.” The publications that became the loyal cheering section for Operation Clean Hands would

ecome known, ironically, as the Clean Pens! (elsewhere as the Red Pens). The opponents and mavericks made a lot of trouble for the magistrates,

‘vio Berlusconi controls the group of companies then known as Fin-

_ invest, now Mediaset. This public company (traded on the stock ex_ change) controls, in turn, Italy’s three commercial television networks,

= Rete 4, Italia 1, and Canale 5, as well as the Arnoldo Mondadori publish-

ing house, which produces books and the best-read Italian newsweekly,

Panorama. Berlusconi’s brother Paolo possesses (through the construction company Edilnord, which he completely controls) the daily I/ Gior-

nale. But the Berlusconi family doesn’t stop there. Silvio’s wife, Veronica

Lario Berlusconi, holds 30 percent of the shares of the Foglio Quotidiano

publishing house, which produces a daily, I/ Foglio2 But unlike the press that acted as a cheering section for the Pool, Berlusconi’s media had nota-

ble independence and variety-of-view. Many journalists and commentators of Berlusconi’s television networks were open supporters of

Operation Clean Hands and of the PDS; this was true, for example, of

he very popular Maurizio Costanzo, who stayed on the air throughout.

Over the years the Italian political system had created a mechanism to

‘overcome the political freeze—namely, the absence of any alternation in power of the anti-Communist majority and the Communist Left (even though the PCI, at one time or another, controlled governments in 60 ercent of the regions). Known as consociativismo, it was a kind of under-

sound railway linking the two great postwar opposing forces, Commu-

‘nism and Christian Democracy. In fact, the more moderate Communists

and the soft-left Christians Democrats, both groups probably a majority

in their parties (in terms of the party leadership, but probably not in terms

f either the rank-and-file or their voters), developed such broad coopera-

jon—sharing the spoils of power, consulting on anything that affected

the other’s interests, approving without question, in parliamentary com“mittee, each other’s budgets—that the democracy of the last decades of

the First Republic has often been described as “organic,” suggesting the

nergy of elements that cooperate, the opposite of a combative, pluralis-

tic democracy featuring true opposition between political forces. Italian

= consociativismo can be seen as a variant on the consociational democracy

‘whose four principal characteristics were defined by Arend Lijphart: (1)

government by grand coalition; (2) mutual veto; (3) proportionality in representation, appointments, allocation of resources; and (4) autonomy

‘of each of the parts.’ The Italian version, emphasizing the third character-

istic, never achieved the grand-coalition stage, but it did (and continues to) manifest strong tendencies in that direction.

Italy’s mixed economy, with its cornucopia of spoils, was its founda-

58 ~~ Chapter 7

tion. And a robust foundation it was: The Italian purely-private sector was (and still is) the smallest of any major Western country, accounting profor somewhere between 35 and 40 percent of the country’s industrial

duction* The same periodicals that supported the coup were, up to then, consistently supportive of this Italian model of heavy state intervention in the

economy. ‘They backed the system for forty years. Of course, they also

benefited richly from it: Advertising revenue was more parcelled out than competed for, Now, in the 1990s, the same periodicals haye become intransigent accusers of the same system, sparing only the PCI/PDS and unconditionally supporting every assault of the Milan magistrates. ‘These periodicals received the daily flow of information described

y. The above, almost all of it violating Italian laws of judicial confidentialitevery act normally cynical editors and reporters—accustomed to reading for its political meaning—suspended their critical faculties and treated this

flow of information as the unveiling of the true, corrupt Italy. They neveras spared either headlines or editorial support for the magistrates. And

the star-magistrates, especially Borrelli and Di Pietro, became morenes bold, and they themselves wrote “‘Op-Ed” pieces for the supportive magazi

newspapers.

‘The professor/columnist Angelo Panebianco tried, in 1993, to blow the

includwhistle on one especially pernicious practice of these periodicals, magistrates ing that of the paper in which his column appears. Although

may perform, at different times in their careers, both the prosecutor’s role

and the judge’s role, the two roles remain distinct. But the supportive

became press persisted in referring to proseoutors as judges. Di Pietro, Panebi “Judge Di Pietro.” Besides the greater prestige that title conveys tion, -in anco listed certain negative consequences, including “the destruc

the popular mind, of the principle of innocence-until-proven-guilty. If the magistrate who sends an avviso di garanzia is considered a ‘judge,’

then, necessarily, an avviso becomes similar to a ‘judgement,’ to a sentence. That means that the trial, which is the only institution with the

responsibility of weighing the evidence, becomes, for the press and in the popular mind, a mere formality.” The second evil is that the defense attorney, an equal third, along with

the judge and the prosecutor, of the liberal-democratic idea of justice,

becomes, for public opinion, “an ambiguous personage, barely tolerated, one who by opposing the prosecutor, as is his job, dares to hinder the

work of ‘His Honor the Judge.’ ”

The distortion may be the direct fault of the press, but Paniebianco has

observed that “‘it’s a strange fact, however, that the magistrates never cor-

rect it,... The suspicion must be that-certain magistrates, the most politicized, of course, are quite content that public opinion does not really

Politics of Justice ~—> 59

‘he newspaper support for the Milan Pool, rule. Milan’s I/ Giornale, though now s, was founded in the 1970s as a coo pera~

4, Since the beginning of Operation

Clean Hands, Italian Communists have occasionally been caught in the crowded fishnets of the magistrat es, in the first three months, seven Communist politicians were men tioned

t of his party ise” with the

example, important criticisms of the

magisof PCI/PDS involvement in illegal fin ancing -line Communist Refoundation Party. Con-

60 ~~ Chapter 7

versely, the Milan magistrates enjoyed considerable support from the Right, And it is often forgotten that the Italian Socialist Party, despite its bitter struggle against the PCI in the 1970s and 1980s, was a party of the

Left and the fountainhead from which Italian Communists originally split

off, Second, it is to Liguori that one credits the first serious attempt to provide an alternative to the reporting of Operation Clean Hands by the magistrates’ journalistic allies. Its launching bore a front-page headline

personally composed by Liguori: “Clean Hands, Broken Lives,” with ev-

ident reference to the many suicides and human tragedies produced by

the investigation.

In August 1995, I! Giornale, now edited by Vittorio Feltri, revealed

that a number of political leaders had received public-owned apartments

in the center of Rome. They were either currently occupying them or had

passed them on to sons or daughters, sometimes long after the politicos had left any government or party position. They were paying low rents that had nothing to do with the market. What was unusual about this scandal-in-a-season-of-scandals was that the PCI/PDS, including the cur~ rent patty secretary, Massimo D’Alema, was benefiting as much as any-

one else. {1 Giornale gave the details and printed the names. And

Bologna’s daily newspaper reported thar in areas where public works were “largely in the hands of the communist cooperative construction companies,” the costs of those operations dropped by 20 percent in Bologna and Ravenna, and by 30 percent in Ferrara, in the period after Opera-

tion Clean Hands had turned the spotlight on kickbacks.* These were

indications—others will be noted—that the PCI/PDS was deeply in-

volved in the general Italian practice of political kickbacks. Indeed, under consociativismo it could hardly have been otherwise. But the independent

media did not normally receive enough information from magistrates’ investigations to be able to write much on the subject. Outside Italy, a few European journalists who did not rely exclusively on the Clean Hands cheering section were at least noting the political

imbalance of what was happening. Bernard Bonilauri, writing in Paris's

Le Figaro, remarked on the first news that the magistrates were following

any lines that might lead to the PDS: “It has taken three years for the magistracy to rediscover the path of equity... . The traditional parties of the Right and Center have disappeared under the legal blows of the

magistracy. The ex-PCI has been spared. Profiting from their judicial in-

dependence, certain magistrates have protected the Communists. Italian

public opinion has known for a long time about the financial manipula-

tions soon: who next

of the neo~Communists.”? But the French journalist had written too ‘The investigation was quashed, and Tiziana Parenti, the magistrate had etred by following those leads, was soon out of the Pool.'® The time there would be any “outside” interest of this kind was on the

Politics of Justice ~-> 61

occasion of a celebrated suicide, which attr acted the attention, for one day, of papers

from Le Monde to the Financial Times," Notes

1. The term Clean Pens is used with a little license here, 2s about the coup. In fact, it comes from the Cusani trial (see Chap in other writings ter 16) and hada specific reference, The financier Sergio Cusani wrote, from “cooperative periodicals,” “hired pens’’ (as in “hired guns”), and payoffsprisoto n,journof alist Journalists involoed Were alleged to have been originally “hired” to clean up the s.imag When La Repubblica launched vieulent attacks against Cusae of Montedison, ni, his attorney threatened that Cusani would name names about journalistic corr ing direct payments to editors, But when questioned by the courtuption, includtated (with thick suspense in the courtroom, according to accounts , Cusani hest that he did not want to ruin families and careers, and so would ) and then said allegations. See Gianluca Di Feo, “Le fette di salame,” Corriere not make specific , 12 March 1994, * During the controversy following ode, the ironic term Clean Pens came to be applied to those newspapers, thismagaepis to be giving blanket support to the Pool. zines, and journalists who appeared 2. 11 Foglio is edited by television onality Giuliano Ferra ra, who holds 10 percent of the shates, Ferrara also editepers d Panorama. 3. Arend Lijphart: Democracy in Plur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977),al 25,Societies: A Comparative Exploration fh Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wies Maly: A Difficult Demo cracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)er,, 211, i. Angelo Panebianco, “Gindici e magistrati, distinguiamo,” Corr iere, 27 September 1993, 1, 3, &, David Nellsen, “A Legal Revo on?” in The New Italian Repu phen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds,luti (London: Routledge, 1966), 206, blic, Ste7, Liguori also edited I! Sabato of the Catholic movement know n as Comunione ¢ Liberazione, 8.71 Resto di Carlino, 10 February 1994, cited by Nelken in “A Legal Revohution?” @- Bernard Bonilauti, “Injustice de la justice,” Le Figaro, 28 Sept ember 1995, 10., We can trace this incident because Paren ti resi gned the magi stracy and talked publicly. Today she is a deputy (Forza Italia) and has chai red the Chan, bee's anti-Mafia committee, Ht “Tl “Financial Times’: # una giustizia rozza,” Corriere, 22 July 1993, 5,

8

Seer

The Launching of the Coup I

tis worth reminding the readér here that, throughout the book, evi-

dence that the magistrates were, in fact, engaged in a deadly political cence of the people they struck down. Roberto Mongini, whose case is campaign is not intended to suggest anything about the guilt or inno-

used in this chapter to illustrate Di Pietro’s tactics, appears clearly to have been guilty of some actions that amount to theft and embezzlement, First, a prologue. In January 1990, the Italian Senate received a request for authorization to proceed (i.e., a lifting of parliamentary immunity) against Socialist Senator Antonio Natali. Natali had been president of the Milan Metropolitana, the subway system; and in the request, reference was made to a “notorious and constant” practice of making donations to political parties by companies that were doing work for the subway. In May the request was rejected by 125 votes to 76. The going thesis, consistent with decisions of the Constitutional Court and apparently accepted

by the senators, was that the subway could not be considered a public body, since its directors were not public officials and therefore could not

have committed crimes of corruption, The Milan prosecutor at the time,

Francesco Saverio Borrelli, did not contest the issue before the Constitutional Court (as he would do when faced with the same circumstance in

the 1993 Craxi case), nor did he initiate any criminal procedures based on

the illegal financing of parties. It was not yet time, The place to start the drama is with Italy as it was perceived by the leaders of Italian big industry, some of whom we shall meet in detail, at the time of Maastricht. The question of their active role in triggering the events is in the realm of speculation. But they had reason to expect to benefit, and the media they controlled were crucial to the whole opera-

tion,

A captain of one of Italy’s great private industries, looking at the politi62

Launching of the Coup +> 63 cal and economic landscape in the winter of 1991-1992, would have found

the view bleak. Whether he manufactured cars and trucks, or typewriters

and computers, or tires and fan belts, his factories were the product of

decades of protection. He had reasons for gratitude to the Italian State,

for its protection from outside competition and for timely interventions,

with hard cash, that had allowed him to ease armies of workers out of his plants and into a gilded unemployment, permitting him to modernize and

robotize without labor wars,

But the gratitude was running out and some parts of the landscape were undergoing a change. That same State taxed our industrialist (both him personally and his company) heavily and used the money to feed corrup-

tion and incompetence, Public services were a disaster, and deteriorating.

Few ministers of government stayed in office long enough to take responsibility or blame for serious projects. A succession of brief governments

shuffled the same faces and produced the same shrugs indicating their

inability to do anything about the country’s competitiveness, the eroding

infrastructure, or their own inefficiency. It seemed to the northern indus-

trialists that most of the parasitic politicians were southerners, and that some of these failures had more to do with crime than with simple incom-

petence. And the same politicians, the same “parasites,” were shaking the industrialist down for larger and larger amounts to finance the very political parties that had clearly (to the industrialist) become the problem, not the solution.

Now the new Europe was threatening the icy winds of serious competition. But those with whom the Italian industrialists would be competing

had real governments, governments that moved effectively to enhance the

competitiveness of their industries by measures that went beyond merely financing the soft landing of redundant workers, and governments that

were updating the elements of their tax systems and the parts of the

bureaueracy that had become antiquated.

Much of Italy’s industrial leadership felt it simply could not compete in the new Europe while carrying that disastrous political class in Rome on its back.

The conclusions were clear. First, Italy, as things stood in the winter of 1991-1992, would fall behind, and then fall our of, the new Europe. It

was even doubtful whether, given the new Maastricht convergence stan-

dards on factors such as budget deficits and national debt, Italy’s place at the inner table in Brussels would last beyond 1999. Second, the princes of

Tralian industry were now feeling the seriously painful pinch of the sys-

tem of bribes and kickbacks. The price (for contracts, permission to build,

tax relief, etc.) had gone up so steeply that what had once been a necessary cost of doing business now felt threatening. And, finally, it became clear

at the beginning of 1992 that unless a big electoral surprise came about

64 =~ Chapter 8 in the spring (it did not), Bettino Craxi would be asked to form a new government. He and the Christian Democrats had reached an arrange-

ment, involving both the prime minister’s office and that of the presi-

dency of the Republic, that would return him to the former.

Craxi was a tough nut for the industrialists to deal with, less respectful of their prerogatives than were his Christian Democratic predecessors. He was the devil incarnate for che Communists and other leftists. Craxi, just

when he seemed to be riding high, appeared vulnerable because of the spread of the system of political corruption to all major Italian parties, In his speech to the Chamber of Deputies on July 3, 1992, Craxi in fact

admitted that “in the shadows of a system of illicit financing of the parties ... cases of corruption and extortion flowered and were intertwined. . . . On the other hand, what has to be said, and what everybody knows any-

way, is that a large part of our political funding is irregular or illegal.”

Almost every major player in Italian politics, and much of the business

leadership, would be shown to be part of a broad and corrupt system.

Like Craxi, they all were vulnerable. In the past, this factor had been a lubricant of the system. Everybody “had something” on everybody else,

a situation that produced cooperation and remarkably predictable behayior. But it was also the point of entry for any commandos determined to

blow up the system.

The lead assault team would be the magistrates, those Milan magistrates who would “turn Italy inside out like an old sock,” as magistrate Davigo had elegantly phrased it. Because of their judges’ robes, they were to become known as the Red Togas. Looking back from 1996, a professor and lawyer who had served as industry minister in the Amato government summarized: “In 1992, with the signing of the new European treaty, a new phase started. The political class had its vital support system cut off at the roots. Operation Clean Hands was ericouraged and exalted... .

Not-always-orthodox methods were used. Public opinion didn’t oppose

it. In fact, it applauded.”! The stage now set, we return to the police raid announced at the begin-

ning of the book. On the morning of February 17, 1992, a Milan magis-

trate, Antonio Di Pietro, a swarthy ex-cop in his forties who had gone to

night school to get his law degree, ordered the police squad assigned to him to raid a major Milanese charity. It was the beginning of a process

that would put Di Pietro’s image, usually with unbuttoned collar and five o'clock shadow, onto T-shirts sold in front of the Milan cathedral. In

Chapter 20, with more evidence in hand, we will try to give this enigmatic

figure a sharper outline. Di Pietro, who comes across to Italians as a plain-spoken man of the

people, is just that. Hailing from a tiny village, Montenero di Bisaccia, on

the back of the ankle of the Italian boot, Di Pietro had none of the culti-

Launching of the Coup »-> 65

vated family background of his immediate colleagues. His father was killed falling from a hay rick. His mother took care of 2 small orchard, picked

olives, and kept some livestock in the courtyard. Di Pietro tele-

phoned her almost every day.

Like so many to Germany as afternoon, then turned, and did

other young Italians with his background, Di Pietro went a laborer, polishing metal in a cutlery factory until midgoing to a second job in a sawmill. By the time he remilitary service, Italian universities were free and open to

all. That was Di Pietro’s door to the police service, law school, and then

the examination for the magistracy. We have noted the questions that are raised about the examination process for magistrates in Italy, especially the role of “connectio ns” in the

question of who passes. Di Pietro gained his law degree in the summer of 1978, in record time,

after sailing through twenty-two. course exams in.

thirty-one months. He accomplished all this while working at Aster, a

military spare-parts factory, where only those who had been cleare d by Italy’s intelligence services could be hired, Magistrate Di Pietro was born,

80 to speak, in November 1981, at the age of thirty-one. For the next fourteen months he served his internship in Milan as a judicial audito r.

Subsequently assigned to the prosecutor’s office in the old hill city of Bergamo east of Milan, Di Pietro failed to please his superiors. It was then that the CSM

officials opened a file about this problem magistrate. But Di Pietro beat them to the punch by requesting a transfer back to Milan.

His Bergamo file was closed.2

Di Pietro astonished the other magistrates with his zeal and energy and his willingness to learn anything, such as computers and internationa, l

banking, thar would give him an edge on the criminal and the corrupt, But he was not always a good colleague, preferring to keep cases and witnesses to himself. More than just the symbol of Opera tion Clean

Hands, Di Pietro was also its featured television performer. Di Pietro

burst on the Italian scene in the spring of 1992 and was gone from the magistracy (but not the headli nes) a little more than two years later.

Within weeks of the February raid that ignited the blaze of the Italian

coup, this new star of Italian justice would become the most popul ar public figure

in Italy, according to polls that gave him twice the “votes” of

any other personality.

Nobody, colleagues or victims, had ever seen anything quite like Di Pietro’s methods. And there was never an investigation like Operation

Clean Hands: The pact of omerta that was the necessary rule for the rela-

tionship between businessmen and politicians, and among politicians, was shatte

red. For the first time, a parade of suspec

ts and witnesses talked, allowing the investigation’s web to grow, every day trapping new people. In a published study of

Di Pietro, Paulo Colonnello and his colleagues

66 ~~ Chapter 8

ame, almost overnight, a chorus tried to explain why a realm of silence bec believe this success to be based of stool pigeons.* It asserts that those who not understand. Di Pietro’s use on torture, psychological and physical, do of the “instruments of cleverness.” er

ingness and ability to work long Part of his secret was industry, a ywillelse. He shared a small office with

hours at a faster pace than anybod y’s three Jaw enforcement agenfour officers, one from each branch of Ital d, with “che bright cies, plus a civilian guard. Di Pietro alwaysfightappeoffarssleetire p.”* No one who has eyes of someone who is tense and must is said to

for his energy. He esrieed with him has failed to expranessabuawendance of details that he is able forget nothing, and to recall such by such a wealth to move easily in milieus that are foreign to him, buoyed der. of knowledge that he appears to be an insi

like Inspector Maigret’s, to be An element of Di Pietro’s method was, with the circles in which his come very familiar with specific milieus, ltrated those cixcles, while remaintargets were moving, He personally infi n someone would tell Di Pietro ing “incredibly alert and attentive.” Whe after months or years, “not only about a personal experience, he could, ed to

as though it had happen recall it perfectly, but even re-tell it almost ean Hands; Di Pietro. time of the launching of Operation.Cl him.” At the

ness and political circles at was already profoundly familiar with the busi , and understood the

within them Which he was aiming, could move easily Col onnello

study notes that “in personalities of the major figures. The out of the lives of these people his mind there is a frame of reference made cal consequences

".

logi and in a split second he can tell you all the

tomorrow of an event today.’*

al computer capable of storing Di Pietro has been described as a biologic at the starting point of Operation

all types of data. So when he atrived

n streets of the road map Clean Hands, he already had a feel for the mai to the ground. He knew entopoli, the Bribe City he svould burn of Tang the ambience.

mayor, Paolo Pillitteri, who is Di Pietro saw a lot of Milan’s Socialist , at r. He got to know the architect Claudio Dini

married to Craxi’s siste Maurizio Prada, president of that time president of the subway systems of the giant property

Gorrini, CEO Milan’s city bus agency; Giancarlo ‘Ant onio D’Adamo insurer (MAA); construction czar

(who would be the

ro’s alleged corruption); and chief figure in the 1997 scandal about Di Piet poli reached all of

assistant. Tangento Sergio Raedaeli, Pillitteri’s personal stig ation had been them. Early on, even before the inve

Jaunched, Di Pie~

When Radaelli opened his tro asked Radaelli to exchange business cards. seconds when he could briefcase to find his cards, Di Pietro used the few its contents. Two years of see into the briefcase to make a mental note

Launching of the Coup “> 67

later, investigating Radaelli, _as the credit cards the off Di Pietro was able to remember such details icial had been carrying.

When toughness, even extrem e cruelty, was deemed necess ~ Was up to it. A suspect ary; the Poo! or witness would be told that if he ever mana ., t0 get out of San Vittore, ged the magistrates would be immediately. The study abl e to rearr est him calls Di Pietro

“the classic. inquisitor, _in extreme psychological distress. putting you | loving the police style of cnt " Di Piece, is described by witnesses as ering the off

ices of a political party or a “the executives lilke clerks, charging them to run and fetch documents him. “Di Pietro called the for m the way a cop wo

uld tall: to a key suspect, like: get in here, maybe you won 't get life , but 'll damn sure see that _ You get twenty years. ” He would brutally inf orm Peo Suspects, malsing them tre mble or freeze with fear. “B ple that they were ut let’s be clear that Di Pietro didn’t shout or pound the table {th en}, that he said what he said

_aren’t used to being treated this way”? Than

ks to Roberto Mongini, company that runs Milan’s airporwhts,o had been vice-president of SEA, the and

who directly experienced being in Di Pietro’s clutches, we hav e a good picture of the “technique—a technique tha t became the spearhead of ex-cop’s grilling the investigation

68 e~ Chapter 8

d an and thus of the coup itself. fo Mongini and others, Di Pietro seeme

, “{mplacable mastiff” who would never give in, In his firsta fewdayseasyin prison admiswith Davigo conducting the questioning, Mongini made many legal problems.

sions, saying things that would not cause him too to tall: But when Davigo told Di Pietro that Mongini was really refusing that, seriously, Di Pietro seemed to go crazy. It was in this state of mind

e. Monona Friday evening, Di Pietro suddenly showed up atingSanthatVittor the interrogini was already back in his cell, ready for bed, believ ni’s attorney without gation was over for the day. Di Pietro called Mongi

arrive. warning, so that it would be some time before the lawyer could

his attorMongini was escorted into a side room, supposedly to wait for driving and ney, But the latter was late, partly because it was raining hard to be was difficult, and partly because he too had not been expecting called out,

.” After So Mongini found himself face to face with the dreaded “judge you.”” a little foreplay, Di Pietro said dramatically: “We know all about

ni could Then he took some thick file folders out of his briefcase. Mongi comnot know even whether the folders contained documents from his

ed nothpany; he felt trapped, Di Pietro made certain that MonginiAt believ that point a goal. ing could stop the magistrate from reaching hisey presen t. Di Pietro was real interrogation began, still without the attorn let you out.” categorie: “[Elither you talk right now or I’m never goingDi toPietro ’s toughLike miany before and after, Mongini was struck by, but it made Monness. It may have smacked of Hollywood cop movies to gini understand that Di Pietro wasn’t joking, that he was determined

win at any price. Mongini started tallking. is that ‘Another reason the Mongini case is valuable for what is to come was talking to Davigo, the press played its role. In the early days, when thehe newsp apers that he was but really telling him nothing, Mongini read in Pool’s “revelations” “spilling all the beans.” Mongini now sees that the

n and to the papers were part of Di Pietro’s strategy. Other businessme politicians would read these stories and come into the Palace of Justice to volunteer a confession before the Pool, guided by Mongini’s “confessions,” came to arrest them.

Mongini himself had already decided to present himself for questionarrest. ing, without having been invited, on the morning after his surprise ally in ‘That the magistrates got to him first gave them an advantage, especi the public’s eye. Mongini’s idea had been to make some small confessions.

He gave himself a fifty-filty chance of avoiding jail by doing this,andbased put

on how things used to work. Instead, Di Pietro got there first Mongini in prison based on the allegation that Mongini would have gone on the lam, despite the fact that Mongini had spent the day in his office and that evening had gone to a restaurant just around the corner from the

Launching of the Coup ~> 69

cathedral in the heart of Milan, Di Pietro had Mongini arrested as he was coming out of the restaurant, greatly weakening Mongini’s position and his morale.

Critical to Di Pietro’s technique was gett ing his suspects into San Vite tore prison as early as possible, even if he had not yet advanced far in his investigation. Tt was the objective of the Milan Pool not to wound their vic

tims with a small conviction for min or peccadilloes but, rather, to erase them from the politica

l and business e, 50, when Di Pietro had somebody scen gun-sight, he would use the evidence he had of couple of minor inviohis lat ion s to get an arrest wartana for one of them. The arrest gave Di Pie tro

some time to play with, time to take other testimony, time to try to link together pieces of hearsay evidence. He might know, or have tea son to believe, ot have just an intuition, that the suspect had committed som tions. And if the time of the initial det e other, more important violaention was running out (three months in most cases), Di Pietro had another accusation or two in his pocket so that he could immediately get another arrest warrant and keep the suspect in San Vittore, Whe

n he arrested Mongini, it was for a case involving the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, and Di Pietro so told the press. When Mongini asked what he was bei ng charged with, Di Pietro replied that he had no intention to charge him with anything in connection with the hosp

ital. Mongini was furious “because through the mud for that al legation for fort I had already been dragged y days’ worth of newspapers,” But Di Pietro, smilin

g, said that he really believed Mongin i to be involved in another case, He then told Mongini that “T’ve been tailing you for three years and T know everything about you.” It was all a bluff, and, as i tumed out, Di Pietro had started wit h no concrete evidence, only some feelings about Mongin

i, and these he lowed up perfectly. Observers often mention that Di Piefol and love of media atteation, He has tro’s weak point may be his vanity walked out

of imporvane inverrogations to attend social events where tel evision cameras would be filming. Although Borrelli

was the chief, made the overall strategy, the magistrates’ grea the assignments, and controlled t raid on the Italian establishment ‘was , 8O far as most Italians are concerned , led

by “Antonio Di Pietro, who has been depicted, in the best tra ditions of Italian populism, as a Molisan

peasant.’

Though usually described as almost an accident, as an investigation of a banal bribery case whose thread s Jed in sur pri sin g subsequent directions, we now see that the init

ial target of what would become Operat ion Clean Hands was in fact ideal for the launching of the public politica l campaign against selected elements of the Firs t Rep ubl ic. Tha t the firs t case was neither banal nor accidenta l was suggested some time later whe n the Pool’s Gerardo d’Ambrosio gave the following answer to a question

70 ~~ Chapter 8

Milan magistrates Antonio Di Pietro (1), Gherardo Colombo (center), and Francesco Saverio Borrelli (r) stroll in the Vittorio Emanuele IT Gallery in Milan, (Foto De Bellis, Claudio Testa) from a group of students he was addressing: “[The arrest of Mario Chiesa

did not catch the magistrates unprepared, They already knew everything

about his bank accounts and about those in Switzerland." Much of this

information had come from tapping Chiesa’s phone, where they heard conversations between Chiesa and his unhappy and demanding wife, separated from Chiesa and traveling frequently to Switzerland. For an affair that seemed so small, the arrest of a man first described by Di Pietro as just a common swindler, the magistrates had made a major investment in preparation,

This was because the Pio Albergo Trivulzio was no ordinary charity. It

was a major Milan landlord, owning some of the most valuable commercial property and apartments in the center of the city. As at almost every

major charitable or social institution in Italy, the director’s chair at Pio

Albergo Trivulzio was one filled by clientelismo. This is the patronage

system by which all plum jobs are filled—from the management positions

in huge parastatal companies to bank tellers’ cages, from opera orchestra first chairs to television producers’ positions. Since Milan was the home base of Socialist leader Craxi, the manager of the charity was a Socialist, a dapper ward heeler named Mario Chiesa.

Asa major landlord, Pio Albergo Trivulzio had contracts to award. ‘Ihe

Launching of the Coup “== 71 buildings had to. be cleaned and maintained. The companies who received

the contracts were expected to say thanle you in two ways. First, at election time their employees were expected to cast votes that would ensure the continuation of the mutually beneficial relationship with the Social-

ists. And, second, money changed hands, flowing back to “Signor Ten Percent,” Mario Chiesa.

But this arrangement was so common, and considered so normal by

Italian conventional wisdom, that its very banality robbed it of punch as

a scandal. The magistrates had, however, found a twist that gave them a handle on the public’s heartstrings. One of Pio Albergo Trivulzio’s’ major

charitable activities was the operation of an old people’s home, La Baggina. Chiesa, as part of his duties, also ran this establishment, an operation

that included the arranging of funerals for people who died without the

means (or the family means) to provide for a proper ceremony and burial plot. The undertakers who received the work paid Chiesa a flat rate of 100,000 lire per corpse. For political purposes, the right elements were all here: a political hack who was close to, and delivered votes to, Milan’s

most important political boss, Craxi, plus destitute old people and their bereaved families.

Tt was the callousness of the flat-rate-per-corpse that was especially

attractive to the magistrates. The Pool’s Piercamillo Davigo admitted as

much almost two years later: magistrates from external. cri

“[I]ts psychological impact sheltered the We had the sensation of having

found the end of a skein of yarn, a key.”® Di Pietro’s raid was not perfect: They caught Chiesa, not dealing in cadavers, but in the act of taking an ordinary bribe, the equivalent of

about $4,000, from the owner of a cleaning company who, like others

who furnished services to the charity, had to pay his kickback, And

Chiesa, having asked the detectives for bathroom privileges, was able to flush several million live down the toilet. But that disappointment did not | matter much when the magistrates delivered the news to the key newspa-

pers: Both the magistrates and their press partners knew that it should be played as a stealing-from-the-poor scam, as it was.

At first, Chiesa refused to cooperate. But Di Pietro left him to languish

in jail with no indication of when any action might be taken on his case, Jet alone his release. On March 23, after several weeks in prison, Chiesa confessed and turned state’s evidence.

The confession and its handling are as interesting as its content. First,

the confession scarcely met Western standards. Chiesa had been kept in prison for more than a month, Second, the confession, supposedly subject

to judicial secrecy, was leaked and printed, almost in full, in De Benedec-

ti’s L’Espresso.™ In this first case, and in all those that followed, the publi~

72 =

Chapter 8

cations never felt the need to indicate where they had gotten their

information or to justify their disclosures.

ee

8

In the months ahead, every politically interesting confession, and every

avviso di garanzia—with the details of its content—rendered to high-

level figures, found its way immediately into the periodicals of the major

industrial magnates. Thus, from the very first arrest we see the investigators resorting to the expedients of preventive detention and violation of

the confidentiality of judicial proceedings.

This was the beginning of the central battlefront of the Italian coup. Its

name, Mani Pulite, or Clean Hands, started as a code name used by police in the initial raids, It became part of Italy’s everyday vocabulary. From February

17, 1992, to December

1993, the time of Operation

Clean Hands’ greatest media event, the Cusani trial in Milan, the old sys-

tem that is now called the First Republic was definitively destroyed. In

mid-January 1994, the president of the Republic dissolved Parliament to set the stage for the election that would bring political victory to the

forces that combined to make the Italian coup. The polls would, by then,

show

that the PDS-dominated

Center-Left, the “Progressives,” would

take power immediately following the elections set for March 27-28, 1994, It was to be last act of the opera that was now beginning. Notes

1. Giuseppe Guarino, “E’ come nel "46: va fata subito,” Corriere, 5 Decem-

ber 1996.

2. For further details on this background, see Stefano Zurlo, “Tonino, genio anche alla Universita,” IJ Giornale, 29 January 1997 and the same day’s Corriere, as well as “Dossier Di Pietro,” // Sabato, 17 July 1993. 3. Gherardo Colombe, // vizio della memoria (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997), 146. 4, Paolo Colonnello, Piero Degli Antoni, Marco Rota, and Rossella Verga, Antonio Di Pietro (Milan: Tullio Pitonti Editore, 1992), 5, Enzo Biagi, “Vi racconto le mie mani pulite,” Corviere, 8 July 1992, 2. 6. Colonnello et al., Di Pietro. 7. Ibid.

8. Ibid. 9. The preceding quotes are witnesses’ descriptions, including Mongi

's,

cited in ibid. 10. Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian State (New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1995), 5.

11, Franz Prato, “Il dibattito—Davigo: pid tempo per poter indagare sui parla-

mentari,” 1 Giorno, 21 April, 1993. 12. Cited in Goffredo Buccini, ““Tangentopoli, un puzzle senza fine,’ ” Corriere, 17 October 1993, 6.

Launching of the Coup ~-> 73 13. The reference here is to the “Clean Pen” newspapers that were the magis-

trates’ rooting section during the two years that followed. With nothing but cir-

cumstance to indicate collusion, we can note only that the Clean Pens were those

periodicals owned by the few major Italian industrialists who had most to lose by a continuation of the old way of doing business as Italy entered a more competitive Europe. The rooting section involved all of the newspapers and newsmagazines in these groups, and none of the other major Italian periodicals except for the PDS daily L’Unita. However suggestive this lineup is, it is still just circumstantial evidence,

14, L’Espresso, 28 June 1992.

9

Seer

The Scandal Touches the Political Summit

B

eginning with the first raid, the Chiesa case made bold headlines.

‘The Italian press is never shy about scandal, but this story had

everything: human interest, a good low level of villainy, and, most

important, Craxi himself. The papers assembled and republished several

years’ worth of scandals and suspicions that had touched Craxi’s Socialist

Party. As it became clear that a major scandal might be in the offing, a name was found for it: Zangentopoli, or Kickback City. The malfeasance that would be uncovered in the months ahead mostly involved the parties of the governing coalitions that had ruled Italy since the war and most frequently involved rake-offs on government contracts. Many of the practices appeared to fall under the notably vague and generalized law defin-

ing licit and illicit financing of political parties. (The investigations also in-

turned up significant bribery related to tax assessments and several stances of the keeping of fraudulent books.) The result was not a general map of a system of corruption existing in Italy (mostly northern Italy) but, rather, a very selective map in which some parts of the system were exposed and others were not and, more important, once exposed, some

cases of corruption were pursued, others were not.

The political groundwork for Operation Clean Hands had been so well

prepared that the assault could get up to speed immediately. Every day of that spring of 1992 seemed to bring a new photo of another political

of business giant, often in manacles, being led into San Vittore prison. ‘The businessmen never included any of the proprietors of Clean Pens

periodicals, with two illustrative exceptions. Investigations twice led to the doorstep of Carlo De Benedetti, who had previously possessed a rep-

utation as a “moralizer,” but without significant follow-up.’ And, in an 74

Scandal Touches the Political Summit “= 75 incident we will examine in Chapter 12, four FIAT! executives came under Antonio Di Pietro’s

microscope, but a four-hour conversation between the executives’ boss, FIAT CEO Cesare Romiti, and the Pool made the problem evaporate. But for most politicians, that one news photo, with the handcuffs and the increasingly familiar gates of San Vittore, was enough. It did not matter whether the magistrates could give the papers anything solid in the

_ way of specific charges: The press photos and the “leaked” news of the avvisi di garanzia, the mere notification to the investigation, were enough to trigger resignat suspect that he was under ions, retirements, or the end of political careers even in cases where the victims still had some fight left

in them, These stories, and news from the south about politicians and organized crime, were stirred together in a way that tarred everyone with a common brush. On March 12, 1992, in Palermo, the leading Sicilian Christian Dem

ocratic figure, Salvo Lima, was murdered. At the same time, unrelated to the killing, but played as part of a country-wide scandal, mayors (the last two mayors of Mila n) and city council members throughout the north were announced as being under investigation by the magistrates. Soon som

—

e northern cities lacked a quorum for council

to the magistracy of that city a thick dossier on

the financing, by the USSR, of the Italian Communists, described as “an extraordinary step , “uni

que, motivated by the enormity of the sums transferred.? Important __details may thus have

been delivered into—in s, from the Warsaw Pact had long been well known in extent to which prosecut

fact, disappeared into—the “hands of Italian magistrates. The fina ncial support of the PCI that had _come, over the year

tay, but “necessary question, pabout the

Neultural

the. ors had previously had the facts for prosecution (had they wanted to pros ecute) had remained a Italian journalists and political scientists had talked for years flow of goods through Communist coop eratives, mostly agcooperatives (and espe

cially meat) from Eastern Europe. Even

76 «~~ Chapter 9

was common knowl- the sum skimmed, by the Italian party, 10 percent, already confirmed that had edge. And in a visit to Florence, Gorbachev

d up to 1990. But the the financial support given by the Kremlin had laste lin documents, had prosecutors’ office, initial recipient of the Krem

Rome

s, who, by reputation, proJong been in the hands of Christian Democrat lving the Christian Democrats vided a “fog harbor” into which cases invo

and 1980s) and their allies (including the Communists through the 1970s would sail and never be seen again, een the Communists, or ex-

Any consideration of the relation betw te who did the most Communists, and Tangentopoli leads to the magistra some ‘Tuscan from Pisa to discover the connection: Tiziana Parenti, a hand Leninist extra~parMarxistwho had youthful political experience in the , Parenti had been a liamentary groups that disturbed Italy in the 1970s Operation Clean Hands magistrate in Milan for more than a decade when will see, led to public was launched. The fireworks that followed, as we es on her mental health, and then to her resigna-

attacks by Pool colleagu Italia ticket in 1994 and tion. She was elected to Parliament on the Forza reelected in 1996.

When

she started following Parenti entered the Clean Hands Pool,

the financial links leads that led to the Red cooperatives. She discoveredG” in some newspa~ PCI official, Primo Greganti (“Comrade between a

a Occhetto, sister of pers), and Ecolibri, a publishing house run by Paol secretary of the Ialian ‘Achille Occhetto who at that time was national born PDS. Parenti’s furCommunist Party and, laser, leader of the newparty coming from ther investigations turned up illicit financing to the I, the East German Eumit of East Berlin,

a company controlled by STAS

S through a series of Red secret service. The funds went to the PCI/PD avvisi di garanzia to cooperatives. The consequence was that Parenti sent onal chief of administration Paola Occhetto, to Marcello Stefanini, the nati ials. of the PCI/PDS, and to several other party offic

most openly tied to Borrelli’s chief deputy, and the Milan magistrate to the rescue of his party. He the PCI/PDS, Gerardo D'Ambrosio, camestat ement that Parenti “was not took the case away from Parenti with the nalist asked party in line with the Pool.” But the story was out, and a jour

he received an avviso di leader Achille Occhetto. what he would do if me an avviso, it’s a coup garanzia. Occhetto responded, “[I]f they send thing

the Pool, some q’état.” Later, after Parenti had been bounced from of the STASI connechad to be done about the fact that her investigation g magistrate, Paolo tion was known to the public, So Borrelli put a youn ond

ng of Ielo and a “sec Ielo, on the case, We later describe the recruiti that Ielo had already generation” of Pool magistrates; but for now note other

ing”) some proven himself politically correct by burying (“archiv ed the fact that the cases involying the PCI/PDS. ‘Iwo newspapers leak

Scandal Touches the Political Summit ~—> 77

German police handed Ielo a list of fifty coded Swiss bank accounts that had been traced to the Italian party; it was through these accounts that

East Germans had been financing the party. This “indiscretion” was denied by D’Amb

rosio, and from that time forward there was no further pursuit of these leads, In June 1996, the weekly Panorama, not part of the magistrates’ cheer-

ing section, revealed that documents that Parenti had sequestered in the offices of the PDS, in several cooperatives, and specifically in Greganti’s

office, had been lost, ‘The seals that the Finance Police had placed on the

archives of the PDS administrative offices at party headquarters on Via delle Botteghe Oscure in the center of Rome had been broken and the

most important documents stolen. There was no denial of this report.

So Operation Clean Hands did not real ly have a component conce rning

the financing of the Communist Party and its successors, only a sidebar exposed when Parenti resigned and went public with the story of how her efforts to pursue leads pointing toward the Communists had been consistently blocked. There was also the demand, on the witness stand, by

Bettino Craxi that some balance be brought into the Pool’s invest igations. ‘These protests vanished like the Moscow files,

By late spring of 1992, the Pool magistrates had already achieved two

_

obvious objectives. They had made it impossible for the president of the Republic to

name Bettino Craxi to a third term as prime minister, despite the fact that the old governing coalition (Christian Democrats, Socialists, Liberals, and Social Democrats) had a large enough major ity that they

could still make do without the now-recalcitrant Republican s.* The Re-

publican Party refused to join the coalition that was then being assembled by the former deputy secretary of Craxi’s Socialist Party, Giuliano _ Amato. Republican leader Giorgio La Malfa declared that his refusal to be part of the new government was based on the Repub s’ being “the party of honest people,” and therefore it could not getlican mixed up in the dirty politics of the partitocrazia, the term used to assert that the partie call all the shots in the Italian democracy. Unfortunately for this postur s e, La Malfa himself received an avviso di garanzia from the Clean Hands

Pool a few months later for the alleged illegal financing of the just-con. cluded election campaign. And soon after that, the Republican chief was also investigated by the Milan magistrates for his involvement in the En-

imont affair. La Malfa and former Minister of Posts and Teleg raphs Oscar Mammi, also a Republican, were then investigated for kickbacks to the ministry from Olivetti, an investigation during which De Bened etti was also briefly arrested.5

During the same period there were insistent rumors of an imminent

avviso di garanzia coming from the Pool to the other most important

Republican politico, Giovanni Spadolini, former prime minister, party

78 ~~~ Chapter 9 secretary, and, at that time, president of the Senate. And right at the time

of the voting for the presidency of the Republic, to which Spadolini had

long aspired, a Republican deputy, the party’s strongman in Milan, and a leader of Spadolini’s faction, Antonio Del Pennino, received an avviso

for alleged corruption in the contracting for the building of the Milan

subway.

The Milan subway scandal is interesting also because Enzo Papi, an important manager of CogefarImpresit, a construction firm controlled by

FIAT, was arrested for paying kickbacks on the construction. Papi was

hauled off to San Vittore, where he refused to answer questions and so spent three months in prison. After the negotiations between FIAT CEO Cesare Romiti and the Milan magistrates, detailed below, Papi started cooperating and. confessed to a few misdeeds. But he denied in every case

any responsibility, direct or indirect, for Romiti’s actions.

‘The installation of the Amato government did nothing to slow the coup

process; the revolutionaries were seeking more than a simple change of government. On May 1, avvist di garanzia had been delivered to two

former Socialist mayors of Milan, Carlo Tognoli and Paolo Pillitteri, Craxi’s brother-in-law. Four days later, it was the turn of a Milan entre-

preneur, Mario Lodigiani. Information the magistrates got out of Lodigiani would be crucial to the delivery, at the end of the year, of Craxi’s first avviso.

A few days later (still in May 1992), Borrelli made his most open acknowledgment to date (more impressive examples would follow) of the political character of Operation Clean Hands. He told the friendly L’Es-

presso that “the investigation has grown thanks to a new and particularly

favorable climate due, perhaps, in part, to the way things have come to-

gether electorally, perhaps also to the pick-axe that . . . has been taken to

the party system.”

May 23 was a turning point for the scandals of both north and south.

In Milan, the magistrates announced that they were investigating Salvatore

Ligresti, a financier who had made billions in construction in northern

Italy. Meanwhile, at Capaci, on the highway between Palermo and its air~ port, a gigantic explosion ripped out a stretch of the highway and demol-

ished two cars carrying the justly celebrated hero of the war against the

Mafia, magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife, his driver, and five bodyguards. Only the driver survived because he was sitting in the backseat of the second car, Falcone having insisted on the pleasure of driving his Fiat Croma himself, The assassination permanently altered both the politics and the public perception of the struggle between State and Mafia.

For starters, the assassination ended a political stalemate in Rome. ‘he

seven-year mandate of the president of the Republic, Francesco Cossiga, had not yet run out, But on April 25 he had shocked the nation by going

Scandal Touches the Political Summit “> 79 on television, making a long series of bitter remarks, and then, in teats, signing the presidency. So, before the president could help find a prime minister, the Parliament had to find a president. A two-thirds majority is called for in the first three rounds of balloting, a simple majority after

that.’ But the choice of a president had come too soon; the deals had not

yet been negotiated,

_ In the chaos that ensued, all semblance of order left the Christian Dem-

ocratic Party (DC), which had always been deeply factionalized. Five bal-

lots in, the party’s chief, Arnoldo Forlani, became its candidate. Craxi

backed him, and the two parties had.enough votes to elect. But the ballotg is secret, and on two ballots enough Christian Democrats and Social-

ists deserted so that Forlani failed (and, before the two weeks of turmoil

‘were over, resigned as party secretary). To male matters worse, fraud was exposed in the last round of voting: Five more votes were cast than people

=)

in the hall.

The Falcone assassination radically altered the mood of the nation. The

politicians sunk in deadlock Iknew that further demonstrations of busi-

:mess-as-usual would not be tolerated. Startling switches immediately took

place: Antonio Gava, Naples DC chief—long reputed to be tied to the

Camorra, Naples’ brotherhood of organized crime—now backed an alli-

|

ance between the Christian Democrats and the Communists. These _ switches permitted the election, on May 25, of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro as president of the Republic. Scalfaro was exactly the sort of candidate who

emerges from a combination of political stalemate and citizen thirst for

law and order. Largely independent of any of the main factions of the

“Christian Demoetatic Party, Scalfaro was a devout Catholic, with a repu-

ation for honesty. His freedom from factions meant that his influence in

haping the party through the years had been very small. His Catholicism

meant that he would devote himself to rebuilding a Catholic center, de-

spite a nationwide reform movement that asserted that responsible gov-

ernment

could

be

created

in Italy

only

through

direct,

confrontation of a well-defined Left and a well-defined Right,

combative

Notes

1. De Benedetti seemed doubly protected, since he owned a significant part of the “friendly” periodicals and also had strong ties to the PCI/PDS. 2, Mark Gilbert, The Ttalian Revolution: The End of Politics, Italian Style?

| Boulder: Westview, 1995), 134-135.

3. Bernard Bonilauri, “Injustice dé la justice,” Le Figaro, 28 September 1995. 4, In the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, the breakdown was DC 29.7 per_ cent, Socialists 13,6 percent, PDS 16.1 percent, and (a complication) the secession| ist Northern League 8.7 percent, Needing 316 seats for a majority, the four parties

80 ~~ Chapter 9 of government (ie, without the Republicans) won 331 seats. Despite the DC’s decline (from 34 percent), the biggest drop was suffered by the Communists, who totaled a little over 20 percent with the hard-line Refoundation included, down

from 28 percent, 5. This scandal is described below. La Malfa was accused several hundred million lire from Carlo Sama, the Montedison 6. The troubles that De Benedetti also experienced owing in the infamous bankrupt Banco Ambrosiano were not the Hands Pool.

of having received CEO, to his involvement fault of the Clean

7. The president is actually elected by the two houses of Parliament plus re-

gional representatives.

The Establishment Cracks

I n June, the magistrates’ investigation of Renato Amorese, Socialist party secretary of Lodi, just outside Milan, induced the first in a

string of suicides. Amorese killed himself on June 17, 1992, after

being interrogated by Di Pietro. Before shooting himself, he wrote a

strange letter to Di Pietro, thanking him for his “rigor.” In the end, at

least twenty-seven people who were targets of investigations had taken their own lives.! A few days later the magistrates induced the Socialist secretary for Lombardy to confess to having passed bribe money along to PSI headquarters. By mid-June, avvisi had been sent to sixteen Socialist and fourteen Christian Democratic politicians. Craxi’s Socialists remained the prime target of the Milan Pool.? On July

16 the magistrates arrested Salvatore Ligresti, a financier and friend of Craxi. Ligresti knew that their true objective was Craxi. On November 19, after five months locked up in San Vittore, under dramatically terrible

conditions, Ligresti said that his financial group had made some financial

_ contributions to Socialist administrative chief Vincenzo Balzamo and to Severino Citaristi, his Christian Democrat Party (DC) counterpart. For

more than five months of imprisonment and tough grilling by Di Pietro,

Ligresti stood his ground and denied having made a contribution to Craxi. Ultimately, the magistrates, in order to accuse Craxi directly, had to use the proposition that Craxi, as party secretary, “could not have not known.”

Just three days after Di Pietro had put handcuffs on Ligresti, a terrible

occurrence in Sicily cranled up his zeal a notch. The late Giovanni Fal-

cone’s celebrated partner, Paolo Borsellino, was killed by a car-bomb in

the heart of Palermo, The two murders moved many people closer to a

war mentality. Still, it is important to remember that the connection be81

82 ~~ Chapter 10

tween the northern and southern arenas of this great season of scandal appears to have been. confined to a small group in the top echelon of the

DC, The struggle against organized crime in the south, although it would add an impressive additional list of names to the powerful who would fall, was not the battlefield of the coup. In fact, the public perception of a

victory over the Mafia might have strengthened whatever regime was responsible for it, making it better able to resist the northern coup. While Italy focused on the funeral of another fallen hero, Di Pietro

focused on Ligresti. Friendly journalists were assured privately by the

magistrates that Ligresti would eventually crack, that Craxi would be

next, Italy’s most-read leftist columnist, Giorgio Bocca, wrote in L’Espresso, during Di Pietro’s grilling of Ligresti, chat “our democracy is already dead” and started using the word revoltion—approvingly: “Now we face a revolution that cannot fail, because we must somehow free our-

selves of this cadaver which is our present democracy.’

A few weeks later, while the Socialists waited for word from the Li-

gresti questioning and heard tales of how he was being treated, the magis-

trates delivered a subpoena to Sergio Moroni, a Socialist member of Parliament. Moroni killed himself on September 2, 1992. He sent a letter,

a sort of political last will, to the president of the lower house of Parlia~

ment. The “Speaker of the House” at this time was the PDS’s Giorgio Napolitano, whose loyalty to the Parliament competed with his party loyalty. Napolitano was so moved by Moroni’s letter that he included it

in his own book about the Parliament.4 He introduced it by quoting from his own diary: 3 September 1992, Terrible news has reached me of ain act which was unthinkable until yesterday. A deputy, the Hon, Sergio Moroni, Socialist, has killed himself... . 1 am living a moment of great turbulence. 1 am waiting while the letter is brought to me by a PSI member who has dashed into town and to the dead man’s house. Lfinally received it. ...In the lucidity of the arguments, in its conciseness, in the eveiiness of the handwriting, there is evidence of an impressive selfcontrol at the moment of making such an extreme decision, I've decided to make the text of the letter public.’

A few lines in the letter relate directly to Italy’s revolutionaries in

judges’ robes:

Dear Mr. President, Thave decided to send to you some brief considerations before leaving my seat in Parliament by completing the final act of putting an end to my life. ‘We are... living through months which will signal a radical change in the

The Establishment Cracks ~> 83

way of life of our country, of our democracy, of the institutions which are its expression. .. Bur ic is unjust that this takes place through a summary and violent process. ... [have come to the conviction that obscure forces harbor designs that have nothing to do with renewal and “cleansing,” A great veil of hypocrisy (shared by all) has covered,for many long yeats, the ways of life of the parties and their system of financing. There absolutely Italian culture in the making of rules and laws that everybisodyan knows cannot be respected. ... 1 don’t think that our country will build the future that it deserves by cultivating a climate of “pogrom’” vis-i-vis the political whose limits are well known but which nevertheless has made Italy one class, of the freest countries, I started my political militancy in the PSI very young, at 17... . I still recall with passion many struggles of politics and ideals, I committed an error in accepting the “system,” believing that to receive butcontri s and support for the party was justified in a context where this wasbution common practices Moroni had received funds for his party in contrav

of the party finance law. But he claimed, perfectly correctly accordiention ng to the evidence that has surfaced, that none of the money ever went to his personal bene-

fit, nor to anything that seemed counter to the common. good of the elec-

torate. He thus rejected the label of “thief” that

his involyement in Tangentopoli would seem to imply. He felt, he said, that all that was lefe to him was the final

gesture.

Lespecially hope that [this act] can serve to prevent others in the same situation from suffering the moral anguish that I have lived through these weeks, and to avoid summary trials (in the piazza or on television) thatin transform an avviso di garanzia into an advance verdict of guilty.” Moroni’s letter caused some Italians to reflect on

rates’ responsibility for his suicide, Borrelli responded: “I don’tthe seemagist any reason to

link the death of poor Moroni with the prosecutor’s accusations. . .. From

what I heard there were also other circumstances which could have ex-

plained what happened.” The papers friendly to the magistrates tried to provide those “other circumstances” by inventing a grave illness for Moroni, which proved to be nonexistent. Magistrate D'Ambrosio was more

openly cynical about Moroni: “One can also die of shame.”” It was during the tense days of Di Pietro’s questioning of Ligrest an essential stage in any revolution (and some coups) was reached:i that the splitting of the enemy and the création of turncoats, partners in the “new order,” out of some of the fragments of the ancien régime.

Claudio Martelli was, at fifty, a boyishly handsome former Craxi pro-

84 ~~ Chapter 10

PSI tégé. Martelli had served as Craxi’s second-in-command in the Milan al party. The in the 1970s, then as one of two vice-secretaries of the nation

other vice-secretary, Valdo Spini, now leader of the tiny Labor Party in was Parliament, represented a concession to the left wing of the party and he 1989 In not close to Craxi, So Martelli was clearly Craxi’s dauphin. minbecame deputy prime minister. As justice minister and deputy prime 1992), Martelli ister in Andreotti’s last government (April 1991 to June

headed by a had been the highest-level Socialist in the last government

government, Christian Democrat. Also justice minister in the new Amato ed Martelli was the first of a series of four justice ministers to be attack magistrates: (like a “pigeon shoot,” cracked Tiziana Maiolo) by the Milan

were to follow. Giovanni Conso, Alfredo Biondi, and Filippo Mancuso

magistrates While the others were being attacked in the political arena, the li had some substantial corruption charges to throw at Martelli. Martel

who were became the first of five ministers in the Amato government

forced, under the Milan Pool’s assault, to resign. over ‘As the threat of Ligresti’s endurance in San Vittore prison hovered an Martelli, in them, and the horror of Moroni’s suicide struck home,

Craxi’s counterinterview in La Stampa, began to distance himself from to end their alliance attack against the Pool, and called for the Socialists

by with the Christian Democrats.’ Elements of the dying PSI controlled ates Martelli immediately threw their support in local elections to candid

of the PDS. well. The results ‘The maneuver failed; the Socialist turncoats did not do

the PSI from a late September election in Mantua continued the decline of

tto and DC. Although Martelli campaigned with PDS chief Achillthee Ocche ex-Com-

ata big rally in Mantua, his switch seemed to benefit only domimunists, The Socialists lost almost half thei support, and the onceThe vote. the of nant Christian Democrats could muster only 14 percent

the two parties losses, it should be noted, were confined to the north;

were still holding well in the south for the moment.

thus When the state of the Christian Democratic Party at the polls became clear, Party Secretary Forlani resigned even his caretaker role, De With the opposition cracking (though not Ligresti, quite yet),

of that Benedetti’s publications shifted into high gear. The lead article

week’s L’Espresso accused, in bold headlines, a series of First Republic

Vizfigures—Andreotti, Craxi, Forlani, Social Democratic leader Carlo Lorenzo, zini, Liberal Party chief Renato Altissimo, Liberal Francesco De

of Socialist Naples DC boss Antonio Gava, and the most inviting symbol

last two depravity, the long-haired, high-living foreign minister in the

e for Andreotti governments, Gianni De Michelis—of being responsibl se of the

such rot in the halls of power that it had led to a serious collap lira in early September. Italy’s popular political press bas noteworthy vit-

riol at any time, but L’Espr

The Establishment Cracks = 95

o went a step beyond: The accused were made to look like fugiess tives, with “WANTED” spilled actossleadtheters, mug shots.!°

Former Health Minister De Lorenzo was accused cent cut on construction contracts for new hospital tients, and of pocketing bribes fro m drug firms government certification that permits them to put a

of receiving a5 perwings for AIDS pain exchange for the medicine on sale,

The construction kickback was a time-honored way of raising money

in Vittore and regular sessions ssault on Craxi, the Pool was

‘The Clean Pens headlined it all

Democracy.

ing itself, since it was the cover-

Saranzia, that was bringing ruin

The method remained the came: Mid-level party officials, politicians, and businessmen underwent the terror

of being hauled within the crushingl

y intimidating walls of San Vin Core prison (with pre-notified press photographers catching the scene for

next morning’s

editions), were given thé impression that the key to walking out was to accuse others, and quickl y joined the chorus, The pressure was kept on as a very larg e number of Christian Democratic aparatchiks were held, som e for days that stretched into weeks, in prison cells until they could sing thei r way out. As Di Pietro and his Partners traced the flow of money, through the words of this parade of | bourgeois informers, they regularly followed that flow into DC party headquarters in Piazza del Gesu

in Rome, Avvi was the beginning of an inferno for Citaristi,

si di garannia starved piling up, literally, on the desk of Senator Severiiio C ‘aristi, the DC party treasurer. It

Detention to induce accusations seemed ern police state than a Western democracy more characteristic of an East. Photos of a shockingly emaciated, stra

ined, and weakened Salvatore Ligr esti were a cruel reminder of

86 ~~ Chapter 10 how barbarous the practice could be. As we saw, by law a citizen is never

talk, supposed to be menaced with arrest or detention because he won’t Pool that Tiziana Maiolo says that it was clear to those arrested by the they were being intimidated to force them to “name names.” She writes that that “in the case of investigations into the political world, it is clear the arrested person will have to say the magic name, that of the Party Vittore Secretary." And she says that she has personally met, in San parties, prison, former colleagues on the City Council, politicians of all

who had been left to languish, forgotten.

had already It is important to note that in many cases the prisoners manadmitted their own guilt. It was not enough. The “businessmen and d

“mixe agers” whom Maiolo “had met many times before,” who were s,”

and drug addict together with other prisoners, mostly immigrants ed by a pentito.”"* were, she found, “often in jail because they were fingerthey became pentiti

‘The politicians, on the other hand, were in jail until themselves.

Borrelli continued to defend these practices because, he said, the Pool doing such could not have accomplished what it did accomplish without

things. Borrelli’s reading of history told him that this reasoning had through worked well during the fight against terrorism. It was also used, gh, time, to justify the occasionally strong hand against the Mafia, althou those interestingly, the most successful recent Sicilian magistrates were least addicted to strong-arm methods.”

or to spring Craxi’s counteroffensive did nothing to slow up the Pool, politics story per day, Ligresti. A steady diet of scandalous thrills, a dirtyvictims at bay. kept any public concern for the civil rights of the Pool’s d. ‘The stories proved Borrelli’s point: These methods workered an avviso di

In early November, after the magistrates had delive he died of a garanzia to Socialist administrative chief Vincenzo Balzamo,

had heart attack, an apparent victim of the stress felt by so many who come to fear the knock on the door, although this is unprovable. from Later in November, after the magistrates had taken five months ihis life and thirty pounds from his body, Ligresti broke. (Almost immed

l transcript of Liately, De Benedetti’s L’Espresso published the officiaine “had somehow

gresti’s confession, which, as Gilbert put ir, the magaz

confessed obtained.”) He denied having given any money to Craxi, but substa ntial

to having been part of a group of entrepreneurs who made g on illegal annual contributions to the Socialist Party. During questionin or, November 23, 1992, Luciano Betti, the Ligresti group’s financial direct testified to having given Balzamo about $4 million between the end of 1985 and June 1991. It was at this point that the magistrates applied for secrethe first time the “Craxi Theorem,” according to which the party tary could not not know about any PSI operation.

The Establishment Cracks «> 87

That same winter, Balzamo’s assi stant, Vincenzo D'Urso, directly im-

» plicated Craxi,

A parliamentary debate on a question of confidence in the Amato government gave Craxi the opportunity to

opments, a position he never altered,

state his position on these devel-

Parties have relied on, tinue to rely on, the use of funds that come in irregular or illegal formsand . con eve that theve is anyone in this Chamber, any politician respon..sib1 ledon’fort beli grand up and swear the contrary of what Iimphaveortant organizations, who can facts will show that he is perjuring himself.'* just saich sooncy ve later the

a

to the secessionist Northern League alian Social Movement (MSI) in the

At the end of, January, Vincen zo D’Urso, assistant to the late Balzamo, Bave the magistrates som

e deta

ils about the group of businesses ‘de d reg ula r fin anc ial y support to the Socialists, Hf supposedlythat Ptoconfdential testimony appeared in L’E spr ess

o two weeks after his arrest. It too had been “somehow obtained,” ‘The magazine satirized Craxi’s friendship “with his dead colleague in its headline: “Craxi and Balzamo? Two hearts, ne bank account,

38 ~~ Chapter 10

Emboldened by this success, s.” tie par er oth g on am individuals scattered tics, and the hagiography of the

ction to their tac us in justifying their methods se lack of public reaals cautio press, the magistrates o became less

ice to and aims. mbo ordered the finance pol lo Co do ar er Gh 3, 199 2, onally—to On February Parliament-—unconstituti n lia Ita the of se hou er enter the low they sought was, in fact, in

data. Everything d search for certain lists and libraries. They also announce lic pub at ble ila ava and dget the public domain to. sequester a COPY of the bu all was rch sea ir the of ect obj budgets of that the main document, along with the is ‘Th ty. Par ist ial Soc s of Craxi’ in the Parliament's official 31 rch ‘Ma ry eve d he is bl pu ply the other parties, is papers. So the invasion sim ws ne the all in s ear app n tration by register, and the a show of strength, a demons but ng thi any n bee e hav could not reached in the coup process. ge sta the of es alrat ist mag the in not taking proper account of the loy

“The cnistake they madeent wasNapolitano.

itano is ‘As we saw carlier, ‘Napol

seventy, he joined the g in ch oa pr ap w No . st ni The no ordinary ex-Commu the leader of its right wing. lme ca be and wat the of t, bil party at the end Democratic Party of the Lef the o int I PC the of n” io ‘eransformat atic party, owes much cr mo de ial soc an pe ro Eu am it ing itself as a mainstre no.'* When the polls made ta li po Na to ty ili dib cre l on, of its internationa first post-Jangentopoli electi n the win d ul wo S PD the t writte seem certain tha as foreign minister. He had nty tai cer a ed em de was Napolitano d international contacts oa br ed in ta in ma had , res widely on legislatu veloped over the years a pas de had d ‘an s, ian tar men lia now among other par institution, @ loyalty that was an as nt me ia rl Pa the to y sionate loyalt to party. every bit as strong as his fealty allow the policemen to enter Parliament, Napolitano bridled, refused to the “acomprehensible” actions of the r errors and lodged a public prothetestlatove d that “sometimes there are lie rep ter d, te un da Pool. But, un o.” it takes is a misplaced zer in the Official Gazette, all h anguis during this period. ’s no ta li po Na h tc wa to d Te was interesting political allies of his party, ani the ly ive ect obj e wer es rat rates’ The Milan magist n) beneficiary of the magist tai cer e tim t tha (at the anti-parthe party: was ape noting the increasingly esc not ld cou no ta li po Na coup. But rates’ words and actions. ist mag the of ter rac cha ry ta en liam osed to investigate Jangentop pr was e te it mm co y ar nt cal When a parliame crossing the line into the politi in aga e onc l, Poo the and pt opoli, Borrelli ly. Borrelli showed the contemdust lic pub it d se po op na, are ve ati ud of and legisl when he said: “I fear that a clo ns cia iti pol for t fel l Poo the that shapes already proven of of ar cle the r blu d ul wo h ic could be raised wh the Pool their way to being proven.” Parliament, on February 7, o int ion rus int the er aft s Five day

ties of Chamber Presid

The Establishment Cracks ~-> 89 added the finishing touches to the political destruction of Bettino Craxi. During Ligresti’s incarceration, Silvano Larini, the Milan city architect, a

major Socialist figure in Milan and personally close to Craxi, had been named asa recipient of some of the funds that businessmen had “contrib-

uted” to the PSI. Larini was alleged to have received bribes on Milan

subway system contracts. Seeing what was happening to others from whom

the magistrates wanted. to extract information,

Larini fled. Al-

though he could have lived comfortably outside Italy for an indefinite

period, he was induced to return after eight months on the Jam and turn ~ himself in to Di Pietro at Ventimiglia, on the border with France. Larini

© provided details on the flow of money between Milanese businessmen

and Craxi’s Milan office. This meant more avvisi for Craxi, despite the

fact that Larini declared under oath that he had never given money di-

rectly to Craxi, Larini said that the money had gone to Vincenza Toma-

selli, Craxi’s secretary, in the party offices on Piazza Duomo in Milan. But they were destined for Balzamo, the administrative chief, who was in

the same wing of the building.

Tomaselli herself was arrested on February 17. The accusation went

all the way back to 1981, to one of Italy’s greatest scandals, the Banco © Ambrosiano affair (involving failed banks in Italy and the United States, | the Sicilian banker Michele Sindona, another banker, Robert Calvi, who

even the was found hanging beneath Blackétiars Bridge in London, and _ Vatican). The magistrates were reopening the case because some of the | bank funds had gone to the Socialists to help pay off a PSI loan from the

bank itself. But this new action seems to be part of a long-sought vendetta, and it relates to the many reasons why Craxi was a special target of the Milan Pool. It was during the Banco Ambrosiano scandal that the Socialists made their first major attempt to limit the political intervention-

ism of the magistrates. On the basis of some sharp public criticism of the way the Banco Ambrosiano affair was being handled, the Socialists, along

with many allies in the small “lay” parties and also many Christian Demwill

ocrats, backed a referendum whose impact on the Italian judiciary we

_ see in the next chapter. Its political effect was to increase the already-high + level of tension between the most politically active magistrates and Craxi’s Socialists.

_

Larini’s confession, which had immediately become public, implicated © Claudio Martelli, During this winter of 1992-1993, it was necessary that

a justice minister be as clean as Caesar’s wife. So, only hours after the

down. © Banco Ambrosiano news broke on February 10, Martelli stepped the newspa-

Although avvisi di garanzia are supposed to be confidential, _ per story again (as with Craxi’s) preceded the receipt of the avviso, which had not yet arrived when Martelli resigned. Having already divorced himself from Craxi, Martelli also left the party. Craxi finally resigned as party

90 ~~ Chapter 10

secretary the next day (on February 11, 1993). The establishment was on the run.!?

On February 19 the magistrates arrested thirty-five more politicians in Milan and Rome, including Ferruccio De Lorenzo, the father of the minister of health. That day became known as the “day of the arrests.”

Three days later the Pool delivered an avviso di garanzia to Giorgio La Malfa, leader of the Republican Party. For much of the postwar perio d, this party had

been a valuable member of governing coalitions, not because of its size (tiny) but because of its historic roots trailing back to the Riso

rgimento, The presence of the Republicans in a governme nt was supposed to mean that the government would be disci plined by the spirit of the Republic, which the Party was widely considered to embody, In

recent years, the Republicans had also been seen as representatives of big industry. On February 25, immediately after the news rs that were the regular recipients of the Pool’s “lealss” announced pape his receipt of an

avviso, La Malfa admitted that the party had received mone of the party finance law and stepped down as party secre y in violation tary. (The fall of Giorgio

La Malfa made more headlines on February 25 than did the suicide of another avviso recipient, Sergio Castellari , the former director general

of the Ministry of State Participation, the oversight ministry for Italy’s mountain of parastatal enterprises.) Up to now, although many memb of the parties that had beeti the usual components of most governiners g coalitions were wounded, it was Craxi and the Socialists who had been the highest prior ity targets of the magistrates. Some scandals involving Christian Demo crats had already made news, especially while the magistrates were bogg ed down trying to make Ligresti talk about Craxi. And the Christian Democrats, along with the small “lay” parties (Republicans, Liberals, Socia l peared to be clearly associated in the public mind with Democrats) apthe corrupt old order, because they began a free-fall at the polls, It was only the start. With the Socia list Party now in ruins, the magistrates turn ed their atten-

tion to the Christian Democrats.

Notes

1. This figure is approximate because three cases are ambiguous as to the in mediate cause. For example, Vincenzo Balzamo, socialist secretary for admin istras tion, was probably a victim of a more generalized stress, Most accou nts inclu de such cases, however, and put the total at thirty. 2% Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian State (New York St, Martin's 1995), 140, 3. Giorgio Bocca, “Questa nostr Iuzione,” L’Espresso, 2 August 1992, a 5. democtazia 8 un cadavere, meglio la tivo-

‘The Establishment Cracks ~~ 91

4. Giorgio Napolitano, Dove oa la Repubblica (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994). 5. Napolitasio, Dove va, 22. 6. Ibid, 23-25.

7. Cited in Ibid., 25.

8, Statement released 3 September 1992,

9, “Intervista ‘psicoanalitica’ a Martelli,” La Stampa, 12 September 1992. 10. L’Espresso, September 17, 1992, cover.

11. Tiziana Maiolo, Introduction to Giancarlo Lehner’s, Borrelli (Milan, Gior-

nalisti Editori, 1995), 10. 12. Ibid, 13. See Alexander Stille’s Excellent Cadavers (New York: Pantheon, 1995) for

multiple instances. 14. Mark Gilbert, The Italian Revolution (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 135.

15. Corriere, 9 July 1992,

16. L’Espresso, 14 February 1993,

17. Resto del Carlino, 10 February 1993.

18. Napolitano was the first Communist (when he was still a Communist by

name) welcomed into the North Atlantic Assembly, the club of NATO parliamentarians. 19. For summaries of the cases against Larini and others, see Martin Rhodes,

| “Reinventing the Left: The Origins of Italy's Progressive Alliance,” in Carol Mer-

|" shon and Gianfranco Pasquino, eds. Italian Politics: Ending the First Republic, (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 113-129.

11

Seer?

Setbacks for the Government and the Parties |

tis important, for grasping the tactics of the revo luti

onaries, to understand the existing relationship between the Craxi Socialists and the several factions (i.e, correnti, or currents ) of the Christian Demo-

cratic Party (DC).

In the years just preceding the beginning of the coup, a new “word? had entered Italy

's political vocabulary: CAE This acrony Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani, Although the CAF was some of the press as actually ruling Italy, quietly taking the portrayed in key decisions among themselves, it was reall

m signified the trio of one Socialist, Bettino Craxi, and two Christian Democrats, Giulio

y only a temporary alliance. In part, it represented a reaction to consociativismo, the subtl e, ongoing cooperation between the PCI/PDS and elements

But it was more than an exchange of favors, system of consultaoftionthe, DC. and shar ing of the spoils, for it also signified an effort to

maintain the system’s equilibrium and protect the positions of the smaller parties and groups. Wha t cons ocia tivi smo was not was competit

ive, combative democracy, Craxi’s oppositi on to consociativismo was unambiguous and often stated harshly; the positions of An-

dreotti and Forlani were more ambiguous.

Consociativismo can be seen as the successor to the “historic compromise,” the 1970s attempt to achieve form al partnership between the DC and the Communists in the ruling of Italy. Craxi was the principal spoiler of that effort by effectively questioning the Communists” democratic credentials, He became the

PCI’s number-one enemy.

It fit the politics of the Milan magistrates (going, for some of them, back to the beginnings

of Magistratura Democratica) and their allies that Craxi, Andreotti, and Forlani were targe ts of Operation Clean Hands, 92

Setbacks for the Government and the Parties +> 93

Today the Pool’s crushing of CAF is complete: All that awaits is final victory by prosecutors in Palermo and Perugia to convict Andreotti. The l latter, seven times prime minister, is sometimes perceived as the symbo

south, the of Italy’s long-term political corruption and, when he faces

But Aninvolvement of its political establishment with organized crime. rates, is dreott’s courtroom conviction, though satisfying to the magist of an tti irrelevant to the coup. The publicity given the delivery to Andreo pension avviso di garanzia was sufficient to force him to close his office,

s. off his secretary of forty years, and retire from politicthere So far as the Milan Pool was concerned, then,

were priorities.

(1) Craxi had Craxi was at the top. To summarize, the reasons were that

the most played the spoiler role for the historic compromise, (2) he was (3)

left wing, and Sutspoken of the enemies of the PDS and the DC’sparty’ s financing, he despite the revelation of some ugly truths about his

leader remained the most powerful and effective non-Communist political the in Italy, Add to that the special virulence that is always reserved for

historic initial ally that has turned against one. The Socialist Party was the home of Italian Communism.

in the ‘A Anal reason is little discussed. We noted that Craxi, beginning of the 1980s, had been the most vocal opponent of both the ideologization

professor Guarnieri judiciary and its heightened activism. As Bologna law expans ion of judicial writes: “[NJot all the political class welcomed this ”! In power. The most important was the Socialist party, under .. . Craxi. potential short, Craxi saw the development of an imbalance, of a flow of

ls. power into the hands of a group of nonelected, uncontrollable officia PST The antagonism burst into the open in March 1986 when the rates’ launched a referendum to change the voting system for the magist hing the seats on the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM), abolis benea proportional representation from which Magistratura Democratic legal fited. The referendum also lifted the magistrates’ immunity from official funcresponsibility for crimes committed while executing their suffered tions. Civil liability was a restraint that the magistracy had never

in Italy.

Consti‘The part of the referendum on the CSM was disallowed by the legal tutional Court, but the question of ending the magistrates’ privileged 80 perprotection went to the country in November 1987 and garnered serious cent of the vote. This Socialist victory was the magistracy’s only complained political defeat in recent decades. Magistratura Democratica life that it had all been a political attack but told its members to accept without privileged immunity? on the We saw that the Pool—during the summer in which its assault

on Socialists was stalled by Ligresti’s refusal to talk—had drawn a bead ed Christian Democrats. DC Treasurer Severino Citaristi had watch the

94 em Chapter 11

avvist pile up on his desk in Rome. Citaristi holds the Operatio n Clean Hands record for avvisi, but he had, after all, a big business to run. He testified that he needed more than $56 million a year for basic expenses

In 1989, former Prime Minister Arnaldo Forl ani had become party sécretary, a fairl

y bad omen for Christian Democrats who were fond of doing business with the Communists (alt hough

ani was a cautious man who haved disruptions). So a month after theForl resi gnations of Craxi and Martelli, rumors abou

t Forlani’s impending fall esca

lated as the magistrates brought in Forlani’s spokesman, Enzo Carra, with full media coyerage of his manacled passage into court, During the same period in carly 1993, the Pool initiate

d a drama that would eventually cause the first serious publ ic doubt about its aims and methods. As Antonio Di Pietro chased alle gedly corrupt Socialists, one who fell into his net was Gabriele Cagliari , president of the National Agency for Hydrocarbons (ENI). Created in the imme

diate postwar period under De Gasperi, ENI is the energy giant that Enrico Mattei developed

into a huge parastaral industrial holding company controlling éleven industrial groups. It is Ttaly’s second largest company, It became, until Operation Clean Hands, a fiefdom of the Socialists.’

Cagliari, untouched by scandal at

sixty-seven, was an internationally renlowned engineer and manager, cultivat and intelligent, Ele had taken over ENT in 1989; Cagliari’s predecessor,ed Fran glio, was now fi. nance minister, and he resigned after Cagliari’s coarresRevi t, Cagliari had two

things in common with Ligresti: He was associat

ed with Craxi, and Pietro was determined to hold him until he broke and fingered Craxi, Bart

Di

was a

olomeo De Toma was already talking to the magistrates. De Toma businessman, a Socialist who had

funds

the ENI group. According to the magistrates, De Toma said the went to Craxi and PST administ

Craxi’s

confidence and advised him on the energy sector of Italian business and government. De Toma told the magistrates about a big kickback on a sale of turbines by a comPany in

rative chief Vincenzo Balzamo. The deal would probably have had to go thro ugh ENI management, The; was all the magistrates needed to put their s on Gabriele Cagliari, Cagliari was brought in wearing handhand s on the night of March 8-9, 1995. Hiis arrest had been signed by thecuff usual Judge Ghitti for the Pool

Cagliari was accused of corruption and the illegal fina

ncing of political parties in connection with the sale of the turbines. He admitted, at the begi

nning of his first interrogation, to all the facts that were the ostensible grounds for his arrest. According to the magi strates’ record of the interrosation, Cagliari

contribution to

confirmed meeting with De Toma and agreeing to the the PSI.

On the same day, Cagliari resigned his presidency. Sinc e the confession

Setbacks for the Government and the Parties ~* 95 ‘was complete and spontaneous, Cagliari’s attorney asked for his client’s ‘release, or at least a change from imprisonment to house arrest. _ It was Gherardo Colombo who took the lead on the first interrogation.

‘Colombo went fishing, asking Cagliari about a range of hearsay and alle“gations from the Pool’s files.

During a second round of questioning by Colombo on March 11, Caglati described an episode about which the magistrates had known little and asked nothing, although ic had been mentioned by a banker they had questioned. This involved natural-gas negotiations between Algeria and

an ENI company, which paid a middleman to help get good terms from

‘the Algerians.

Despite Cagliari’s confession to the facts for which he had been arrested, plus this bonus, the Pool recommended against Cagliari’s release “and Judge Ghitti denied it on the grounds that, if released, Cagliari might

repeat the crimes, Since Cagliari had resigned the presidency of ENI, this

reason was patently phony. Moreover, the letters that Cagliari sent from

prison to his wife and his attorney show that he knew exactly what the

Pool wanted of him: It wanted him to implicate others, an act that Cagliari considered too shameful to contemplate.

» On March 16 he was again questioned by Colombo, and then Di Pietro

‘took a turn, Cagliari gave details of ENI's financing of political parties

and, in his one lapse from the refusal to implicate others, identified the

amiddleman in these payments: Francesco Pacini Battaglia, a banker whose ‘role had been, until then, completely unknown. (Pacini Battaglia surfaced _again in October 1996 when Magistratura Democratica (MD) magistrates “in La Spezia opened a corruption case against Lorenzo Necci, head of

_ the Italian state railroad system.‘) To Di Pietro, Cagliari confessed having discussed with Balzamo, when he took the presidency, how the ENI/PSI financial arrangements worked, including a regular cut that went to the Christian Democrats. . After this interrogation, Cagliari’s lawyer again presented a motion for release or house arrest. On March 25, Judge Ghitti, following the Pool’s _adyice, again refused the request. ‘he same reason was given, with the same logical impossibility that it could be the real reason. From that time on, rio new charges were added and Cagliari was never

again seriously interrogated. He was simply left “in a state of increasing

“tension.” Cagliari was to hold out as long as Ligresti had, but the conclu-

sion would be vastly different. The Pool was moving on several fronts at

once. On the day Cagliari was jailed, Giulio Andreotti received an avviso

Mor participation in the illegal financing not of Andreotti’s DC but of the small Social Democratic Party. This avaiso has been long forgotten because of Andreotti’s other troubles, the headline-making trials in Palermo

‘(for Mafia association) and Perugia (for the murder of scandal-mongering

96 ~~ Chapter 11 journalist Mino Pecorelli). But it is a striking example of the cooperation

among supposedly competing political parties under the First Republic, a

tendency we will see reemerging.

‘The overworked and stressed condition of the Pool magistrates was

becoming obvious at Milan’s Palace of Justice. So many investigations had

been launched, so many avvisi delivered, that the Pool could no longer handle the action. The magistrates even had trouble keeping up with the

confessions that arrived on their doorstep at the rate of several a day, brought in by people who preferred to become preemptive pentiti, nam-

ing others before they themselves were fingered by colleagues who had gotten downtown to the prosecutor’s office before them. ‘The question began to be raised as to how Operation Clean Hands was ever going to be brought to a conchusion, given the roughly 2,000 avvisi

that had been delivered just to prominent politicos and businessmen. Gio-

vanni Conso, Martelli’s successor as justice minister and a former president of the Constitutional Court, seemed the right man to tackle the question. A courtly Piedmontese of seventy-plus years, Conso was himself a magistrate and a distinguished university professor. Even the PDS’s D’Alema thought Conso was “outside the power games.”*

But Conso soon let it be known that he was personally bothered by

the jailing of Giovanni Battista Zorzoli, a former counselor of ENEL, the

national electric company, “unjustly held in prison for more than a month and a half.” Borrelli was unaccustomed to such questions being

raised. He found it “simply incredible that the minister . .. could have publicly said the words attributed to him.’ Soon Conso’s concern widened to the general question of the Pool’s use of “easy handcuffs”—that is, the frequent use of preventive detention for long periods.’

So Conso offered up a decree-law. (A “proposed law” must be debated and passed by Parliament to come into effect, whereas a “decree-law” is in effect when the president of the Republic signs it, until Parliament

disposes of the question.) It would allow those who had broken the party

financing law to be released and éscape punishment by paying three times

the amount of the original illegal transaction, Sirice most of the money

was already hidden, probably outside Italy, reclaiming the cash would have required suspects to offer up the numbers of bank accounts all over the world, sell off family houses, and so forth. On this score, the decree-

law lacked practicality and was an easy target for Pool magistrates and

their supporters who wanted to shoot it down before it could slow the

coup.

Conso’s decree-law was approved by the cabinet on March 5, 1993. Its

signing by President Scalfaro, unless the Parliament acted quickly to de-

feat it, would have ended the use being made of detention in order to produce confessions and accusations. When the Pool magistrates said that

Setbacks for the Government and the Parties +> 97 it would tie their hands and be a big setback for Mani Pulite, there was

_ justice in their view. For the politicized magistrates it would have slowed

up the coup d’état. Even for a magistrate driven by law-enforcement zeal _ rather than politics, it would have been crippling; recall Borrelli’s defense _of these practices as justified because they produce results. '

Although the idea of magistrates as magistrates becoming active politi-

‘cal campaigners is foreign to most Western countries, that is precisely what the Milan magistrates now did. From the time of the declarations

“released by Magistratura Democratica in the 1970s, some of them had

seen their judicial service as a way of waging politics, so their campaign _in the spring of 1993 was mere continuation. They sent messages to the Parliament, the president, and the government saying that they did not,

_and would not, consent to the law. Borrelli called a press conference. His

manner, described as “visibly nervous” by Mark Gilbert, showed that

he knew they were taking a big step. He had a declaration which had been igned by all of his colleagues in the Clean Hands Pool. There was noth-

"ing restrained about it. It said that the decree-law would produce “total _

paralysis” of the entire Operation Clean Hands effort.

According to the media—this may actually have been a “virtual” reac-

‘don, both created and described by the same media—the public response

_to the law was enormous and overwhelming on the side of the magistrates.

Civil rights were never mentioned. Since the politicians were proving

themselves, in the eyes of the citizens, to be mere defenders of their own “soiled nests, spokesmen supporting the decree-law scarcely got a hearing.

;A storm of demonstrations and messages of protest about the attempted “whitewash” broke over the head of the president. Scalfaro, who had

undoubtedly been consulted by Prime Minister Amato before the decree‘law was announced, backed away.!? His refusal to sign left the Amato _ government with nothing to show for ics efforts, Its credibility was dam"aged by the appearance of stupidity and arrogance in choosing to use a decree-law rather than to thrash it out in Parliament. Even Justice Minister

Conso was no support: He said that he had been forced to swallow a bad

idea (the decree-law) by the needs of government solidarity, was glad that Scalfaro had refused 10 sign, and talked of resigning.” Scalfaro’s refusal “left the Pool politically victorious for all to see. While the Milan magistrates focused on the political struggle over the -Conso decree-law, the Naples fiefdom of Christian Democrat Antonio

_Gava suffered swift collapse. Gava was considered the archetypical DC

_political boss. A portly machine politician in his mid-sixties, Gava had

“been president of the Naples city council for thirty years, a national parliamentarian for twenty. His clout was such that DC prime ministers put

him in their cabinets and even made a mockery of Italian law and order

“by giving him the Interior Ministry, in charge of law enforcement,

98 ~~ Chapter 11

‘The party official who was actually responsible for collecting bribes for

the DC

in Naples started confessing in mid-March

1993. Within one

week, every leading Campania politician from every party of the national

governing coalitions had received an avviso. Three had held ministerial portfolios in the national government, On Match 27 Giulio Andreotti received his first avviso from the Palermo magistrates; the charge would be association with the Mafia. Roughly speaking, Andreotti is supposed to have enjoyed the political support of the Sicilian Mafia, a support that was essential for the expansion of his own small power base in Rome and its suburbs into a nationally powerful faction within the DC. In exchange, the principal favors that Andreotti is alleged to have offered were the fixing of court cases inyolv-

ing mafoosi. ‘Io the north (this trial would be in Perugia), he was charged

with having arranged for the murder of Mino Pecorelli, a Roman scandalmongering journalist. The killing was one for which dozens of Italian personalities had motives. La Repubblica unleashed toward Andreotti its strongest poison. Al-

though some in the PDS expressed regret at the sea of judicial troubles washing around Andreotti, with whom they had an earlier history of cooperation, he had long been a target of the Left (though with nothing

like the venom reserved for Bettino Craxi). Part of the reason was the

indecipherable complexity of his position on the historic compromise in the 1970s, even though he was the designated prime minister for the deal. Andreotti, now nearing eighty, grew up in Catholic politics in his home

city of Rome and was a protégé of Italy’s great postwar leader, Alcide De

Gasperi, serving in his first government in 1947. Andreotti was personally

close to Pope Paul VI and was both devout and politically close to the Vatican. Though considered a leader of the party conservatives in the

1950s, he was part of a Center-Left government in the 1960s, and sup-

ported (but also may have undermined) the historic compromise with the

Communists in che 1970s. Whatever the eventual findings about his connections with organized crime, the striking down of Andreotti meant, for

the coup, the erasing of the symbol of the grip that the Christian Democrats had had on Italy from the time of De Gasperi.

Gilbert describes the attack on Andreotti:

La Repubblica’s headline the following day was “Now It Is Beelzebub’s Turn.” The title was accompanied by a spine-chilling cartoon by Forattini showing a hunched figure in a black overcoat and cap holding a mask of Andreotti’s face by the ears. The figure’s new face was a skull, with socketless eyes and huge teeth; carrion crows hovered in the background. The Pool had carried its assault far into the political heart of Italy, but the

old rules of the game threatened to leave the ancien régime battered but still on its feet.

Setbacks for the Government and the Parties ~> 99 In the First Republic, with its system of proportional representation combined with unwavering party loyalty on the part of most of the elec-

torate, even intense dissatisfaction with the way Italy was being governed

did not translate into real political change. So the firestorm of scandal

unleashed by the magistrates, even if it caused some sliding at the polls

by the Socialists and Christian Democrats, was not enough to make a

coup, Although the PDS had benefited some from the losses by the old

governing parties, much of the potential gain was draining away to the

ex-Fascists and to the secessionists of the north. ‘The PDS enjoyed only 2

modest harvest. Whether the electoral trends that were evident by mid1993 would continue, and lead eventually to a great political sea-change, ‘was a question that could be short-circuited by electoral reform. The man most associated with electoral reform in Italy was Christian

Democrat Mario Segni, son of a conservative Christian Democrat who

was a two-time prime minister in the 1950s and president of the Republic in the 1960s. In 1988 Segni, along with Socialist political commentator

Giuseppe ‘Tamburtano, created the Movement for Electoral Reform (MRE). At one time or another, personalities and publications of quite different political stripes were associated with Segni. Segni himself had

thrashed about in his search for a cure for Italy’s political ills, deciding at

one point in the 1980s that Bettino Craxi and a strong directly elected executive were the answer.

Segni used Andreotti’s receipt of the avvisi as the occasion to leave

the Christian Democratic Party. So MRE was now a reform movement independent of the mainstream parties, its leader free of any such attach-

ments. Electoral reform attempts had always been bottled up in Parliament by the Christian Democrats and their allies. But there was an alternate route. The constitution provides for popular referendum." Getting a referendum to the people is a long ordeal, and referenda can only negate laws (or parts of laws), not create them, But on April 18-19, 1993, Segni succeeded in bringing to the ballot eight referenda, one of which would have the result of switching to a first-past-the-post majority system for the election of about 75 percent of the Senate. The manifestation of popular will (82.7 percent of the votes cast) was so great that the Parlia~ ment soon adopted the same reform for the. lower house.

The change could not have suited the revolutionaries better, in terms of

either form or timing, Occurring at what then seemed the low point in the fortunes of the DC and PSI, the referendum appeared to ensure that,

finally, they could be demolished at the polls, Since about two-thirds of the current members of both houses, almost all of them from the parties

of the old governing coalitions, would eventually receive avvisi, the decisive ejection of an entire discredited political class seemed at hand. The

referendum victory was also the high-water mark in Mario Segni’s politi-

100 ~~ Chapter 11 cal fortunes. Widely popular in the country, he seemed to many opponents of the Milan Pool and the PDS to offer an alternative unsoiled by First Republic political mud. One supporter was media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. When Segni soon proved himself to have a Hamlet-like irresolution, and also seemed to be all too available for alliance with the PDS, his star faded quickly. It was to disappointment with Mario Segni that

Berlusconi attributed his own entrance into politics.

Notes

1, Guarnieri adds that “opposition to judicial interventionism,. . . could also be found in minor centrist parties and among some Christian Democrats.” See Guarnieri, “Thhe Judiciary in the Italian Political Crisis,” paper delivered at 1996 conference, University of Bologna, 8. 2, Guarnieri, “The Judiciary,” 8. See also G. Di Federico, “The Crisis of the Justice System and the Referendum on the Judiciary,” in Ztalian Politics: A Review (Vol, 3), Robert Leonardi and Piergiorgio Corbetta, eds. (London: Pinter, 1989), 3, Romano Canosa, Storia della magistratura in Italia (Milan: Baldini&eCastoldi, 1996), 141-143,

4. David Nelken, “A Legal Revolution?” in The New Italian Republic, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds. (London: Routledge, 1996), 193. 5, Joseph LaPalombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 78 6. Ironically, Necci, though not a Socialist, had been considered by Craxi for the ENI presidency back in 1981. 7, Bettino Craxi, Il caso C. (parte seconda) (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 2. 8, Michele Manno, “Il PDS disponibile alla soluzione politica,” Corrieve, 27 February 1993, 2.

he

9. “Conso cerea ‘la soluzione politica,” Corriere, 26 February 1993, 4. 10, Marco Nese, ““Conso: svolta con grande cautela,” Corriere, 1 March 1993,

14. Mark Gilbert, Zhe Italian Revolution (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 139. 12. Gianluigi Da Rold, “Conso: serve la soluzione politica,” Corriere, 16 Sep-

tember 1993, 13.

13, Paolo Menghinis “ ‘Cosi non si pud lavorare,’ ” Corriere, 9 March 1993,2. 14, Gilbert, The Italian Revolution, 142. 15, Implementing legislation was not enacted until 1970, 16, This outcome was possible with a “negative” referendum because the law had always provided for majority voting for these seats if the winner got at least 65 percent of the vote. Nobody ever did, so it had been a dead letter, When the 65 percent provision was struck from the law, the transformation was achieved.

12

weer

Differences in Treatment:

Cagliari and Romiti

D

uring all of this political action, Gabriele Cagliari was locked up,

increasingly desperate and frenzied, but still unwilling to play the Pool’s game of finger-pointing. Four weeks after his arrest, Cagliari’s attorney again asked that Cagliari be formally charged, ot released. No reply was ever received, A pattern throughout all of the judicial offensive against certain ele-

_ ments of the political and business establishment was the absence of actual

_ courtroom trials. Even where one could presume that the magistrates

would do well in court, the Pool was clearly satisfied to have brought the mighty down and caused near-revolutionary political change in Italy.

Actually facing the challenge of presenting courtroom evidence was not a necessary step. This is not to suggest that, in many or most of the cases, they would be unable to get convictions, Rather, the point is that the convictions were not critical to the political strategy.

‘The group of newspapers supporting the magistrates did not, in these cases, play the journalistic gadfly role of insisting that both sides advance

credible evidence and plausible arguments. They undertook the opposite

task of anesthetizing Italians who might have worried about the absence of trials and of all the substantiating evidence that would have been seen as normal rules-of-the-game to other Western journalists. Far from being

watchdogs of due process, the papers urged their readers not to ask diffi-

cult questions but, instead, to see a generalized cancer of evil that was

being excised. For the editor of De Benedetti’s La Repubblica, Eugenio

Scalfari, the DC represented a “malignant spirit,” and exposure of that

spirit should be enough to force its leaders out of Italian public life. Scalfari needed no cartoonist: 101

102 ~~ Chapter 12

Look at them, these lords of the flies, these Pomicinos, these Gavas, these Vitos. . . . [Look at their greasy faces, their eyes flashing with craftiness, smarminess, an appeal for complicity ... [Llook at their search to find the lowest possible common denominator, where every vice can be included and every divisive virtue ignored, .. . Sometimes one bumps into them in a crowd in some Roman restaurant and they’re unmistakable, thin lips. .., looking around circumspectly as though to ward off a blow. ... But always obsequious words, language that seems to allude to something they know and the interlocutor, obviously, must also knows something that is at the center of the problem, the heart of the question, but whose name cannot and must not be spoken; something that is there even if it can't be seen and the less you see it the more it’s there, These are the lords of the flies. ‘The Scalfari editorial ran ten days before the national referendum vote on Segni’s electoral reform.

Soon after the referendum, Prime Minister Giuliano Amato went to the

president and tendered his resignation, Amato had gained respect in some circles during his tenure, especially for undertaking tough economic mea-

sures that the country desperately needed. But Amato had to recognize that in the changed political atmosphere he carried insurmountable handi-

caps. He bore the burden of having tried to pass the decree-law that would have reined in the Pool. His ability to deal with the magistrates was com-

promised anyway because he was a Socialist who had received appointments from Craxi, His party had sunk, in a poll published five days after

the referendum, to 4.5 percent?

The PDS, worried that the Amato government would resist, notwi bh

standing all the scandal headlines, decided to harvest electorally the pol

cal results it had gained. So the ex-Commiunists launched, in the mass

media, a campaign of pressure on the president of the Republic to make

him dissolve the Parliament and schedule new elections, The aim of the

PDS was to win the elections and go directly into government, now that

the Pool had routed all the main opposing parties. PDS Secretary Achille Occhetto had no reason to believe, at this moment, that media magnate Silvio Berlusconi might enter the lists and prove to be a very dangerous outsider.

Occhetto would have to wait a few months to learn this lesson. Presi-

dent Scalfaro, faced with the campaign in favor of new clections and a Parliament whose members wete drowning in avvisi and. had been elected by a system that had just been roundly rejected by the citizens, nevertheess turned to the solution of a “presidential” or “technical” government, a government supposedly of technicians and experts. The governor of the

Bank of Italy since 1979, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, would take office on April 28, 1993, as the new prime minister. Ciampi named three PDS min-

Differences in Treatment: Cagliari and Romiti ~~ 103

isters, but then failed to receive the endorsement of the PDS itself. So the _ three ministers never actually served. If the Pool, as we shall see, was willing to go to extreme lengths to protect the PDS, it faced an equally difficult problem relative to its supporters at the summit of Italian industry. The benefits received by Italy’s » industrial giants from governments, national and local, in the postwar period had been so enormous that no one seriously considered their compa-

nies’ kickback-and-bribery involvement to be on any but the same grand scale, And cases once opened, and politicians once talking, the Clean

Hands process was not perfectly controllable. Add to that the fact that two of the magistrates, Parenti and Di Pietro, sharing none of the defining political orientation of their colleagues, were not very controllable them_ selves, and there is no way that trouble can be avoided. But damage can be controlled.

_ And so, in the same month (April 1993) that brought the referendum and also the PDS’s closest approach to power, an operation of damagecontrol was put into high gear in the Milan Palace of Justice.

The problem lay with a combination of our old friend Judge Italo

Ghitti who, though not politically aligned with the “Red Togas” of the “Pool, had, as “Judge for the Preliminary Investigations” (GIP), compli-

_antly signed most of the preventive detention orders the Milan Pool had requested, and of Di Pietro, who was to have flown to Switzerland to follow a FIAT money trail, When FIAT officials learned that Di Pietro

“was sniffing around the Swiss banks they used, they made it clear that

“they would oppose the banks’ turning over any documents to him. On April 23, 1/ Giornale exposed an open conflict between Judge Ghicti

+ and the Pool.

| The case causing the dust-up involved'four senior FIAT managers* who _had been ensnared in the Jangentopoli web. Money that had gone illegally

to political parties had been traced back to FIAT, to these executives. For weeks they remained at large, outside the country,’ and the warrants | against them were never executed. Instead, some private conversations were held with FIAT Managing Director Cesare Romiti, who came to

Milan to chat with the Pool—for four hours. After the conversations it was announced that Di Pietro was not really in Switzerland working on the FIAT case, but had had a long-standing appointment to pursue a more

generalized research there.

As for the four managers on the lam, the agreement was, according to

“one source, that they would get “soft” treatment,$ which meant questioning and release or, at worst, house arrest. But Judge Ghitti ruined the ‘satisfaction felt within the Pool after these negotiations;* he had not been

in on the conversations, was not bound by anything decided there, and, just as he had no trouble signing any arrest warrant the Pool put before

104 ~~ Chapter 12

him, his lapidary sense of how his duties should be discharged saw no

reason to make an exception of the FIAT managers. “These orders are

going to be executed,” Ghitti declared. “I don’t know anything about

any negotiations. I haven’t been a party to any agreements. . . . From now on, this judge will question them only in San Vittore.”” Ghitti went fur-

ther, exposing how things work in the Milan prosecutor's office. He said

that he did not agree with the use of arrest warrants as an instrument of pressure against suspects: “Here is an arrest warrant, but if you talk we let you go.” Irascible Judge Ghitti was getting out of line. Worse yet, 1] Giornale’s exposure of Judge Ghitti’s concerns about the

handling of the FLAT cases led Tiziana Maiolo, then chairing the parlia-

mentary Justice Committee, to ask, “Does one law exist for {ordinary]

citizens and another for the management of FIAT?” Maiolo indicated

that she wanted to investigate whether there had been “negotiations” be-

tween FIAT and the Milan Pool.

Corviere della Sera characterized Romiti’s long session with the Pool

as very general talks, in which Romiti outlined “the organization of company branches involved in the system of corruption in order to explain how the top levels of FIAT had nothing to do with the negotiations about

kickbacks, which were handled by individual managers,” Although the relations between FIAT and the Pool were such that nobody from the auto firm was likely to suffer, Romiti was making certain: If anybody saw the inside of San Vittore, it would be colonels, not the generals.

Romiti gave a “general description of the ‘phenomenon of the environ-

ment’ of the kickbacks,” volunteering to send the Pool a memorandum

about the network of payoffs. If the Corriere story was accurate, then the

question we will pose at the end—Can we really swallow the idea that

FIAT and Olivetti were not involved in the system?—becomes simply, Why did FIAT and Olivetti executives not pay the same price for their

involvement as that paid by other business leaders? Romiti covered these questions, on the day after the exposure of FIAT’s problem, with a thick syrup of pieties in a letter to Corriere della Sera:

“(IJ recent years many people had warned of the progressive moral degradation into which the country was falling. Men of culture and some enlightened politicians had worried aloud about the massive dimensions that the illegality had reached. .. . It is for this reason that, after a long period of inertia . .. the initiatives developed by the magistracy in recent

months appear to be of great importance because they are an instrument of acceleration of the process of change so widely desired.” Romiti concluded by declaring that “my ambition is to be able to make a contribution to allowing our children and our grandchildren to live in a

democratic country.”

Exactly how the affair related to democracy he did not make clear, but

Differences in Treatment: Cagliari and Romiti ~= 105 giving a contribution, especially in envelopes under tables, had been a

longstanding FIAT practice, as Di Pietro had already discovered in the case of the four executives on the lam. FIAT may be just a corporation,

but Romiti imbued it with human qualities: “Even FIAT, which had a clear perception of the degradation [of the country] and had denounced

it forcefully, has been amazed by the revelation of the breadth and depth

of the phenomenon.”” 71 Giorno gagged a bit at the hypocrisy: “ ‘Even P—concedes the Number Two of the group whose profits top 50 trillion {lire][i.c., Romiti of FIAT], falling into the unusual guise of the victim—

‘notwithstanding my role and my not-always-flexible character—I suffered genuine vexations.’ Romiti did another favor for the Pool. After his conversations with

the magistrates, he called the president of Confindustria, Italy’s major

industrial association (similar to the National Association of Manufactur-

ers, but far more powerful in the Italian context), to discuss a public ap-

peal to the country’s business leaders urging them to “follow the new line

of collaboration with the magistrates that has been adopted by FIAT."

News about the investigations was an important weapon in the coup,

as we have seen. But the FIAT affair was just the opposite: an embarrass-

ment all around, and the trigger for unpleasant comments by Maiolo and Judge Ghitti. The magistrates demonstrated how different this unintended leak was from the others by holding a meeting to compare texts and try to understand how the leak had occurred; one newspaper said that “the

end of the world exploded” in the Pool’s offices,'* even though none of the previous extensive “leaks” had caused any stir whatsoever. The Pool

magistrates opened a formal inquiry,” even though it raised questions about the difference between their reaction in this case and their reaction to all the leaks that had been useful to their political project. One of the journalists grilled by the Pool was Frank Cimini, a veteran

judicial correspondent (of nineteen years) for Naples’ // Mattino, Interviewed months later by the professional journal of Italian journalists,

Cimini recalled the incident: “I too, like the other reporters who work on Operation Clean Hands, have been questioned by Gerardo D’Ambrosio.

[D’Ambrosio] explained to me that the investigation had been opened

because, for the first time, the names of persons had been published before any formal acts had been taken relative to those people. I answered

that it was not the first time and gave a series of examples.” Nothing came of the investigation, publicly at least. But the journalists who were not part of the Pool’s cheering section felt the pressure. As Cimini commented: “A prosecutor should have a [consistent] line: open

an investigation every time there is a leak. Or never open one.’? How had the leak occurred? Romiti did not have an attorney with him; the only people in the room were Romiti and three members of the Clean

106 =~ Chapter 12

Hands Pool (Di Pietro, Davigo, and Colombo). So there was little chance that a mole had been among those present. We cannot suggest the answer here, but it is interesting to note that, a year later, when the magistrates

wanted to transcribe a very sensitive document that Di Pietro had written

by hand, Davigo did the job himself on his own computer, not the office

computer, remarking later that, once it was into the office system, the

document would have been available to, among others, at least ten clerks.

And we know that the magistrates made a record of the conversation with Romiti, because they spoke of comparing the L’Espresso text with their

text.

When Cimini wrote that the prosecutors had agreed not to prosecute

Romiti (which seems obvious), the Pool’s reaction was to open legal proceedings against Cimini. Casting another shadow over the whole FIAT problem was the fact, for which credible witnesses were beginning to appear, that important

kickbacks had been made by FIAT to the Communist Party.* There is

no suggestion in all this that FLAT and the PCI/PDS were active partners

in a political adventure. They had had their skirmishes through the years. But these periods of hostility—most notably immediately after then-PCI chief Enrico Berlinguer was disappointed in his effort to achieve the historic compromise in the mid-1970s~—-alternated with periods of consider-

able

cooperation.

‘he

Communist

labor

union,

CGIL,

was

vastly

preferred. to the irascible autonomous unions as a bargaining partner. Many businessmen believed that the Communists could produce better

discipline on the shop floor than did the Christian Democrats throughout

the strike-plagued period of the 1960s to 1980s. Anything may have

seemed better than the governmental ineptitude and inflated funding de-

mands levied recently by the Socialists and Christian Democrats.

The conflict between Ghitti and the Pool over the FIAT arrest warrants

became the talk of the corridors of the Palace of Justice. It was well known

that orders for the preventive detention of the four FIAT managers had

been held in the drawers of the Pool’s desks for days, perhaps in the hope

that the four managers themselves would come in spontaneously, Lawyers representing some of the true victims of the Pool began complaining:

“There are major Jeague suspects and minor league suspects.”” It was

this apparent discrimination among suspects (which would become an old

story during the next year) that bothered Judge Ghitti. Romiti appeared to have tidied up matters with the Pool, but enough details had now leaked out that FIAT faced dangers from all the other

magistrates in the country, including especially those in FIAT’s home

base of Turin. Many of these magistrates were unsympathetic to the Pool and antagonistic to the politics of Magistratura Democratica. They would not let the tidiness endure. Nor would this journalist, among a few others:

Differences in Treatment: Cagliari and Romiti >

107

Now everybody knows the mess Romiti is in, It’s a serious mess, hard to fix. If you plug a leak, a tap opens; close the tap, it seeps through the wall. Things are going badly at FIAT. The political crisis, of which Romiti has been an active and knowing agent . . . is now out of control... , Romiti, unlike Craxi, has kept his footing.» Number Three in FIAT management, after Gianni Agnelli and Cesare

Romiti, was Paolo Mattioli, the financial director of the FIAT Group, and

Romiti’s trusted right-hand man. Mattioli would always deny the involvement of top management in the payment of bribes and kickbacks, maintaining that the company did not tolerate such practices, Therefore, if

any kickbacks were discovered, they had to be the responsibility of lower

levels—of managers of the smaller companies that made up the FLAT Group.

But another top manager spoiled the company line. Antonio Mosconi,

who had run a couple of the major FIAT enterprises, including its insur-

ance company, was tied to Gianni Agnelli’s brother Umberto. One as-

sumes he had bad relations with Romiti. because the internal warfare between Romiti and Umberto is FIAT’ legend. Mosconi decided to con-

fess, revealing the existence of a coded bank account (code name Sacisa)

in the Swiss bank BUC (for Banca Unione di Credito di Lugano), a bank

totally controlled by FLAT. Mosconi said it was used for paying kickbacks

and for general financing of political parties through transfers from one coded account to another. Mosconi was the first top manager of the Turin

company to reveal the direct involvement of Romiti. But the Pool held

the Romiti file and so Romiti avoided arrest, or even avvisi, until mid-

1997. He answered Mosconi’s charges with a brief deposition before the Milan magistrates, all in private, with no leaks this time, and thereby closed the case with the Pool.

As we will see, however, some Turin prosecutors were at work prepar-

ing an unpleasant surprise for Romiti in 1997. 8

oe

The FIAT chief may not have seen a jail cell, but Gabriele Cagliari was

still locked up in San Vittore. His incarceration reached its forty-sixth

day on April 26, 1993. On that date, Judge Ghitti issued a new order for

the continued preventive detention of Cagliari, with two new accusations: fraud and illegal financing of political parties, But the facts of the new

accusations were those to which Cagliari had fully confessed during the first hours of his incarceration. According to the magistrates themselves,

all the necessary evidence against all the suspects had already been lected. The fraud charge, for example, is one that is normally based tirely on documents, and the magistrates already possessed all documents in question. So there was no way that Cagliari, given his

colenthe lib-

108 ~~~ Chapter 12

erty, could alter the evidence, Not a single plausible legal ground for Cag-

Iiar’s retention can be found in any of the judgments issued by Ghicti.

The effect of all this, we know from Cagliari’s letters, was to drive him

almost mad. Reminding that Cagliari had confessed to everything, his lawyer again

requested his freedom. At one time, the question had been whether the

magistrates, in fact, possessed all the documents necessary to prove all the

charges to which Cagliari had already confessed: There were figures and details chat Cagliari did not know. The banker Pacini Battaglia brought in the additional documents sought; there appeared to be nothing signifi-

cant that the magistrates, claiming that they were holding Cagliari to prevent his poisoning the well of evidence, could think of that they did not

already have. Then or since, no grounds have ever been given to justify

the refusal of, at least, house arrest. Cagliari would have been prevented

from seeing anyone but his attorneys. His telephone would have been tapped. But that was not what the magistrates were after. ‘Their interest

was politics, not law enforcement, Cagliari stayed in prison because he would not point the finger.

Notes

1. Eugenio Scalfari, “Il signore delle mosche vi ha preso Panima,” La Repubblica, 7 April 1993. 2. La Repubblica, 23 April 1993. The country, extremely splintered at this moment, was also markedly regionalized, The Christian Democrats risked becoming a southern party, the PDS found its strength in the Red Belt of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, and both groups badly trailed the Northern League in the industrial triangle and the Veneto. 3, The most senior was Giorgio Garuzzo, chief of production at FLAT headquarters on Corso Marconi in ‘Turin, 4, G. Di Feo, “Milano, braccio di ferro sul caso Fiat,” Carriere, 23 April 1993, 7.

5. P. Colaprico and L. Fazzo, “ ‘La Fiat? Si presenti a San Vittore,’” La Repubblica, 23 April 1993, 5. 6. Colaprico and Fazzo, ‘La Fiat?” "5. 7. Ciced in Emanuela Mastropietro and Raffaella Rietmann, “Ghitti: ‘niente patti con la Fiat,” 11 Giornale, 23 April 1993, 8. Colaprico and Fazzo, “ ‘La Fiat?” 5. 9, Cited in G, Di Feo, “Milano, braccio di ferro.” 10, Ibid. 11. Luigi Ferrarella, “E il dottore sapeva fin dal lontano 1991 (Che cosa serive il settimanale sulla deposizione del numero due di corso Marconi),” I Giorno, 24 April 1993, 5.

Differences in Treatment: Cagliari and Romiti >

109

12, “Dibattito—Una lettera di Romiti: stupiti dal degrado tanto profondo,” II Giorno, 25 April 1993, 5. Also quoted on page 5 of La Stampa of the same date. 13. “Dibattito,” 5. 14, Ferrarella, “E il dottore sapeva,” 5. 15, Ibid, 16, Paolo Colonnello, “I! mistero della talpa in Procura,” ZI Giorno, 24 April 1993, 5. 17. Susanna Marzolla, “Fuga di notizie sulla deposizione,” La Stampa, 24 April 1993, 5. 18. Cited in Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno di spitfferi,” Prima Comunicazione,

April 1994,

19, Tbid. 20. ‘This document was, in fact, an avoiso di garanzia against the prime minister. 21. Marco Travaglio, “Papi: si, abbiamo pagato il PCI,” I! Giornale, 1 Jane

1993, 9.

22. ‘Travaglio, “Papi: si, abbiamo pagato il PCI,” 9. 23. Giuliano Ferrara, “Cesare Romiti: E il Craxi degli imprenditori,” Epoca, 4 May 1993.

13

weer

Parliament Confronts the Pool

AN

t the end of this fateful month of April 1993, by far the cruelest

month for those who had ruled Italy throughout forty-five years of economic miracle and profound ideological struggle, the Parliament was finally faced with the demand of the magistrates to lift the parliamentary immunity on Bettino Craxi, as the Senate had already done in Andreotti’s case on April 27. Andreotti had agreed to the lifting of the immunity. Craxi did not. But the Socialists and Christian Democrats did not have the votes to reject the request.

Craxi did, however, have an asset that came from Paris. The Fédération

Internationale des Droits de ’ Homme had sent a mission to look into the actions of the Milan Pool, and had rendered a judgment, always in the

prudent and respectful language of international organizations. The mission charged the Milan magistrates with making “extensive” and “systematic” use of preventive detention. It noted that the Pool justified these practices by saying that they were preventing a “poisoning” of the evidence. But, said the mission, there could be no doubt that these jailings

had “in reality the aim of exerting pressure to obtain confessions of guilt

and the denouncing of accomplices.” Some of the magistrates had admit-

ted this publicly, but they had stressed the “effectiveness” of the method,

‘The jailings, however, were in violation of both Article 275 of the new Italian criminal procedure code and of international standards of human

rights. The mission added that the Pool’s behavior was “even more worrisome because it seems today to be outside any type of control.” The mission also observed that the role of “purifier” that the Milan

magistrates attributed to themselves, “and that they publicly proclaim,

raises delicate questions of the relation between judicial power, executive

power, and legislative power; and not only because many politicians are objects of a majority of the cases, along with industrialists and business110

Parliament Confronts the Pool ~-* 111 men, but for the distortion of these relationships, which can... cause a

worrisome collapse of democratic order.” With this report in his hand, Craxi addressed his colleagues on April

29. He noted that the only hard evidence offered against him by the Pool

had come from his own speech about party financing, the year before, to

the Chamber of Deputies, “I never denied the reality, never minimized it,

never underestimated the moral, political and institutional significance of

the issues that have burst into the open.” Craxi described the “degenera-

tion” of the system of financing politics in Italy, “the illegality that’s been there for a long time, maybe from time immemorial.”

He asserted that everybody knew that most of the party financing in

Italy was either irregular or illegal, and challenged anyone in the Chamber

to deny it. Nobody responded. He also raised the issue of foreign financ-

ing of some of the parties (meaning, of course, the Warsaw Pact money

that had gone to the Communist Party), saying that “everybody knew

and nobody said anything.”

But however negative one’s opinion of the irregular financing of the parties, “it must not be used by anyone as dynamite to blow up a system,

to make a whole political class illegitimate,” to create a climate in which

there cannot be an effective reform, but only collapse and political ‘‘ad-

venture.” That was, of course, exactly the situation Italy faced. Instead of

correction and reform, there was a criminalization of parties and politicians though a process that was “often generalized and indiscriminate.” Craxi predicted that the list of crimes, pentiti, and scandals would become

“interminable.”

Craxi next turned to the role of the newspapers and magazines supporting the magistrates:

"The propaganda campaigns have featured . . . brutal simplifications. This job is being done by a part of the press, going far beyond the proper rights and duties of information media, often distorting beyond measure, exalting the arguments of the accusers and ignoring those of the defense, trampling with no respect the guaranteed constitutional rights so that defense becomes practically impossible, often creating a wicked atmosphere that has descoyed people and families, and produced tragedy. Craxi, unlike many other politicians, then openly admitted that his party was not financed according to the law, a confession that he later made, simply and openly, in the courtroom. But the system did not start

in the 1980s, he noted. Its “roots, as everybody knows, are much older

and shared by all the forces that have battled each other.” The search for funds, in violation of “a financing law that is hypocritical, was hypocritically accepted, and generally not respected, is a part of the history of

112 ~~ Chapter 13 Italian political society, its bitter conflicts, its contradictions, and its deep

shadows, from the end of the war up to today.” Craxi’s further diagnosis was one with which most scholars and observers have agreed: that the prolonged monopoly of power by the same

parties had made the field fertile for abuse of that power. Since all were involved in the system, Craxi had previously called for a parliamentary

inquiry followed by new laws, rather than the selective guillotining by a

small group of magistrates. It was the Parliament’s responsibility because it was the Parliament that had regularly approved (as required by law!) transparently phony party budgets and had established organs of control that had not controlled. This system had been “accepted by consensus

and shared by all.” It-was also the system “which all the major industrial’ groups in the country, private and public, had participated in and contrib-

uted to.” He emphasized that he meant all the groups, including those

owning groups of newspapers and magazines.

The sins of the Pool were next:

Who has not watched the arrests that are illegal, easy . .. spectacular, even capricious, in the face of a civilization of rights and a standard of law that, even in our country, considers arrest an extreme measure? Who has not watched the illegal detentions that drain the life out of habeas corpus, the detentions for forcing confessions that are completely contrary to what is accepted practice? Who has not watched the confiscations . .. especially in political party offices, that arc manifestly useless but valuable for the... spectacle of defamation? We see every day the systematic violation of investigation secrets . . . dictated by various interests . . . including political interests. Is there anyone who has not seen the exemplary political timing of planned operations? When justice goes by the political clock, this is an aberration in itself. As an example, Craxi cited the arrests on the eve of the formation of local governments, the specially timed pre-electoral operations, the

scoops leaked to journals according to precise political timing, and, of course, the calculated disparity in the treatment given different cases.

Tn what democracy on earth, any time in this century, have judicial inves tigations and the harrowing climate that has been created around them been able to provoke so many suicides, attempted suicides, and unexpected deaths? In what free and civil country on earth are so many summary trials conducted in the piazza of public opinion, have so many public lynchings taken place, and have so many convictions been rendered even before any courtroom trial? He then went over the elements of his own case in order to show the evidence for asserting that he was being persecuted. The “‘smoke of perse-

Parliament Confronts the Pool ~=> 113

cution” is grounds for a vote against the lifting of parliamentary immunity. Persecution should be suspected, he said, whenever investigations proceed before an avviso di garanzia is sent to the suspect and before Parliament has given authorization to proceed. He noted the ransacking

of his office, and those of his wife and his son, the family dwelling of his

secretary and, on the same night, his daughter’s house in Milan and her office in Rome. They were made to look like robberies.

‘The smoke of persecution could also be seen when the secret (by law)

investigations “are. systematically leaked and given, step by step, and al-

ways with great and singular promptness, in all their details and with other kinds of indiscretions, to the press.” He noted the distortions of that press. The leaks also included those from other cases that mentioned

him. They included the transcripts of the interrogations, immediately distributed. Even depositions that defense attorneys were not allowed to read

were given to the press in their entirety and promptly published. “And

thus, in the last few months, a violent campaign of defamation has been

deliberately nurtured, one of such brutality and of such a nature as to

have no precedent, at least up to this moment, in the whole history of our nation.”?

This was a self-serving speech, of course, but it so accurately described

the situation, without

exaggeration,

that observers

indicated

that the

members of the house were moved. Despite the fact that the Socialists and Christian Democrats did not have a majority, the Pool’s request was

defeated by a heavy: majority on all of their charges against Craxi; Roman

magistrates were allowed to proceed with an investigation of illicit party financing. In the Chamber, two bellicose law-and-order parties, the

ex-Fascist

Italian Social Movement/National Right (MSI-DN) and the Sicilian Rete

set off an uproar. Leoluca Orlando, who dominates the Rete, has said frequently that “suspicion is the antechamber of truth.” The PDS organized a rally in Rome’s baroque Piazza Navona, “by coincidence” just a few yards from Craxi’s quarters in the tiny Hotel Raphael. “Spontaneously,” a group of PDS militants gathered in front of the hotel, shouting

threats.

A newsphoto’ showed the Rete’s official spokesman in the front

row of the mob, but the Clean Pens newspapers called it a spontaneous

demonstration, Craxi was due at a television studio and refused police

requests to cancel or to leave by a back door. Some accounts say the crowd tried to attack him, others say it merely threatened him and threw coins at him and his police escort. In Milan, the PDS organized a demon-

stration of solidarity with the Pool, during which an effigy of Craxi in prison garb was carried through the streets, providing another photo spread for La Repubblica.

The vote caused heated polemics throughout Italy and has been treated

114 ~ Chapter 13 with scorn by outside commentators. The conventional wisdom is that

everyone who voted with Craxi did it for the most venal reasons, and that everyone who supported the magistrates’ request voted thus out of

nobility. According to this view, whose popularity continues, all who

worry about either the procedures or the politics of the Pool must want to absolve the Pool’s victims from the corruption charges. That was the

position taken by Borrelli himself when his self-control failed him and he

issued a vengeful public starement after the vote was announced, saying that those who voted for Craxi’s immunity were trying to stave off his

conviction. Carla Mosca observed in J] Giorno that it was “grave” for a

magistrate to presume guilt.

Because the Parliament had entered into the substance of the accusa~ tions against Craxi, Borrelli complained that it was “invading the area of

competence of the judiciary.” This assertion seems more bellicose than

reasoned, since it is difficult to render a judgment on whether there is evidence of persecution, which the Parliament is required by law to do,

without looking at the substance of the accusations. Borrelli’s boss, Milan general prosecutor Giulio Catelani, may have cast Borrelli’s wrath in the

proper light with his own comment: “Operation Clean Hands is a kind of legal revolution. When you're making a revolution, you can’t turn back.”* ‘The fact is that the 300-plus deputies who voted with Craxi would have included many outside the PSI and DC. By the rules of the Chamber

of Deputies then in force, the vote was secret. After the denial of the

authorization to proceed, Giorgio Napolitano, the president of the house,

pressed by his own party (PDS), convoked the Rules Committee, which he himself chairs, A majority made up of Christian Democrats and PDS

(an “hiscoric compromise majority”), with the support of the neo-Fascist

MSI/DN and Rete, decided that from then on such votes would be open. The whole event made clear the fact that there were some doubts repre-

sented in the Chamber that day, doubts about the growing odor of coup,

its perpetrators, their aims. But the vote on Craxi’s immunity was poorly

chosen as a way to express doubts about the gathering pace of the coup

and the magistrates’ role in it. The Conso decree-law, although the Pool branded it as nothing more than an effort to spring some of the guilty

from jail, would have been, in its overall sweep, a step forward in the protection of civil liberties and defendants’ rights. ‘The vote on Craxi’s

immunity, representing a more complex set of motives than is generally

acknowledged, also had some clear elements of the rallying of a dying establishment to save itself, The complexity of the motives is shown by

the number of deputies outside the PST and DC who voted for it, at least

some of whom were clearly voting their conscience. The probable una~

nimity of the PSI and DG vote, on the other hand, was not a sign of

deputies voting their conscience but, rather reflected the old discipline

Parliament Confronts the Pool =

115

still at work. The totals made Craxi’s victory look fixed—as, in terms of those votes that were party-line, it undoubtedly was. So, whereas the Chamber’s rejection may have momentarily frustrated the Pool, it was a

step forward for the coup.”

Borrelli used the Chamber vote for one of the most political public

statements he had thus far issued: “The Parliament, as everybody knows,

is what it is. It has not changed and is the expression of the old party logic.” La Repubblica splashed the word vergogna, shame, across its cover. This front page was virtually designed to be made into a placard,

so the demonstrators in front of Craxi’s hotel carried replicas of it. Book

The polls gave the PDS every reason to believe that, following the first

election by the new electoral system, it would finally govern Italy. The men who had stood in the way of the PCI/PDS, especially CAP—Craxi,

Andreotti, and Forlani—had been destroyed, not in the voting booth or

the courtroom, but in the pages of newspapers that happened, day after

day, to be the recipient of detailed and complete “leaks” from the magis-

trates, some of whom, twenty years earlier, had determined to carry out just such a overturn. Industrialists who started 1992 believing that their

situation had become intolerable were already fecling the relief of no

longer paying such a high price to support Italy’s party system. And Ital-

ian Communists, whose story seemed, in the 1980s, to be coming to an

end, could now confidently expect to have some of the “‘official”’ political

fruits that had been denied to them throughout forty long years of being

the largest Communist Party in the world that never governed its country.

‘The optimism of the PDS and its allies was based on an easy reading of

the possibilities. They were not standing alone in the rubble of the First

Republic, of course. There were a couple of noisy movements: Orlando’s

Rete in Sicily, which combined anti-Mafia manifestos with leftist policies, and the northern secessionists led by Umberto Bossi.* And there were a couple of quietly dangerous movements: a post-Fascist party that was transforming itself into an effective and more respectable player on the

national stage, and the possibility that Mario Segni could still convert his

reform movement into a centrist party. But the revolutionaries could take

comfort from the fact that anyone who had been associated with Craxi ind the old regime clearly had no political future, that the world was jivided into (1) the PDS and associates, leading decisively in all opinion

polls; (2) the old gang, completely discredited; and (3) outsiders/newcomns. That someone from the second category could emerge as a leader of the third category seemed impossible. They had overlooked Silvio Berlus-

soni,

But until Berlusconi burst on the stage in late January 1994, the path of the coup seemed smooth, with the Northern League the most nettlesome

116 ~~ Chapter 13

problem, Even terrorist bombs going off in Rome (on May 14) and Florenee (on May 27, killing five people, injuring twenty-nine, and badly damaging a wing of the Uffizi gallery)—and then not going off, but discovered

and defused, in a FIAT 500 parked near Palazzo Chigi in Rome, housing

the prime minister’s office—seemed to help the Left, since the attacks were originally thought to be of rightist origin” In fact, Borrelli turned these events to the coup’s public advantage by asserting, against all evidence, that they represented efforts to intimidate

the Pool. Corriere reported that Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Saverio Borrelli reasoned thus: We magistrates represent that which is new in Italy; therefore, every disruption is to be seen as an effort to slow our

progress, and is the product of those political forces we are destroying."

Senator Ugo Pecchioli of the PDS, for years the PCI’s “shadow” justice minister, declared that “there are many forces that today have an interest in opposing themselves to that which is new and forward-moving.”"

Borrelli even suggested that his and the other magistrates’ lives were in

danger.”

‘As it turned out, the Florence bombing, and perhaps some of the oth-

ers, were probably the work of the Mafia and had nothing to do with the

magistrates. The sad fact is that when the Mafia has had magistrates as its targets, it has acted directly and effectively, as the deaths of Falcone and

Borsellino testify, not by taking it out on some monuments. Notes

1. The law requires, among other chings, that any financing, otherwise legal,

received from a business or other entity that is more than 5 million fire (about

$3,000) must be noted in the party budget. ‘This clause, like others, was never

respected by any of the major parties. But then most such donations were not

“otherwise legal” anyway, because that legality requires that no favor of any kind

be exchanged for the “donation.” Cf. Ernesto Galli Della Loggia, “La via sbagliata,” Corriere, 7 March 1993, 1-3.

2. All of the foregoing quotes are from the text of Craxi’s April 29, 1993, speech to the Chamber of Deputies. Amplification of many of his points is found in the

second volume of Bettino Craxi: [1 Caso C, (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1994).

3. Published in I! Venerdi di Repubblica.

4. Il Giorno, { May 1993.

5, Cited in Goffredo 1993, 5. 6. Ibid.

Buccini, “Borrelli sconcertato,”

Corriere, 30 March

7. The vote did not have the support even of the independent journalists

working outside the papers friendly to the Pool. Consequently, no doubting voices were heard on this occasion about the overall course of Mani Pulite.

Parliament Confronts the Pool =

117

8. For an analysis of the Northern League, and the problems it represented for the future builders of the Second Republic, see Stanton Burnett, “Will Italy

Split in Two?” The International Economy, July-August 1995.

9, More bombs exploded on July 27, in Milan and Rome. But they did not prove to be the beginning of a campaign. Indeed, the bombs will probably not take on political importance unless a clear perpetrator emerges. Evidence made public since these dates points more to the Mafia than anywhere else. 10. Corriere, 29 May 1993. On July 27, there was an attack on the Padiglione

di Arte Contemporanea in Via Palestro in Milan. The Pool did not miss the op-

portunity to advertise itself and slander the politicians, declaring that the attack should be attributed to “the old gang who still resists.”

11, Cited in Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di un inquisitore

(Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 113.

12. See, for example, the Corriere headline of 8 August 1993: “Alarm: Attacks,

Borrelli in Danger.” On July 28, the Pool had called the press into the conference

room of the Milan prosecutor, where the Clean Hands squad all sat in a row while

D’Ambrosio, the Pool magistrate closest to the PDS, acted out their drama in a

way that Italy’s true magistrate-heroes (Falcone and Borsellino in Palermo) never did. The press quoted D’ Ambrosio as saying: “We are even disposed to give our lives, if it’s necessary. We will do our duty all the way. If we had been afraid, we would not have chosen this profession.”

14

weer

The Red Togas and Their Thought I

f Di Pietro is the most celebrated, but also the most enigmatic, of the revolutionaries-in-judicial-togas, and Davigo and Colombo are the

most interesting theorists, Borrelli is the most important. He is the

chief, He is within the bailiwick of, but is not really supervised by, Milan General Prosecutor Giulio Catelani, who, as we will see below, some-

had doubts about the Pool’s tactics; but the work of the Milan Pool has

Borrelli at its vortex. Whereas Borrelli possesses a pallor and reserve that seem almost aristocratic, and is a bourgeois judge who is the son of a

bourgeois judge, the burly, swarthy, energetic Di Pietro, who lives at

shout, had joined other poor Italians in emigrating to Germany, then became a policeman and went to night school to gain the education that permitted him to pass the magistrates’ examination. Since Di Pietro did

not share the politics of his main Pool colleagues (clearly the case despite

his 1997 entrance into electoral politics on the Left), Borrelli was in the position of unleashing Di Pietro at one moment, then taking action away

from his “unpredictable” (Borrelli’s word) attack dog at another, Al-

though those many Italians who believe that everyone is politicized would

be skeptical, this characterization may be close to the truth. Di Pietro, for example, never joined any of the magistrates’ associations and factions.

Even Di Pietro’s successful 1997 run for the Senate was based on no dis-

cernible political line (except constant repetition of the word moderate),

but had more to do with popularity and the securing of a long-term role and pulpit. So, although Di Pietro has gotten most of the headlines and is the tireless motor of the most important investigations we are following, it is Borrelli we must understand. The task is not an easy one. Some of BorrelIi’s bizarre ideas about the role of the judiciary veer between exaltation 118

T

times acknowledged sharing in the revolutionary spirit and sometimes

Red ‘Togas and Their Thought “> 119 and hysteria. The judiciary’s role, according to him, is to impose moral

absolutes in a Manichean world: “It was our job to divide men into good

and bad.” At other times he sounds almost lyrical: “It is unjust to ask us

too frequently for a comment, an explanation of our activity. It would be like asking a poet to put, at the bottom of the page, the explanation of each of his poems.” Or religious: “In Italy there are priests who have felt our ethical commitment.” On the same trip to Brazil that was the occasion of Borrelli’s remark

about the priests, his colleague Gherardo Colombo expressed dissatisfac~

tion with the lack of support the Pool had received from the Pope and the Vatican hierarchy.’ At this point, the Vatican had had enough and ven-

tured to voice a criticism of the Milan Pool. The Vatican daily newspaper editorialized: “So it’s really true. The Pool has become disoriented. Why

do they expect support from ecclesiastical circles? A magistrate should

not seek external help, So perhaps the moment has arrived for the Pool to work without a lot of noise and without demagogic posturing. And with a style that would be a synthesis of legality, reserve, and respect for the

dignity of the person.”

Borrelli’s assertion that some priests were “with” the Pool and his colleague’s complaint that this support did not go far enough are strange ideas for a man who tends to blame the Church for Italy’s corruption. Borrelli went out of Italy, speaking to an interviewer for the Vienna daily

Der Standard, to say “the fault is partly the Church’s.”* His reasoning is that a culture based on the Revealed Word will always be centralized, will

always put too much power in just a few hands. Catholicism also leads to a personalizing of power, according to Borrelli, different from the egali-

tarianism of socialism. Enzo Biagi is a popular columnist who interviewed Borrelli about his

life and thought in 1992.5 Noting that “[hJe measures his words, as in a

police movie,” Biagi reported that Borrelli vacationed in Czechoslovakia

and that he “very rarely” regretted any of his decisions. Borrelli’s thought included.a strong expression of approval for the way Communist countries treated bribe-takcers, astonishing in a man whose family background

and reputation are both purely bourgeois.

Biagi asked him what kinds of crime one should treat most severely.

“Certainly more severe for those that are called ‘white collar crimes,’”

Borelli answered. And he asked the question we consider at the beginning

and end of this study: Why was Operation Clean Hands launched when it was, since the crimes were part of a long-standing system? Borrelli’s answer was a non-answer: They had never before gotten people to talk. As with the Mafia investigations, the Pool needed pentiti. Borelli did not say why they emerged in February 1992. How, asked Biagi, did Borrelli protect his “moral independence?” Bor-

120 ~~ Chapter 14 relli: “That is no problem at all... , No one makes an obscene pass at a proper lady, There has to be a little encouragement.” Borrelli is a Neapolitan in his sixties who studied in Florence and mar-

ried a Florentine. He is the son of Manlio Borrelli, who was president of the Court of Appeals of Milan from 1952 to 1959. And Manlio’s father

was, in turn, a celebrated magistrate who was president of the Court of

Appeals of Potenza. (It gets to the fourth generation: One of Borrelli’s two sons is also a magistrate.)

If the pale, severe coldness of the son is itself memorable, the father’s

personality was legendary: “tall, dry, always elegant.” Possessing a light Neapolitan accent, Manlio Borrelli was cultivated and a brilliant conversa-

tionalist, “with an extraordinary charisma and fascination,” according to

Michele Saponara, head of the Milan lawyers’ association.§ Though often

distant in manner, he was devoted to the idea that magistrates were too isolated, that they should know the world and become known by the

world. His son, on the other hand, told Biagi that for long periods he had no friends.

Manlio Borrelli retired in Milan in 1959 because the law sets the age limit at seventy. Francesco Saverio Borrelli returned to the same city and

took up his own duties in 1980. In 1984, when Piero Pajardi, a former

student and great admirer of Manlio, became president of the same Court

of Appeals, he said to young Borrelli, “I’m keeping the seat warm for you. Yes, it’s your natural role: here there will once again be a Borrelli.””

Saponara agrees: “In my opinion, he’s always dreamed of gaining his father’s old seat. The Borrellis have the magistracy in their blood.... And

it would be best... he’s a judge more than a prosecutor.”*

In the Biagi interview, Borrelli confessed to the belief that nothing

should stand in the way of magistrates doing what they wished. As for the question of what it was the magistrates should be doing, Borrelli constitutes a peculiar mix across the lines of class/political stereotypes. Bor-

relli’s arrogance may be that of a judge from a judge’s family, with lofty

ideas about the role of judges, but he was also a founder of the leftist Magistratura Democratica.® There is, of course, a conceptual connection:

magistrates as the beacons, showing the way to the rest of society. Magis-

trates are like priests, administering The Law on earth. They should

occupy the top rung of society, above those who dirty their hands work -

ing to produce wealth. Since they administer the sacred law, they must

not be responsible to anyone, even if they might, in the end, seek popular

consensus for their actions. From the people, they seelx authorization to

be accuser, judge, and legislator, all in one. As these glory days of Tan-

gentopoli wore on, Borrelli made a series of public revelations, often comparing the Pool’s work to the French Revolution.

In May 1993 Borrelli launched a radio appeal for the collective mobili-

Red Togas and Their Thought ~~ 121

Milan pool chief Francesco Saverio Borrelli. (Foto De Bellis, Claudio Testa)

122 -~~ Chapter 14 zation of all the anonymous informers of Italy, whether they were pros, amateurs, or mere neophytes. Everyone, he said, had the responsibility to denounce everyone else; those who do not inform actually support the criminals. That was going too far for the lawyers who had to work the halls of Milan’s Palace of Justice, and they requested the intervention of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM). It was denied, But the lawyers’ complaint is worth reading in light of the further (after May

1993) progress of the coup. They said that Borrelli’s call to all Italians to

become informers was

an invitation contrary to an elementary principle of civilization, according to which those who formulate accusations must assume responsibility for them, ... The initiative of the Prosecutor of the Republic is pernicious for criminal justice itself because it can lead to an uncontrollable multiplication of denunciations. . . . (Such a wave of] denunciation can carry our country into a datle period in which no one can feel safe. The lawyers’ guild in Rome joined in, warning of the “risk of government

by judges” whose power has no political legitimation and whose own

“will to power can be seen to grow.”

Borrelli, in the face of this reaction, took a small step back, saying that he was merely reminding those who wished to become informers that they could do so through official circles and remain anonymous. But his

step back was not enough for Marco Pannella, long-time leader of the

Radical Party (which now bears his name), who combines political street

theater and protest fasts with a strong commitment to civil liberties.

Pannella accused Borrelli of having authoritarian ambitions. Borrelli lowered his volume even further and commented quietly that he understood that “those who don’t know me personally could get af impression like that.’

Throughout this debate, the newspapers and magazines owned by the major industrialists either supported Borrelli or, evidently embarrassed, did not report the exchanges. The path of the coup did not even suffer a detour when the general prosecutor of Milan, to whom all of the Milan Pool, including Borrelli,

reported, made a daring public revelation of what the “Red Togas” (as they were by now regularly labeled by the nonsupportive press) were

really up to: “Ours is a legal and wise revolution which has lasted a little

more than a year. Remember that the French Revolution began in 1789

and was completed only in 1794.” Borrelli was to make similar allusions

to the French Revolution in the months ahead. He told a newsweekly that “we [magistrates] have been the notaries and executors of something that was happening outside the palace of justice. ... One awaits only the spark that will make this mixture explode.’"*

Red ‘Togas and Their Thought ~> 123 But Francesco Saverio Borrelli’s father, Manlio, had seen the judge as

the opposite of the demagogue, one who contemplated and agonized rather than flaunting his certainty. He once said:

In his Republic Plato failed to say one thing about the well-ordered state" in such a state a judge should, throughout his career and devoting his entire existence to it, only study one case and then conclude it with a declaration of incompetence. It would be the only way to deserve your pension and retire with serenity.!3 Judge Italo Ghitti, the GIP (as noted, “Judge for the Preliminary Inyes-

tigations,” responsible for approving incarceration) to whom almost all

the Pool’s requests to arrest came, was the working judge who was probably in the best position to observe Operation Clean Hands. He revealed

his own concerns about what was happening: “The role of the magistrate

is to intervene in actual crimes, in cases of social deviation, but nothing

beyond that. The magistrates cannot be the masters who establish the value system. I confess that a government of judges truly frightens me.” A week after the Ghitti interview appeared, the magistrates’ coup took even clearer shape for those in the public who were attentive. Gerardo D’Ambrosio, the fatherly Number ‘Two of the Pool, had consistently been less discreet than the others about his political leanings and connections. He is openly leftist and acknowledges that his legal education was funded by the PCL.”

It was D’Ambrosio, therefore, who came to the rescue every time over-

zealous magistrates (usually outside the Milan Pool) started getting too

close to the PCI/PDS. On May 26, 1993, the Communist daily L’Unita

asked D’Ambrosio if Operation Clean Hands was finally nearing its conclusion. D’Ambrosio replied: “Conclusion in the sense that what was

supposed to emerge in the political-business trail [we have been exposing] has come out.” This indication that, from the beginning, the magistrates

knew what they intended to expose is revealing. D’Ambrosio, in more

recent interviews (through spring 1995), has made clear that the intention of the Milan magistrates was to destroy the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties, not to weed out a system of corruption in Italy. “Cor-

ruption was born when the world was born,” he said.'® Even more revealing is D’Ambrosio’s fairly open acknowledgment of the magistrates’

relation to the big industrialists who were probably central to the triggering of the coup, Cesare Romiti, managing director of FIAT (controlling,

therefore, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera), and Olivetti’s Carlo De

Benedetti (also, therefore, proprietor of the L’Espresso/La Repubblica group) had had to live with the fact that various party officials would mention financing received from their companies, along with all the oth-

124 ~- Chapter 14 ers. D’Ambrosio, with superb agility, managed to put this situation in a

favorable light.

Q: “It also seems, listening to you, that you give great importance to the recent depositions of Romiti and De Benedetti. Is that the case,

Dr. D’Ambrosio?”

D'Ambrosio: “. . . Suffice it to say that they have saved us from very long labors of verification. These are the voices of insiders. Authori-

tative voices, right? [Now] we think that our investigations can be concluded fairly rapidly, and this also thanks, in part, to the collabo-

ration of Romiti and De Benedetti.”

With a few turns of phrase, selected participants in alleged orimes become heroes of the army of the revolution,

soe

ow

‘The separatist Northern League had not entirely escaped investigation for

allegedly having taken money from business in violation of the campaign

finance law. But Umberto Bossi and his green-shirted League. troops still seemed to many northerners to be both new and appropriate as a northern reaction to southern corruption. That Jangentopoli, Bribe City, ap-

peared to be a very northern city did not entirely destroy the northern belief that corruption was a southern specialty. So on June 6, 1993, local

elections (with runoffs on June 20) were contested for more than a hundred city administrations, many of them very important. Because the

Northern League is generally, and correctly, considered a form of rightwing populism,” the political action in northern cities focused on the forming of Left and Center-Left coalitions to try to defeat Bossi’s candi-

dates.

Apart from some scattered successes by the League, the PDS, always in coalition with other groups, won more than 60 percent of the races.

Only 9 of the 122 newly elected mayors were Christian Democrats. The

Socialists lost more than 80 percent of their vote compared with their 1992 totals. The sequence of Socialist mayors of Milan, Craxi’s old power base, was broken with the election of the Northern League’s Marco

Formentini. The political topography of the First Republic was dead.

Commentators at the time disagreed about the future of the political

system. Moderates still held out hope for Mario Segni, leader of the elec-

toral reform movement. Bossi’s Northern League seemed to be the only effective force on the Right, since the “post-Fascists” carried the heavy

burden of their past and also because, as had been true for forty years,

they would not be invited to join any alliances. And the PDS hegemony

over the Left was secure, even enhanced. That constituted the conventional wisdom of the moment. Only the

Red ‘Togas and Their Thought ~~ 125 last statement proved to be true. Segni would self-destruct within six months. Within eighteen months Bossi would be on the Left (for electoral, not programmatic purposes, and only very temporarily). And not

taking seriously the new party growing out of the ashes of Fascism was a mistake; there was, in fact, a startling and steady growth on the Right,

creating a reasonably respectable coalition partner for moderate conserva-

tive parties. A week after the election, an oddity confirmed the judgment

of those who spoke of the practices of the Milan Pool as torture to force

prisoners to become informers. The Pool had consistently ignored clear

evidence of the PCI/PDS’s regular violations of the party financing law. (Magistrates in Venice and other cities, later, would Jaunch some investiga-

tions with which the Milan magistrates did not cooperate.) But, especially

with zealots such as Di Pietro, the control could not always be perfect. So, in the summer of 1993, the Lombardy PDS chief, Gianstefano Buzzi,

was hauled in. Before matters could be put back in order and Buzzi put

back on the street, he languished for several days and, in a June 15 letter,

confirmed that the characterization presented here of the Pool’s practices was no exaggeration. At one time, Buzzi wrote, confessions were obtained

“by means of physical torture.” But today’s preventive detention is the

same thing: “What difference does it make if the pressure—if we don’t want to call it torture—is psychological?””!

A few days earlier, Borrelli had given his wittiest response to the critics

of the Pool’s method of forcing citizens to talk: “We don’t incarcerate people to make them tall. We set them free after they have talked .. .”? Throughout the electoral collapse of the main parties of the First Re-

public, ENI’s president Cagliari had languished in prison, as Colombo

and Di Pietro kept the pressure on. And on June 18, the Pool launched an investigation into the Ferruzzi Group that would result in one of the two

most celebrated Mani Pulite suicides.

The magistrates’ moments in the headlines were about to come.

In that same summer of 1993, the president of the Republic was becom-

ing less certain that having some of Italy’s major business leaders languish in prison was a good idea. The president, as we saw, serves as the chairman of the CSM. President Scalfaro took the politically dangerous step of expressing publicly his concern about the Pool’s tactics, especially the practice of holding people in prison until they talked. He stated a plain historical truth: “All civil states suppressed the use of torture several centuries ago.” Borrelli took exception and took the unusual step of sending a warning, through La Repubblica, to the president: “I absolutely refuse

to believe that President Scalfaro could have come to the defense of those

being investigated, in the sense that he could have, in any way, expressed

solidarity with political and non-political personalities who have so gravely offended the laws of the state and, even worse, its ethical norms,”

126 «~~ Chapter 14 Tiziana Maiolo’s criticism, on the other hand, focused on the alliance

between the magistrates and the newspapers and magazines supporting them:

The Espresso-Repubblica group has been chosen by the magistracy as their

communications channel to the outside. The number of violations of judicial

secrecy by Espresso are beyond counting. But up to now nobody has opened

an investigation. . . "The Espresso-Repubblica group has supported, from the very beginning, the party of the magistrates, which today is very strong.

One must ask, at this point, how it is that De Benedetti and FIAT receive

favorable treatment. ... Why, for example, has Romiti not been arrested . ..? The prosecutor uses preventive detention to acquire information, indepen-

dent of that which is harvested by investigation, The discretional power of

the magistrate is, now, enormous. ... When the law becomes barbaric, bar-

barism becomes a law. . . . The magistrate behaves in his relation to the

suspect like an official of the Inquisition: “You must name names, must in-

terrupt all contact with your normal environment, must remain alone and

without friends, must become a non-person. To sum up, you must give me

your soul...

In the meantime the press has already convicted you and the

mud that has been thrown at you is so thick that you will never recover.

Giuliano Spazzali, a celebrated Italian attorney who would be the de-

fense attorney in Tangentopoli’s only big show trial (the Cusani trial, dis-

cussed later), commented on the predicament of the Milan magistrates when faced with evidence of the wrongdoing of “their” industrialists—

the ones who, especially through the media they controlled, provided the key support for the magistrates. In those cases the Pool changed its usual

practice of incarceration to force the victim to talk. Now, Spazzali said,

“for this formula, they substitute that of pardoning he who confesses

everything from the beginning, knowing that he thus will not be punished.”?5

Notes

1. Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di un inquisitore (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 179-180. 2, When, in an article in the daily La Notte, the former head of the DC in Milan made a confused reference to illegal funds that his party received from the Milan Curia, the Pool ignored this news. Nor were any explanations asked of Bettino Craxi when, testifying in the Cusani trial (see below), Craxi said that all the parties and institutions in Milan, including religious institutions, had participated in the system of illegal political financing, Di Pietro, usually a bulldog who followed up everything, did not ask a single question or raise an objection to Craxi’s assertion.

Red Togas and Their Thought ~~ 127

3. L’Osservatore Romano, 30 April 1995. 4, Cited in Marco Garzonio, “Borrelli sferza la Chiesa,” Corriere, 29 Decem-

ber 1993, 12.

5, Enzo Biagi, “Affarismo, male della politica,” Corriere, 17 May 1992, 8. 6. Cited in Venanzio Postiglione, “Il padre, giudice e gentiluomo,” Corriere,

31 December 1993, 2.

7. Cited in Postiglione, “Il padre,” 2. 8, Ibid. 9. Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno di spifferi,” Prima Comunicazione, April

1994,

10. This characterization was given by Lehner (in Borrelli), based on the Biagi interview. 11, Piero Colaprico, “Gli avvocati ‘L’emergenza sar’ perpetua,’” La Repub-

blica.

12. Lehner, Borrelli, 44. For the Borrelli appeal, see Corviere, 8 May 1993. For

all the exchanges, see Filippo Facci, Di Pietro: La Biografia Non Autorizzata (Milan: Mondadori, 1997), 222.

13. Giulio Catelani, cited in JJ Giorno, 9 May 1993 14, Panorama, 16 May 1993. 15. Postiglione, “Il padre,” 2. 16. La Repubblica, 19 May 1993.

17. Lehner, Borrelli, 81.

18, Cinzia Sasso, “E D’Ambrosio assicura ‘Noi non ci fermeremo,’ ” interview with D’Ambrosio, La Repubblica, 7 December 1994, 19, L’Unita, 26 May 1993. 20, In his Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New Yorke: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), for example, Hans-Georg Betz studies the Lega Nord and ignores the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale. 21. Lehner, Borrelli, 44-45, 22, Il Giornale, 4 June 1993. 23, La Repubblica, 10 July 1993. 24, Andrea Manzi, “Cosi fabbricano i pentiti,’” L’Informazione, 21 July 1996,

25, “L’avvocato Spazzali: “Vogliono salvare gli imprenditori,’” La Stampa, 6

September 1994.

15

Seer

Death by Clean Hands

]

tis time to return to Gabriele Cagliari, the ENI chief still languishing in San Vittore prison despite having confessed to all the accusations

against him, and more. Originally arrested by Di Pietro, Cagliari had, by June 9, 1993, passed

three months in his crowded cell. That is the end of the duration permit-

ted by law for preventive detention, The only action taken in Cagliari’s

case on that date was the amazing one of dropping the initial charges. But this did not mean that the cell door would be opened: On May 26 another

Pool magistrate had issued a new order, signed by Judge Ghitti, for the

preventive detention of Cagliari based on an ENI insurance case. This

meant that a new clock was started on the allowable three months of

detention, so Cagliari need not be given the liberty guaranteed by the law. During the three months, all the other people touched by the ENT case

had remained at liberty, with the exception of ENI financial chief Enrico Ferranti, who presumably knew some of the political connections in-

volved in the alleged ENI kickbacks. Ironically, the two prisoners were

allowed to talk to each other, even though the reason given for their incar~ ceration was to prevent their having any influence over evidence or testi-

mony. During his long incarceration, the prisoner Cagliari had “celebrated”

his sixty-seventh birthday and had received the news of the death of his

daughter-in-law, who left behind a young son. Cagliari was told that he

would not be permitted to be with his family to give them comfort, unless he were to accept the humiliation of attending the funeral with a uniformed, armed escort. On June 17, Ghitti indicated that he would con-

sider house arrest for Cagliari so, four days later, the defense tried again,

presenting a new motion for Cagliari’s release.

But a new antagonist now came on stage. Di Pietro had arrested Cagli128

Death by Clean Hands ~ 129 ari to grill him about one case (Ansaldo) and Cagliari’s confession had ow satisfied Di Pietro. But a young

magistrate, Fabio

De

Pasquale,

working another case (ENI/SAI, involving life insurance for ENI em' ployees), was ruthless in his determination to get Cagliari to say the name -Craxi.” Tt was not the first time Cagliari had seen De Pasquale. In May,

-Cagliari had told De Pasquale that he knew nothing about the case. Now De Pasquale denied the motion for release, contradicting, in his written pinion, the reason for incarceration by saying that the crimes involved had already been “adequately proved.” Who was this new figure who now held Cagliari’s freedom in his hands ‘land also that of Ligresti and other suspects)? De Pasquale had joined the Pool about a year before and worked on cases involving high-level sus-

pects, He had become intensely unpopular with his Pool colleagues in just

a few months, and he was especially competitive with Di Pietro. Images of De Pasquale’s long, balding, ascetic head had briefly hit the front pages in 1992 when he had exposed some fraud and mismtanagement

dnvolving European Community (EC) funds, an exposure highly damaging to Italy in Brussels. Most of the individuals involved, and a consistent

focus for De Pasquale, were Socialists. The EC scandals gained bonus headlines because.one of the recipients of De Pasquale’s avvisi di garanzia avas Giorgio Strehler, for years the most famous theatrical director in Italy

Ge one confines Zeffirelli to opera and film), Strehler had received EC

money for some training courses. It was alleged that the money had been “mishandled. De Pasquale had sent avvisi also to some political figures of ‘such reputed probity that the other magistrates became concerned. He ad gone after Republican Giorgio La Malfa (who admitted violating the

party finance law) and leaders of the Republican and Liberal parties. Fi-

“nally, iin June 1992, the Chamber of Deputies had turned down De Pas-

uale’s request to proceed against four deputies of these small lay parties id had formally censured De Pasquale’s methods as “persecutory.”* In

‘this case (and in Craxi’s) the Parliament cannot be seen as simply protect-

g its own and its interests; it accepted too many requests to proceed inst its members for this charge to stand. On June 24, the GIP, accepting the arguments of De Pasquale, hit Cagli-

with yet another refusal, The reason given for having him confined

‘this time was that “Cagliari’s attitude during the procedures, marked by ¢ most absolute denial, appears to be the expression of a specific tendency to commit crimes.” It may-have been at this point that Cagliari began believing that he would never get out alive. “In July, Cagliari broke under the grilling and more than four months of imprisonment, after having written some letters detailing the brutality awith which he was being treated.? It could be that the trigger came with

130 ~~ Chapter 15

ENI president Gabriele Cagliari with his wife, Bruna Di Lucca, attending a premiere at La Scala in Milan. (Foto De Bellis, Claudio Testa)

Death by Clean Hands ~~ 131 ‘morning papers of July 14, They brought news of Salvatore Ligresti,

ose suffering was similar to Cagliari’s. After spending six months in

1 Vittore prison while the Pool tried to force him to point the finger at tino Craxi, Ligresti had somehow survived his ordeal and regained his

sdom in December. But now, in July 1993, the Pool rearrested Ligresti. 2 magistrate who had signed the arrest warrant was Fabio De Pasquale.

rough a “consultant” who was now in hiding, De Pasquale had ob-

ied Ligresti’s confession to a kickback paid in April 1992 to the Chris1 Democrats and the Socialists in the Padana Vita affair, Padana Vita

3 a joint venture of Cagliari’s ENI and a company held by Ligresti’s up. This particular payoff involved life insurance policies for 140,000

ployees of ENI. De Pasquale now had what he needed to question

gliari on the same case.’

‘he Ligresti who faced the Pool that July was now a man who knew

terror of long imprisonment in San Vittore, and who had had time to lerstand fully the politics of the magistracy. According to Craxi, Listi, “pronouncing quite generically, as his safe conduct pass, the name

axi,’ had sought to avoid losing his freedom again.”* One can speculate h confidence that Cagliari, in addition to seeing another web of guilt hg woven around ENI, was also informed that Ligresti had pointed

finger at Craxi and thus retained his freedom.

© the next day, July 15, Gabriele Cagliari asked to be questioned anew. had not been questioned for almost a month: The magistrates ap-

red to have forgotten him since June 17. Cagliari knew by now that

y by enlarging his confession could he bring an end to his imprison-

at. “Everything is clear, absolutely clear. There are no other exits. Im-

diate confession in exchange for freedom.”

‘he session with De Pasquale began at 5:30 in the afternoon. Cagliari

continued to resist implicating others than himself. He bad confessed

and taken personal responsibility for, the charges brought against him ing the first hours of his arrest, adding, as we have seen, an episode that magistrates had known nothing about. His guilt was, in fact, that of reone at the top, responsible in theory for everyone below him, even ot a true participant in fact. Cagliari had, from the day he took the

is at ENI in the fall of 1989, walked into (and was most probably

fed on) an ongoing system that was understood as normal, though irly illegal, by all of the participants; and only now was Cagliari comely compromised. All but one of the others implicated in the same

ir had been immediately released. The difference was that they had

sed to point fingers at others, whereas Cagliari had not. i broken man as a result of his long imprisonment, Cagliari had now

ided to add some new elements to his confession. ‘These were of a

racter completely different from what had come before encompassing

132 ~~ Chapter 15 both internal contradictions and contradictions with known facts. In this chaotic context, Craxi was finally mentioned, It was as though Cagliari had wanted to send a signal that he was trying the path of fiction to gain his release,

Tt appeared to work. De Pasquale seemed to be satisfied. “With a disgusting and unrepeatable remark and with the tone more appropriate to someone who has finally won his own very personal battle, not that of a magistrate,’’® De Pasquale assured Cagliari that his deposition was more

than enough to win his release. What we have on the record is absolutely

clear. De Pasquale said: “I must send you home

even if the last part

doesn’t convince me. So you've gained your freedom.” Since it was late, 8:40 in the evening, De Pasquale told Cagliari’s attorney to prepare the motion requesting his client’s release and adjourned the session to the

next day.’

On the following morning the motion requested by De Pasquale was presented, But De Pasquale had turned to other business: the interrogation of Enrico Ferranti, the ENI financial chief, imprisoned over much

the same period as Cagliari had been. De Pasquale, in an aside to Ferranti’s attorney, mentioned that he intended to release Cagliari.

The next morning Cagliari’s attorney, Vittorio D’ Aiello, picked up, as

usual, the Clean Pens newspapers, now the authoritative source for what was happening in the Palace of Justice. He was stunned to read that De

Pasquale had taken back the promise made and had given a negative view on the liberation of Cagliari. These judgments had been delivered to the supporting press, but not to D’Aiello, the prisoner’s attorney. D’Aiello immediately issued a statement to the press that proved horri-

bly prophetic. He expressed the hope, given the psychological exhaustion

of his client, that De Pasquale would stick with the intention he had ex-

pressed earlier, And he accused De Pasquale of not having calculated the

grave psychological effect of promising freedom and then withdrawing it.

But he was addressing himself to an empty bench; De Pasquale had left Milan that morning to begin his summer vacation in Messina.

That last hearing, and its crushing disappointment, had taken place on

july 16, 1993. On Monday the 19th Cagliari, now in his fifth month in Cell 102, received word that, despite all that De Pasquale had said in the

hearing, the magistrate, before heading south for the Sicilian sun, had

indicated his opposition not just to Cagliari’s release but even to shifting his incarceration to house arrest.

D’Aiello did not give up. He submitted to De Pasquale’s substitute a

very tough memorandum. He started by expressing his anguish and bitterness over De Pasquale’s behavior. He went on to deny that Cagliari

had exerted any pressure on Ferranti. In fact, he noted, it was De Pasquale himself who had authorized the meetings in prison between the two EN]

Death by Clean Hands ~~ 133 chiefs. He then raised the question of Cagliari’s further cooperation with

the Pool: “Cagliari will tall no more. Now

he [has] no more trust in

any magistrate. He was not being difficult. At the time of his arrest he

immediately submitted his resignation from the presidency of ENI and

admitted his responsibility. How could he have been able to corrupt the investigation or commit more of the crimes of which he was accused?”*

On either July 19 or after midnight (therefore July 20), Cagliari penned

a long letter to his wife saying that the torture had been too much for him, that he could not endure the isolation of his situation, that the Pool

would never stop until he had named those the magistrates wanted to implicate. He said that the Pool had revolution in mind, and the creation of an authoritarian state,’ During the early hours of July 20 Cagliari said nothing

out of the ordinary to his three cellmates, to whom

he was

known as “the engineer.” He completed a letter to his wife (“to Bruna to

whom I owe everything, soul of my soul”) and put it with several others

on his bed, beside the rest of his clothes, neatly folded. One of the letters

was to his attorney, and another to his cellmates, to whom he wrote: “{D]on’t worry, it’s a suicide according to all the rules.”"° Then, at about

9:15 on the morning of the 20th, Cagliari appears to have gone into the

bathroom of the cell, drawn a plastic garbage bag over his head, and suffocated himself;

About fifteen minutes later, a young attorney, Luigi Gianzi, who was part of the firm defending Cagliari, entered the visiting room of San Vit-

tore, He was carrying two books Cagliari had requested, Normally, Gi-

anzi did not have long to wait. Cagliari was an orderly and methodical man who had always arrived on time for appointments and had not changed his habits in prison. Gianzi waited for twenty minutes, but there

was no sign of Cagliari, He asked the guards to check. But still nothing

for another ten minutes. Gianzi was not worried: Gagliari might have been

having a visit from a doctor. Gianzi had, after all, seen Cagliari just the

day before, wearing a yellow shirt and grey trousers, well shaved and neat as always. Cagliari kept up his appearance, no matter how frenzied he had become about his situation. At 10:15, the marshal in charge of the visiting room came to Gianzi and

said only “Follow me.” He took him to the prison director, who informed him of Cagliari’s death.!! Twenty minutes later the news wires

carried a bulletin saying that the former president of ENI had died of a heart attack. Cagliari’s widow and son dashed to D’Aiello’s office and

found the attorney in tears. D’Aiello would comment later, after reading

some of the letters, that “his was an act of protest and rage, not an act

dictated by fear.”

Cagliari’s death was announced by Borrelli himself, who said that ten

private letters had been found in his cell: “The letters from July 4 onward

134 ~~ Chapter 15

clearly indicate he was contemplating suicide. . .. He expresses the wish

to be cremated and that his ashes should be given to his wife . . . Cagliari’s death is an immense burden for all of us, but I don’t see that it will affect the inquiry overall.”

But Antonio Di Pietro, who was showing increasing difficulty in ac-

cepting both the methods of the Pool and the toll that their coup was

taking, finally broke the line, He said that Cagliari’s death was “a defeat,

a defeat, a defeat.” Worse yet for the Pool, Di Pietro said that Cagliari should have been released from prison six weeks earlier."

Di Pietro’s explosion was probably more alarming to the Pool than the

death itself. The flagship of the Clean Pens newsweeklies, L’Espresso, Jeapt into action; “[We go] from doubts about the honesty of the judges

to their exhaustion, Answer? Keep going. Full speed."

In one story, L’Espresso worries, not about the Milan magistrates’ methods, but whether the winds of popular favor, currently blowing in the direction of the Pool, might shift. Covering the Poo!’s tracks, the mag-

azine used its usual access to inside information to claim that the GIP,

Maurizio Grigo, would have made a new decision on releasing Cagliari, if only the latter had waited a little.'* L’Espresso’s lead story on the event is chilling in its cold antipathy toward Cagliari and its references to the Pool magistrates as “heroes.” It said that the only striking thing about the Cagliari affair is not the suicide nor the role of the Poo! in Cagliari’s

death, but Cagliari’s “drastic refusal . . . of the status of being the ac-

cused.”"” Since Cagliari had confessed, accepting his “status” must have meant accepting incarceration without trial. Finally, the magazine told its readers that they should worry not about

Cagliari or the Pool’s methods, but about the weariness of the “heroes,”

the magistrates, and how a piece of bad luck (no responsibility indicated)

such as Cagliari’s death might make them feel an even greater fatigue:

“Fatigue is a very human sensation, and tragedies such as that of Cagliari seem made to order to feed it. But one must resist. . . [I]f Italy misses

the opportunity to strike down the tyranny of bribes, it would be disas-

trous. ... However paradoxical it seems, there is no better response to the

Jast act of the ex-president of ENI.”"* Cagliari might not have agreed, Cagliari was the eleventh suspect to die while under investigation by the Milan Pool.

We said that Cagliari “appears to” have suffocated himself because the leveer to his wife is not specifically a suicide note, and Yale’s Joseph LaPalombara has had some interesting conversations with psychologists who

do not view the letters from Cagliari as those of a man heading toward suicide. Tiziana Maiolo was among the last to see Cagliari alive and said

that he did not seem to be considering suicide. (It is true, of course, that

Death by Clean Hands »=* 135

there are many cases of psychological intimidation inducing suicide in someone who is not psychologically very strong.)

‘The Milan prosecutor’s office had concluded that Cagliari took his own life, But the delicate question of how Cagliari died was destined to attract

the attention of two successive justice ministers, the one in office when

Cagliari died, Giovanni Conso, and his successor, Filippo Mancuso. Conso, father of the decree-law that had been such a battleground with the Pool, ordered a special investigation into Cagliari’s death. Mancuso,

an aging former magistrate himself, would later raise the question of whether one or more of the Milan magistrates bore some responsibility for the body found in Cell 102 at San Vittore in the summer of 1993. Since the new investigation could not properly be carried out in the Milan jurisdiction, the Cagliari dossier was given to magistrate Roberto Di Martino in Brescia. The hill town of Brescia was to become the source

of many problems for the Milan Pool because, according to the way pros-

ecutors’ offices are ranked in Italy, Brescia is the next venue in the region

for any case whose investigation by the Milanese would be inappropriate.

The Brescia prosecutor's office focused on the possible responsibility

of Borrelli and De Pasquale for Cagliari’s death. Cristiana Muscardini, a

National Alliance deputy in the European Parliament, gave a witness’s deposition saying that, within the prison, rumors were circulating that Cagliari had been killed. Di Martino commented early on that “there are

some facts concerning the reconstruction of the suicide of Gabriele Cagli-

ari that are not convincing. The results of the autopsy, first of all, but also

the position of the cadaver when it was found.” He was quoted in the

headline of Corriere’s story as saying “I don’t believe in the suicide of Cagliari,” but he had actually stopped well short of that, All Di Martino

said was that “even if there is one possibility out of a hundred that Cagli-

ari did not commit suicide, I want to try to understand it. It won’t be easy, and maybe I won’t turn up a thing, but I want to try.”

Di Martino started with the letters, including Cagliari’s last letter to his

wife. “I want to shed light on the letters that Cagliari wrote from prison:

I'll ask for an evaluation by an expert, Dr. Filippi. A psychological evalua-

tion, first of all.” But it was the letters themselves, letters found in Cagli-

ari’s cell, that seemed to support the finding of suicide, Di Martino asked

Cagliari’s widow whether she recognized the “psychology” of her husband, asked about the handwriting, and asked about the personality re-

flected in the letters. She added nothing that suggested a more direct responsibility of the magistrates, although their responsibility for driving

Cagliari to suicide was already direct enough. As she left Brescia’s Palace

of Justice, she talked to the press: “I am convinced that my husband was

psychologically forced to kill himself.” Then she added, “Ee died because

i al

of a system. Because of how he was treated in prison, because of how the

interrogations were conducted.””° Di Martino hoped to get his hands on all the letters that Cagliari wrote to his wife from prison. Cagliari had written so much because he had refused to allow her or any family members to visit him, to see him in his humiliation.

But many of the letters no longer exist. The widow, Bruna Di Lucca, explains that “I destroyed many of those letters. Gabriele wrote about a hundred of them’ to me in four months of prison. At home now I must

have a dozen maybe.”#!

Di Martino never found grounds to indict anyone and the case, still open, was “archived”—that is, buried and forgotten. There is an additional reason, beyond Di Martino’s, for looking at what Cagliari wrote just before dying. Parts of his letter to his wife are impor-

tant for the overall consideration of the magistrates’ coup:”

‘The criminalization of behavior that had been everybody’s behavior, even

magistrates’ . . . has put some of us out of action, abandoning us to the

pillory and the rancor of public opinion. The heavy hand of the magistrates, biased and unfair, has done the rest. They truly treat us as non-persons, as dogs banished to the kennel. ... They repeatedly explain their objective, but

we are absolutely forbidden to put it on the record, as should normally be done. The objective of these magistrates of the Milan Procura . . . is to force [

| |

each of us to break, definitively and irrevocably, with what they call our “environment.” Each of us ... must adopt “collaboration,” which means betrayal and informing. ,. . The magistrates consider prison to be nothing

more than a tool, an instrument of psychological torture. .. . We are dogs in a kennel from which every prosecutor can pull us out to run through his own drill and show that he is better or more severe than the one who had staged a similar drill a few days eatlier, or a few hours earlier. . . They are destroying the very bases, the very culture of law: they are proceeding

irrevocably down the road that leads to their authoritarian state.

want to be there,

... I don’t

And to his lawyer, Cagliari wrote:

It’s clear. .. that the political goal pursued by the magistrates miakes .. the judiciary the dominant power. . .. It is my right to refuse to become a scapegoat for an already-finished situation, or a victim of this culture of shame and rancor. ‘Thus I took the only solution that dignity and pride impose on me, In other letters, Cagliari charges that the Italian “revolution” was be-

coming a “national tragedy.” As for what was taking place in San Vittore

and in Milan’s halls of justice, Cagliari calls it a “crazy, tragic farce.” He

discusses the illegality of preventive detention, the fact that the magis-

ini

136 =~ Chapter 15

/

Death by Clean Hands “=> 137

“trates said many things to him that were never recorded in the transcripts

‘of the interrogations, as is the normal routine, and the magistrates’ insen“sitivity and cynicism. These are mere “details,” according to L’Espresso.® ‘The Cagliari case was later addressed by the Pool’s Piercamillo Davigo,

in whose Lion’s Club speech we saw the link between this treatment of -dlefendants and public popularity, Davigo said only that “these people are let out of prison when they break the chains of omerta [silence]. ‘The results have come.” Eyen the Geneva Convention does not permit

efficacy as the test of legitimacy, especially in the treatment of prisoners.

‘The case is on the docket for possible consideration by the United Na-

tions Human Rights Commission and the International, Court in The

Hague. ~ Giovanni Conso, the justice minister who wrote the ill-fated decree-

law, reacted harshly to Cagliari’s death, charging the Milan Pool with having violated its proper role. He said that it appeared they had forgotten

Cagliari, left him to rot, with no interrogation or other substantive con-

tact, for nearly a month. Nor did the magistrates take any other proce-

dural steps during that period. He naturally triggered a bitter exchange

with Borrelli. Conso went before the Senate, “distraught, with the signs

of emotion painted on his emaciated face... . His voice echoed in the

silent, almost indifferent chamber.” Conso noted that Cagliari took his

life without waiting for the response that was, once again, due from the

GIP about his release—“a fact that allows me to say that the role of the

GIP is very much in crisis... . Cagliari had the conviction that the GIP would limit himself to following whatever the prosecution decides.” A.

few days later, former President Cossiga, in a radio interview, indicated

at Conso’s wish for reform was probably futile: It was impossible to modify in any way the use the Pool was making of preventive detention

“because public opinion, rising with applause for the magistrates and conditioned by the fact that the magistrates have now occupied the space which is properly that of politics,” was too thirsty for decapitation to ‘worry about procedural niceties.

_ Senator Gennaro Acquaviva, a long-time pillar of Socialist politics, fol-

lowed Conso in the Senate to read a brief eulogy for the deceased. He was shouted down by a knot of Northern League senators, screaming “Tn jail!

You should all go to jail!”

= Although Conso’s remarks do not appear excessive given the facts, he

had, once again, gone too far politically. President Scalfaro, who had himself expressed concerns about the detentions, felt that Conso had attacked

the institution of the magistracy, and, as president of the CSM, Scalfaro

felt that he must come to the magistrates’ defense. Conso’s influence was

dead. Although the circumstances were different, Conso was the second

138 «~~ Chapter 15 justice minister, following Martelli, to clash with the Pool and to be forced to resign. Three days after Cagliari’s death, the Milan magistrates arrested a financial consultant, Sergio Cusani, believed to be a middleman in passing

bribe money from the chemical giant Ferruzzi to both Socialist and

Christian Democratic politicians.” Two other Ferruzzi officials were also

arrested. That same day, Raul Gardini, the most glamorous of Italy’s high-living business executives, committed suicide rather than face incar-

ceration upon learning that Di Pietro had gotten some of his colleagues

to talk (resulting in Cusani’s arrest) and thus, potentially, to expose bribes in which he had been involved.

The Ferruzzi Group of firms is the family company created by Serafino Ferruzzi, who had died in a corporate jet crash in 1979, leaving control in

the hands of his son-in-law, Raul Gardini. That family’s naive trust in Gardini led directly to the “Mother of All Bribes.”

Serafino, the patriarch of the family’s business empire, was the son of

farmers, studied agriculture, and founded a company that farmed and supported farmers. Starting with grain transport, Serafino built a food conglomerate that cornered a substantial part of the world cereal market

and expanded into dozens of industrial sectors. Ferruzzi became Italy’s second largest private business group, Serafino was one of the richest men

Raul Gardini with his wife, Idina Ferruzzi, daughter of the founder of the giant Ferruzzi Group of industries. (Foto De Bellis, Claudio Testa.)

Death by Clean Hands ~-> 139 in Europe when his daughter married Raul Gardini, but, to the end, he

was referred to in Italy as “the peasant.” Gardini was anything but a

peasant. He quickly became a gilded playboy of the popular media, a

yachtsman who sailed Italy’s entry in America’s Cup races.

In 1987 Gardini took over Montedison, a chemicals giant with 80 per-

cent of the Italian market. Montedison is Italy’s second largest private

company (after FIAT), with 45,000 workers.”

Gardini then set his sights on marrying some of Montedison’s moneylosing companies with Cagliari’s parastatal giant ENI to form Enimont,

Gardini would hang on to the companies that were profitable. In order to

carry out this complex and profitable maneuver, Gardini had ordered his

lieutenants to “lubricate” the parties of the system (not merely the parties

of the governing coalition of the time) so that they would not oppose the government decree that would give him the financial concessions necessary to make the deal successful. Such help was necessary because, for the

government’s interests, the deal smelled.

Gardini had told the Ferruzzi family, for whom he managed the enterprise, that the takeover was the key step toward a monopoly of the chemi‘al industry in Italy. For Gardini himself it meant a fast and huge profit.

When the Ferruzzi family realized this, they felt betrayed and broke with

Gardini, but too late to save themselves. ‘The two companies that had merged their chemical activities to create

Enimont—Montedison (via Gardini, on behalf of the Ferruzzi family) and

‘he state holding company ENI—then almost immediately announced

heir decision to back out of the deal. All the Enimont shares held by

Montedison were to be sold back to ENT at a huge profit to Montedison. Even the eventual price would need the agreement of the political par-

ies.) ‘To grease the political skids, money was put into Swiss bank ac‘ounts in Sergio Cusani’s name, Cusani’s job was to deliver the money to he parties. Gardini knew that Cusani’s testimony would be enough to

inish him. According to Gardini’s attorney, immediately after the arrest of Ga-

iriele Cagliari, Gardini’s lawyers had asked the Clean Hands Pool to take ‘spontaneous deposition from their client about the Enimont affair. The

‘rocedural code specifies that, when pontaneously and responds to the trested. The suspect has the right to rate has the obligation to receive it. nd upon learning that Di Pietro had 3ardini became convinced that they

a person under investigation deposes magistrates’ question, he cannot be make the deposition, and the magisWhen the Pool refused to hear him, gotten some of his associates to talk, had decided to arrest him.

On the morning of his suicide—a few hours before Cagliari’s funeral—

3ardini got up very early, Having read in the morning papers that, in

140 ~~ Chapter 15 his last depositions, Cagliari had mentioned him and that his arrest was imminent, he ended his life with a pistol shot. As for the Enimont bribe—which was in addition to large sums that

had gone to all five parties in the “normal” governing coalition on the occasion of the 1992 elections—it has so far been established that almost

$3 million were given to Senator Citaristi for the DC and less than $2

million to Balzamo

for the Socialists. Then

there were

“tips,” almost

$300,000 each for Martelli and La Malfa (handed over personally by Carlo Sama, Gardini’s son-in-law and Montedison administrative chief). Most of the money was the responsibility of Gardini’s consultant Cusani, who

never revealed its true destination, saying only, during his televised trial,

that more than $35 million had “disappeared.”

pened. Perhaps because of Di Pietro’s extraordinary popularity (polls were already showing him to be the most popular public figure in Italy), perhaps because of the Pool’s good fortune that Gardini killed himself not in jail but in his opulent flat in Milan, but most probably because of the amount of money involved and the belief that the guilty rich were getting what they deserved, Gardini’s suicide did nothing to slow the coup.

B®

The day of Gardini’s suicide, July 23, 1993, was also the life of the Christian Democratic Party, which had taken ashes of Fascism and defeat in World War II to make it economy in the industrialized world. Diminished and

last day. of the Italy from the the fifth largest splintered, the

party reorganized itself as the Partito popolare (Popular Party), then splintered further into three pieces and some slivers. Notes

1. “De Pasquale? Sbaglia,’” L’Espresso, 1 August 1993, 55.

2. Justice Minister Conso said, incorrectly, that ‘“‘they [the magistrates] had forgotten him in prison.” In fact, periods of intense grilling and periods of silence were both elements of a strategy of maximum stress. 3 It is probably wise to remind the reader that, as with the other cases, no claim is being made here about Cagliati’s guilt or innocence. The concern is with the methods, political significance, and, where discernible, political intent of the magistrates, 4, Bettino Craxi, 11 caso C. (parte seconda) (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 34. 5, Ibid, 33.

i ca

This second suicide of an executive whose name and face were familiar to most Italians might have triggered a public reaction, or at least some first doubts about the magistrates. But the opposite seems to have hap-

Death by Clean Hands + 141

6. Tbid., 34. Those present were Cagliari’s lawyer and a partner in the same law firm, plus an officer of the Finance Police charged with transcribing the session directly onto a computer, Craxi’s description of De Pasquale’s tone comes presumably from the lawyers. 7. Many of these details come from Chiara Beria di Argentine and Leo Sisti, “Tacere ¢ un po morire,” L’Espresso, 1 August 1993, 52. The thrust of the article is not sympathetic to Cagliari, depicting a man refusing to talk, claiming not to remember. 8. Ibid. 9, L’Espresso, 1 August 1993. 10. Beria di Argentine and Sisti, “Tacere,” 50. 11. Ibid, 12. Ibid., 51.

13. Judge Ghitti reacted with the same bitterness as did Di Pietro. 14, Beatrice Colnago, “Italian Suspect Found Dead in Jail Cell,” Washington

Post, 24 july 1993, A13. 15. Headline, L’Espresso, 1 August 1993, 46.

48,

16. Claudio Rinaldi, “Anche gli eroi si stancano,” L’Espresso, 1 August 1993,

17. Ibid, 46. 18. Ibid, 49. 19, Cited in Alessandra Arachi, “Il pm De Martino [sic] cerca nuove piste,” Corriere, 9 July 1995. 20. Ibid, 21. Ibid, 22. Although Cagliari's most important letter to his family was written on July 3 (1993), it was not published until July 21. Cagliari gave the letter to his lawyer (D’Aiello). On the envelope he had written “To open after I’ve come home.” After bis death, on the morning of July 20, in the presence of Cagliari’s family, D?Aicllo opened the letter, It was first published in (ENI-owned) {d Giorno on July 21. The texts-of the most important letters from prison can also be found in Lehner’s Borrelli and La strategia del ragno and in Vespa’s Il Duello, See also Enzo Biagi, “I giudici e il suicida,” Panorama, 1 August 1993, the series of articles in L’Espresso of 1 August 193, 45~65, and Bettino Craxi’s second speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 4 August 1993. 23, Rinaldi, “Anche gli eroi,” 46. 24. Cited in Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 29-30.

25, “Morte a San Vittore, Conso sfida Borrelli,” Corriere, 23 July 1993, 3. 26. See also “Gonso: voglio il Gip pid forte,” Corriere, 13 October 1993, 5. 27. Earlier in July, the Ferruzzi case had actually begun with the arrest in Geneva of the former president of the utility giant Montedison, Giuseppe Garofano. He was immediately extradited to Italy, where he revealed to magistrates the details of many illegal operations connected with the creation of the short-lived holding company Enimont through the merger of Montedison and ENI.

142 ~~ Chapter 15

28. Romano Canosa, Storia della magistratura in Italia (Milan: Baldini&Castoldi, 1996), 206. 29, In 1966, the merging of two companies, Montecatini and the electric company Edison, created Montedison and triggered charges of monopoly by the Communists and Socialists.

16

Seer

The Cusani Trial T

he summer of 1993 brought an unexpected complication for the revolutionaries and their allies, The money trail led directly from

Ferruzzi to the PCI/PDS

handed dealing-out of cash.

An avviso was rendered to

as one of the recipients of an even-

party treasurer Marcello Stefanini. It was

issued by Tiziana Parenti, who Fist tics resigned and spoken out publicly about the Pool. The avviso was not pre-announced to the press, a depar-

ture from the procedure used against other parties.

Massimo D’Alema, then the party’s deputy sccretary (today he is party

secretary), immediately cried foul, saying there was a plot against the PDS

(after having scoffed at all previous suggestions that plots and politics might have been inyolved in the attack on the DC and PSI), D’Alema’s zeal to combat the besmirching of the Communist name led to an amus-

ing revelation of the close collaboration among those who were toppling

the First Republic. He used this defense in his first public statement: “After a year of investigations it has emerged that the PSI has received

many billions... . After a year of investigations, by contrast, Stefanini is

questioned for small change,”! The following day, Gerardo D’ Ambrosio,

the Pool’s declared PDS militant, happened to use this language: “It is

astounding that in the face of billions of illegal financing one gets excited

about 621 million.” Meanwhile, the Communist daily, L’Unita, hit the streets with a similar version: “It is certainly astounding that, in the face of a river of billions, confirmed, a stir is raised about 621 million.”? The editor of JJ Giorno wondered rhetorically how a magistrate could pursue a case while at the same time publicly exonerating the suspect. D’Ambrosio’s response was to attack Parenti, who had had the temerity to issue an avviso to the PDS, along with the other parties, saying that

Parenti was “right wing.” In fact, Parenti, whose youthful political partic143

144 o~- Chapter 16 ipation had been on the Left, was elected to Parliament on the Berlusconi

ticket following her resignation.

Parenti, initially very reluctant to say anything in public, finally (on August 28) said that, since she had been assigned to the Pool, “no one has ever invited me to a meeting, no one has ever said anything to me.” She was obviously a loose cannon in the context of the Pool, and proved it by also investigating the payment of 1.5 billion lire that had gone from East Berlin to a Swiss bank account named “Gabbietta” and thence to the PCL‘ D'Ambrosio, now clearly in the role of defender of the PCI/PDS,

said that this instance of party financing was not illegal, When informed that D'Ambrosio was playing the role of attorney-for-the-accused,

Parenti reacted: “Ah, he said that? Well, that one-and-a-half billion went

to Marcello Stefanini. It’s self-evident. I’ve already found the checks that

have been cashed, . . D'Ambrosio says that this is not illegal financing, but we'll have to see about that.” Borrelli defended D’Ambrosio’s judg-

ment thus: “D’Ambrosio, in the Stefanini case, has been cautious, pru-

dent. Certainly. So what?”

"Throughout Parenti’s time in the Pool, a series of cases were taken away

from her whenever the evidence led her to the doorstep of the PDS.

"The case against Sergio Cusani produced an additional advantage for

the Pool, one that ensured that a few suicides here and there would not

advantage came when, in the general absence of actual trials during the

Clean Hands operation, Cusani tried the tactic, in his desire to get free of

the Pool’s iron grasp, or as a scenario to dramatize himself as an innocent

man, of demanding that his case come immediately to trial. ‘Trials were not really part of the strategy of the coup. They carried some risks because courtroom drama was not always controllable. And they were unnevessary: The political guillotine chopped effectively on the basis of avvisi di garanzia and “leaks” to the friendly papers. David Nellsen summarizes neatly: “[Bly the time Zengentopoli had done its political damage, few

trials (and certainly none involving leading political figures) had actually

been brought to a conclusion.”

But Di Pietro switched strategies and agreed to bring the case against

Cusani into court during the autumn of 1993. The Cusani trial would be

the dramatic high point of Operation Clean Hands. Nelken says it is the “watershed” between the First and Second Republics.* Cimini calls it “a

spectacle within the spectacle.”®

‘The Cusani trial was the perfect vehicle for interrogating publicly such

major figures as Craxi, Forlani, Martelli, and La Malfa without having to prove a case against them, because they would only be summoned as witnesses against Cusani.

In October, before the Cusani case came to trial, a bit of the politics.of

Tomer

slow their march, would not damage them in the eyes of the public. This

‘The Cusani Trial ~~ 145 he Milan Pool was more nakedly revealed than was comfortable for this

nid-coup period. The evidence available at the time of this writing does

jot really permit a judgment on whether the PDS was an active conspiraor with those who staged the coup, or merely the knowing and intended yeneficiary of the destruction of those parties that had successfully opsosed the Italian Communist Party for almost half a century. At any rate, t was essential that the PDS itself not be a victim of Mani Pulite. We have ilready seen some near-misses. Since the PCI was a behemoth like the

Christian Democratic Party, occupied a huge palazzo in the center of Xome and headquarters in every city and town throughout Italy, staged he biggest rallies, ran the biggest think tanks, published the best-proluced newspaper," and published more books and periodicals than any of the other parties, it was hard to swallow the idea that party members

aid for all of this out of their modest dues, The party did, however, nake some money off summertime Festas dell’ Unitd in cities and towns

hroughout the country, combining music, carnival, and politics. And it hould be added that there is no evidence that PCI/PDS leaders ever en-

iched themselves personally.

‘The PCI’s phony budget was approved each year by the parliamentary ommittee that approved the other phony budgets. The party received,

wut never declared, a direct subsidy from the USSR, paid in dollars

hrough the Soviet Embassy in Rome." Gorbachev surprised most oberveis when he said that direct financing continued up to 1990; most vould have put the cutoff at 1968, when the PCI opened a harsh polemic

vith Moscow, or at the mid-1970s, when it moved closer to the political

nainstream. After that, as is now known, there were two remaining main

noney channels, both already long established. First, export-import ac-

ivity with the PCI’s comrades in the Communist East, through compa-

lies actually owned by the PCI, allowed for subsidizing through

‘commissions” paid by Moscow and other Eastern capitals. Second, the veague of Cooperatives has always had a big role in public and private

ontracts in construction and subcontracting. The “Red” cooperatives,

rart of the League along with the “White” cooperatives affiliated with ther parties, are actually colossal businesses, engaged in contracting and agricultural importing from the East. They exploit a competitive advan-

age coming from the Marcora Law, promoted by the Left of the Chrisian Democrats, that is extremely favorable to the cooperative sector.

A sword of Damocles now hangs over these cooperatives in the form

if three investigations. Venetian magistrate Carlo Nordio is conducting

he most extensive one. He has sent avvisi di gavanzia for violations of the arty finance law to PDS Secretary D’Alema and his predecessor Achille Dechetto. A Palermo prosecutor is looking into links with the Mafia. And ‘aples magistrate Agostino Cordova is doing the same for the Camorra.

146 ~~ Chapter 16 The last two are mainly about subcontracting. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Luciano Violante (PDS), when he was vice-president of the Chamber, admonished Cordova for not having nabbed certain Camorra families. Cordova fired back the suggestion that Violante would

have preferred that he chase common criminals and not track the relations between the Red cooperatives and the Camorra.

It is noteworthy, then, that aside from an occasional Communist town.

councilman caught with his hand in the till, the Milan magistrates had curiously failed to find evidence of PCI wrongdoing. But there was al-

ways the occasional novice prosecutor who hadn’t gotten the word. One

very junior prosecutor, industriously following up the leads that came to him, delivered an avviso di garanzia to the treasurer of the PDS. And the

name of Achille Occhetto, secretary of the party, started to become the

subject of rumors in connection with the Greganti affair (see below), in

which the PCI/PDS was named as a bribe recipient. Again it was D’Am~

brosio who came to the rescue: “In a climate of tension like this, false news often circulates... When a party is calling for early elections [as

the PDS was] there is [always] someone who has an interest in stopping it, even through such stories.””!? Suddenly the Palace of Justice was ablaze with an internal battle that the Pool could not keep from becoming a

public battle. D’Ambrosio tried to absolve the PDS by returning to his war with his colleague Parenti: “Madame the Doctor Parenti has put herself in opposition to the line talsen by the Pool in this episode, This is not

the trial of the PDS.” In all other cases, of course, the magistrates went

after the politicians who received financing with even more zeal than they

did the businessmen who gave it. D’Ambrosio remarked to a journalist

who asked whether the magistrates were protecting the PDS that he did not mind “being labeled as a man of the Left, because everyone is free to

have his own ideas.”?

‘At this point Paolo Ielo arrives on stage (although his most notorious

moment was to come later, in 1995).

Carlo Nordio, the same Venetian magistrate who was investigating the

Red cooperatives, was also looking into some of Craxi’s transactions. The Pool, interested in heading off trouble for the PDS, saw a possible way to

interfere with the Venetians. Ielo, one of the younger and more impetuous recruits into the Milan Pool, revealed publicly that in tapping Craxi’s tele-

phone he had heard Craxi say to “a certain Salvatore” that Nordio was “trustworthy.” Telo neglected to explain that “a certain Salvatore” was Salvatore Lo Giudice, Craxi’s attorney. The Venetian magistracy accused

the Pool of having violated the “civil society of laws” and of using the

investigatory methods of the Inquisition by tapping the dialogue between

a lawyer and his client. Italian law and the code of penal procedure both

The Cusani Trial >

147

expressly prohibit wiretaps or other eavesdropping on conversations be-

teen lawyer and client.

| The incident seemed so grave to Piero Ostellino, a former editor of

Corriere della Sera, that he broke ranks from the common line and de-

dlared that “we have arrived at the definitive politicization of the magis-

tracy, at the identification . . . of its acts ‘by political categories and ignments,’ ” Telo and Nordio were brought before the CSM, with no

tesult. But CSM sources let it be known through the press that Nordio might be transferred, for reasons of “ambiental incompatibility,” to a flace where he could not continue his investigations of the PCI/PDS.'s

Paolo Ielo was one of the “child judges” (gindici vagazzini) by which

‘he Milan Pool was renewing itself. A Sicilian, lelo grew up in Messina

ind got his law degree there. At the university he appears to have been ictive in young-Communist organizations." He too is a member of Maystratura Democratica. He was appointed to Milan in 1988, at age ‘wenty-seven, and recruited into Operation Clean Hands in April 1993.

lelo was selected because of the reliable way he had performed on the

Hribunale della Liberta, charged, among other things, with considering yhether those being held without trial should be released. Ielo was a sarty to the denial of release for Salvatore Ligresti. Borrelli gave him a ‘ouple of sensitive cases, sensitive because they involved the PDS. One vas a case against Eumit, a metallurgical company close to the PCI, to

he DDR (East Germany), and to the Stasi, the East German security

ervice. First, in July 1994, six files containing the international part of he investigation were “lost”;!” then Iclo “archived” the case, which heans that an unsolved case is technically left open but is actually filed ad forgotten. That is how proceedings are killed, permanently, in Italy. It was Ielo’s other responsibility that concerns us now. Ielo took the on the question of what to do about PCI/PDS treasurer Marcello ‘anini. Tiziana Parenti had written a 68-page argument asking for auhorization to proceed against Stefanini. lelo, now well practiced, “arhived” the Stefanini case also, saying that there was insufficient evidence © proceed against the PDS, But Parenti had proof that the money had

trived. PDS Secretary Occhetto tried to shrug off the affair to a journal-

it: “Beh, Parenti, she’s truly a strange type. .. . If I received an avviso di aranzia . ..1 [would] say that we are truly confronting a coup d’état. aced with a thing like that I’m convinced that our rank-and-file would uke to the streets.”"®

Had any other party issued such a threat, one can imagine the reaction

£ Borrelli and the Red Togas. In this case, they kept silent. But the GIB, Italo Ghitti, had had enough. Normally cooperative with

he Pool, Judge Ghitti nevertheless cared for the law. So, as we saw, he

ad rebelled at the favored treatment of FIAT executives. Now he shocked

148 ~~ Chapter 16

Primo Greganti, “Comrade,” leaves prison. (Foto De Bellis, Luigi Nocenti)

The Cusani Trial ~~ 149

the whole Milan Palace of Justice by refusing to allow the Pool to drop the

PDS case. The proposal to drop the case had been based on D’ Ambrosio’s

having been told by PCI/PDS official Primo Greganti that instead of giv-

ing the money he had received from Ferruzzi manager Panzavolta to the

PCI/PDS, he had used it to buy himself an apartment on Via Tirso in Rome. Ghitti couldn’t believe that it had taken Greganti several months

in prison to remember what he did with the money or that Panzavolta,

aormally a careful and intelligent businessman, had given Greganti 621

million Lire on the busy Via Veneto in Rome in the mistaken belief that

Greganti was collecting for the party. Greganti, in this case, would have mjoyed everybody’s dream: He had been handed 621 million by a

itranger, and had used his unexpected good fortune to improve his housng. It was D’Ambrosio who, only hours before Judge Ghitti was to de-

ide on indicting party treasurer Stefanini, found documents to back the

Jlaim that Greganti acted as a solitary profiteer, not as Comrade G. In lhe Cusani trial (see below), however, Luciano Panzavolta testified that

Sreganti had given him a business card reading “PDS National Adminis-

ration,” with the number of a telephone at party headquarters in Via

3otteghe Oscure in Rome.

The morning papers of October 12 carried the news that Borrelli had

ken Tiziana Parenti off the Greganti case, D’Ambrosio explained that his had been done because she was no longer “‘in line” with the Pool.

\s Giancarlo Lehner puts it, “[E]very time the investigation touches a Communist leader, the Pool has a short circuit.”

a

[he domination of the Italian media by Tangentopoli and the magistrates

of the Pool was overwhelming in the fall of 1993. Even the general prose-

mutor of Milan, Giulio Catelani, finally got edgy about the stream of

nedia appearances by the Pool magistrates and called for a period of sience. Piercamillo Davigo managed to slip in a full-page interview in Cor iere della Sera before reading Catelani’s gag-rule memo (which proved neffective). The interview provided a background commentary to the elevision drama that was about to transfix Italians.

Davigo, with the dry look of a precise accountant, is the Pool’s “proce-

lural brain,” a refined and sophisticated legal thinker. Accordingly, Borelli has

him

draft

the

most

complex

indictments.

The

Corriere

nterviewer described Dayigo’s desk as punctiliously tidy, and the man

timself as having the odor of hardness.® Davigo is alleged to have renarked once that “innocent people do not exist, only guilty people not ret discovered.”

‘The interviewer asked Davigo the pivotal question for those who want 0 believe that the Pool was pursuing a normal law-enforcement operaion: “[OJne has the feeling that for ten or fifteen years now the judges in

150 =~ Chapter 16

Milan knew something, or could discover it. Why didn’t you move before

now?” Davigo replied by mentioning two cases from the 1980s where the magistrates had found evidence of a kickback, noting that in those cases the suspects not only remained on the job but were promoted, He said that they had tried to go forward, but “the conditions” (undefined) did

not permit them to succeed. One of the cases he mentioned allegedly involved big kickbacks on the contracts for the construction of the Milan

city subway, the facts of which came out during Operation Clean Hands.

That case alone had lines into the political leadership of Milan and the

whole country, a much more likely starting point for a real judicial assault than was the minor funeral parlor scam that actually launched Tangentopoli. Davigo never explained the “conditions” that were essential to making something of the earlier cases. He was then brought to the crucial question of using prison to extort

confessions. Davigo was irritated by the carping.

Davigo: “As long as it was a matter of North Africans, car-radio

thieves, or small-time drug dealers, nobody dreamed of criticizing the judiciary on the theme of individual freedom. In fact the work-

ings of justice were considered too bland. Whoever was caught com-

mitting one of those crimes was arrested and only released after’ having served the maximum time. .. . In Jangentopoli everyone was

part of a much more complex system. .... Rather than keeping peo-

ple until they had served out their time, those arrested were freed after their confessions.”

Q: “Exactly!”

Davigo: “Exactly nothing! There’s a precise motive. The crimes of Tan~ gentopoli have as their characteristic the circumspection of those who

commit them. If someone collaborates with us, he becomes untrustworthy for the others, he’s no longer suitable for committing this. type of crime. So he can and should be released. Just the way it happens for the Mafia pentiti.”

Q: “Haven’t you ever had the feeling of engaging in the selling of release from prison?”

Davigo: “No. Never.”?!

This account may shed some light on Borrelli’s remark that the Pool did not hold people to make them talk, it just released them after they had

talked.

Later in the interview, Davigo called the Pool the “samurai” of the

judiciary, but when then asked whether he felt partly responsible for the deaths of Cagliari and Gardini, he refused to answer. He also refused to be drawn into answering a question about investigations that may have

.

The Cusani Trial ~> 157

turned up PDS involvement, and repeated, with more irritation, his re-

fusal when asked whether Craxi and PDS treasurer Stefanini might have ‘received different treatment. His refusal became even more categoric

when he was asked about the 68-page draft paper in which Tiziana Parenti

was asking for authorization to proceed against Stefanini.

son

‘After the PDS problem and the Capliari/Gardini suicides, the makers of

the coup desperately needed a public distraction and they produced it.

‘The Cusani trial, “the father of all trials” according to Di Pietro, was the levision hit of November, _. Frank Cimini, who has seen it all in his years of covering the judiciary,

drew a journalist’s picture: “I understood that Cusani might turn out to be unattractive, but he is a gentleman, who had not had operational

tesponsibilities at Montedison, Nevertheless, he stayed five months in San

Vittore prison because he wouldn't talk. Others who did have operational

‘Fesponsibilities and whom one can consider the instigators [the ones who

{geve Cusani his orders] have been released after a few days in the Opera

prison.” (For this case, the Opera prison on the extreme southern edge of the metropolitan area of Milan, a difficult trek for most journalists, was being used instead of San Vittore. San Vittore is considered the medieval

dungeon of Milanese lockups, Opera a modern facility supposedly based on more enlightened principles of operation.)

~ On the question of how Cusani was treated by the press, Cimini’s judg-

‘ment was that too many of his colleagues built their stories exclusively on

what Di Pietro said. As Cimini put it, “That’s not Di Pietro’s fault, of

‘course. It’s the fault of my colleagues. On the other side, Spazzali {the

defense lawyer] fought a difficult battle. 1 remember that at the start of the trial I asked Spazzali if ic was more difficult to defend Cusani ow or

to have defended Toni Negri [the biggest name among the alleged terror-

ists] in 1979. He answered me that the defense of Cusani is infinitely more difficult.”

_ The Cusani trial was seen as a kind of dress rchearsal for an eventual

spectacular Enimont maxi-trial, but its preliminary hearings were specta-

cle enough, engrossing millions of Italian television viewers. Indeed, when the television lights came on, Di Pietro, a dynamo of self-righteous zeal

with an overbearing and theatrical questioning technique, worked over a sweating and nervous Arnaldo Forlani (Christian Democratic chief) and

a tough, almost-belligerent Craxi. » Forlani, his upper lip and forehead glistening, had lost all memory of

money transactions involving his Christian Democratic Party; the deri-

sion of the Clean Pens press about Forlani’s testimony seemed, in this e, well justified. In fact, everyone except Craxi and Giorgio La Malfa wriggled abjectly in trying to claim ignorance of vile transactions.

Antonio Di Pietro (1) questions former prime minister Bettino Craxi during the Cusani trial. (Foto De Bellis, Grazzani-Nocenti) Craxi, on the other hand, evaded nothing, admitting to illegal party

same financing, asserting that everyone played by the same rules of the made system, and wondering aloud why there were so few accusations against the Communists, Craxi’s candor, and his success in mounting a quite unexpected line of defense, however nervous it may have made someg

politicians and magistrates, probably did nothing to abate his growin

tion Eiefavor with the public. The spotlight Craxi curned on the protec chilling

that the Pool had consistently offered the PCI/PDS was especially

to D’Ambrosio and others of the Red Togas. Craxi made it a practice to

recall the Stepankov dossier, the thick file on the financing of the Italian Communist Party that had been brought from Moscow to Rome, but whose contents had never been used to do to the Communists what the

l magistrates were doing to the PSI and DC, Craxi was the only politica asking

leader who kept calling attention to the Communist cooperatives, the magistrates, in the courtroom and in the media, what they intended to do about it and why the PCI/PDS was receiving special treatment.

Despite Di Pietro’s efforts to dominate the public session of the Cusani ial by sheer energy and volume, Graxi got his licks in. Crax’s unstoppa-

ble sermon cowed, for a while, even Di Pietro, who backed off and let

Craxi speak, D'Ambrosio actually criticized Di Pietro publicly for not

having stopped Craxi from saying the things he said, Boreelli was furious

The Cusani Trial -- 153

at Craxi’s counterattack and was heard to say “We'll nail him!” Later, in an interview, Borrelli, who had not been in the courtroom for Craxi’s

testimony, was asked if he had seen it on television. “Yes, I saw it. Almost

all of it.” The interviewer said, “Tell me the truth, are you disappointed

with Di Pietro?”

Borrelli: “Don’t ask me that question.”

Q: “But don’t you think that Di Pietro gave him too much leeway?”

Borrelli: “. . . Olsay, let’s take the Craxi example. There are certain personalities, like him, who face the torture of the courtroom with greater determination. We’ve also seen a more depressed Craxi, on

other occasions, but the other day he was very bellicose. ... And then the protagonists in an argument can have moments of fatigue. And Di Pietro is under stress in the most frightening way. He jumps

from one room to another: just today he’s prosecuting a case on gar-

bage dumps.... He’s under stress, a lot of stress.”

Giorgio La Malfa, the respected leader of the Republican Party, was the

other major figure to stand up to the magistrates during the Cusani trial. It is difficult to know how anxious the magistrates were to nail La Malfa.

The implacable young Fabio De Pasquale, Gabriele Cagliari’s inquisitor, was clearly out to get La Malfa, and had charged him with receiving illegal funds for his party’s 1992 electoral campaign.2” More experienced magis-

trates knew that this accusation was risky: La Malfa was the son of a

revered statesman, and had a personal image of effectiveness and probity such that the magistrates must have worried about a public backlash had they been seen to be persecuting La Malfa.

La Malfa admitted to having received, from the hand of Carlo Sama, Montedison money totaling $175,000 for the 1992 election campaign,

which is remembered for the Republican slogans: “Party of Honest Peo-

ple” and “I want to unite the honest part of Italy to lead it to victory.” La Malfa recounted: “T asked, with a certain embarrassment, but this was a chore that was part of the burdens and honors of a secretary of a politi-

cal party: ‘Doctor Sama, we are in an election campaign: can you give us

a hand?’ .. . Some time later he telephoned me. I went to his house in

Rome, we talked about politics and at the end he gaye me an envelope with 300 million.’?* La Malfa denied any links to the Enimont affair, however,

When the Cusani trial itself actually opened in March 1994, a much

smaller audience heard more indications that Craxi’s questions about the PCI/PDS had been justified. But then Luciano Panzavolta, called “Pan-

zer” for his toughness and determination, testified about money passed from his company Calcestruzzi, part of the Ferruzzi Group, to the PCI/

154 == Chapter 16 PDS. He revealed that the late Gardini had paid more than a half-million

dollars to the PCI to gain Communist support for approval of the legisla~ tion on the Enimont deal. Cusani himself testified to having been present at the payment. Giuliano Spazzali, Cusani’s white-bearded attorney, requested that PDS secretaries Occhetto and D’Alema be ordered to testify, but presid-

ing judge Giuseppe Tarantola denied the request (despite the earlier grill-

ing of the other major party leaders). The Panzavolta and Cusani testimonies had no follow-up either in the trial or in subsequent investiga-

tions,

‘The press believed that Tarantola did not want to call the PDS leaders

because in that spring of 1994 there was an election campaign under way.

‘The Clean Pens found the decision “responsible” and “pradent.” Cusani

was convicted and sentenced to eight years for acts including the pay-

ments to the PCI/PDS, even though the Communist officials were never

called into court.

As if to prove Craxi’s and La Malfa’s point that every party participated in the game, the Northern League, Umberto Bossi’s separatist movement

(which tried to stand apart from, and above, the old party system) was

found, the following month, to have violated the party financing law by

not reporting a donation. But then a much more serious incident went even further than Bossi’s troubles to confirm Graxi’s assertion that everybody had. been involved

in the same system and played by the same rules. Five former high-level. directors in the Italian secret services (both military and civilian) had been

accused of corruption, They chose to play the pentiti/accuser game, and

testified that a series of interior ministers had, for more than a decade,

received secret slush fund money. This was an especially troublesome accusation because the president of the Republic himself (and thereby also president of the CSM), Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, had been one of those interior ministers.” Scalfaro lashed out vaguely at “them,” the miscreants who had just planted bombs in Italy’s cities and who now defamed him.

He never said who “they” were.

As for the information that the Pool had received about the Red coop-

eratives, that met the same fate asin the Eumit-East Germany case (where the files were mislaid and the case archived). In this case, three boxes of

documents on the Red cooperatives disappeared from the Milan Palace of

Justice. They had been sequestered in October 1993 from the Consorzio cooperative costruzioni (CCC) in Bologna and were kept under seal for

three years. They contained balance sheets, bills, account books, A prose-

cutor from the Tuscan town of Grosseto, investigating illegal funding of

the PCI/PDS, asked Paolo Ielo for the documents. On April 11, 1996,

they were supposedly picked up by finance police officers for transport

The Cusani Trial =

155

to Grosseto, But the next day, comparing the documents with the record of the 1993 sequester, the officers discovered that many documents were missing, including all those taken from the CCC’s principal officers. Nor

were these the only cases of mislaid documents. In September 1993 seals placed on PDS files in Rome were violated and the documents taken be-

fore they could be transferred to Milan. In this case, all the documents were gone.>

Venetian magistrate Carlo Nordio is trying to investigate this epidemic

of wandering files. In June 1997 he indicted two PDS militants, Ottaviano

and Zocchi, for complicity in stealing the files, As he wrote in the report he sent to the Rome prosecutor, not only were the seals violated but the

sarabinieri had suspended their sequestering of documents because the

lerks at PDS headquarters had complained about the impossibility of doing their work if the various files were to be transferred. Three days

later they all disappeared.

Notes

1. Only 621 million lire, less than $400,000, was involved in the payment to the PCI. 2, Where the English is the same or parallel, the original Italian is the same or parallel, 3. Corriere, 28 August 1993,

4. Gianluca Di Feo, “A caccia di tangenti rosse tra Stasi e forzieri austriaci,”

Corriere, 10 October 1994, 11.

5. Goffredo Buccini, “Parenti, lascia perdere il PDS,” Corriere, 20 November 994; Antonio Carlucci, “Tiziana non va archiviata,” L’Espresso, 15 October 1995, 58. See also “Caso Parenti: denuncia del pool dopo le accuse a D’Amwrosio,” Corriere, 22 November 1994, 1; Goffredo Buccini, “Sgroj getta fango sui siudici,” Corriere, 30 September 1994, 11. 6. Corriere, 29 August 1993.

7. shen 8, 9.

David Nelken, “A Legal Revolution?” in The New Italian Republic, Ste~ Grundle and Simon Parker, eds. (London: Routledge, 1996), 196, Nelken, “Revolution,” 192. Cited in Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno di spifferi,” Prima Comunicazione,

April, 1994.

10, Throughout much of the postwar period, the PCI actually published three \ewspapers daily. 11, Leonard Weinberg, The Ttansformation of Italian Communism (New Srunswick: Transaction, 1995), 36; Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian itate (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 43—44; Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, taly: A Difficult Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 9-50. 12. Statement by D’Ambrosio, issued 6 October 1993.

156 “~ Chapter 16 13. dl Giorno, 6 October 1993. 14, Piero Ostellino, “Rischio Crepuscolo,” Corriere, 3 October 1995.

15. It should not be assumed that relations between the PDS and Milan Pool

were uncomplicated. By 1997, in fact, PDS Secretary D’Alema was trying to rein in the Pool, for reasons we shall see.

16. This point, though not documented, is based on the declarations of people

who knew him then.

17. Maurizio ‘Tortorella, “Puff! E i documenti Coop spariscono,” Panorama,

13 August 1996, 83.

18. See La Stampa, 6 October 1993. Occhetto later claimed not to have uttered these words. But the journalist, Augusto Minzolini, swore that he reported. Oc-

chetto’s statement faithfully, In any event, the magistrates had no reaction to the

story that was printed,

19. Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di un inquisiore (Milan: Gior-

nalisti Editori, 1995), 90.

20, Goffredo Buccini, “ “Tangentopoli, un puzzle senza fine,’” Corriere, 17 October 1993, 6.

21. Ibid. 22, Ibid.

23. Interview with Frank Cimini in Carlo Riva, Un palazzo pieno di spifferi,

Prima Communicazione, April 1994, 24. Ibid.

25. Lehner, Borrelli, 93.

26. Goffredo Buccini, “Politici, si candidi solo chi ha mani pulite,” Corriere,

20 December 1993, 3.

27.

De Pasquale? Sbaglia,’” L’Espresso, 1 August 1993, 55.

28, L’Unita, 3 December 1993.

29. Ironically, the only interior minister during this period who, according to

the former secret service officials, had not taken money was Amintore Fanfani, a man who was a virtual symbol of the old order of the First Republic, Fanfani

returned so frequently to the prime ministership that he was commonly called

Signor Rieccolo, Mister Here-He-Comes-Again. 30. ‘Tortorella, “Puff,” 83.

Berlusconi

[

n late 1993, Italy was moving toward municipal elections that would be an important test of the progress of the coup. The summer bomb-

ings, and the Pool’s dramatic exploitation of those bombings, plus the suicides and daily headlines triggered by the magistrates’ “revelalions,” had created a tense political climate: “A climate artfully staged, with suppositions that were not just suggestive, but criminal, as the indis-

pensable condition for finally bringing the political-judicial coup into

port.”" Although men of the law are usually disposed to try to defuse

tension, to. de-dramatize explosive situations, Borrelli took a different

tack in a pre-election interview that was the most revealing yet.

_ Borrelli: “L would say that in this universe of investigation which goes under the name of ‘Clean Hands’ perhaps the political consequences can be treated even before we prove things by trial. ...” Bernardo Valli: “You mean to say that the great public trial has already taken place. ..?”

Borrelli: “The great public trial has already taken, place.”

© Valli: “So the courtroom sentence is almost a ‘secondary’ thing, which

+

is related to judicial procedure, the law, justice in the proper sense, but the operation that we call a great cleansing is already here. . .?” Borrelli: “It’s already here, and in part it has already happened. ... I also want to say that in this particular situation, in this difficulty, in

>

=

the face of this universe which has emerged from the depths, perhaps

the discourse can be slightly different [from what a public official normally says about the administration of justice], in the sense that _ the political world and the opinion of the common people, of the voters, can already show certain consequences,”? 157

158 ~~ Chapter 17 If Borrelli seems here to be crowing a bit, he did so deservedly. As

1993 drew to a close, the number of suspects who had received aovisi was impressive: 1,456 businessmen, politicians, and officials, including 251

members of Parliament, and 4 former prime ministers of Italy? Those are the national figures; but Operation Clean Hands, although it ostensibly involved some other prosecutors in other cities, remained mostly a Milan

operation, run by the Pool in the Milan Palace of Justice. So Milan general

prosecutor Catelani could report, in opening judicial year 1994, that the Pool was currently conducting 2,497 separate investigations, involving

1,135 suspects, of whom 358 had been detained. The Pool had resorted to

preventive detention 593 times, which means that a number of people had

suffered more than one such order. The Pool had asked the Chamber of

Deputies to lift the immunity of 137 of its members. (The resistance of

the lower house to the lifting of Craxi’s immunity was more normal than unusual: Of the 137 requests, only 20 had been completely approved and

6 partly approved, whereas on November 2, the date used by Catelani, 84

were still pending.) The magistrates had also recovered about $130 million in bribe money.*

Municipal elections in late November punished the Christian Demo-

crats and Socialists and rewarded the PDS and the secessionist Northern

govern. It was notably successful in doing so: In every major city where

a second round was necessary, the PDS put together a winning coalition.

‘This included three northern port cities—Venice, Genoa, and Trieste—

where the League had shown strength, as well as Rome and Naples, The Naples election may have had the glamor of a Mussolini (the granddaughter) running on the Right, but the Rome election had the most politically important element.

The candidate of the Right in Rome was Gianfranco Fini, the shrewd

and attractive new leader of the “‘post-Fascist” Italian Social Movement.

Fini, still in his early forties, had been part of the MST youth movement

and had captured the reins of the party in 1987. He had been the dauphin of his predecessor, Giorgio Almirante, a handsome political thespian with

long white hair. Almirante may have seemed typecast as the aging Fascist,

but he had a capacity for grand oratory that none of his contemporaries

could match, Fini, who would fit well in a Wall Street boardroom, was in the process of moving the party away from its Fascist roots and toward

such a polite facade that it would be a candidate for temporary coalition with moderate parties,

The most startling moment in the 1993 campaign came when media

magnate Silvio Berlusconi voiced support for Fini. He did this at Rome’s

Overseas Press Club, then came back to the same forum, after a clamor

ome

League. The League had cut so deeply into the vote in the north that the PDS had to find coalition partners in several major cities if it hoped to

Berlusconi “=> 159

had broken out, to take a half-step (but only a half-step) backward, saying that, if he lived in Rome, he would vote for Fini, And in Bologna, at the

‘opening of one of his chain of Shopville supermarkets, Berlusconi let it

be known that he was contemplating entering the political arena himself

‘as a new candidate with a new party. It was a clear preview of the Berlusconi phenomenon that would dominate the winter and, with the support for Fini, of the alliance that would be the centerpiece of the spring. But

this excitement in Rome aside, the municipal elections, and public opinion polls through December and January, constituted a clear foretelling of a

PDS victory in the next parliamentary elections. The last act appeared to be at hand. Despite Catelani’s expression of exasperation at seeing a Borrelli inter-

view every time he picked up a periodical, Borrelli, in an effort to protect

the Pool’s gains, sent a warning, with a drumbeat repetition of

“say I,” to

all those politicians who might stand in their way: “I would like to put

the ball into the other court, into the court of whoever intends to engage

in politics tomorrow: be aware of the new situation, say I. He who knows

he has skeletons in his closet, past embarrassments, should open the closet

and take himself out of the game, to the sidelines. Take yourself out of

the game before we catch up to you, say I. Those who want to run in elections should look all around themselves. If they are clean, then they can peacefully go ahead.” ‘The generalized warning was really aimed at Silvio Berlusconi. Almost 8s soon as Berlusconi announced his candidacy, at the beginning of 1994, the Pool started a series of arrests of Berlusconi’s business associates, including his brother. It was not enough to prevent Berlusconi from derailing, temporarily, the completion of the coup.

Silvio Berlusconi, though actually a product of the old regime, managed

to put himself forward as a new face for a new political era. As Patrick

McCarthy phrased it, “The collapse of structures left a void which a char-

ismatic leader could fill...

. Berlusconi was accustomed to selling... .

[He] replaced the difficult, coded discourse of an Aldo Moro with deliber-

ate clichés such as ‘call to arms.” ”*

Berlusconi had never run for office before. His triumph in the March 1994 election swept into Parliament a great army of Italian citizens who had never served in Parliament, had never held any office, or, in many

zases, had never been politically active before their election. Yet Berlusconi was certainly not a member of any cabal that had had

inything to do with bringing down the First Republic, He was not associ-

ated with the Agnellis and De Benedettis who, in fact, scorned him as an.

ancultured arriviste. His newspaper (technically his brother's), I! Gior-

aale, was not in the “leak” pipeline from the magistrates and did not join their cheering section. He had a few things to fear from the magistrates

160 ~~ Chapter 17 himself. And he despised the PDS; indeed, anti-Communism is the only

consistent political element that can be found in the thinking of the

“early” (pre-candidate) Berlusconi. The portrayal of Berlusconi (and this was his consistent portrait outside Italy)—as a successful businessman, a self-made man, who had finally said “enough of these politicians” and brought a businessman’s dynamism

and probity to politics—was only partly accurate. Many of Berlusconi’s enterprises were doing well, but there was some red ink here and there.

And he had not, of course, appeared from nowhere. His ascent, well known to all Italians because he had brought them the American-style

television they wanted, had occurred in the First Republic and according to its rules. The two shopping malls and the luxury housing development he had built in Milan’s periphery needed all the usual permits, environ-

mental clearances, licenses, and so on, and there is no reason to think that he obtained them (from Socialist and Communist local governments) in a

manner much different from that of other Italian entrepreneurs. His climb to the top of Italian commercial television, advertising, and other

media was wholly the product of his own aggressive entrepreneurial

spirit. Berlusconi was. a genuinely successful showman, He needed no

help in winning a huge audience for his three commercial television net-

works. This status quo was then frozen by a law pushed through by Craxi.

But Berlusconi supported Craxi for serious and disinterested reasons. ‘He was especially fond of that Craxi who was the béte noire of the Com-

munists and helped destroy their chance to enter government in the 1970s.

Berlusconi’s friendship with Craxi was close’ and genuine, and was not abandoned even when it would have been very politically advantageous to do so.

‘The Berlusconi pheriomenon is not part of this analysis of the coup

except to the extent that Berlusconi himself believed that a revolution had

been planned and’ carried out by the elements we have been examining,

‘felt that Italy must be saved from them, and, when he entered the arena,

became the target of a clear combination of those same elements. His

campaign offices were searched by magistrates (in this case from Palmi),

‘and his documents were sequestered during the 1994 electoral campaign. (This was a purely political assault; the declared object of the magistrates’

search was a list of members of Forza Italia clubs. The list would have

been sent by mail on request. In fact, leftist magistrates made no secret of their dislike of the possibility of a Berlusconi government.

: On February 11, 1994, just a few days after Berlusconi entered the race,

the Pool had Berlusconi's younger brother Paolo arrested, Within the next three weeks, right in the middle of the electoral campaign, it was the turn of Marcello Dell’Utri, the president of Berlusconi’s advertising firm

Berlusconi “* 167 Publitalia, along with five other executives of the firm. Five days before the election, newspapers friendly to the Pool said that it was looking into. the possibility that Berlusconi had passed money to the Mafia.’ The “leak” had come from PDS politician Luciano Violante, former chair of ‘the Senate anti-Mafia committee,'? Berlusconi was summoned for “con~ versations” with Di Pietro, Even David Nelken, generally supportive of the Pool, acknowledges that “both some judges and PDS spokesmen did make some bad moves at the time of the 1994 general election in attempting to smear Silvio Berlusconi’s political campaign with Mafia and Masonic support, or to exploit bribery charges being brought against his brother Paolo." Berlusconi’s electoral alliance won a sweeping victory on March 27-29,

1994. This triumph has been portrayed as the counterrevolution, and it certainly did constitute a wide detour of the path of the coup, The victory

would also lead to “the highest point of the conflicts between the country’s government and the Milan prosecutor.”

"The electoral system was complex, but, simply put, the Berlusconi coalition wound up with 146 Senate seats (compared to 122 for the coalition

based on the PDS) and 301 Deputies (compared to 164). The proportional ‘vote was 21 percent for Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and 20.4 for the PDS,

with the post-Fascist National Alliance finishing a strong third. The

Christian Democrats (now the Popular Party) had sunk to 11.1 percent,

down from 31.7 percent at the start of Operation Clean Hands. The Socialists fell from 14.5 percent to 2.2 percent.

«The international media reporting Berlusconi’s victory took little note

of the progress of the PDS. From 16 percent in 1992, it climbed to within

one half of a percentage point of Forza Italia’s total and, given the losses suffered by others, strongly enhanced its hegemony of the Left. Nor was note taken of the fact that 22 magistrates were elected to Parliament, 18 ‘of them on the Left. President Scalfaro did not ask Berlusconi to form a government until May, when the media magnate had finally succeeded in cobbling together a wobbly and tendentious postelectoral coalition consisting of his own Forza Italia, the Northern League, the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazio-

‘nale, and a Christian Democratic splinter. So it was mid-May before Italy had a Berlusconi government.

Notes

1. Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 115. 2. La Repubblica, 17 November 1993. 3. Scott Sullivan, “Shame Without End,” Newsweek, 13 December 1993,

162 ~~ Chapter 17

4. Corte di appello di Milano, Relazione del procuratore generale per Pinangurazione dellanno gindiziario 1994, 35. 5. Cited in Goffredo Buccini, “Politici, si candidi solo chi ha mani pulite,” Corriere, 17 October 1993, 3. 6. Patrick MoCarthy, “Forza Italia: The Overwhelming Success and the Consequent Problems of a Virtual Party,” in Italian Politics: The Year of the Tycoon, Richard 8. Katz and Piero Ignazi, eds. (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 38, 40, 41. And see Edmondo Berselli’s amusing “Politics and Karaoke” in the same volume. 7. Craxi was best man at Berlusconi's wedding with his second wife, 8. See also Romano Canosa, Storia della magistratura in Italia (Milan: Bal-

dini&Castoldi, 1996), 223.

9. La Stampa, 22 March 1994.

10. In the same interview, Violante was asked whether what was happening was a “white coup d’état,” organized by magistrates who were close to the PDS. Violante responded with a revealing wisecrack: “If we had the strength, we would do it, But don’t write that.” As of this writing, Violante is president of the Chamber of Deputies. 11. David Nelken, “A Legal Revolution?” in The New Italian Republic, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds, (London: Routledge, 1996), n. 9. 12,

Canosa, Storia, 223.

18 The Biondi Decree-Law

orrelli had shown already, before the new government was even

sworn in, that bringing down Berlusconi was a fight from which he would not back away. He announced dramatically that, to con-

tinue the struggle, he would renounce his candidacy vo the Court of Appeals and would stay in the trenches. That was less of a sacrifice than it might seem, because Borrelli was only eleventhin line for the job. Borrelli was not close to being a viable candidate. Nonetheless, it shows how im-

portant Borrelli now considered himself.

Borrelli also urged Piercamillo Davigo not to stray from the fold (into

electoral politics). Both of them announced that they would remain “with drawn swords” (Davigo’s phrase) to cut off the heads of the opposition and make them “roll in the dust” (Borrelli’s).!

‘The Pool’s growing presumption was starkly evidenced when an interviewer inquired of Borrelli what would happen if Berlusconi asked the Pool to enter his government. Under the headline “To the Government Only If [President] Scalfaro Calls Us... Borrelli: We Are Staying at Our

Post, Even I Renounce the Court of Appeals,” Borrelli responded

“{OJnly when the President of the Republic . . . as the supreme guardian,

calls to the men of the law... . It would not be enough . . . to have an

ocean of people under our balconies. But an appeal . . from the Chief of

State could be answered with an ‘at your service.’ ” A former member of the CSM observed that such declarations, and the

“fantasies about oceans of people under his balcony,” if made by a gen-

eral, would immediately label him a coup-plotter, a magistrate would ar-

rest him, and his career would be finished. Perhaps more interesting are

(1) Borrelli’s increasing tendency to speak of the Pool as a political party

(that might or might not enter a governing coalition) and (2) the public 163

164 ~~ Chapter 18

reaction reported by the press, which was not to cry that a coup threatened but, rather, to applaud Borrelli’s “generous renunciation.”

Columnist/professor Angelo Panebianco commented on Borrelli’s “av-

alanche of interviews.” Borrelli gave Panebianco “the clear impression of

wanting to propose himself as the moral guide of the opposition to the new majority.” On June 15, with Berlusconi now the prime minister, the Pool finally

put handcuffs on ex-Senator Severino Citaristi, the former administrative

secretary of the Christian Democratic Party on whose desk avvisi di garanzia had made a notable stack. Now retired, Citaristi had stomach can-

cer, and much of his stomach had been removed in delicate surgery a few

months before his arrest. When the Pool had difficulty explaining which of the three permissible grounds for preventive detention (danger that the crime would be repeated, risk that the suspect would flee, danger to soci-

ety) applied in Citaristi’s case, the GIP changed the arrest to house arrest.

The next day, reading the news in the morning papers, much of the

Italian political world reacted with indignation at the Pool’s action, The

president of the Republic telephoned Citaristi, expressing Christian soli-

arity.) An II Giornale columnist could not imagine how the attempt to

jail Citaristi could be justified, unless there was a desire “‘to set an exam-

ple, to send a strong signal, to underscore one’s power.” But the Pool had no need to underscore its power, “given that today it appears full, solitary,

like a lightning bolt.”*

In June the Milan magistrates renewed their attack on Berlusconi. His

brother Paolo was accused of having ordered the payment of bribes to officers of the Finance Police. to avoid or lighten the financial controls imposed on Berlusconi’s companies. Before the Berlusconi government took office, there was talk of an ef-

fort to rein in the magistrates and the CSM. Instead, Berlusconi held out an olive branch. He tried appeasement, held an unprecedented meeting with the magistrates’ association, promised to maintain the magistrates’ independence, and offered Di Pietro the Interior Ministry.

But in mid-July, after two months of unabated attacks by the Pool,

Berlusconi struck back. The government’s counterattack started when it issued a decree-law (despite the failure of the earlier Conso decree-law)

limiting the use of preventive detention for “white-collar” crimes, and

adopting some of the standards of due process and defendants’ rights that

prevail in most other Western countries. This time, Scalfaro signed the decree-law.

The decree-law came from an impeccable source: Berlusconi’s minister

of justice, responsible for promulgating the law, was Alfredo Biondi, a greying veteran of the Liberal Party who seemed to be above the Mani

Pulite fray. Biondi, approaching seventy as of this writing, is a lawyer

The Biondi Decree-Law

~-= 165

who first entered Parliament in 1968, Biondi said the intention was “to

bring Italian practice on preventive detention into conformity with that

of the most democratic countries,” and to answer criticisms from interna-

tional human rights organizations. “Important . . . institutions have often

temarked on the excessive use of preventive detention in the jails of our

country, The decree does not have any influence on proceedings nor on the eventual convictions, but seeks to assure that preventive detention

does not constitute either a premature expiation of the sentence, nor an

instrument to make people confess their own or others’ responsibility, nor, especially, an easier method for gathering evidence that otherwise would be less easy to acquire.”

The newspapers friendly to the Pool portrayed the law simply as a way

fo spring some of the political and business leaders being held by the

Pool. But a number of columnists supported the proposal. Panebianco criticized Berlusconi for choosing the wrong means (a decree-law) for

bringing Italy into line with Western standards of civil rights but strongly supported the need for new legistation: “That preventive detention should

be the exception and not the rule is an elementary principle of civilized

liberal jurisprudence. That preventive detention has often been used in this country to extort a confession from the suspect is also a fact and a

violation of these principles,” Panebianco also reminded his readers of a truth about Italian justice: “The problem is in the fact that, as the magistrate [Edmondo] Bruti Liberati declared in Manifesto, in a failed and bar-

barous system of penal justice such as ours, ‘prison before trial is the only

pertain punishment.’ ”#

| What the law did was to set some standards: An investigation had to be

genuine (truly related to an alleged crime), and the citizen being investigated had to be a valid suspect in the crime, The point was to ensure thar

the avviso di garanzia was used, as it had been intended, as a guarantee for the citizen, not as a means of defaming the citizen? Because the Biondi decree-law reaffirmed the principle that judicial retords should remain confidential, the “Clean Pens” also howled about

freedom of the press. The ministry addressed these attacks by pointing but chat the decree-law did not create new sanctions against the violation

of official secrecy. ‘The press supporting the magistrates was able to whip up a considerible campaign of rallies and street demonstrations against the decree-law. The question of how Italian practice related to Western norms of due srocess was never mentioned. Biondi replied: When the necessary climate of serenity has been recovered and the Parlia~ ment has been given back the function which belongs exclusively to it, I hope that the investigative magistracy itself will takeup again, in a responsi-

166 ~~ Chapter 18

ble manner, its proper functions so that the investigations are carried out; so that the trials can take place; so that the penal sanctions follow the verdict rather than precede it."° But the Pool and the Clean Pens press won this round. The law was widely seen as a blatant attempt to open the prison doors for old friends (and, of course, to ensure that Berlusconi himself would not see the inside

of a prison).'! Even if one decides that, of all the benefits of the law, the

one that probably mattered most to Berlusconi was, in fact, that of getting some control over the Clean Hands Pool, the law does not lose all nobility

of purpose. He believed the Pool to be completely politicized, and he

was undoubtedly deeply troubled by the suicides it had caused; in fact, Berlusconi knew both Cagliari and Gardini and had scen them frequently until their arrests. Berlusconi probably committed a tactical error in choosing the means.

Rather than a decree-law (in’ effect until the Parliament acts), Berlusconi

could have chosen a disegno di legge, a draft law, which has no effect until the Parliament acts on it.

The Pool swung into immediate action, “like Samson under threat of

having his hair cut,” as one journalist put it.

“The reactions of some magistrates are upsetting . . . since they constitute confirmation that prison is considered to be the principal investigative means for obtaining confessions, accusations against others, and general crime tips.” In fact, not waiting even for the cabinet’s approval (unanimous) of the decree-law, Borrelli acted on the basis of leaks about

what was coming. He called a formal press conference to attack the decree-law: “It is truly singular that on the anniversary of the Bastille people are trying to open holes in the walls of San Vittore.”?

But the real blow came from Di Pietro, who showed himself to be a

master of political theater, At seven o’clock on the evening of July 13, the day of the announcement of the decree-law, standing with Colombo,

Davigo, and Francesco Greco, Di Pietro—sleeves rolled up, collar open, needing a shave, the very image of a man working tirelessly, which, in

fact, he was—appeared saddened by the ordeal he was living, and told the prime-time audience that if the decree-law were signed by the president,

he would resign. Maybe they all would. This was then modified by the magistrates into a declaration that they would all request a transfer out of

the Pool." Tiziana Maiolo, chair of the Justice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, unused to having the judiciary play such an overt role in the legislative process, called the Pool’s dramatic intervention “‘a subversive act of unprecedented gravity.”"*

The protest of the Milan magistrates also revealed the essential differ-

ence between the highly political revolutionaries in togas in Milan and

The Biondi Decree-Law “> 167 others working in more real danger and on cases just as sensitive. The

chief prosecutor in Palermo, Giancarlo Caselli, who succeeded Falcone and Borsellino as the commanding general in the war against the Mafia,

criticized the provision in the law requiring a magistrate to inform a sus. pect within three months that he was under investigation. This allowed Caselli to give a lecture on the value of secrecy, a virtue the Milan Pool

had, with great political effect, long since forgotten.'* He was notably silent about any difficulties he would have with the limitations on preventive detention, During the next two days, while Italian politics swirled around the battle that had been opened, Berlusconi and Biondi responded firmly to the

Pool. But, as it turned out, Berlusconi could not count on his coalition—on neither Bossi’s Northern League nor Fini’s National Alliance.

The rift with the Northern League was serious, since Berlusconi’s inte-

rior minister (and deputy prime minister) was from that party, the

League’s most important posting in the Berlusconi government, Young,

bearded Roberto Maroni was considered a moderate and was soon to ex-

perience a temporary break with Bossi (later patched up), partly because

he did not like the idea of giving up his ministerial post when Bossi de-

cided that it was time for the League to leave the government. Maroni was supposedly in on meetings with Berlusconi and Biondi about the decree-

law. And he had supposedly approved a draft. But when he saw the public

firestorm that the decree-law had raised, he insisted that the government

withdraw it, or he would resign.” Washing his hands of any responsibil-

ity, he claimed that he had been tricked by Berlusconi, who, he said, altered the text of the law after Maroni had seen it. Berlusconi reaffirmed

that Maroni had been part of the unanimous cabinet approval of the law, and told Maroni to retract his statement or resign. So Maroni declared

that he would give his ministerial portfolio back to the League—odd since

he had received it from the prime minister, not from his party. The other coalition party, Fini’s post-Fascist National Alliance, seems

to have adeptly confused the issue by calling for an amendment that would permit preventive detention in corruption cases, meaning that

small-time drug dealers would benefit, whereas jailed politicians and busi-

nessmen would not. But Fini, when cornered, publicly supported the Pool and the Pool’s opposition to the decree-law. It is difficult for magis-

trates to lose the support of a law-and-order conservative movement, but

the Pool eventually achieved this outcome. So, as its coup intentions be-

came more clear, Fini stepped back in alarm. His final judgment was that “in the magistracy there are those... who wind up negating the democratic principle that says that it’s the Parliament that makes the laws,” Berlusconi’s spokesman described Maroni’s attempt to back out of responsibility as “infantile” and called it the act of an amateur. Biondi’s

168 ~~ Chapter 18 response was to resign, but the resignation was rejected by Berlusconi

who was trying to retake the initiative. He did so in July, in a speech that became known as the “Trieste Declaration,” a sort of manifesto against

the abuses of the Pool.

“In Italy the magistracy has done praiseworthy work, But,” said the Prime Minister, “as time passed, voices of protest were raised . . . against the abuse of preventive detention which, in some cases, has been used excessively

«+ [and] to get confessions. This is illegal.

Our prisons are frighteningly crowded with thousands of people that have

not been convicted in a regular trial... people whom the Code commands us to consider innocent and who are instead treated as though they had been convicted and sentenced. The number of these unfortunates grows continually, and their living conditions, with the overcrowding and the promiscuity,

becomes unworthy of a civilized country, Now, in Italy and abroad, we are

openly accused of violating several fundamental principles of human rights and of taking on the character of a police state.

I know that parties and movements with an authoritarian mentality are

demonstrating in the piazza. | know that parties and movernents exist that

conceive of the law as’a vendetta... . Against them I affirm the principles of

liberal society. Risking unpopularity, therefore, I will do everything I can to

empty the prisons of all those who are being held in violation of the universal,

principles of right and morality.

Preventive detention must go back to being an exceptional measure for

the gravest crimes, for association with the Mafia, for murder, for terrorist

attack, for drug trafficking, for those who constitute a real danger to the

community, In all other cases it must be abolished. Or reduced to the mini-

mum. And after it, trials must be conducted. . .. The prolonging of impris-

onment with new accusations must not be abused.

Berlusconi then came to the point: “I consider the Biondi decree a first

step in this direction. Some people want to insinuate that it’s designed to send back home all the corrupt of Zangentopoli, to protect certain privi-

leged economic sectors. This is an ignoble lie, a propagandistic lie. This is

the first act of this government to apply in Italy the universal rights of

man, the rights of every human being.”"” Berlusconi invited amendments, so long as they didn’t restrict liberty but, instead, increased it. Di Pietro’s threat to resign was later further modified into a declaration by Borrelli that they would all request to be transferred out of the Mani

Pylite operation. But it was Davigo who cut to the heart of the matter. In an interview with state television journalist Bruno Vespa, Davigo asked

rhetorically, “[IJf orders that are given to me in pursuance of a law and

that I must execute are irrational and would lead to the failure of the

system, what do I do?” Davigo’s answer was that since “the anomaly is

The Biondi Decree-Law ~~ 169

not in the justice system, but in the political power,” the “legitimacy” of

the regime itself becomes doubtful, and the magistrates, having made that diagnosis, believed that “such a tumor must by cut out by magistrates

supported by a people stirred up by public declarations,”

‘The newspapers and magazines friendly to thé magistrates were unsparing in their attack on the decree-law. They labeled it the “Robber-Saver

Decree.” The editor of Corriere, in a front-page column, said the govern-

ment was about to have a fatal heart attack, and deservedly so, since

“never has there been a government that was, more than this one, inspired

by the hard law of battle .. ., of military logic. All of Italian society is

seen as a barren land across which are strewn hundreds of fortresses, each to be razed to the ground and erased. .., Berlusconi has done nothing to keep from making it appear to Italians that he is more interested in the

surrender of Antonio Di Pietro and the Clean Hands Pool than in any-

thing else.’

The claim by the League’s Roberto Maroni, the interior minister, that

the wording of the decree-law had been changed after he had approved it allowed Bossi to bail out. He joined Fini in announcing nonsupport of the law. The government made an inelegant retreat before the shrillness of the

Pool and buried the decree-law. The former chairwoman

of the Justice

Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, who, though politically at odds with Berlusconi, supported the decree-law, summed up the result; “It’s

certainly true that the government has suffered a defeat and that true garantismo (defense of the principles of the constitution] has turned out, as

always, to concern [only] a minority.” Maiolo called the intervention of

Di Pietro and Borrelli “‘an instigation to insurrection. « .. Enough of this:

if they want power, let them take off the toga and get themselves elected by the people. Instead, the magistrates are the only ones who don’t have

to answer to anyone, assured of an absolute impunity, since the CSM

never intervenes in these cases.”?3 With the failure of the decree-law, the systematic violation of basic civil rights of the accused continued. ‘The Poo! had a free hand to continue

what Panebianco called a “double barbarity, an intolerable violation that strikes both individual liberty ... and the demands of societal security.

« It is an act of violence against individual liberty because it forces so many citizens to become acquainted with prison, citizens who deserve, until conviction, the presumption of innocence, and who then, when they

come to trial, according to the statistics, are found innocent in a majority of the cases,”

The International Human Rights Federation issued a report based on a 1992 mission to Italy stating, in part, that “‘it is not possible to doubt the fact that the systematic incarceration without trial of many suspects—

170 ~~ Chapter 18 many of whom present evident reasons for notoriety—which is officially motivated by the concern for a possible ‘poisoning of the evidence,’ has,

in reality, the objective of exercising pressure in order to obtain confessions of guilt or the denouncing of accomplices.”

The few days that the decree-law was operational before Parliament voted it down give us the possibility of comparing the results with the PDS accusation that the only objective of the law was to spring victims of Operation Clean Hands. Of 4,000 citizens in jail before trial, 2,000 were released, 472 of them immediately. Of the first bunch, 419 were common

criminals, almost all drug addicts. Of the rest, cases involving more than

petty crimes, there may have been some corruption cases, One paper

called the mass release, appropriately, “the day of the forgotten ones.”

Of those released subsequently, al! were “anonymous” prisoners accused of “ordinary” crimes. Silvio Berlusconi’s war with the Pool invensified through the late sum-

mer and autumn of 1994. The magistrates did their best to harass Berlus-

coni and his businesses to make it impossible for him to govern

effectively.

‘The prime minister’s next move, however correct, was one that sent a

shock wave through the corridors of Milan’s Palace of Justice. Justice Min-

ister Biondi ordered an inspection of the Milan Pool, the normal proce-

dure in response to all the complaints that had been registered about its

actions. It is the minister’s right and duty to watch, and acquire information about, anomalous situations, although any disciplinary action would have to be decided by the CSM.% During the same period, Milan general

prosecutor Giulio Catclani sent an official letter to the Ministry expressing his own grave concerns about the Pool, a message to which Biondi

would have had to react.

In his letter giving the inspectors their charge, Biondi cited some of the messages he had received from persons and businesses who believed

themselves to have been abused.’ Since there is no question that Biondi

had partially political motives for sending the inspectors, one must ask whether he nevertheless had solid and legitimate reasons. This is a sampling of the complaints to which he was responding:

© A complaint asserted that the Pool’s requisitioning of materials from

Berlusconi’s businesses was a generalized fishing expedition rather than a search for specific itemis, as the law requires.

¢ A member of Parliament complained that the Pool had held Fininvest

manager Salvatore Sciascia in prison, although he had confessed and

was in “gravely” poor health.

« Finance Police General Giuseppe Cerciello (who would later suffer

‘The Biondi Decree-Law “=> 171 the Pool’s vendetta) asked questions about Colombo’s interrogation of one of Cerciello’s marshals, who then committed suicide. * Messages to the Ministry complained of the many violations of judi-

cial confidentiality and, in one case, noted that in an interview in

Corriere della Sera, Borrelli had acknowledged that his strategy of attack against Berlusconi’s company Telepit was politically moti-

vated.

¢ A police major complained that an investigation chat was beginning to touch Communist circles had been taken from magistrate Parenti and then not pursued seriously. ¢ There were complaints of a generalized wiretapping of an attorney (not the Craxi case).

There were also, of course, the protests of Prime Minister Berlusconi

himself. More than 200 searches had been made of his businesses, all re-

ported in the press. The difference of treatment by the Pool between FIAT and Fininvest was noted.

Although the inspection was obviously legitimate, it may have been politically unwise. Borrelli took the unprecedented step of attacking the minister publicly: “I really believe ‘that Biondi is a little tired.” Davigo

then suggested, also publicly, that the best thing for Biondi would be to

resign. And, sure enough, Biondi did soon resign, becoming the third justice minister, after Martelli and Conso, to be defeated by the Milan Pool.

Not content to block passage of laws they didn’t like, the Pool took. an

interest in the creative side of legislation. In September 1994, Di Pietro

told a convention of industrialists at Cernobbio that the Milan Pool would propose a legislative solution to the stalemate caused by the investi-

gations. Shortly after Di Pietro’s speech at Cernobbio, the project was formally

presented by the Pool at the Milan state university before an admiring mdience of more than 1,400 students. As four of the stars of the Pool

nade their way on stage (bright with television lights), preceded by an umy of photographers, there was a murmur of recognition for Francesco Greco, then strong applause for Piercamillo Davigo and Gherardo Co-

ombo, both in red ties. (Borrelli was there also, in the first row of the

tudience.) The arrival of Di Pietro was greeted with the sort of explosion ‘rom the balcony that one associates with soccer stars. “For a moment he iavored. it, this sports-stadium welcome.” During that moment, the itretch of Italian history that this story of the coup covers was all present ‘And who knows if in that instant, even he, the magistrate of Operation

Clean Hands, saw before his eyes once again a sort of film from the past, hat past that [saw this very auditorium], in the long-ago year of 1968,

172 o~« Chapter 18 live through fiery, maybe historic, moments. Another time, of course.

Another student throng. And there, on the stage . . . overshadowed by

huge photos of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.”

The dean of the law faculty, knowing that the magistrates were on dan-

getous constitutional ground, introduced them with a disclaimer: “The

University of Milan is not involved in any way in the reform proposal

which will be presented here.” The chairman of the meeting recognized

that Di Pietro was not listed as the first speaker but turned the floor over

to him anyway, saying that he had “demanded to speak first.”

Initially, Di Pietro seemed restrained, “different from the Di Pietro who is always on his feet, pointing, gesturing, accusing, rolling back the

sleeves of his toga.... But this ‘Professor’ Di Pietro only lasts an instant.

He stays seated, it’s true, and one hardly sees bis hands... . But the voice,

ah, that voice that always rises and falls and reveals now Di Pietro the

mediator-politician, now Di Pietro the polemicist . . . now Di Pietro the tough, the destructive.”*" This was the Di Pietro that became familiar,

thanks to television, to millions of Italians. According to the polls, they loved it, and him.

Di Pietro announced that he wanted to respond to the “gratuitous in-

vectives with which we have been hit... . It’s necessary to...

re-write the

rules of the relations between business and politics.” Raising his voice to a hoarse shout, his eyes on fire, he made his appeal: “You politicians, you

lawyers who pull back at the last minute, don’t be offended by the fact that we have allowed ourselves to take the initiative!” And then Di Pietro presented a series of fourteen legislative proposals,

most of them involying an increase in the penalties for various crimes, or

the ability to reward pentiti with complete impunity before the law. They

were soon to be called the “kickback-killer laws” by the friendly press.

Insisting that they were not trying to write the laws, “despite what the

honorable ‘Tiziana Parenti may say... and here the honorable Parenti is wrong, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Di Pietro finished

his proposals shouting: “Do it quickly or Italy will be conquered!” He

drew silence or polite applause from professors and lawyers in the ground-floor audience but tumultuous cheers from the students in the

balcony.

For the law professors who spoke, the Pool had gone too far. After

Colombo spoke “with passion” a Bologna law professor asked whether

the State, “if it bases itself on the collaboration of private individuals, does

not admit its own impotence. Private individuals do not collaborate for

reasons of justice, but for their own interests.” The magistrates were also

asked by the professors whether “augmenting the penalties does not, per-

haps, simply respond to the public’s emotional wave.” Several professors began their own remarks with lines such as “I must

The Biondi Decree-Law +=» 173

express my doubts and perplexity. . "They worried that the Pool was doing too many favors for those who collaborate, and was too vindictive against those who did not. Clearly, they saw danger in the path followed by the Pool. One of the scholars who rose to express doubts about the

ideas of the magistrates was a lawyer and professor from Rome, Giovanni

Maria Flick, a future justice minister. Flick actually published a dissent,

which took some courage in those days.”

‘The Pool had so clearly overstepped the spirit of the Italian constitution

that voices of serious dissent were finally heard. Criminal lawyers held

meetings in the Milan Palace of Justice to discuss the proposals. Disap-

proval of Di Pietro’s initiative came also from the national union of crimi-

nal lawyers, whose president, Gaetano Pecorella, thought that the Pool

had overstepped its proper role, and also worried aloud about the grave imbalance between prosecution and defense.

But the most interesting and, we believe, on-target intervention in the

debate on the Pool’s proposals came from Judge Italo Ghitti, who had approved so many of the Pool’s requests for preventive detention—more than 500 arrest warrants, by his own count. Already uncomfortable about

the use of detention to force people to talk, Ghitti stunned the Pool by

expressing his doubts publicly. By the fall of 1994, Ghitti had {eft his

Milan post to become a member of the CSM. With distance, Judge Ghit-

t’s doubts about what was happening in Milan had grown, and the Pool’s

entrance into the field of legislation was the last straw.

Ghitti decided to talk to the press, Warning that hé did not want to

engage in polemics with his old colleagues, he said that he now felt that

the system was wrong. He noted that when a magistrate initially requests an arrest warrant, the defense is not allowed to present its case against the imprisonment, With no one speaking effectively against the arrest, the

GIP has little reason not to grant the prosecuting magistrate’s request. If the suspect asks for a hearing, the question of when the hearing occurs is entirely in the hands of the prosecution. The prosecution can say that the strategy of its investigation requires waiting weeks, or months, The prosecutors get their way, while the citizen languishes in prison, Despite this imbalance, Ghitti said, the Pool wanted to strengthen further the

hand of the prosecution, and to isicrease the effectiveness of preventive

detention and the use of the pentiti that detention might produce, further

weakening the rights of the accused.

Task myself: the person who finds himself under arrest, is he in a position of equality with respect to his accuser? Or, as I believe, in a position of psychological weakness? .. . A prisoner is at the disposition of a whole office, in such a way that all the magistrates of that office . . . can interrogate him in connection with whatever investigation [they wish}, even though the [original arrest warrant] has been issued for a single incident.

174 -~« Chapter 18

Judge Ghitti recalled the example of a Milan magistrate who had received 4 warrant permitting him to pull a man in for an investigation into orga-

nized crime, then immediately dropped all organized-crime charges but

kept the man for questioning on corruption charges. The final irony of the titanic struggle between the government and the Pool over the Biondi decree-law came the following year, after the Berlus-

ng coni government had passed from the scene and the PDS was beginnilaw to prepare for its central role in the Second Republic. A reform of the on preventive detention was approved by the Parliament, attracting even

the votes of the PDS. The content of the reform law was taken directly

from the Biondi decree.

Notes

1. “Borrelli: noi siamo decisi ad andare avanti,” Corriere, 13 April 1994, 3. 2. Corriere, 1 May 1994. 3, See Mauro Mellini, 1 Golpe dei gindici (Milan: Spirali-Vel, 1994).coup”In fact, was magistrates arrested Edgardo Sogno for much less. Sogno’s “white supposed to have been scheduled for August 1974 and to have been financed by FIAT, He was arrested by the Communist magistrate Luciano Violante (the same) on the basis of a letter that, as was later determined, Sogno knew about only after the fact. Violante, denounced for false arrest by Sogno, was absolved byintoa Venetian considcourt in 1975 because the court found no evil intent. The court took put statement eration that Violante’s investigative work involved, as its sentencing it, “a complex judicial case, of national importance and of unpredictable consequences.” But Violante was forced to take himself out of the investigation and to pass the responsibility to another magistrate, The latter absolved Sogno on September 12, 1978, more than four years after the “scheduled coup.” 1994. 4. Angelo Panebianco, “Il partito dei magistrati,” Corriere, 9 May 5, Gianluca Di Feo, “Citaristi rimanga agli arresti,” Corriere, 22 June 1994, 15. 6, Salvatore Searpino, JI Giornale, 17 June 1994. 7, “Commentary by the Justice Minister on the so-called ‘Biondi Decree,’ L’Opinione, 17 July 1994. 8, Angelo Panebianco, “Gli Errori, Le Anomalie,” Corviere, 16 July 1994, 4. 9. Panebianco, “Gli Exrori.”” 10. Cited in ibids emphasis added. {1. Gilbert calls it the second mistake of the Berlusconi government, the first being a heavy-handed attempt to gain such control over RAI, the state radiotelevision system, that his politics would be reflected in its broadcasts and bis commercial networks would gain some competitive advantages. dall’incivilta gi12. ‘Tita Mazzuca, “L'ltalia ha un’occasione storica per uscire uridica,” L’Opinione, 17 July 1994, 6.

The Biondi Decree-Law > 13. Cited in Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli (Milan: Giornalisti

31-32.

175

Editori, 1995),

14, “Grandi latitanti, estradizione addio,” Corriere, 17 July 1994, 1.

15, Interview with Tiziana Matolo by Andrea Manzi in L’Informazione, 21

July 1996.

16. “Dimisioni ‘verbali’ del pool,” L’Opintone, 17 July 1994, 5.

17. “Maroni: via il decreto o me ne vado,” Corriere, 17 July 1994, 1.

18. Cited in Francesco Verderami, “Fini: giudici con delirio di onnipotenza,’ Corriere, 21 April 1997, 2,

19. Dichiarazione del Presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi sulla situazi-

one della giustizia penale in italia. Unpublished speech text, Trieste, 16 July 1994.

20, Vespa, alarmed, then went to the heart of the procedural question: “You

arrest 2 person for crime A and don’t let him out unless he talks about B, C, D.

‘This is the accusation contained in Cagliari’s suicide note and that has been con-

firmed by many other people, Don’t you find that, if true, this would be a worrisome accusation?” Davigo’s replied, “{I]t’s anybody’s opinion whether it’s true,

But even if it’s true it would not be worrisome.” See Bruno Vespa, I! Duello (Milan: Nuova Eri-Mondadori, 1995). 21. Paolo Micli, “L’atto di forza,” Corviere, 17 July 1994, 1,

22. Interview by Andrea Manzi in L*Informazione, 21 July 1996. 23. Ibid, 24, Panebianco, “Gli Errori,” 4; emphasis added.

6.

25, Vittorio Macioce, “Il giorno dei ‘dimenticati,’ ” L’Opinione, 17 July 1994,

26. Disciplinary action can be initiated by the Procuratore Generale della Cas-

sazione, on a recommendation from the minister, but only the CSM can judge the

case.

27. The text of the letter was published in J Resto del Carlino, 13 October 1994, 28. In an interview with Andrea Manzi (in L’Informazione, 21 July 1994), Mai-

olo was asked about the crumbling of the separation of powers.

Q: “Why has the situation Maiolo; “Because the Left party of the magistrates, through a pure exercise whole political class out the freedom of anybody

s.

degenerated to such a point?” has either supported or has been controlled by the which is now invading the other powers of the State of power... , They have felt the thrill of sending a to pasture . and strong in the ability to take away who does not want step back into line.”

29. Armando Zeni, “Il pm ‘star’ alla Statale,” La Stampa, 15 September 1994,

30. Susanna Marzolla, “ ‘Fate presto o Italia sara espugnata,’” Corriere, 15 September 1994, 3, 31. Zeni, “1 pm ‘star’ alla Statale.”

34:

‘Cost il Paese sara espugnato,’ ” Corriere, 15 September 1994, 3.

176 =~~ Chapter 18

35. 36, 37. 38.

Marzolla, “Kate presto.” Ibid. September 1994, 3. Interview with Giovanni Maria Flick, La Stampa, 15Repub blica,27 SeptemInterview with Italo Ghitti by Franco Coppola, La

ber, 1994, 8.

19

wee

The Pool Attacks the Prime Minister

orrelli, having threatened a cataclysm in his summer interviews,

was, by mid-autumn of 1994, clearly showing what he had in

mind: the destruction of the prime minister. The method was the same one that had proved so effective before: the breaking of the rules of

investigatory secrecy to obtain a “conviction” in the friendly press before

his victim had been formally charged or tried. Borrelli gave another of his

stream of front-page interviews: “Ah, no use hiding it. It’s true, We’re at

an important, a crucial, moment,” He announced that the Pool’s investi-

gations of Berlusconi’s enterprise Telepit. would arrive at “very elevated” political levels. Since the investigation had already touched Paolo Berlus-

coni, the meaning was clear.! Berlusconi’s spokesman exploded: “It’s a

delirium of omnipotence. .., This interview is the culmination of a series

of seditious attacks...

that have nothing to do-with the impartial adminis-

tration of criminal justice.”?

Soon after, the inspectors sent out by Minister Biondi on October 13

arrived in Milan, moved into an office in the Palace of Justice, and started

work. They began interviewing magistrates, including Tiziana Parenti.

Some of her declaration was made public in November. She said that “Ge-

rardo D’Ambrosio made me understand that no avviso di garanzia should be sent to PDS members . . . because this was the political force

that was assuring the consensus supporting the investigations of Clean Hands,”

‘Two days later, D’Ambrosio responded to Parenti: “She should visit a psychiatrist.’”*

But Parenti was not the only magistrate critical of the Pool. The Milan

general prosecutor, Giulio Catelani, revealed that an order to confiscate

documents at Berlusconi’s Publitalia offices had been used to look for

some sign of crime, rather than to seek proof of a specific alleged crime 177

178 ~~ Chapter 19 as required by the Constitutional Court. And later in October the Milan lawyers’ association complained to the CSM about the Pool’s “illegiti-

mate” practices, especially the “generalized” tapping of the phone of Fininvest’s lawyer, “without taking account of the principle . . . fundamental

for the free exercise of the [lawyers"] profession, of professional secrecy.”* Minister Biondi said that these episodes caused “not a little perplexity concerning the rigorous respect for the law on the part of some magis-

trates of the Milan prosecutor’s office, authors, among other things, of frequent public statements that would seem to be in conflict with the duty of maintaining a certain reserve,” Biondi’s and Parenti’s statements enraged Borrelli, The next day he wrote.two letters, one to Catelani and

the other to the president (and CSM chairman), Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.

‘To Catelani he complained, in a strange assertion, that the inspection

was “without precedent in all the history of Italian justice.” He added

that it was based on documents from “‘suspect” sources. He then expressed his “bitter disappointment” that Catelani himself felt the inspec-

tion was a good idea. Catelani had, Borrelli reminded, praised the Pool in

the past. Borrelli groused that the inspection could produce bad psycho-

logical effects on informers, harming their relationship with the Pool, and

that it would lead suspects to be arrogant. His team needed tranquility; the inspection would be a cloud over their heads, forcing them to try to remember the reasons for their actions because of “pretentious accusations.” He asked Catelani ta denounce the inspection publicly.

Borrelli had a series of questions for President Scalfaro, including whether he could hire a lawyer, whether he could refuse to answer inspec~ tors’ questions, and whether he himself enjoyed immunity. Shamelessly

(given their own behavior), he noted that the Pool’s action were covered by official secrecy, Then, at the end, Borrelli unloaded what Romano Ca-

nosa calls “the most malicious”* question of all: Could he, Borrelli, arrest

the inspectors (for interference with justice, presumably) and bring criminal action against them?

es

8

4

The central drama of the Pool’s effort to destroy the Berlusconi government was played out in these November days.

‘On November 22, 1994, the Pool escalated by delivering an avviso di

garanzia and an “invitation” to Berlusconi himself to come in and submit

, before this, through the friendly newspapers, the Pool to questioningJust had accused Fininvest officers of seeking to lighten the company’s tax load by cutting deals with the Finance Police, There was no quict conversation, as there had been with Romiti, nor

the assumption, from which Romiti and others had obviously benefited, that the most senior levels were innocent of involvement unless evidence

emerged indicating their personal involvement, Berlusconi had, according

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister ~*~ 179

to Maiolo, “triggered the livid reaction of the revolutionaries in togas.”? Most telling was the way they delivered Berlusconi’s avviso. The prime minister was engaged in the delicate maneuvering through

Parliament of a budget crucial both to Italy's future in Europe and to its own prosperity. Politically, Berlusconi was in his sixth month as head of

the coalition government he shared with the ex-Fascist National Alliance and the obstreperous Northern League of Umberto Bossi, both nervous

about Berlusconi’s legal problems: Alliance leader Fini smoothly hid his

concerns in rehearsed reaffirmations of loyalty to the coalition, whereas Bossi never hid anything, including his desire to get more distance from

Berlusconi. Their concerns were increased on the Monday morning of November 21, 1994, with the publication of some local election results, none of them good for Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the coalition. (Not

only were they “a triumph””® for the PDS and its new secretary, Massimo

D’Alema, but the Christian Democratic splinter [Italian Popular Party, or PPI] that had chosen to ally its electoral lists with the PDS actually showed some signs of electoral life.) The leaders did not discuss their

problems that morning because Berlusconi had left Rome to play host in Naples to delegates from 140 nations at a United Nations conference on international crime,

The journalist Bruno Vespa, retracing events closely for a book he would do on the affair,!' describes the prime minister as sobered (perhaps

by the election results), lunching on fish with five close colleagues in his

hotel suite on the Bay of Naples, the suite where Caruso stayed when

performing at the San Carlo Opera House. Berlusconi had to say something publicly to explain the electoral losses, so in the late afternoon he

jotted down the lines he would use, some of which were surly and accusatory toward his coalition allies. Anything other than smiling boosterism is

rare for Berlusconi, always appearing fresh from the barber, in a double~ breasted suit he just put on, confident, buoyant, ready to perform when

the lights go on. Tonight was blacks tie: He would follow Caruso’s path to

San Carlo for a Pavarotti gala inaugurating the UN conference.

‘That morning, 500 miles to the north, the Pool was preparing to deliver

a blow designed to destroy Berlusconi's political credibility and topple his government. But the dossier containing their chief weapon was in the

hands of the unpredictable Di Pietro. The latter, however, was about to

travel. The Corriere correspondents closest to the Pool described the sense of event:

That something big was about to happen was evident yesterday morning “summit conferences,” meetings on the run, tension, and effervescence. For long hours the Pool magistrates. . . huddled, looked over their papers, Here’s Di Pietro, getting on the fourth floor of the old palace. Continual

180 ~« Chapter 19

them, ready to leave for France, .. . Here are Davigo and Colombothatand,. . with . revolves Francesco Greco . . D'Ambrosio . . . the whole team that from know around Borrelli. [They] look each other in the eye. They ion Clean this moment on, a thousand days after the beginning ofg Operat be as it ever will Nothin slope, y Hands, the investigation enters a slipper was.'?

"The avviso was drafted by Di Pietro himself that same Monday intomornthe

ing. He carried it to Borrelli, who handed it to Davigo to punch computer. But the staging of the coming drama deserved special care. Punching the avviso into the office computer would give dozens of clerks access to it. So Davigo used his own computer, not connected to the net-

work, This accomplished, Davigo placed the avviso in an envelope and gave it to wwo carabinieri commanders, the senior officers assigned to the Pool. One had been with the Pool since the funeral parlor scam arrests two and a half years earlier and had handed Bettino Craxi his first avviso. The officers were old colleagues, but this time the Pool would use them as

pawns in a game whose rules were not explained to them. The carabinieri toared south and a few hours later pulled up in front

of Palazzo Chigi, the prime minister’s office in the historic center of

Rome. They were accompanied to the prime minister’s office on the third floor by the palace ushers, There they found the chief of Berlusconi’s

secretariat, astonished at their arrival. Didn’t they know about the Naples

conference? The palace was almost empty: The only close colleague of

Berlusconi’s who had stayed behind was Gianni Letta, who was called

immediately. Letta, as undersecretary to the prime minister, handled,

among a thousand other chores, many questions involving Berlusconi’s

public face. He had been the editor of the conservative Roman daily oZ/ ‘Tempo, whose offices were just across the same piazza from Palazz

Chigi. Leta was the picture of the sleek, never-ruffled matinee idol; he had once taken time off from his editorship for a movie role. But today

he had reason to be ruffled. The officers refused to give their envelope to

anyone but Berlusconi. If the prime minister was in Naples, then they

would have to jump back in their car and head south. Letta had the secre-

tariat chief try to buy time, saying they would try to call Berlusconi. But

the carabinieri refused to be stalled, so he took the number of their cellu-

lar phone and watched them leave.

‘At that point, while the officers were on the Autostrada del Sole heading for Naples, the Berlusconi team was burning up the phone wires. Leta reached Berlusconi minutes before he was to leave for San Carlo. Berlus-

coni told Letta to call Cesare Previti, the defense minister, and charge him

with finding out what was in the envelope. Before entering the cabinet

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister ~~ 187

Previti had been general counsel for Berlusconi’s media giant Fininvest,

the company most likely to be the focus of any criminal investigation. But

Previti was in Seville, having just left Naples where he had “comforted

Berlusconi by explaining to the journalists that for a new-born party like Forza Italia the local [electoral] failures were quite predictable.” Although, as defense minister, Previti commanded the carabinieri, he knew

nothing of the operation, So he called the commanding general, who also knew nothing about the mission of his officers to the prime minister. So Berlusconi himself took the step of calling the cellular phone of the police car heading toward Naples. According to Vespa, the prime minister “punched the ten digits with . , . trepidation.”

Berlusconi asked the carabinieri commander to open the envelope and read it to him. The same officer who had refused to hand the envelope

even to the chief of Berlusconi’s secretariat would agree to open it for a

voice on a telephone; Berlusconi's voice is very recognizable, The cold message read out by the commander was that the prime minister was invited to present himself to the Milan prosecutor’s office to answer

charges that he, his brother Paolo, and the Fininvest fiscal chief had bribed

the Finance Police to obtain tax leniency. A similar charge related to the group’s insurance company, Mediolanum Vita.'’ Berlusconi coolly thanked the officer and agreed to meet him at: Palazzo Chigi the next afternoon. Fe then called Letta and finally unleashed the explosion, the feeling of injustice and victimhood that had been building within him.**

A few hours later, before dawn, Letta was awakened by an excited call from Enrico Mentana, the news chief of one of Berlusconi’s television

retworks. Every morning they prepared a television summary of newspa-

per headlines, But for three hours Corriere had refused to give them the

asual advance copy of the front page, and early editions had not made ‘heir usual middle-of-the-night appearance on newsstands. Now Mentana

aad very grave news for the prime minister. Corriere della Sera’? had Ber-

usconi’s avviso on the front pages that were hitting the streets at that

nour (5 A.M). The banner headline read: “Milan: Berlusconi Under Inves-

igation.” The lead story began: “Silvio Berlusconi is under investigation,

The magistrates strike the final blow, after months of skirmishes and volemics....”

The details of two of the three parts of the investigation were all there, neluding the amounts allegedly paid ($200,000 total) and the dates, even

sow the money was divided among the Finance Police officials. The paper tamed General Giuseppe Cerciello as the senior officer receiving the

sribes. It also described the direct involvement of younger brother Paolo, 3erlusconi and Salvatore Sciascia, head of Fininvest’s fiscal office." Else-

vhere, the paper trumpeted the idea that “as of yesterday the position of he Prime Minister changes.” The statement was certainly true in terms

182 ~~ Chapter 19 of the political damage to Berlusconi and the advancing of the coup, but

all this was the result of a “leak” about the most preliminary phase of an

investigation, Berlusconi had not been charged, nor was he found guilty of anything; but under the war rules of the Italian coup, that fact was inconsequential, Letta immediately called Berlusconi: ‘I'he avviso was a legal problem

that could drag on for years, but the publication of the avviso, the central tactic for the destruction of the enemy by those staging the Italian coup, was far graver, a political blow from which few ever recovered, According to Vespa, Berlusconi said to Letta: “And now what do I do?...Ina

little

while the conference starts, and the topic today is international corruption. P've been elected chairman of the conference: how can I do it if ’m

accused of corruption myself?” He wanted to quit the conference and return to Rome immediately, Letta “fought like a lion” to convince him

to stay in Naples and show himself in perfect shape at the conference.

When Vespa later asked the Poo! magistrates why they had chosen that moment and that method to get at Berlusconi, considering all the damage

to Italy’s image, Davigo’s answer was that if the Finance Police had not been bribed, none of it would have happened.

Berlusconi had no need to wonder about the leak or Corriere’s “scoop”: He knew the connections. Not bothering to call the editor, or the magistrates who must have been responsible for the leak, Berlusconi

phoned New York for FIAT chairman Gianni Agnelli to protest the grave

step his newspaper had taken. Although we do not know what transpired in what must have been a chilly exchange between the media magnate and the grand old man of Italian industry and culture, the prince of a closed world that Berlusconi would never enter, the mere fact of the call illustrates the prime minister’s perception of the connections involved. Berlusconi then had to face the ordeal that awaited him in Naples. Wading through reporters besieging his hotel, he somehow managed to pre-

side over the morning session.’ At the first coffee break, a little after

eleven, Berlusconi bolted and minutes later his car was heading north on the antostrada. He was only an hour late for his meeting with the carabi-

nieri commanders who served him with the avviso, the text of which he could have read, along with the rest of Italy, in Corriere.

‘The case against Berlusconi appeared flimsy. The magistrates had no

evidence that the companies had offered the bribes, only that they had

responded to a shakedown by the Finance Police. The defense version was that the officers had given them a choice: Pay or have company activities

paralyzed for a long time. Fininvest fiscal chief Salvatore Sciascia had been

threatened with “‘a detailed inspection of the books seeking even technical irregularities, extremely lengthy periods of time for the execution of the inspection...

a whole series of deliberate obstructions designed to tie up

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister ~-> 183

the company’s activities.” ‘Telephoning Paolo to report the terms, Sciascia

asked his agreement to pay, which was given.”

Sciascia took responsibility for having made a payment. Paolo Berlusconi had already admitted, in July, having given the order. Nothing con-

nected Silvio Berlusconi to the two bribes except the magistrates’ reasoning that “he could not not have known.” This reasoning was absolutely different from, for example, that used

for FIAT. Cesare Romiti never suffered at the hands of the Pool, although

their “conversations” seemed clearly to indicate that he represented the

highest company officer who might be held responsible for the com-

pany’s actions, And when Turin magistrates later charged Romiti, they were recognizing his responsibility for what happened at FIAT. But it appears that no one ever thought of touching Gianni Agnelli. This is be-

cause Agnelli is just a shareholder—with enough shares to control, but still just a shareholder. It is Romiti who runs the company. The parallel

to Berlusconi’s role in bis companies is Agnelli’s role, not Romiti’s. In

comparable cases, the Pool never accused the company CEO unless there was proof of direct involvement, and it never carried the accusation to a shareholder, even the principal shareholder. But in no other case was the shareholder a politician who had both derailed the coup and tried to curb

the Pool itself.

Berlusconi went on television the next day to assert his innocence, de-

claring that he refused to resign.

He tried to distinguish his team from the old guard. “We are not politi-

cal hustlers, experts in the old uses and customs of the First Republic.

We are not party functionaries, professional agitators, demagogues of the

piazza or salon gossips. We are serious people, who come from the working world, and who have made a contract with the people to govern Italy in a new way.” Berlusconi and his team were not going to let the people

who had voted for them be betrayed by “palace conspiracies.”

‘These were brave words from a prime minister with unreliable political

allies. The Northern Leagues’s Umberto Bossi, Italy’s political loose can-

non but a numerically necessary coalition partner, was already publicly

backing away from Berlusconi. Although there had been other troubles in the government’s brief life—a disappointing budget presentation, a back-

down on pension reform, and the Biondi decree fiasco (with the League's

Maroni trying to jump ship from cabinet responsibility)—the idea of marching behind a politician who was a target of the Pool was-more than

Bossi was willing to accommodate.

The pool of Clean Hands journalists skewered Berlusconi: “[FJor the

umpteenth time he is proclaiming himself innocent ... stuff we've already

seen, words we've already heard.” These words are not from an editorial

comment, they are part of La Repubblica’s news account reporting the

184 ~~ Chapter 19 prime minister’s statement. The article charges that Berlusconi had uttered “words of war, which divide Italy and the Ivalians.’5

‘The Pool’s delivery of its avviso to Berlusconi had been a strategic mas-

terpiece. The delivery during the Naples conference had both a mocking symbolism and the convenience of a delay in Berlusconi’s being able to read the accusations that Corviere was already setting in type. Former

President Cossiga commented

that the act had “shredded the image of

our country in front of the world.” He added that the Pool’s recent actions, including its effort to play a part in the legislative process and its

repeated appeals to the Italian public, had put the Pool “outside any judicial logic, even that of an emergency.” The Pool had, instead, been engag-

ing in “institutional guerilla warfare.”

But the Pool’s attack on the prime minister did not disturb only conser-

vative opinion, Consider the reaction of Senator Giovanni Pellegrino, a PDS veteran and dedicated garantista, chairman of Parliament’s terrorism investigating committee, and, in 1994, head. of the parliamentary body charged with authorizing investigation of members of Parliament (a good

vantage for observing the Pool). Pellegrino was struck by “a culture that

alarmed me, because it harbored an aggrandizing of the role of the judi-

ciary and a dangerous demonizing of political activity.” He added that Borrelli’s public remarks delegitimized the entire Parliament. Stressing that delivery of the avviso to Prime Minister Berlusconi was an example

necessary for a democracy, Pellegrino said that the Pool had “always exer-

cised its power to the maximum. . . . Unfortunately, every invitation to moderation has been rejected, triggering a poisonous atmosphere, forcing the resignation of the man who was probably the Pool’s best.”2*

The Pool suffered a setback when the Court of Cassation ordered a change of venue of a portion of its cases against Berlusconi, that involving

the Finance Police, The Pool had been developing a new theater of opera-

tions with the Finance Police as its target. It was seeking to. find corrup-

tion in the police’s operations in the north, and. was targeting especially General Giuseppe Cerciello. But the Court shifted responsibility for the case forty-five miles east to the old city of Brescia.

‘The Court’s concern was that people involved in the case had also been

involved in Clean Hands cases, meaning that Milan was not a good venue. It was the Milan office of the Finance Police that was under investigation.

‘That office regularly assigned officers to the Milan magistracy. So the judgment was logical, and it had precedents in other high-profile cases such as the movement from Sicily to the mainland of the first great trial

against Mafia families in 1965, and the shift from Milan to Catanzaro of the trial for the terrorist bomb in Piazza Fontana, described in chapter 3

as an example of the slow path of Italian justice.

a

of the Pool’s “never” having used the logic of self-limitation which is

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister >

785

The change of venue was especially frustrating to the Pool magistrates

because not all the Brescia magistrates shared their politics. Davigo was

particularly nettled*; indeed, he demonstrated

exactly the grounds for

concern perceived by the Court by declaring, when the transfer was an-

nounced, that he hoped to see General Cerciello, who had leveled count-

craccusations at the Pool, “leave prison a dead man.” The president of the section of the Court that had made the decision was Dr. Arnaldo Valente, now retired. Valente was violently attacked by the Pool, who accused him playing the old Roman “Fog Harbor” game, trying to bury actions against the powerful. Valente sent an indignant letter of resignation to the CSM. The president of the Republic intervened and got Va-

lente to withdraw his resignation. Later, when the Pool announced that it

was investigating the Roman magistracy itself (see Chapter 23), it exacted

its revenge against Valente.

Referring to the Court of Cassation ruling, PDS chief D’Alema charged

that there was a conspiracy to help Berlusconi" (although the transfer had

been obtained not by Berlusconi’s attorney but by General Cerciello’s

attorney”),

The different political balance in Brescia was the sore point. At the time it received the case, the Brescia prosecutor’s office did not have a chief prosecutor because the incumbent (Lisciotto) was himself under investi-

gation. The office was all MD except for the GIP (Judge for the Preliminary Investigations) and one magistrate, Fabio Salamone, Salamone

represented the danger to the Pool.

Despite the Brescia prosecutors’ adherence to the rules of confidential-

ity, enough evidence has emerged to show that Berlusconi, when it be-

came clear that he was going to try to derail the coup, had become the

Pool’s principal target. General Cerciello’s attorney said publicly that Di

Pietro “had promised to free [defendant] Marshall Francesco Nanocchio,

and also promised him the retention of all of his wealth and possessions.

. «In exchange Di Pietro wanted one single name: Silvio Berlusconi.”

‘The Pool told the press that it had had its pocket picked (Davigo’s

term). D'Ambrosio blamed the transfer on the Justice Ministry inspec-

tors." When a journalist asked Davigo if the Court’s decision constituted

a de-legitimating of the Pool, he said, surprisingly, “It’s much more than

that.’ President Scalfaro, from a monastery he was visiting in Slovakia,

said that he was following these events minute-by-minute by telephone.** Weighing in on the side of the Pool was the historic leader of Magistratura

Democratica in Milan, Edmondo Bruti Liberati, who called the transfer

“scandalous” and accused the Court, implicitly, of delaying the investiga-

tions.” The chair of the Justice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies de-

clared that the investigation into the Finance Police’s transactions with

186 ~~ Chapter 19 Berlusconi’s businesses “was not launched to serve justice, but to achieve

a political goal: to send an avviso di garanzia to Silvio Berlusconi and to undermine him by judicial means. . . The Court recognizes that the investigation could not be conducted with the necessary serenity and im-

partiality by the Milan magistrates. In Milan impartiality and serenity have long since disappeared.”**

‘Two weeks later the prime minister went to the Palace of Justice in

Milan to submit himself to the Pool’s interrogation. After a two-hour

grilling, Berlusconi claimed, and the Pool did not deny, that “[t]here does not exist, against me, either documents or accusatory testimony. . . I was

able to establish that this judicial initiative . . . is based, incredibly, on a theory devoid of any telling content and was built on a suspicion that was neither proven nor provable,’° Berlusconi blasted the Pool:

‘The avviso di garanzia, which is an instrument to protect the rights of the suspect, should have remained rigorously confidential. Putting the head of government under investigation is a legitimate act, because no one is above the law, but it is also an act without precedent in the entire history of the country. . . , But it has not been treated thus. A grave violation of official secrecy, on which serious arid impartial investigations should be conducted .. has transformed a guarantee for the suspect into aclamorous act of showtrial justice or . .. show-trial injustice.

Berlusconi also spoke of the price that Italy was paying for these political

maneuvers. He asked what the representatives of 140 countries, at the UN conference on crime, must have thought of a country where a confidential

judicial act is made public in order to strike at the prime minister.

On the same day, Berlusconi wrote a letter to the editor of IJ Sole 24 ore describing the development of his businesses and their success, despite his never having gone for government contracts, protection, or subsidies. He especially noted his struggle to give life to private television networks

in Italy. Then he repeated his refusal to resign. In truth, Berlusconi should have been cleaning out his desk, because his

erstwhile ally, the coarse, rambunctious, but necessary Umberto Bossi,

was just hours away from jumping ship—a move he had been inching toward for at least two months and had already threatened several times.

Berlusconi’s Center-Right coalition had been flimsy from the begin-

ning. The incompatibilicy of its two partners, the separatist Northern

League and the post-Fascist National Alliance, had forced Berlusconi to

construct two separate alliances, each with its own name: one that con-

nected his Forza Italia to the League, and one that connected it to the

National Alliance. (His partners could not tolerate formal alliance with each other.) The governing majority had been weakened by a disappoint-

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister --> 187 ing budget presentation, an embarrassing back-down on pension reform, and the defeat of the Biondi decree-law. A deep crack in the coalition began to appear when Bossi proved reluctant to give full support to Berlusconi when he faced conflict-of-interest problems (concerning the com-

patibility of a prime minister’s ownership of major media outlets), That

was a preview of Bossi’s complete failure to support Berlusconi in his

struggle with the Pool, The judgment of Johns Hopkins professor Patrick

McCarthy and others is clearly correct in putting the judicial problem at

the top of the list of causes for the fall of Berlusconi’s government." It

was the crash of the prime minister’s credibility, because of the avviso and its handling, that led directly to Bossi’s pulling his Northern League

out of the coalition, robbing it of its majority after only seven months of

governing.

But the Northern League was not really destined to stay in the coalition anyway, partly because of its incompatibility with the National Alliance,

and partly because Bossi, alarmed at numerous polls showing a sharp

drop in League support, was afraid of being perceived as absorbed and

discredited by the troubled coalition. A journalist present at an August meeting between Berlusconi and Bossi described to the authors how Ber-

lusconi insisted (where journalists could overhear him) on the fact that

the League, according to the polls, had no real hope to make an impact

nationally, riding at about 2 percent. Bossi appeared surprised and disturbed by these data. A later strong showing (30.6 percent) by Berlus-

coni’s Forza Italia in elections for the European Parliament further

increased Bossi’s fear of being absorbed.

ee The Milan Pool continued to search for the one element that would bring

the Berlusconi phenomenon to. an end politically: a provable and illegal link to Craxi. Months after Berlusconi had left office, a Milan judge finally

made a decision on whether even to pursue the prosecution of Berlus-

coni—by postponing it until September 1995. The original case was not activated again, with more confiscating of files and more “leaks” to

friendly papers, until Berlusconi once again faced a national election campaign, that leading to the vote of April 21, 1996. The Pool, however, found

other ways to keep the heat on Berlusconi through the intervening

months.

Notes

1, Interview by Goffredo Buccini in Corriere, 5 October 1994. 2, Maria Latella, “Messaggi in stile mafioso,” Corriere della Sera, 6 October 1994, 2.

188 -~ Chapter 19 3, Goffredo Buccini, “Parenti, lascia perdere il PDS,” Corriere, 20 November 1994, 9. 4. Corriere, 22 November 1994.

5. Romano Canosa, Storia Hella magistratura in Italia (Milan: Baldini&Castoldi, 1996), 225. 6, Canosa, Storia, 226. : 7. “Notiziario trimestrale” of Magistratnra Democratica, December 1994. 8. Canosa, Storia, 228. 9. Tiziana Maiolo, Introduction to Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di tin inquisitore (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 9. 10. Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 187. 11, See Bruno Vespa, [1 duello (Milan: Nuova Eri-Mondadori, 1995), from which most of the details are taken. 12. Goffredo Buccini and Gianluca Di Feo, “Il Cavaliere nel registro degli indagati,” Corriere, 22 November 1994, 2. 13. Vespa, I! duello, 17. 14. Ibid, 15. Goffredo Buccini and Gianluca Di Feo, “Milano, indagato Berlusconi,” Corriere, 22 November, 1994, 1. 16. This sentence is based on Vespa, who had good access to both Berlusconi and Letta. 17. Corriere itself had raised the question of the price that Italy would pay if the prime minister were to receive an avviso, The conclusion was ambiguous, but the editorial column said there were reasons (international reputation, stock market and fira fall, political instability) to fear such a step. See Piero Ostellino, “Il costo di un avviso,” Corriere, 10 October 1994, 1. 18. Alleged bribes by Mondadori and Mediolanum Vita made up two parts of the charges. The third charge, involving Videotime, was not reported. 19. Corriere, 22 November, 1994, 1. 20, Buccini and Di Feo, “Il Cavaliere,” 2. 21, “He smiles (with his mouth, not with his eyes).” 22. Statement of Paolo Berlusconi in Corrieve, 22 November 1994, 2. 23, Text of television address by the Prime Minister, carried by, among others, ANSA, on Nov. 23, 1994. 24, Mino Fuccillo, “‘E se mi condannano & sowversione,’ ” La Repubblica, 24 November 1994. 25, Fuccillo, “ ‘E se mi condannano.’ 26, Di Pietro’s role remains a subject of debate in Italy. The fact that the avuiso carried his signature does not signify his agreement in the way the deed was done:

It was customary for all the magistrates to join in on a group of signatures. (Once

Di Pietro’s signature appeared on an avviso showing the time as being the moment when he was appearing live on television.) About to leave for France, he may have lost control of the process when his draft went from Borrelli to Davigo

and into Davigo’s personal computer.

Berlusconi, interviewed by Michele Santoro on RAT television, revealed that Di

Pool Attacks the Prime Minister ~~ 139

Pietro, in a meeting at Berlusconi's house, had confided that he disagreed with sending the avviso to Berlusconi in Naples. On the day after the telecast, asked by Borrelli to deny the story, Di Pietro responded with vagueness. _ Many months later (see Chapter 23), a court in Brescia tried to get closer to the truth,

27. Cited in D. Messina, “Tolgo la firma al libro di Di Pietro,” Corriere, 26

November

1994, 7.

© 28. Cited in Gianfranco Ballardin, “Pellegrino: ‘Innescata dal pool l'atmosfera

avvelenata,’ ” Corriere,

8 December 1994, 4.

| 29, Gianluca Di Feo, “Sconforto nel pool: non pud finire cost,” Corriere, 1

December 1994, 4.

30. Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di un Inguisitore (Milan: Gior-

nalisti Editori, 1995).

| 31. Marco Ventura, “D’Alema pensa al complotto,” I/ Giornale, 30 November,

1994.

| 32. “Buna vittoria del diritto,’ ” I! Giornale, 30 November 1994. » 33. I] Giornale, 5 April 1995.

© 34, Interview with Gherardo D'Ambrosio, La Repubblica, 30 November 1994, 2 35. Luca Fazzo, “ ‘Berlusconi? I pool pud interrogarlo . ...”” La Repubblica,

30 November 1994, 2. 36, Massimilliano Scafi, “Mai buttato nessuna dalla carrozza,’” I! Giornale,

30 November 1994, 6.

37. Bruti Liberati made this accusation because a change of venue meant start-

ing the process from the beginning again.

38. Ventura, “D’Alema pensa.”

39, Declaration of Silvio Berlusconi at the conclusion of the questioning of 13 December 1994 before Prosecutor of the Republic Borrelli and Prosecutors Dav-

igo and Colombo.

| 40, See ibid. Although the Pool’s tactics are not thereby excused, itis doubelul

that the investigation of a major political figure would have remained secret for long. 41, McCarthy, Crisis, 188.

20

Seer

The Resignation of Di Pietro 1 he delivery of the avviso to Berlusconi and the decision of the Court of Cassation to transfer the Finance Police case to Brescia constitute the preface to the most dramatic moment in the history of the revolutionary magistrates of the Milan Pool. We cannot be sure if both or either were the cavsal trigger, because the principals have not

p

|

spoken clearly.

Nevertheless, it was just two weeks after the Berlusconi incident that

Antonio Di Pietro takes off his magistrate’s toga for the last time, in the act of

resigning. (Foto De Bellis, Claudio Testa)

190

Resignation of Di Pietro ~~ 197

Antonio Di Pietro, on television, dramatically took off his black judicial

robe with its white bib and announced that he was quitting. He intended

to become a teacher. The magistrate’s career for which he had prepared

by attending night school law classes after work—and the crusade that had made him, while still a young man, far and away the most popular public figure in Italy—were over. In letters to his chief, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, and to the CSM dated

December 6, Di Pietro did not explain his resignation, but he dropped

some interesting hints. His reason for resigning, he said, was that he was usato. Although this could signify that he was worn out, the more common meaning of the word is “used,” manipulated by someone else, some other force.' Di Pietro claimed that his investigations had been conducted ina nonpolitical manner, but that, to others, they had a political meaning. Di Pietro’s timing suggests other motives. Local elections had just shown the clear direction of the political winds, and Di Pietro’s subse~ quent actions revealed clearly that he was thinking politics. Di Pietro also had something to fear from his actions while a magistrate. He had received

an unsecured loan from a businessman (who had his own legal problems) that, at the least, would have been grounds for disciplinary proceedings, but would probably have proved little or no trouble for him as a private citizen, (In 1997, Di Pietro’s decision to enter the ranks of leftist senators

came right on the heels of a fusillade of further corruption charges, a sequence that suggested to many that he was seeking protection from the prosecutors.)

Public-opinion polls had been trying to crown Di Pietro for months.

Not only was he the most popular public figure in the country, but, in

varying percentages (always large), those polled believed that making him

prime minister was a fine idea, Di Pietro was careful never to say anything

that would put an end to this genuine groundswell. But just what were

Tonino’s politics? He stood out among his Milan Pool colleagues by his

nonaffiliation with Magistratura Democratica, and had never signed on to

any radical manifestos, Public-opinion polls showed that those members

of the public who wanted Di Pietro as prime minister were generally left-

leaning (a logical circumstance, in view of the politics of the Pool in gen-

eral), whereas those who knew Di Pietro well believed that if he ever entered electoral politics it would be within the Center-Right coalition,

given his many friends in Alleanza Nazionale. In addition, he was close

to Mirko Tremaglia, a member of Parliament from Bergamo, first for the neo-Fascist

MSI-DN,

then

for the “post-Fascist’? National

Alliance.

Tremaglia has always supported Di Pietro as “a man of the Right.”

As we saw, in fact, Berlusconi offered the Interior Ministry to Di Pietro

when he formed his government in 1994. This move surprised many peo-

ple, but not former President Cossiga: “[Berlusconi) was very shrewd:

192 ~~ Chapter 20

seeing that the political faction of Operation Clean Hands had lined up on the Left

and given that Di Pietro was not aligned with the faction,

Berlusconi said: ‘Notice that he isn’t on your side.’ ”? Cossiga went on to guess that Di Pietro was probably a political moderate, but not necessarily an ally of Berlusconi. He doubted that Di Pietro would be a very good

member of Berlusconi’s team stating: “I have too much respect for the

intelligence of both of them.” (In fact,

during Di Pietro’s brief tenure as

minister of public works in the Prodi government, he showed himself to be an explosive and difficult colleague, frequently threatening to resign before he actually did so.)

Were political factors the key reasons for Di Pietro’s resignation? He

has not yet said. But he has said that his failure to be politicized like his

colleagues was the cause of his having been “forced to xesign.”* Similarly, Cossiga believes that “Operation Clean Hands was a political phenomenon. Di Pietro... wound up as a target.” Former Defense Minister

Cesare Previti said clearly that “Di Pietro left the Pool precisely because

of disagreements with his colleagues:”” Borrelli denied this vigorously: “It’s one of the gravest lies that have ever been told by a person in authority or who was, in the past, in authority. I can only deplore it intensely.” Nevertheless, the signs of Di Pietro’s difficulties with the most politi

cized of his colleagues had begun showing themselves a few weeks before

the resignation. On September 9, Corriere had printed the text of a draft letter from Di Pietro to Berlusconi that had never been sent. Borrelli at-

tributed its (mainly linguistic) roughness to the fact that it was only a first

draft; he had asked Davigo to “correct” the draft before deciding not to send it at all. It was a novel public insult to Di Pietro. Former President Cossiga reiterated’ his belief that the Milan Pool was

really a political faction engaged in a political campaign; then he said:

Antonio Di Pietro, when he decided to leave the magistracy, had not taken account of this, ... One doesn’t resign from a [political] faction. One cannot just wave and walk out. From a faction one exits by making another political choice or because one is expelled, Di Pietro... can’t respond to D‘Ambrosio. [who accused him of disloyalty] with the pained and sincere tone of the magistrate. He must choose: either he is totally serious about becoming a professor, or he responds to the attacks. But then he must accept the rules of politics.° There is reason to believe, as Berlusconi does," that Di Pietro was deeply bothered by the delivery of the avviso to Berlusconi. Berlusconi

said that he had bad a private conversation with Di Pietro that he could

not repeat but that had left him with the impression of Di Pietro’s discomfort. Di Pietro, reached for comment, said only that he took responsi-

Resignation of Di Pietro “> 193 bility for everything he signed.'? He declined to express support for the way the Pool handled the delivery.

© Borrelli (who had turned the prosecution of Berlusconi over to Ghera-

ido Colombo) lashed back:

Tm bitter... deeply disappointed . .. because Di Pietro has refuted too little fof Berlusconi’s statement]. His words are too bland. . .. !'m not astonished . .. by the fact thet politicians such as Francesco Cossiga, Cesare Preyiti, and Silvio Berhasconi spread lies about relations between Antonio Di Pietro and his colleagues of the Pool of which he used to be part. But these lies . .. are made believable, become nourished, by Di Pietro’s silence, Itis a guilty silence. ... Itis laden with misunderstandings ... and one that unfortunately throws a mysterious light over his own act of leaving the magistracy and on the factors that could have dictated it. Borrelli’s “guilty silence” line was too much for Di Pietro to swallow:

Borrelli wrongs me (and hurts me) when he accuses me of “guilty silence.” .... The true drama of the investigation of Berlusconi by the Milan prosecutor’s office was not the sending of the invitation to present himself (an act of incontrovertible duty) but the scandalous news leak even before the delivery of the notification to the interested party—a very grave fact not only for the personal image of [the prime minister], but especially for our institutions in general and the Clean Hands Pool in particular."* Di Pietro went on to note the irony of the Pool’s having issued the

avviso while Berlusconi was at an international conference on the struggle

‘against crime. Di Pietro was cleaily saying that. he was not involved in the “news leak,” and séemed to be suggesting that he opposed the regular practice of the Pool in triggering the downfall of their targets through the

flow of detailed information delivered to the friendly press. ‘The Left and the Clean Pen newspapers vilified Di Pietro and suggested that mysterious right-wing forces were blackmailing him.'* But two days after Borrelli’s statement, the Vatican’s newspaper said what the biggest Italian dailies were not saying:

‘The public has the right to know everything about the Clean Hands Pool. .. . The Milanese magistrates . .. now cannot fail to recognize their duty to explain their actions and to reveal the source of the press leaks about avvisi di garanzia. . . . Public opinion would like to understand the logic behind their organized press conferences and their decision to address themselves directly to the people... . with the risk—pethaps unintended—of destroying the harmony between the [different] powers of the State."

194 «~~ Chapter 20

Four days later Gherardo D’Ambrosio tried to load further guilt on Di

Pietro’s shoulders by saying that Di Pietro’s criticisms of the Pool abetted the “killer” who had stalked him by isolating the magistrates.’” As these charges flew, the. widow of Gabriele Cagliari (the president of

ENI who ended his life with a plastic bag over his head after months of

prison and harsh questioning by Di Pietro) amazed readers of I! Giornale by saying: “There, running everything, is Borrelli, the man who has used and exploited Di Pietro for his own interests. If Tonino left, perhaps it’s also for this reason.”* Antonio Di Pietro remains the most interesting and enigmatic figure among the magistrates who made the Italian coup. We have seen descriptions of his tactics by those who suffered under them. His cruelty may

have been that of the hot-blooded zealot, not of the sadist, but it was

cruelty nonetheless. On the other hand, if one’s worry is magistrates so

politicized that their robes are put into the service of political aims, if

one prefers one’s magistrates to crave justice, even if it has the smell of

retribution, then Di Pietro must be seen to stand apart from, and above, his main Pool colleagues. Di Pietro is the only one for whom the image of the Western sheriff seems to have any suitability, if one doesn’t mind

the sheriff being trigger-happy. Di Pietro’s methods had been questioned

before. Back in 1984, the Judicial Council of Brescia vetoed his nomination to the Tibunale dell’Uditore because its members’ examination of his record led them to question “the balance, the diligence, the circum-

spection, the scruples in the carrying out of his work and the adequacy of the professional training of this magistrate. ... Such behavior leads this Couneil to judge that Dr. Di, Pietro Antonio does not merit the trust required of a magistrate.”

The council expressed doubts, at this early date, about Di Pietro’s use of informers and also his leaking of confidential information about his

own investigations. A further harbinger was the criticism of Di Pietro by the Brescia judges for having left forgotten in prison a suspect that he had arrested, Fausto Tombini. When the preventive detention term ran out,

Tombini was released; yet in that entire period Di Pietro forgot about

him, never even went to interrogate him, contrary to what the law re-

quires. Tombini levied charges against Di Pietro.

Di Pietro’s politics were clearly a problem within the Milan Pool. If

those who have lauded his brilliance are correct, he must clearly have seen

the political significance of Operation Clean Hands, realized who would benefit, noted the connections between the ownership of the publications

of the journalists’ pool that received (and shared) a flow of information

from the Pool, been party to the difference in treatment accorded officers of those firms when the trail of bribes reached their doorstep, and shown

zeal in pursuing cases against Socialists and Christian Democrats while,

Resignation of Di Pietro += 195 at the least, watching silently the insabbiamento (sand-bagging) and archi-

viazione (burying) of the major cases whose trails led to the PCI/PDS.

Since leaving, Di Pietro has been circumspect on this subject, a neces-

sary restraint for a man who has continually examined his own political

possibilities in conversations with almost all parts of the Italian political spectrum. Once out of office, he came to the defense of Tiziana Parenti,

the Milan magistrate who had resigned when the Pool prevented her from

pursuing cases against the PCJ/PDS. Then, in the summer of 1997, when.

now-Deputy Parenti got into a noisy feud with the Pool’s Ilda Boccassini, Di Pietro was alleged to have referred to Boccassini as one of “his favorite magistrates.” In a letter-to-the-editor he asserted his disagreement with the way the Pool was pursuing Berlusconi. Di Pietro criticized the whole

operation, saying that it was not a serious investigation of possible cor-

ruption in Berlusconi’s business enterprises. The letter concludes with a remarkable (though sinuous and dense) analysis of the politics within the magistracy:

D’Ambrosio has to be taken as he is: even whén, in order to defend the Pool from the accusations of being “Red Togas,” he says that it is well known that neither Di Pietro nor Davigo can be considered to be Reds. The ruinous polemics (fueled, in truth, also by us) risk neutralizing the Pool’s most powerful weapon: its internal cohesion. . . . Thus Operation Clean Hands will lose that popular consensus which up to now has shielded ie against all the atvempts at restoration [of the old political order]?

Restoration, of course, can only follow revolution or coup d’état.

And now trouble came again from the direction of Brescia, The trial of the Finance Police general, Giuseppe Cerciello, the officer alleged to have received the payments from Berlusconi that were the basis of the accusa-

tion against the prime minister, resulted in Di Pietro’s finding himself the target of serious charges of having abused his office. A considerable list of accusations included two (the most important but those that mattered least to the Italian public) relating to procedure: the leaking of judicial secrets and improper preventive detention. A host of others were more

personal, charging Di Pietro with having shaken down businessmen, having accepted such favors as a Mercedes-Benz and a loan with “favorable” conditions, and having snared a government contract for a friend’s computer software company, all adding up to charges of graft and corruption. The loan allegedly came, in 1991 (before the launching of Operation

Clean Hands), from a friend, Osvaldo Rocca, and totaled more than

$60,000. It was to help Di Pietro buy a house, Rocca had been given this money, for this purpose, by Giancarlo Gorrini, president of the MAA insurance company, but Di Pietro originally had been kept in the dark

196 ~~ Chapter 20 about the source of the money: Gorrini himself told Di Pietro only the

following year. Di Pietro paid back the money in September and October of 1994, Also in 1990-1991, also through Rocea, and also without know-

ing that the original source was MAA, Di Pietro received the Mercedes, for which he was supposed vo pay in installments. But after a few days Di

Pietro resold the car, without using the money to pay back Rocea, who is supposed to have taken care of the repayment to MAA with his own

money in 1994.

‘That is Di Pietro’s version of the events, not that of his accusers. But even in their “best” form, such events demonstrate a perplexing casual-

ness about favors and transactions, perplexing for a public official who

had become the Cotton Mather of Italy. The fact is that receiving an

interest-free loan is the same as receiving a gift. Even when Di Pietro

learned the origin of the loan, two years went by before he repaid it (al-

though he would have had no difficulty getting an immediate bank loan

to pay it off), In Italy, a bank making a $50,000 unsecured loan for four

years would collect about half that sum in interest. . Later (in July 1997), a developer, Antonio D’Adamo, testified that he

passed money to Di Pietro, through the banker Pacini Battaglia and a mutual friend, and also gave Di Pietro a car for his wife and a studio in

the center of Milan. (D’Adamo is one of those members of the Milan

establishment noted in Chapter 8 as having been cultivated by Di Pietro

so that he could understand the milieu.) A wiretap seemed to show that

they expected protection from Operation Clean Hands in exchange for the gifts. Cossiga was asked about Di Pietro’s character. Cossiga, among the foremost critics of the Milan Pool and its politics, probably surprised

many when he said that “on Di Pietro’s past, 1 would hold my hand over

a fire. He is a free and simple man. His simplicity used to seem to be his strength. Now, instead, its limits are being revealed.” He then rendered

the doubtful judgment that “in one thing .. . Di Pietro has been truly

ingenuous. become, in But the statements, caused him

He has never understood that Operation Clean Hands had all its aspects, a political faction.”® harassment of Di Pietro was effective. According to his own the charges against him, which were all eventually dropped, to postpone his own entrance into politics until after the na-

tional elections of April 21, 1996.

No sooner were these charges dropped than Brescia magistrates— minus Salamone, who was removed from all investigations relating to Di

Pietro—launched a probe to sce who was plotting against Di Pietro, ‘They

started with Berlusconi’s brother Paolo and legal counsel (and former

Defense Minister) Cesare Previti. A poll showed that, even after the cloud

Resignation of Di Pietro ~~ 197

that were In from

had been thrown over Di Pietro’s reputation, 52.3 percent of Italians ready to vote for any political party that he would found. early April 1995 General Cerciello’s defense lawyers cited testimony prisoners detained with Cerciello in the Peschiera military prison,

where General Cerciello spent eight months in solitary confinement, but

with some chances for communication with other prisoners. Among

them was Domenico Cristiano, a policeman who was the witness who

testified (see Chapter 19) that Di Pietro had promised to free Finance

Marshall Francesco Nanocchio if he would implicate Berlusconi in the

corruption of the Finance Police. ‘The incarcerated cop also spoke of Marshall Agostino Landi, who had

taken his own life the previous July. Cristiano said that a few days before

the suicide, he found Landi hanging onto the bars of his cell, sobbing “Di Pietro is a hyena, a hyena.””” Cristiano added that Marshall Nanocchio

had returned to his cell stunned by the questioning he had received from

Di Pietro. Once Nanocchio explained to Cristiano that Di Pietro had said

that he would imprison him for ten years if he refused to talk, but kept

repeating that he could get out immediately if he would only fnger Berlusconi and, further, that Di Pietro would not touch any of the businesses

or property that Nanocchio owned or part-owned. Di Pietro also promised (again according to Cristiano) that none of Nanocchio’s lower-rank-

ing colleagues would be arrested, even if they were named in the affair, Di Pietro was shooting high. There is another important distinction to be made between Di Pietro

on one side and Borrelli and his Poo! colleagues on the other: Both fought

against decree-laws that would have hampered the operation of the Pool

by curbing some of its worst excesses. Di Pietro himself was especially

prone to these excesses and had been for years, as we know from the Brescia judges. But Di Pietro stepped back from any deeper forays into

solitics willing, ‘er 23), Borrelli

while he was in harness. Borrelli and Company, however, were on many occasions right up to the time of this writing (see Chapto stray far afield from normal magistrates’ concerns. So while was increasing his attacks on Parliament and politicians, Di

ietro’s answer to the question of how to complete the work of Operation

Clean Hands was quite different: “It can’t go on. A solution has to be ound... . The politicians have to find the solution. I’m not making war mn the system, . . . Guillotines don’t do anyone any good.” Borrelli sought to limit the damage: “Di Pietro’s remarks were a cry

hat escaped from the heart in a moment of particular exhaustion. I don’t hink that he means that we’ve had enough judicial interventions, that we

hould delegate to the politicians a solution for what has happened.”

»

om

198 ~~ Chapter 20 For some time before their principal assault on Berlusconi, the Milan

magistrates had been traveling around Europe, using their new celebrity to preach the political doctrine behind the Italian coup. In November

|. 1994, Borrelli went to Brussels in the company of a PDS parliamentarian,

“ Rinaldo Bontempi. There he told the European Commission that the magistrates of the world had to band together to defeat corrupt politicians, appealing for what Giancarlo Lehner calls a “Robed Cominform,””? whose great virtue would be that it was outside the control of any of the member states. In the spring of 1995, Borrelli continued to formulate his ideas about

the relation among civil liberties, justice, and politics as he responded to

remarks made by Di Pietro, now “Professor ‘Tonino,” in lectures given at the University of Castellanza, where he was appointed “docent” (lec-

turer). Borrelli addressed the value of detention without trial and its effi-

cacy in reforming the political morals of a society, calling it “the

indispensable symbolic and operational rampart encircling the citadel of duty” that should be supplemented by the codification of more severe measures against “deviant conduct.”

Notes

1. And, in fact, Di Pietro said at one point that he was mtilizzato, or “utilized.” 2. This statement is a speculation based partly on analyses of polls by, and conversations with, Lucio Caracciolo, editor of the political periodical LiMes. 3. Cited in Guido Tiberga, “Tonino, pitt debole perche libero,” La Stampa, 19 April 1995.

4. 5. 6. 7.

Ibid. Remarks at CSIS, Washington, 24 July 1995. Tiberga, “Tonino, pid debole.”” Cited in Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di un inquisitore Giornalisti Editori, 1995), 178.

9. He had first made this point at the time of the comic-opera “attempt” on the life of D’Ambrosio (see Chapter 21), 10. Cited in Tiberge, “Tonino, pitt debole.” 11. This point was revealed in an interview with Berlusconi on RAT IIL, in the program “Tempo Reale” of 13 April 1995. 12, A Brescia prosecutor has now indicted Di Pietro because his signature is on reports of interrogations at which he had not been present, See “Quell’accusa a Di Pietro,” Corriere, 3 May 1997. 13. Cited in Lehner, Borrelli, 183. Sce also Venanzio Postiglione, “Borrelli: rimango, il pool andré avanti,” Corriere, 7 December 1994, 2; “Borrelli: noi siamo13 decisi ad andare avanti a meno che il potere politico non ci affondi,” Corriere,

Resignation of Di Pietro ~~ 199

April 1994, 3; Goffredo Buccini and Pabio Cavalera, “Di Pietro: basta, mi tirano da tutte le parti,” Corriere, 7 December 1994, 3; Vittorio Testa, “ ‘Se avesse fatto il mio ministro,’” La Repubblica, 7 December 1994, 8. 44, Antonio Di Pietro, “Quante inutili polemiche,” La Stampa, 15 April 1995.

15. One account of these events suggests that the Left had reason for nervous-

ness, In particular, M. Andreoli has presented evidence indicating that Di Pietro was gentle with Bettino Craxi for a considerable time because of his belief that Craxi could deliver damning information on the Communist Party. See M. Andreoli, Processo all” Italia (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 1994). 16. Osseroatore romano, 16 April 1995. 17. La Stampa, 19 April 1995,

18. I! Giornale, 13 May 1995.

19. Cited in Roberto Chiodi, “Materiali per un dibattito,” {1 Sabato, 17 July 1993. 20, Letter headed “Good Luck to D'Ambrosio,” La Repubblica, 16 April 1995. 21. ‘The latter speak of a shakedown by Di Pietro, not of voluntary gifts. 22. That calculation and the reasoning about the case are largely those of Ernesto Galli della Loggia, “Nient’altro che i fatti,” Corriere, 6 August 1995, 1. 23, Tiberga, ““Tonino, pid debole.” 24, "Salamone sotto accusa,” Corriere, 31 March 1996, 1, The matter of a plot against Di Pietro was dropped in 1997 for lack of evidence. 25. Corriere, 8 April 1995,

26. Corriere, 19 April 1995. 27. It is part of the enigma of Di Pietro that Cristiano also said that “at a certain point Landi recalled to Di Pietro that in one of his [Di Pietro’s] books, recalling something his mother had said, he said that he did not harm other men. The magistrate hugged him, then harshly took up the questioning again.” See

Corriere, 19 April 1995, 28. These remarks were made to journalists on February 11, 1993.

29. L’Unita, 3 March 1993.

30. Lehner, Borrelli, 70. 31. Ibid., 149.

21

weer

Intermission: The Magistrate As Eliot Ness r | 1 he war waged by courageous magistrates against terrorism and the

Mafia both inspired (we know from their own words) and gave

some tips to the magistrates of Operation Clean Hands. A chal-

lenge faced by the press, devoted to whipping up support, was to make

the Milan magistrates (except Di Pietro, who needed no media hype) appear to be heroes. The haplessly bungled effort to achieve this end merits pause in our account, before we detail the coup’s endgame, because it appears also to be an attempt to charge the atmosphere in Italy within a week of important elections.

What kept the magistrates from being truly dashing heroes was the

absence of any real threat to them. The magistrates during the Years of Lead, then Falcone and Borsellino in Sicily, and also Giorgio Ambrosoli, the Bank of Italy-appointed lawyer who cracked the Sindona empire, all

had genuinely risked their lives. The Pool’s chief, Francesco Saverio Bor-

relli, regularly claimed that his magistrates were in danger but could never produce evidence of a threat. In July and December 1992, police and carabinieri spoke of plots to assassinate Di Pietro, who paid little attention.

The Pool’s political theatre needed something better. When it finally came, it was comic opera,

In April 1995, La Stampa reported an attempt on the life of Pool magistrate Gerardo D’Ambrosio. D’Ambrosio comes from Camorra country,

near Naples, and, in his sixties (as of this writing), is older than the Pool’s

other stars. Bespectacled and professorial, D’Ambrosio makes no bones

about his leftist disposition and his open alliance with the PCI/PDS. An interviewer once introduced him as “the ‘reddest’ of the Clean Hands

Pool”!

200

Intermission: The Magistrate As Eliot Ness ~7 20!

tlan magistrates Piercamillo Davigo (1), Francesco Saverio Borrelli (center), and srardo D'Ambrosio (r). (Foto De Bellis, Luigi Nocenti) CatasLa Stampa said the attack on D’ Ambrosio was “in cold blood.”

ophe was avoided by seconds. account. The following is a rough summary of La Stampa’s dsApsilof a 15kinde rgar“Ambrosio house is almost surrounded by the groun io was

n. At nine on Good Friday morning, D’Ambros

about to leave

ng on high-profile cases, i the office. Like all Italian magistrates workiparke d outside the house, had police protection, an officer in a car aiting to escort him to the Palace of Justice. and swings of the "The officer spotted a man lurking among the slidesready to fire, hoolyard, Staying semi-hidden, the man had toa rifle sio from "The cop stayed calm. The first objective was keep d D’theAmbro would-be asallsing into the ambush, It was raining, which helpe

was doing issin hide but also made it hard for him to see what the guard cop reached 1 the car. Slowly, so as not to attract attention, the young o, doctor. yr the phone in his car and called D’Ambrosio’s number. “Hell

you again.” He did not Jon’t move. Stay in the house until I telephone' for back-up or to have the

aen call his station house, to make a request

hands. indergarten surrounded, but instead took matters into his own io ‘he gunman

was

looking around,

ready to fire when

D’Ambros

the car, pistol merged. In a flash, the cop “catapulted himself” fromd the schoolyard awn, The assassin ran, still carrying his rifle. He vaulte

202 ~~ Chapter 21

wall, the young cop at his heels. The gunman had an accomplice waiting for him astride a powerful motorcycle, and they sped off.

On the same day, Corriere della Sera also reported the drama and added some confusion. The man in the schoolyard was “suspicious” but did not clearly have a rifle, only a long dark object, The telephoned warning to D’Ambrosio came from another cop (absent from La Stampa’s version), who used the entrance-door intercom. The cop who “catapulted

himself” from his car saw that the object was a rifle only when he had

drawn closer during the chase. On the following day, La Stampa rewrote. The rifle became simply “a weapon,” no longer exhibited where the cop could see it but hidden under araincoat. And the investigator gave assurances that it was not a “bluff”

but a real attempt on D’Ambrosio’s life. Corrieve had the same investiga-

tor (with a rearranged spelling of his name) saying the idea of an assassina-

tion attempt was merely a hypothesis. For Corriere the weapon now became a rifle, but instead of being hidden under the raincoat, it was lean-

ing against a wall. The policeman, instead of catapulting himself to give chase, went to the kindergarten entrance, roused the custodian to open

the door, then shouted ata man hidden behind the custodian’s little building: “Halt, I’m a policeman.” The same day La Repubblica said the weapon was a “precision car-

bine.” This time, a third policeman appeared, in the same car with the

first day’s hero, But now it was the first cop who went to D’Ambrosio’s

entrance intercom and warned the magistrate. La Repubblica also gave the first cop some personality. He was “elegant as a photographer’s model.” The kindergarten no longer had walls (for leaping over and leaning guns against) but a metal fence. Because an election was pending, one of the advertising panels used throughout Italy for election posters had prevented the cops from seeing anything in the schoolyard from the car.

Instead, the elegant young cop spotted the suspect while making inspec-

tion rounds. He saw no weapon until the chase started. What all these accounts had in common was the failure of any of the

policemen to call headquarters, ask for help, take the license number of the motorcycle, or even note its model.

The elegant young cop talked to La Repubblica on April 18, 1995, and

gave credit to his cousin (later changed to brother-in-law) who had told

him that schools in Italy are closed during Holy Week, which meant that he could determine that the gunman was not an early-arriving schoolboy.

But the cop stumbled by saying that he had seen no weapon until the chase, when the man picked a rifle up off the ground. The next day’s

Corriere had the young cop now remembering that he had called the

station house. And the PDS daily /’Unita gave the suspect a machine gun. But just when this comic opera seemed at an end, another aria started.

Intermission: The Magistrate As Eliot Ness ~-> 203

‘The kindergarten custodian, described earlier as a man, became a woman.

"There were now three suspicious men in the schoolyard. ‘The long, dark object became an umbrella, but closed (despite the rain) so that it looked like a rifle. Instead of a lone, brave, photo-model cop catapulting himself

from his car, now multiple policemen arrived, sirens screaming, giving

chase, although none asked the custodian to open the entrance gate. Two gunmen fled on a motorcycle. The third walked away peacefully, slipping through the crowds of policemen who had blanketed the neighborhood.

Corriere tried a new version. The Good Friday thriller began when

someone rang the kindergarten bell. The lady custodian answered and

found herself facing a man carrying a closed umbrella in the rain. He

asked for enrollment forms. He was trying to keep the custodian busy so that she would not call for help (presuming that she normally sounded an alarm when asked for enrollment forms). When the cop in the car saw the man with the rifle “who must have wanted to shoot the magistrate,” he sounded an alarm, causing police to flood the neighborhood, sirens blaring. The man, staying cool despite the sirens, told the custodian not to call for the police because they would “make us lose a lot of time.” He politely said good-bye to the custodian and walked away through the crowds of police.

Assuming their readers would ignore the ephemera, the papers had

enough material to do the electoral job. La Repubblica headlined “A

Killer for D'Ambrosio” and spoke of grave political tension? La Stampa decided that D'Ambrosio was being stalked by professional killers with an “almost-perfect plan.” D’Ambrosio had been saved only by the cool bravery of the photo-model cop. D’Ambrosio’s colleagues rallied round him, signing a public message saying that “Uncle Jerry” had “once again

risked his life.” They expressed “solidarity and unlimited affection; he is

a man/symbol, a banner for the entire magistracy.”™

This expression of solidarity, notwithstanding the laughable lack of

credibility surrounding the entire “threat” against

D’ Ambrosio, led for-

mer President Cossiga to say that “the Pool . . . is playing politics in . . .

this horrible exchange of [declarations of] solidarity between magis-

‘trates.’

D'Ambrosio himself put a nasty twist on the whole comedy when he blamed his former colleague Di Pietro for having helped the gunman by

criticizing the Pool magistrates and thereby isolating them against their

enemies.

Notes 7.

1. Paolo Foschini, “ ‘I pm studino prima da giudici,’ ” Corviere, 17 April 1997,

204 ~~ Chapter 21

2. 3. 4, 5,

1995.

Corriere, April 20-21, 1996. La Repubblica, April 20-21, 1996. La Stampa, April 20-21, 1996. Guido Tiberga, “Tonino, pit debole perch libero,” La Stampa, 19 April

i

22

wee

Interregnum: Between

_ Counterrevolution and Endgame he Milan prosecutors were not unique in their interest in malfea~

sance in high places, only in the political use they made of it.

Partly because of leads that emerged from public accounts of the ilan action, and partly because a weakened old political establishment was no longer to be much feared by prosecutors, occasional politicalruption cases were being developed in other cities. One of them, begun sack in the first year of Operation Clean Hands, now flows into the story

of the Italian coup.

| In the autumn of 1993, Roman magistrates broke the SISDE “black ‘unds” scandal. SISDE (Servizio Informazione ¢ Sicuvezza Democratica)

8 the civilian intelligence service reporting to the Interior Ministry. In

ome the magistrates ISDE chiefs on trial liscovered that SISDE © the minister of the

tose and use.

actually moved into the courtroom and put former for misuse of funds. The Roman magistrates had directors regularly passed sizable sums of money interior himself, with no accounting of their pur-

» President Scalfaro had a direct interest: He had been one of the four

jterior ministers, serving for four years in the Craxi governments, who ad held office during the period being investigated. According to the onstitution, the magistracy cannot investigate the Chief of State. The aly crime for which he can be investigated is “high treason and the atsmpt to overthrow the Constitution of the Republic.” And such an inéstigation must be decided on by a parliamentary committee charged

ith impeachment proceedings. At that time, in the autumn of 1993, the

arliament was made up largely of politicians under investigation by the ool. They hoped, of course, that Scalfaro would decide on an amnesty 205

206 ~~ Chapter 22 they did not dare call for his so and es, rat ist mag the m fro m the to save

impeachment for the SISDE affair.

hold of the story and disBut months later, several newspapers got ement in the SISDE affair. played the items of proof of Scalfaro’s involv coni) published the tran-

lus Fhe newsweekly Panorama (owned bySISBer DE treasurer, Maurizio Brocco”s scription of a recording made by the of SIS DE, in which the service' letti, during

an internal meeting

s that President Scalfaro, gue lea col his to ned lai exp or ect dir s operation rior Minister Ni-

and (then) Inte (then) Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, ide on the cover-up of the scandal, cola Mancino had held a meeting to dec not to investigate either the ce offi r’s uto sec pro e Rom the d ere ord had and tion took place nonetheless. iga est inv The e. Stat of ef Chi the or ministers r cases were subsequently “‘ar‘Amato and Mancino were charged; thei of Rome because Broccoletti’s testichived” by the Tribunale dei Ministri at the

it was refuted by others mony was held to be not credible since received very SISDE officials who eventually came to trial

meeting. The

mild sentences. up in all the papers. Scalfaro Panorama’s scoop was, of course, picked that he had ordered his magazine ced vin con i, con lus Ber h wit s iou fur was as we shall shortly see, it l, unti t man dor lay case the But , him ck to atta was shockingly revived. er'21, 1994, after only The fall of Berlusconi’s government on Decemb tion victory, was une elec seven months of life following his impressiv end of the hated inspections of doubtedly celebrated by the Pool as the ministers, ‘The inspections were its mode of operation ordered by justice by their loyal

bed as pointless labeled as harassment by the Pool and descri newspapers.

:

coni's on January 17, 1995, was "The governument that succeeded ateBerd lus by Scalfaro for a government with the result of a compromise negoti ved. The new sol dis n the and y ckl qui ed iev ach be to s goal r fou of set who had been Berlus-

l figure prime minister was an international financia headed a team of nonpolitical coni’s treasury minister, Lamberto Dini. He l might have expected

from whom the Poo cehnicians, not a government sof en banker in his sixties, had spent eich trouble. Dini himself, a t-sandpokthen inning in beg rs yea een fift for , IMF the h wit n gto hin Was in time the Bank of Italy. Six days after the

1979, was the director general of ment showed signs of greater government had taken office, as the govern surprisingly large, Berlusambition and its parliamentary support proved lated and denounced Scalfaro ‘vio ng bei was n gai bar the that d ime cla coni his minister, Berlusconi

i had been snd the government. Even thoughmateDinbec ause it was labeled the government illegiti March 1994 election results.

not reflective of the

Cavaliere, as The Milan Pool’s sigh of relief about the unseating of Z/

Interregnum: Between Counterrevolution and Endgame > 207

Berlusconi was popularly called, was wary, however, because Dini had chosen Filippo Mancuso as his justice minister. The appointment stirred

little interest elsewhere. But Mancuso was, according to Romano Canosa, “probably chosen in order to bring ‘order’ back to the magistracy,”? and he took that part of the job more seriously than anyone had expected.

Mancuso not only supported the previous inspection of the Pool but

initiated a new round, with a focus on the treatment of prisoners in San

Vittore, including the Pool’s use of preventive detention, the use of the same GIP for all the cases, and thirteen other areas of concern.

Mancuso let it be known that he was interested in, among other in

dents, Cagliari’s suicide and the dropping of any charges against PDS

officials in the Greganti case. There were even rumors that Mancuso was initiating a disciplinary process against the Pool. This led to parliamentary questions during the early spring of 1995, and to the staking out of positions. The PDS wanted to know what the government intended to do

to avoid any further disturbing of the serenity of the Pool. From the Cen-

ter-Right alliance came questions about the use of imprisonment “as a coercive instrument in order to obtain confessions and the naming of ac-

complices.” Other parliamentarians asked the justice minister to be cer-

tain that the investigation include the practice of searches and seizures,

not for obtaining evidence relating to alleged crimes being investigated but as fishing expeditions to search for evidence of crimes that had not yet been alleged. Deputies also noted the failure of the Pool to follow up

obvious leads relating to PDS financing, including “the involvement of the PCI/PDS in cooperatives with East European countries which served as a screen for financing political activity.”

‘The PDS had begun its attacks on Mancuso as soon as it got wind of

the questions being investigated. But even former MD magistrate Canosa,

antagonistic toward Mancuso, noted that all the minister was calling for

was that the charges be looked into; any resulting disciplinary action sould not be taken by Mancuso, but only finally decided by the CSM.

The independence of the magistrates was scarcely at risk. And, in fact, toward the end of that spring, Borrelli asked a journalist from Corriere della Sera: “Judge for yourself: does my face seem to you

the face of a worried person?’”! Having defeated Martelli, Conso, and Bi-

ondi, the robed revolutionaries felt no need to justify their practices, but simply watched their parliamentary supporters go after Mancuso’s head, But on May 11 Justice Minister Mancuso let it be known that he was ‘specially interested in a “refusal on the part of a qualified member of the

Milan] prosecutor’s office to receive a report that an official of the Firance Police had deposited with him.” J Giornale explained the meaning

of this affair:

208 ~~ Chapter 22

"The refused report was 2 monograph on Greganti and the now-legendary acquisition of an apartment on Via Tirso in Rome. . ,. On October 29, 1991, the day on which Greganti had withdrawn a large sum in Lugano, Comrade G. also signed the bill of sale on the dwelling in Via Tirso. Therefore, the money deposited in Lugano did not wind up in [PCI/PDS headquarters on] Via delle Botteghe Oscure [in Rome]. .. . The PCI/PDS is saved.

of the Finance Police, assigned ‘All okay? No, because a scrupulous officer to the investigation, notes an incongruity worth looking into. Greganti and Mario Eerrari, the seller of the apartment, had dated the bill of sale at 9:30 on the morning of October 29 in Rome, in the offices of the Monte dei Paschi di Siona bank. ... There's a problem: at what time on the same morning did Greganti go to the bank in Lugano to withdraw from the account? Greganti does not have the gift of ubiquity, or so the police officer reasoned. ... The money withdrawn in Lugano is not the same money put on the table in Rome... The officer writes down his doubts and requests a verification of Mario

Ferrari’s financial records. There is a bit of confusion there: he [Ferrari] seems to have received 1.3 billion from Greganti but a large part, 600-700 million, was lost... . An official then talses the report and carries it to the prosecutor’s office. The welcome there is cold. The information about Ferati is rejected; the question of Greganti’s ubiquity is judged irrelevant.* What went wrong with the Pool’s plans here is the conscience of a police officer that continued to torment him long after the affair. So, a year later, he told the inspectors sent out from the Ministry of Justice what had

happened.

In the face of all these serious charges, the Pool still showed itself to be perfectly secure in its political protection. The man who had most to worry about in any inspection of the politicization of the magistrates’

work, Gerardo D’Ambrosio, merely shrugged: “After what I read I can

say only that there has been a steep drop in my interest in the Minister of

Justice, in whatever he might say. That’s it. It doesn’t matter at all to me.

It is so clear that he’s playing somebody’s game... . From now on what

he says has the value of a puff of wind that passes by and goes away.” But no shrugs were forthcoming from the PDS politicians, or the Clean Pens. ‘The attacks on Mancuso were unusually poisonous.” The PDS chiefs must have felt considerable vulnerability throughout this period. Am embarrassing series of stories in Italian and foreign jour-

nals were asking the wrong questions about the financing the party had received over the years from the Communist cooperatives. During the

autumn of 1995, the director of one of the cooperatives confessed to hav-

ing turned over millions to the old PCI. Berlusconi was getting more

vocal about the “red judges” who refused to follow up even the most clamorous leads.’ The populist leader of the Northern League, Umberto

Interregnum: Between Counterrevolution and Endgame “> 209 lossi, had also been making accusations against the PDS concerning its legal financing.” ‘The PDS decided on a bold and unprecedented step: It would call for a arliamentary vote of no confidence not in the government: but in Man-

uso alone,

The Left could not be absolutely sure about Mancuso’s skill in mountag a defense, nor about the reaction of some of its garantista allies (the

sual watchdogs of civil rights, Marco Pannella’s Radicals, had already

olted any effort to rope them into the Center-Left), nor, in the end, bout the reaction of the country to such an unprecedented guillotining

f an individual minister who had been charged with no corruption or

salfeasance. In bringing the motion of no-confidence against Mancuso to

ae floor of the Parliament, PDS deputies said that there was nothing to

e investigated in Milan, that the inspection was a mere harassment of the

ool. The credibility of that assertion was a problem for the PDS. Mancuso

ras not prejudiced against magistrates: For forty-four years he himself ad been a magistrate, and was renowned for his rectitude. He had never

een touched by scandal or controversy. Mancuso charged the Pool with.

aving systematically obstructed the quite-normal inspections by the finistry.

The reaction of the Pool to Mancuso’s accusations was as virulent as it ad been against Mancuso’s three prédecessors. Borrelli sent a letter to the 'SM asking if interference with the works of the Pool did not constitute a

unishable crime, giving him and his team the “obligation and the means”

> inscribe the inspectors among the accused and, therefore, subject to

timinal investigation by the very magistrates they were inspecting.

Mancuso, not a politician but a judge who suddenly found himself in igh office, reacted in a straightforward. way, as a man of law. He said that

lorrelli’s letter and the behavior of the Pool relative to the inspection onstituted evidence that demonstrated ‘‘the participation of all four [of ie named magistrates: Borrelli, D’Ambrosio, Colombo, and Davigo] in malign and studied conspiratorial initiative, which amounted to the in-

mtional intimidating of the moral freedom of the inspectors... . The

um of all this is, therefore, that we are confronted with an enormous case

f continued abuse of official position.”' The no-confidence motion made the Senate the arena for one of the pup’s most poignant public dramas.

Mancuso used the parliamentary debate as the occasion for a speech to

ae Senate in which he appeared alone at the podium; the seats usually ccupied by members of the cabinet on important occasions were empty.

Je faced a disorderly chamber, with loud remarks and catcalls comi;

specially from PDS and Northern League benches. Mancuso pro! av

210 ~~ Chapter 22

swayed no votes; he remained doomed. But in his speech, and some additional materials released after the speech, he defended the propriety of his actions, the allegations about actions of the Pool that fully justified

ministerial concern, and the exceptional and probably unconstitutional attack on his tenure as minister, The Clean Pens said that he suffered humiliating defeat in the debate. Others saw a different drama unfolding, as did the head of a civil rights organization:

Mancuso does not leave the Senate debate a defeated man. What emerges beaten and shamed are those who are giving in to the magistrates’ coup Prat, "The magistrates, who crown the parliamentary motion with their approval, who are in reality the signers of a coup-plotters’ declaration, [carrying out] a coherent program of overwhelming every other power . « . can proclaim themselves . .. the official victors. But they were forced to come out into the open and for the first time they had to defeat someone who dared to fight back. . .. Why did the “party of the magistrates” decide to face a parliamentary battle? ‘The simplest reason is their rising, dangerous arrogance. Another is that certain pressures were felt, coming from the fact that, despite the fragility of the inspection weapon, Mancuso’s inspection was arriving at something fundamental in the sanctuary of the City of Prosecutors and they wanted to stop it at any cost. But the Senate debate, the firm posture of Mancuso, the rage of a pseudo-progressive and League-ist front . ., that has gathered around the coup-plotters of the magistracy, should have opened some eyes . .. [the eyes of those who] have tried to deny, even without mtich conviction, the existence of a single party and a single large operation of judicial extremism." Few who shared this view rose to be heard in the Senate. A notable excep-

tion was former President Cossiga.

The Constitutional Court took up the question of whether a vote of

no-confidence in a single ministet was unconstitutional. But before it could come to a decision, the Center-Left alliance based on the PDS

quickly brought the parliamentary question to a successful vote, and Mancuso, perhaps still constitutionally entitled to his position, was forced out by a parliamentary majority, the fourth justice minister to fall because

he dared to challenge the Pool.

Before being forced to step down, Mancuso gave the Senate the prelimi-

nary inspection reports, with some supporting documentation. These in-

dicated that the Pool had made excessive use of preventive detention, that it had systeniatically violated judicial confidentiality, and that it had consistently failed to observe defendants’ rights and “due process.” The inspectors concluded, while complimenting the magistrates on what they

Interregnum: Between Counterrevolution and Endgame ~= 211 had accomplished, by finding that preventive detention had been used as a means “of obtaining confessions or elements of accusation relative to

third parties.” They also reported an absence of pity and of respect for

human dignity, recklessness, loss of a sense of “measure,” and an obses-

Sive seeking of public spectacle and public favor. But most striking was

Mancuso’s own conclusion that the Pool had shown clear evidence of

political bias. He ended his last moments before the Senate as a minister

of government by saying that the inspections would continue, Among

the fourteen points he wanted further investigated were Tiziana Parenti’s

charges about the protection of the PDS and certain of the suicides in

prison.

_ The political context of the Mancuso affair was marked by the absence,

in this account and in the Senate chamber, of the prime minister whom

Mancuso served. Mancuso had said that Prime Minister Dini was always,

in both his words and his actions, favorable to the inspections of the Pool. Mancuso pointed out statements by Dini according to which President

Scalfaro was also in agreement with the inspection. “The President of the supposed to have said, But. Mancuso admitted that Dini had added that “ic wasn’t worth the effort” (to inspect) because the Pool “is winding up”

Republic knows that the Minister is right about the Milan Pool,” Dini is

the Clean Hands investigations."? This declaration by Mancuso is a grave assertion, given the total aban-

donment of Mancuso by Dini and Scalfaro to the wolves who eventually inished him. Scalfaro, after the fall of the Berlusconi government and the

sirch of the Dini government, always supported the (Dini) “government

of technicians,” citing the good of the nation, that objective which the

Chief of State—who, according to the constitution, is super partes and is he guarantor of the nation itself—must pursue. Scalfaro had decided that

ections should be delayed as long as possible. So he would have been letermined to keep the Mancuso affair from becoming an issue that vould threaten the Dini government. To do this, he found it necessary to

llow the offending minister to be surgically removed while saving the

datient.

But Mancuso was not finished. In the official text of his last Senate

peech, he inserted four pages that he had not tead on the Senate floor iecause he feared the disturbance that might ensue. The pages harked lack to the SISDE affair with which this chapter opened. In these four pages, Mancuso related how, when he had been chairman

if the investigating commission looking into the “black funds” of SISDE

nd before becoming justice minister, he was asked by Scalfaro and the

secretary general of the Quirinale (the president’s palace), Gaetano Gi-

ani, to modify the commission’s final report to indicate that no minister f the interior had received “black funds” from SISDE. This statement

212 ~~ Chapter 22 would have been contrary to what the former chiefs of SISDE had con-

fessed to the magistrates. ‘The issue is delicate because Scalfaro, as Craxi’s minister of the interior,

SISDE had had the responsibility for selecting and appointing the same chiefs and much of its top brass. Those appointed by Scalfaro had been (ic., arrested and convicted for having dipped into “reserved funds” “black funds”) at SISDE for their personal advantage and to help political

friends. According to the investigation, every interior minister—Scalfaro

included—used to receive hundreds of millions of lire a month from the “reserved funds” for “institutional objectives.” One estimate is that Scalf-

aro received a total of more than 5 billion lire, equivalent to more than $3

million,

Scalfaro was unrepentant, Having declared that “I won't go along with this massacre game,” he had convinced himself that Berlusconi had organized a press campaign to force him to resign. This is unlikely, however,

because Berlusconi clearly had other things in mind; Scalfaro’s fall would

not have been the key to a resurgence of Berlusconi’s political fortunes,

only the cause of a huge delay in the new elections Berlusconi was seeking.

In fact, President Scalfaro resisted until, in February 1996, a last-gasp

effort to form a government-for-institutional-reform collapsed. Berlus-

coni claimed that the president had lost the impartiality the system de-

mands and was violating his duty to call elections before the end of a

parliament's term if there is no other way to form a “political” government, that is, a government made up of some combination of winners of the last election.

2

8

&

‘Lhe Milan Pool, which was in the process of destroying the Berlusconi government in the fall of 1994 when Bossi administered the coup de grace, had not finished the job of eliminating the man himself who had derailed their coup or, at least, caused a long detour. On May 26, 1995, the arrest of the managers of Berlusconi’s businesses

began again. On May 28, the Pool requested that his company Publicalia

be put into the hands of a court-appointed commissioner. Such a measure

as this had never been requested by the Pool for any Italian enterprise, lia

from FLAT on down. The ‘Tribunal rejected the request. So Publita shareholders chose an outsider, Roberto Poli, a manager close to Prodi,

as the company’s new president,

‘As soon as it became clear that the April 21, 1996, election had removed

any immediate possibility that Berlusconi would have the power to dam-

age the Milan magistrates and their allies, they pounced, leveling new charges and sentencing Berlusconi’s brother to two and a half years in prison. Paolo Berlusconi was found guilty of paying kickbacks on prop-

Interregnum: Between Counterrevolution and Endgame => 273 irty sales. In June 1997, he benefited from his crime’s being taken off the ‘egister of chargeable offenses. For the same transactions, long after the

original charges and attendant publicity had done their part in the work f political assassination, Bettino Craxi was acquitted. Notes

1, Asis apparent, leaks are an everyday tool of all political factions in Italy. That distinguished the alliance of the Pool and its supportive press was the sys~ ematic, regular, and immediate passing of full information, by the magistrates, bout investigations of prominent business and political leaders. 2, Romano Canosa, Storia della magistratwra in Italia (Milan: BaldinigeCasoldi, 1996), 231. 3. Docurnenti Giustizia, n. 5, May 1995. 4, Corriere, 6 May 1995. D’Ambrosio said that this little problem didn’t tighten him, since his house had been robbed twice in the last few days. Fle did ot mention the earlier “assassination attempt.” 5. 11 Giornale, 13 May 1995. 6. La Repubblica, 12 May 1995. 7, For a summary of these attacks, see Giancarlo Lehner, Borrelli (Milan: Girnalisti Editori, 1995), 224-225. 8, Berlusconi’s colleagues had long been raising these issues, with no judicial fect. Almost two years earlier, journalist Giuliano Ferrara, who served in Berlusoni’s government, had summarized: ““Greganti and a band of co-op managers are ae shadow cashiers of the PCI/PDS, but they are on the list of the new untouchbles, together with their chiefs... the D’Alemas, the Stefaninis, Therefore, any-

ne who investigates is anathema, is accused of ideological rottenness, and of omplicity with the old party gangs, as is anyone who discusses their role, their ‘ne history, their right to label themselves as different.” See Giuliano Ferrara,

Alhusioni, minacce, menzogne ¢ ricatti,”” Corriere, 15 November 1993, 2.

9, Bernard Bonilauri, “Injustice de la justice,” Le Figaro, 28 September 1995. 10. Resoconto Sommario, 160th and 161st seduta pubblica, 11 may 1995. 11, See Mauro Mellini, “Il partito dei giudici mostra il suo volto equivoco,” ’Opinione, 20 October, 1995, Mellini, a deputy in Parliament, is president of a ational group concerned with defendants’ rights; he also leads the garantista sociation Ginstizia Giwsta (A Just Justice), which publishes a periodical by the ume name, Considered a great penalist and one of the founders of the Radical arty, which he has since abandoned, Mellini was clected to a “lay” seat on the ‘SM in 1993 (i.c., he was elected by the Parliament, not magistrates). 12. In fact, Scalfaro had probably supported the original appointment of Man350 as justice minister. Mancuso told [2 Giornale that it was Scalfaro who had anted him in that job, and as profound a skeptic as Canosa sees “no reason why, ‘east on this point, one should not believe him.” See Canosa, Storia, 231.

23

weer

The Final Act?

yim

Minister Lamberto Dini had initially defended Mancuso’s

pursuit of the inspections as being properly within the responsibil-

ities of the minister of justice. But by the time Italians returned from the beach at the end of summer (1995), the PDS had returned to the

attack with the unprecedented motion of no-confidence in a single minister just described. Mancuso had been accused of failing to produce “se-

renity” in the judicial system, of being “conflictual,” and of having said

bad things about the president while the latter was traveling abroad.’

Dini’s apparent fear of the powerful forces lined up. against Mancuso, both the Pool and the PDS, led to his extraordinary failure even vo show up for the parliamentary debate on Mancuso’s fate, including two landmark addresses to the Parliament by Mancuso himself. Dini was nowhere

to be seen, and he from the smoke of motion (the normal ter-Right, a motion

subsequently avoided public comment. This retreat battle provoked the presentation of a no-confidence type, directed at the entire government) by the Censubscribed to even by the unreconstructed Commu-

nists of Rifondazione Comunista.

‘The significance of the Pool’s successful operation against Mancuso, according to former President Francesco Cossiga, was that it revealed the

“strange and phony suspension of party politics” in which a “useful mo-

ment of truce was being transformed into a comedy with a mediocre

script.” He was referring to the “technical” government, which was, he

believed, ever more in the thrall of party politics, even though it would

not admit it. Cossiga believed that the vote against Mancuso, clearly a

partisan PDS operation, had brought the neutral, technical character of the Dini government to an end. The makers and beneficiaries of the coup,

having suffered the Berlusconi detour, were getting back on their track.

As Cossiga put it, “The no-confidence vote against Mancuso does not 214

The Final Act? > 215 stem from acts committed by the Minister, but from the perceived and

perhaps real conflict of his actions with the political line of the [govern-

ment’s] majority,” ‘Then Cossiga trained his sights on Pool:

From the moment of Mancuso’s ousting, let’s pray that we do not breathe new life into... an authoritarian, violent and often vulgar administration of justice by a fraction of the magistracy that, luckily for our citizens, is certainly not the totality nor even the majority of the Italian magistracy ?

Finally, Cossiga addressed himself to his successor, President Scalfaro,

and accused him of responsibility for a “presidential government,” mean-

ing a government, whether technical or political in character, that is really

a product of the president’s office, not of the Parliament as the constitu-

tion intends. This was also the line that the Center-Right was taking at

the time, Some commentators suggested that Scalfaro. had become, in ef-

fect, the leader of a government party and that, with his commentary, exPresident Cossiga had become the effective leader of the opposition. Si vio Berlusconi, who thought he had been elected to govern, must have been surprised by these developments. Although the Dini government was billed as a government of techni-

cians, and was headed by a former member of Berlusconi’s cabinet, its

support came from the PDS and the Center-Left, and its policies and ministers were a mix that overall, was acceptable to the PDS. Was this, then, the denouement at which the magistrates who had declared their

revolutionary intentions twenty years earlier had been aiming? Did it resolve the concerns of the worried industrialists facing a new Europe? Did ‘he ex-Communists of the PDS, finally, feel like victors? If so, then this

vas a very modest structure to erect on the ashes of the First Republic.

Viore to the point, Massimo D’Alema and the PDS leadership could not

sossibly have been satisfied with this not-very-juicy fruit of all their la~

dors.

Maneuso’s first speech defending himself against the personalized no-

‘onfidence motion took place on October 18, 1995.3 He had noted that here was nothing unique about sending inspectors to Milan. In fact, he

tad initiated 217 inspections throughout the country, with no protests ther than those from Milan.’ He suggested that all the reaction, both aside and outside the judiciary, had come from one political current. Accused of having undermined Dini, Mancuso showed that he had kept

dini informed every step of the way and, until it gor hot in the kitchen, iad received regular signs of the prime minister’s approval and encouragenent,

216 ~~~ Chapter 23

Some of Mancuso’s words had gone to the heart of the tactics used by Operation Clean Hands and the danger they represented. It is not legitimate to label those who believe in due process as formalistic,

or enemies of magistrates . . . especially when it’s a question of the presump-

tion of innocence. .. . The same goes for those who do riot want preventive detention to be an instrument of torture. ... You can’t have a clear conscience when you thinks along the following lines: you are a suspect, you defend yourself, you deny, you refuse to make secret accusations against others,

therefore you are guilty. And at the same time the magistrate—cooking up, in a dirty kitchen, his own . . . ferocious triumph—boasts and whines, on

television, in the newspapers, in every sector that can be intimidated. This has been allowed to occur in Italy. You must not wait until it arrives on your own doorstep before you grasp the risk that it carries for everybody.*

The no-confidence motion against the Dini government that had been introduced by the Center-Right following Dini’s flight from the parliamentary battle over Mancuso failed, of course. But the impropriety, in

some eyes, of Dini’s failure either to defend Mancuso or to sack him was

an important factor in making it impossible for Dini to form the broadbased government he sought in the mid-winter of 1995-1996. When his government of technicians, Italy’s fifty-third government since the war,

finally resigned and Scalfaro was seeking a solution that would avoid elec-

tions (a solution he never found), Berlusconi proposed a political agree-

ment among all the parties. At the core of the agreement would be, of course, a deal between Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the PDS. They would

give birth to what Berlusconi labeled a “government of broad accord” in

order to carry out institutional reforms and cure the chronic State deficit.

This government, which could even have been led by Lamberto Dini, would have had to last at least wo years. It was a version of this Berlusconi idea that Scalfaro finally tried when, in February 1996, he charged

the veteran politico Antonio Maccanico with trying to form a last-hope-

before-calling-elections government. ‘The effort collapsed in a week. When this failed, there was no alternative to elections, however much Scalfaro struggled against them. Much of the electorate clearly (according

to polls and interviews) feared clections because of the possibility of “a

Communist government.” ‘The idea of going to early elections also made some of the Italian political class shudder (and probably even caused a bit of tremor down Berlusconi’s spine) because of the possibility that the big

winner would be Gianfranco Fini’s post-Fascist National Alliance. Fini

must have had the same anticipation, because he took the lead in pressing for early elections. He pressed so hard that one Italian journalist wrote:

“{T]his is how the war of succession on the Right is beginning.”* It was

the shuddering politicians who feared the wrong thing.

The Final Act? ~-> 217

The PDS entered the April 21, 1996, elections with, finally, the way

clear for the payoff of this long journey. The old opposition parties that

had frustrated the Communists since 1948 now lay in ashes. But victory

was no sure thing: Polls showed some voter distrust of the Olive Tree, the

Center-Left coalition guided by the PDS. Iz may have dominated the six small partners of its loose band, but those partners gave it cover, gave it needed votes, and gave it greater respectability, It also had, in Romano

Prodi as the proposed prime minister, the very image of respectability,

moderation, and those provincial family values that contrasted sharply with the razor-sharp jet-set image of Silvio Berlusconi.

The discomfort of the PDS came mostly from the fact that it had, al-

ready in 1994, faced a battlefield that was largely swept of the old enemies.

And the absolutely unforeseen phenomenon

of Silvio Berlusconi had

robbed the PDS of the coup’s fruits at the very last minute. Berlusconi’s

image was no longer what it had been in 1994. His governing coalition had started falling apart on the day he took office. Italians had been

watching him on television as just another opposition parliamentarian

speaking from his seat in the Chamber, no longer the fresh outsider. And,

by far the greatest burden, the magistrates’ harassment, which had never

really abated, was warmed up and generated increasingly noisy press cov-

erage as the election approached. Berlusconi’s face, to many Italians, was

ao longer as new or as clean as it had once seemed.

Outside of the weakened Berlusconi, there was no more serious opposi-

tion to the PDS, The standard Italian political annual could summarize

neatly: “The party system that defined the postwar Republic no longer oxists.”7 Gone were the Christian Democrats, who had given Italy forty years

of clientelism, but had also given it the Economic Miracle and forty years of relative calm and demoeratic freedom,

Gone were the despised Craxi Socialists, who had ruined the opportu-

tity the Communists had in the mid-1970s to enter into formal sharing

of power in Italy, It was Craxi (and the exceptional brain trust he had

vith him) who had changed the debate about the PCI from the old ‘threadbare doubts about its independence from Moscow into a devastatng critique of the PCI’s own democratic credentials, and of its real devoion to pluralism and competitive elections. Gone were the Liberals, the last bastion of “respectable” (i.c., conserva-

ism with no taint of Fascism).

Gone were the Social Democrats, representing a relaxed attitude toward

weryday graft but also genuine moderation in the labor movement. Gone were the Republicans, those inconvenient guarantors of the spirit of the Italian constitution.

The old parties and politicians, notwithstanding the accomplishments

218 ~~ Chapter 23 wer for. Their corruption and from which Italy benefits, had much to ans t Republic such that the ending of the practices of the Firs

legality were

ed ten, perhaps twenty was richly deserved. It would have been deserv

years earlier. because of moral rot, however. “The parties did not collapse from withthein Pool its political, business, and by und gro the to ned bur were y The 21996 for reasons that appear poand media allies. This happened in 199 tical reasons, despite the litical, just as it did not happen earlier for poli illegality. readily available evidence of large-scn aleto the PDS were some Fascists, both So all that remained as oppositio rmed hard-line Communists, a reformed and not, some definitely unrefo

Christian Democratic splinters folkloric secessionist movement, and two the Center-Right to collect some of their

thought to be hanging around

nt finally collapsed. Informer followers when the Berlusconi movemei had not even converted creasingly beset by the magistrates, Berluscon

themselves with soccer on his support clubs, some of ‘which concerned tical party—although it is poli true a g lin emb res ng thi any into s, day Sun from the 1994 elec-

fair to say that much of Forze’s parliamentary team nalism

than their newskill and professio tions had performed with more mig to expect. Berlusconi ness to parliamentary politics ht athavehisled1994one succ ess with the same

may have believed that he could repe formula, but without a real party structure. vented a sweeping victory: He came close to doing so. He certainly pre place in hough Berlusconi’s Forza Italia slipped to second

of the PDS. Alt

behind the PDS (21.1 to 20.6 in the overall vote, it was less than 1 percent ition, based

Prodi coal the proportional voting for the lower house). The that Prodi’s governdeclared victory, but it was so narrow

on the PDS, Communist Refoundation ment had to rely on the votes of the old-line has worked to keep the (PRC) party in the Chamber of Deputies.’ That the revamping of the government's life-support system ticking; but on s” necessary in Italy's welfare system to produce those “structural change , the PRC has declared casé for entrance into Europe’s common currency

that it will abandon the coalition. district results. Further spice was added by later analyses of district-bye of the Fascists ement, mad They showed that the Fiamma (Flame) mov

ance when it started renouncswho had walked out of Fini’s National Alli -Right in so

Center ing its Fascist past, took key votes away from the -Right fold,

the latees Center many districts that, had they been in thehouses of Parliament. This detail

would actually have won control of both d, and France, where the was not reported in the United States, Englan told only of the splendid victory of the Center-Left.

media generally

eeming of the "Thus the spring 1996 victory of the PDS 1994in , Italthoy, ugha redperh aps not the victory it felt should have been its own in

The Final Act? > 219 last act in a revolution—as that term is normally used—was also not just

a landmark election. Victory was not gained at the polls until the old majority, which had a fifty-year winning streak, was eliminated; not by millions of Italian voters, but by a handful of magistrates in Milan. The

magistrates had allies. But an accurate description of the relationship of

these forces to the Poo! must rest on circumstantial evidence and powerful—but frequently partisan—testimony. The evidence that certain industrialists and the print media they owned were close and active allies of the Pool is very strong, but it is not a smoking gun. The same is true for the connection to the PDS.

These highly politicized magistrates were not all, as D’Ambrosio was,

acknowledged partisans of the party. But whereas some were to the left

of the PCI/PDS, as they had almost all been at the time of the founding of Magistratura Democratica,

and whereas Borrelli appeared

to have

amended “all power to the proletariat” into “all power to the magis-

trates,” these variations did not stand in the way of an obviously deep

comprehension of common goals and shared interests. That harmony of

interests was so great and so clear that there may have been no need for active conspiring.

But now, as we will see in the final chapter, the confidence that comes with victory and accustoming oneself to the warm glow of prestige (in the case of the magistrates) and the confidence that comes with victory

and rule (in the case of the PDS) have led them to begin to acknowledge the specifics of their alliance. If, in years to come, memoirs, old records, or loose statements, products of their growing confidence, do lead the two parties to reveal the active rather than silent connections, the planning

and operations that made the Italian coup, they will not really add much to our understanding of how the coup came about.

In the meantime, the evidence of the Pool’s political goals and alliances

sontinues to mount, and not just in the political candidacy of Di Pietro

inder the aegis of Massimo D’Alema, As we are about to see, Turin magis-

trates had no trouble building a solid case against Cesare Romiti, going

Into court, and getting a conyiction, all of which the Milan Pool had refused to do. But—besides the cases already mentioned, and besides the

strong testimony of Tiziana Parenti and police officers assigned to the

Pool—are we going too far in suggesting that the obvious difference be-

sween the PCI/PDS and the other parties is that the Milan Pool refused

'o follow those trails of corruption that led to their allies in the Commuaist, and then “post”-Commuunist Party? Craxi strongly asserted that the Communists had the same guilt as the other parties, and that they were

peing protected by the Pool. But Craxi’s statements on this subject are

often written off as self-serving, Then, from within the movement came, in late 1996, almost exactly the

220 ~~ Chapter 23 same assertion. One of the senior leaders of Italian Communism, Ar-

mando Cossutta, had for many years sat in Parliament for the PCL. He

had been part of the party’s small ruling circle. (Today he is the unofficial

Number ‘Iwo leader of the Communist Refoundation Party though a prominent political leader, known to all Italians, for much longer than

the party secretary, Fausto Bertinotti). Cossutta launched an appeal to the Left to tell the truth about party financing. He declared, based on his direct personal knowledge, that all parties had illicit funding, including the Communist Party. When reminded that Craxi had said the same thing, Cossutta warned, in effect, that Craxi should not be left to exploit

the fact that he was telling the truth while the other political leaders were

denying it: “The Left, all of it, should carry out... an Operation Truth,

because it is unfortunately true that no Italian party can say that it has not violated the law on party financing ...”?

The PDS exploded. Its spokesman exclaimed, “This attempt, one of Craxi’s old war horses, to put everybody on the same level . . . is unac~ ceptable.’ He suggested that maybe it was just Cossutta who tool

money. One opposition legislator remarked that the Communists were

afraid of the fact that some of the money they had received had passed through Craxi, and “maybe they fear that Craxi might have kept the re~ ceipts.” On television, PDS Secretary D’Alema explained that the PCI may have received funding from Moscow until the mid-1970s, “the other

face of a system of financing that, from the other side of the Atlantic,

aided the Christian Democrats and their allies.” But for the period after that D’Alema cried poor: “Only God knows how much the PCI-PDS had to intervene, in the ’80s, in an extreme way, to fire employees, to scale

down the apparatus.”"! Some of those reductions were, in fact, visible to observers, but only since the generalized caution spread by the Tangento-

poli scandals; up to and through the 1980s, the huge PCI/PDS apparatus

had seemed to function normally. And we have Gorbachev's word that

direct funding continued until 1990 (see Chapter 9).

Cossutta’s assertion that the PCI/PDS was no different from the other parties in its illicit funding came at a time when more documentation

about the Pool’s protection of that party had become public. The inspec-

tors sent to Milan by Minister Biondi (before those of Mancuso) had

treated this question in their report, in a section of eighty-nine pages.

They acknowledged that investigating the PCI/PDS was more difficult than probing the other parties because the old PCI had been structured

asa kind of “party-church,” whose faithful put its interest before all else.

So testimony by these faithful was harder to obtain. Further, the payments to the party were often not simple kickbacks. The methods were “more sophisticated and complex, such as the acquisition of buildings in which a single PCI militant would hold the deed, not the party; the cre-

The Final Act? s=> 227

ation of finance companies; the hiring of employees by the Red cooperatives when those people would actually worl: in party offices; . . .

contributions from banks and companies operating in the ex-Communist

countries,” Given these difficulties, the inspectors found that the Pool

used “a less-than-adequate diligence” except during the period when Parenti was working in the Pool,'?

In the following months, difficulties between the Pool and the PDS, although they resulted in some harsh exchanges, did not prevent an inereasingly evident and solid alliance between them. The PDS may no longer need the Pool as its ladder to power, but it|will certainly need some

protection against the conversion of its history jof party funding into a

major political problem for the party and judicial problem for its leaders. According to Angelo Panebianco, the “organic PDS-magistracy alliance” will “serve to guarantee to the PDS, even in the years to come, a sort of judicial safe-conduct pass which is, by definition, denied to its political adversaries.” In fact, he suggests, whoever in the future thinks about launching “political parties in competition with the PDS can be certain ¥++ to enter, automatically and immediately, inthe gunsights of a large aumber of Italian magistrates,”

|

_ Much of the conflict between the forces left standing after the coup has

aow settled down to a grinding struggle over the rules of the Italian politiral game. Some of those weakened forces—garantisti, moderates, old-

ityle liberals, small and mid-sized entrepreneurs, political Catholics—

nay eventually derive strength from being centrist “swing” elements between coalitions of the Left and the Right, unless Left and Right reach an iccord over their heads. The clash over formulas for institutional reform,

ncluding electoral reform, will determine the role they will eventually dlay, if any. Meanwhile, the other great issue of how the political game is played— ‘ontrol of the state television network, government concessions to Ber-

usconi for his three television networks, and how to achieve fairness in elevised political campaigning—is so far from being resolved that the jovernment was left to act by decree on these issues in the run-up to the \pril 21, 1996, elections. As for the state radio and television (RAI), no

rarty has been more assiduous in its effort to gain control of it over the

‘ears, at all levels, than the PCI/PDS, although Berlusconi ran hard to

atch up during his government’s brief life. These crucial crossroads in Italian postwar political history are being

pproached with the country’s president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, ina most

eculiar position. He is no longer considered an above-the-battle arbiter

f the game but a player. He has not hidden his support for the creation

fa “Third Pole,” a centrist coalition that would arise from the ashes of

talian Christian Democracy. His exaggerated stalling on the calling of

222 «~~ Chapter 23

elections was clearly to allow as much tinie as possible for this develop-

ment and, perhaps (this is speculation), to allow time for the Pool to de-

stroy Berlusconi’s political viability. With the 1996 elections, Italy has

finally passed beyond its phase of “Presidential Government” of dubious

constitutionality,

The elections have not, of course, solved the crisis of Italian justice that

was created when, in Milan, judges’ robes became the togas of revolution. And fear of preventive detention has claimed another victim. A former Christian Democratic member of the Chamber of Deputies, Carmine

Mensorio, was later elected senator for one of the Christian Democratic splinters (the Christian Democratic Center, or CCD). When magistrates

investigating Mensorio asked the Senate to lift his immunity, the Senate

refused. But Mensorio lost his immunity when he was not reelected in

April 1996. He fled to Greece, where he stayed for four months, declaring

to the end that he was innocent. The end came when he got on the ferry

that was supposed to carry him back to Italy to face the magistrates. He

threw himself off the boat, having left a letter to his family and a forty-

page dossier in which he declared himself innocent, with evidence. All of the material left by Mensorio is still secret, sequestered by the magistrates

before it could reach the public."* This time, the unanimous reaction of Italy’s politicians was to criticize the excessive use of incarceration in order to male suspects confess. The reaction in the country was such that even some fairly authoritative PDS

politicos, such as Gavino Angius (parliamentary deputy and close collab-

orator of PDS Secretary D’Alema), have said that in these years (the years

covered by this book) there have been many abuses, that the law should be changed, and that a “political solution” must be found for Jangentopoli.

Things look different when one is in power: Evidently the ex-Commu-

nists are very worried about a number of indications that some magistrates around the country want to attack the PDS itself now that it is in the government. The fact that during the history of Operation Clean

Hands there was an almost-total inactivity by the magistrates in the Red

Belt—that swath of central Italy running through Emilia-Romagna and

‘Tuscany in which the Communists have been dominant throughout most of the postwar period—may suggest, of course, a unique purity in the party’s political and governmental operations. But some magistrates outside the MD orbit, such as Carlo Nordio in Venice, do not think so, The

first timid probes into the cooperatives from which the Communists have

long skimmed a fat profit off many enterprises, including especially trade

in agricultural products with the old Warsaw Pact, suggest that the silence

from those regions is a product of the judicial inactivity itself, not of the puritanical habits of the regional Red politicos.

In several parts of the country, magistrates are sniffing out PDS trails

The Final Act? ~-> 223

that the Milan magistrates had refused to follow. I! Giornale has pub-

ished the text of a confidential twelve-page report submitted to Rome by Nordio. The report had led, at the end of 1996, to new charges against D’Alema, It described 104 companies run by PDS party faithful. Arturo Gismondi commented in the newspaper article that “the investigations in this area have almost never relied on pentiti.... We're facing here a sort

of political schizophrenia, or duplicity, by which a governing party needs

hard-line comrades who, instead of talking, keep quiet and, rather than cooperate with the magistrates—who are nonetheless exalted as guaran-

tors of legality—hamper or derail their investigations.’

If these prosecutors have (or can get along without) enough political protection, the PDS may be in for some bad times. It will depend on the developing strength of the Magistratura Democratica, on the CSM, and

on the survival of a solid Center-Right opposition. It is no sure thing.

Some other troubles for the coup victors may come from within the Left itself. Giuliano Pisapia, a lawyer elected to Parliament for the Marxist

hard-line Rifondazione Comunista, is the new chairman of the Justice

Committee of the Chamber. Pisapia proposed, when the deputies returned from their 1996 summer holidays, a special session of the Parlia-

ment on problems of justice in Italy. He explained that a remedy must be found for those abuses that have been detailed in this book. The proposal was favorably received by all the parties (What else could they do?), and

the session may actually take place although there are many forces with an interest in avoiding it. Opponents will be able to make the case that the need was met by the inclusion of the system of justice as one of the

three points on the agenda of the Bicameral Committee to consider constitutional and electoral issues. Its chairman, Massimo D’Alema, reached some important areas of agreement with Berlusconi, and the Committee,

unlike several predecessors, was actually able to report outa set of recom-

mendations for the Parliament. The arrogance and political involvement of the Pool were unrelenting,

sowever, Following Borrelli’s clamorous attempts to influence the Com-

mittee, he and his allies turned immediately toa reform (of Law 513)

debated by the Parliament in the summer of 1997. It seemed a simple xffort, with good agreement on both Left and Right, to bring Italy closer

‘0 the rest of the West by requiring that informers, Italy’s celebrated pen-

iti, be required to testify in court and undergo cross-examination by the jefense. Parliamentarians were even willing to write in some exceptions n the cases of Mafia pentiti under serious personal threat. Yet the magisrates not only fought the change, which passed with very large majorit-

es, but one week after the parliamentary approval they launched a

‘ampaign to undo the reform and return to their old comfortable (for the srosecution) ways.

224 ~~ Chapter 23 The hero of the Milan Pool, Antonio Di Pietro, appeared not to be

central to the question of the politics of the Pool. But he was a political

wild card of immense national popularity until July 1997, when he agreed, Tree

ina

secret private dinner in Rome with D’Alema, to run as the Olive

Senate candidate in the Mugello precinct of Florence, (The holder of the

seat, sociologist Pino Arlacchi, had accepted. leadership of the UN orga-

nized crime initiative.) Once again, “Ionino” had caused an explosion. /

Giornale’s editor Vittorio Feltri, like many on the Right, felt betrayed.

Feltri accused him of seeking parliamentary immunity against the new

corruption charges (see Chapter 20), describing it bitterly as a “perfect” story, “made in Italy, . . a leap from the tractor to the limo.’ Di Pietro’s the close friend on the Right, Mirko ‘Tremaglia, was found weeping inwere corridor outside the Chamber of Deputies. Attacks from the Right PDS matched by grumbling within the Left, including the PDS itself. The machine in Mugello had been informed five minutes before the public

announcement and felt ill-used. Several coalition partners, including the

Greens and the Communist Refoundation, said they would work against him in the fall election to fill the seat. D’Alema’s claim that Di Pietro’s

popularity would add masses of votes to the Left raised the question of

why they had chosen Mugello, the second-“reddest” district in Italy (70

percent PDS), instead of a district in opposition hands that ‘Ionino’s popularity could capture. And Di Pietro’s assertion that the timing had nothing to do with the new charges against him (announced forty-eight hours earlier) had some holes in it. He claimed, simply, that parliamentary im-remunity no longer existed in Italy. This claim is ingenuous. In a 1989

form, the term immunity had been erased, but parliamentarians were still protected against any magistrates’ actions that would limit their “personal

liberty.” As we have seen in the whole Clean Hands drama, the protectione.

was not perfect but, even in the case of Craxi, was frequently effectiv

‘And Di Pietro’s declared thirst to participate in the votes on the reforms

recommended by the Bicameral Committee faces the difficulty that he would clearly take his Senate seat’ after the crucial voting had occurred,

The “summer of mud” concluded by making the “savior of Italy” appearo mortal and opportunistic. In November, however, the citizens of Mugell gave him a handy victory.

Just a few weeks earlier, Di Pietro’s popularity was still intact. When

the Bicameral Committee was considering direct election of the president, television news reports cut immediately to Di Pietro’s home in the coun-

try for his reaction: They considered it a foregone conclusion that he

would be elected if he ran. Everyone may be putting too much faith in opinion polls, which Italians notoriously use to protest against the current establishment (without really intending to break up the current ar-

The Final Act? ~~ 225

rangement, which carries some benefits for them) when they get in the voting booth,

We saw that Di Pietro had successfully defended himself against three

rounds of charges in Brescia, But in the course of Brescia magistrate Fabio

Salamone’s probe, on January 14, 1996, journalists received copies of the wiretaps of Di Pietro’s phone that had been ordered by Salamone, thou-

sands of pages that were presumably part of Salamone’s request for the

indictment of Italy’s most popular figure, Salamone protested against the

leak and has denied any responsibility for it.

The leaked wiretaps show why idealists on the Left (Greens, Commu-

nists, many in the PDS) have such doubts about Di Pietro’s commitment

to even the moderate Left. In the wiretapped phone calls, Di Pietro is raising money for the founding of a “Clean Hands Party,” But the tran-

scripts show Di Pietro discussing his own possible candidacy with just

about all the parties: with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia; with the National Alliance; with the PDS, where he discusses this with Luciano Violante,

the shadow justice minister who labored to destroy Mancuso; with Romano Prodi, the leader of the Olive Tree coalition and now prime minis-

ter; with the centrist reform leader Mario Segni; and, perhaps, with the separatist Northern League of Umberto Bossi.

A river of rumor in the fall of 1995 about Di Pietro’s plans to enter politics came to nothing in the short run, perhaps because of the investigation by Salamone, whose last hearing was concluded too close to the April 21, 1996, elections to allow Di Pietro time to put anything together,

Di Pietro had consistently said that he would do nothing politically until his judicial slate was clean, He contradicted these statements dramatically by entering elective politics immediately after the revelation of the most

serious round of corruption charges against him,

Once thought to be a conservative, Di Pietro is mostly confusing, and

perhaps confused, when he makes public utterances on substantive issues.

In October 1995 he had a spotlighted meeting with Prodi and Walter Veltroni, editor of L’Unita and dauphin of the PDS, with no announced.

results. The next month Diego Masi, former Christian Democratic deputy

now connected with Segni’s reformers and the Center-Left, and Elio Veltri, former Socialist mayor of Pavia, announced that ““Tonino” was work-

ing with them to put together a new political movement, Democrazia

Vera (True Democracy).

In November 1995 Di Pietro attacked Prodi, deducing from the meet-

ing he’d had with him that Prodi has muddled ideas about electoral and

institutional reform, justice, and the State. He accused Prodi of trying to use him, Di Pietro, as an advertising poster in asking that he back the

Olive Tree.” When Prodi denied the accusation, Di Pietro said that he had never wanted to ally himself with the Center-Left and Prodi. (Two

: 226 om Chapter 23 years later, Prodi accepted Di Pietro, who agreed, in effect, to be an advertising poster. He is now a senator sitting with Prodi’s Olive ‘Tree coali-

again in - tion) Di Pietro’s next project to form his own party—he hinted —was - early 1996 that he would form an independent “centrist”h group abandoned in favor of a move to New York to study Englis and give his

___ family relief from the media spotlight, It was soon after he had declared a he would never join political forces with anyone that he accepted that © ministerial portfolio in the Prodi government. Prodi named Di Pietro

minister for public works in the government formed after the April 1996

“elections.

Te appeared to be a shrewd appointment, since this is the ministry with

responsibility for those public works that.were the favorite field of the ’s - parastatal enterprises that, in turn, were savaged by magistrate Di Pietro

investigations. As minister, Di Pietro did not change his style. Seeming to

he ap"possess more energy and emotion than his skin could contain, battles ,

proached a number of the issues he faced as major contentious s and they evoked from him table-pounding oratory and frequent threat

t on - to resign. Not giving the minister his way was treated as an assaul major | truth and virtue. When Di Pietro decided on an improvement of the

became a highway through the hills dividing Bologna from Florence, hepleas about bulldozer himself, and would hear nothing of his colleagues’ when Di the need for budget reduction. 'The fiercest controversy came of Pietto announced that he was simply going to sack all the employees or “due > his ministry whom he suspected of corruption, with no appeal the Centerprocess.” The unions and the parliamentary supporters of Left government reacted fiercely; he met this resistance with more resig-

nation threats. But Di Pietro’s early resignation came, in November, not as a protest

judicial over substantive frustrations but, rather, because of a very rough

on investigation of his own propriety. Television coverage of a police raid cars his home to sequester documents showed such an army of men and that it looked like the Waco siege. His letter of resignation to the prime minister was in his best rough style: “I’ve had enough!” Borrelli, through all this, kept up his enraged sniping at the manand whohis had dared to resign from the revolutionary band, saying that he

colleagues knew Di Pietro’s limits: “Antonio is so stubborn, so naive. I

lity that wonder whether he has the gifts of prudence, cunning, and flexibi are supposed to be essential.” Over the long haul, Di Pietro was, Borrelli thought, not capable of being a politician. “I hope I’m wrong,” (This

from the man who had publicly suggested that the politicians had made such a mess of things that the country might have to be ruled by the

magistrates. He obviously meant certain magistrates.) In July 1997, how-

ever, on the day before the announcement that Di Pietro would be a Sen-

The Final Act? +> 227 ate candidate for the PDS safe seat, he had gone to Milan and up to the fourth floor of the Palace of Justice for a chat with Borrelli and his ex-

‘olleagues of the Pool. They must have been astonished by his plans, but ince, in many ways, Di Pietro’s defection to the Left is the punctuation

“mark on the coup, there has been not a word of criticism from the Pool.

‘There are enough questions about Di Pietro’s last coup de théatre that

he earlier characterization of the Di Pietro enigma merely tales on a new

inkle. The mystery of why he joined hands with D’Alema is added to ‘his failure to explain his resignation from the magistracy, Berlusconi’s ‘reaction to the Di Pietro candidacy was to say that “finally the masquer-

ade is over,”® suggesting that Tonino had been full partner in the Pool’s litical action all along. But this interpretation

Ful: A close study of the history of Operation

ments and ideas of the Pool magistrates, leaves

seems extremely doubt-

Clean Hands, and the stateone convinced that Di

Pietro was the most unpolitical of the magistrates, even though he probably did the greatest service to the PDS of any of them. How can one find connection between the radicalism of Di Pietro’s Pool colleagues, to~

‘day’s PDS, and the ex-cop “‘Tonino”? Perhaps Arturo Gismondi has “come closest:

A large part of the opposition provoked by Di Pietzo’s candidacy hides within it more than just [a reaction co] the ambiguity of the personality, but also the suspicion that this operation is part of a pact, of an agreement, of a reciprocal legitimizing between the most politicized part of the magistracy and the party that has benefitted the most from the magistrates’ action, . .. ‘A personality like Di Pietro, it has been observed, is foreign to the culture of the Left: This is true only if we expel from this culture, for convenience, the practice of government of the Communist parties where they have taken power, and the robust vein of Jacobinism that is present in the Leftist factions of the Italian magistracy, always legitimized by the PCI, and then by the PDS ‘In one eighteen-hour grilling by the Brescia prosecutor Fabio Salamone,

Di Pietro was reported by the press to have talked about his resignation.

‘The newspapers friendly to the Pool said that Berlusconi had blackmailed Di Pietro to force him to resign. But Cesare Previti (the company lawyer

‘turned defense minister) maintains that he has a letter from Di Pietro that

eliminates such a possibility, and Di Pietro has not denied this. On the contrary, Berlusconi, when prime minister, invited Di Pietro to remain a magistrate and not resign. The former Operation Clean Hands hero repeated (see Chapter 20) that he had not been in agreement with the Pool’s investigation of Berlusconi and its sending him an avviso di garanzia.

Borrelli, who was called as a witness by Salamone (since some of the charges against Di Pietro had to do with misuse of authority in office),

228 ~~ Chapter 23

said exactly the opposite: that Di Pietro was the driving force of the inves-

tigation of Berlusconi, was in agreement with the avviso, and, in fact,

wanted to handle the prosecution personally in the trial of Berlusconi. According to Borrelli, Di Pietro said of Berlusconi, “I'll demolish him.”

Then, suddenly and surprisingly, Di Pietro had resigned.

Berlusconi, Previti, and the other suspects were cleared of all charges.

The court found that no crime had been committed. In 1996 Italians watched a splitting in the ranks of the country’s leftist

magistrates that produced some scandal, some headline thrills, and re-

vealed some of the anatomy of the coup. But we must first revisit the two

business leaders Cesare Romiti (FIAT) and Silvio Berlusconi. Romiti had clearly straightened out his relationship with the Pool following Judge Ghitti’s initial insistence that the four FIAT executives who.

had been trapped along a bribery route actually be arrested when they next set foot on Italian soil. Newspapers and magazines controlled by Romiti were unremitting in their support for Operation Clean Hands.

But this splendid relationship applied only to the Milan magistrates.

‘An unpleasant surprise jolted FIAT in 1996 from the prosecutor's office in its home city of Turia, the office that had normal territorial competence

for alleged FIAT misdeeds. Ir was based, however, on declarations that Antonio Mosconi had made to the Milan Pool (see Chapter 12). These led to new investigations, this time in Turin, and to several raids to sequester company documents, Romiti was being investigated for having cooked

FIAT’s books in order to have some “black funds” available. It was these funds that had gone into the Sacisa bank account (used for kickbacks and political party financing), and they had also been used for alleged “irregu-

lar operations” and for tax fraud (according to Turin magistrates, they

passed. through the BUC of Lugano, the Swiss bank controlled by

FIAT).2

The Milan Pool appears never to have pursued these leads. Besides his obvious support for the Pool (by means of the press controlled by FIAT), Romiti was not just another CEO, Just a few days after the Turin magis-

trates had opened their investigation, Romiti, at a stockholders’ meeting, was named president of FIAT, which is Italy’s largest private company.

Gianni Agnelli, pal of Henry Kissinger and a romantic figure in Pamela

Harriman’s life, “the uncrowned King of Italy,” had occupied that position until this moment. Officially, Agnelli was stepping down because of age—he was now seventy-five—and to leave space for the family’s next generation, But malicious writers and observers suggested that Agnelli

wanted to leave the scene of the crime—to become a mere shareholder,

not a responsible executive. The crimes being formally investigated by the Turin magistrates were

The Final Act? > 229

tax evasion and fraud (for keeping false books), Clemente Signoroni, former finance chief of FIAT’s automobile division, described the situation: Romiti himself. . . explained to me that I would receive, once a month more or so, a telephone call from a lady named Carbonatto [an official in the company’s financial offices] to put aside a certain sum of money. I was to go the bank near FIAT on Corso Marconi and sign a money order in my name and leave the money there. When I had signed, in front of Mrs. Nicola +++ She took an envelope with [other] money in it and put it in a special place

in the safe. .,. Dr. Romiti would, from time to time, tell me the amount.

| Everything was just “understood” the way those things are, in one of those roundabout chats with Romiti.2* The article reporting this description said that the money would some-

times arrive wrapped in a newspaper and adhesive tape. From the sixth floor of the FIAT headquarters on Corso Marconi the cash—about $300,000 per packet—was then carried to the fifth floor, to the office of

Maria Nicola, a bookkeeper and, more important, Romiti’s trusted per-

sonal secretary. She would divide it into smaller packets. Nicola herself,

retired by the time the Turin magistrates started investigating, described this procedure when she was interrogated, These witnesses and this information tarlier, had they wished to pursue a FIAT been destroyed by the Pool with far less. the sidelines while the Turin magistrates

had been available to the Pool investigation; businessmen had But the Milanese watched from actually brought Romiti to jus-

ice—involving not just an avviso and publicity but presentation of the

idence in a courtroom, a conviction, and a sentencing, The prosecution,

hough perhaps touching only a part of FIAT’s activities, was able to prove the deep involvement of Romiti and the company in the system of political party financing that had somehow escaped the grasp of the Milan Pool. Romiti was sentenced to eighteen months, suspended, for fraud and legal payments to political parties, The Turin magistrates accomplished

his with none of the spectacle or due-process atrocities that characterized Dperation Clean Hands.

The other business leader, Silvio Berlusconi, found his judicial antago-

ists, still, in Milan. Throughout 1995-1996, the Pool continued its effort © erase Berlusconi from Italian politics, On November 23, 1995, it an-

tounced that Berlusconi, in 1991, had given Craxi and the Socialist Party

nore than $6 million through a series of foreign companies and banks

vased in such fiscal paradises as the Bahamas and the Channel Islands,

he funds managed by a Fininvest executive, $0 now the charge against

Serlusconi could finally be that violation which is at the heart of most of

he Pool’s big cases: “violation of the law on public financing of parties.”

230 ~~ Chapter 23 Pool. This time the He has now received his second indictment from the s of his allege that he committed a crime by having the book

magistrates

balance. It is an small film distribution company, Medusa, show a false pany records. sation that permits them to sequester boxes full of com accu

on, made it even In early 1996 the Italian coup, finally nearing completi as splits historians to find parallels with the French Revolution,

easier for

ocratic began to develop in the ranks of the “revolutionaries.” Theup “Dem in the Pool nd Magistrates” of the 1970s had not all, of course, wou be found in the running Operation Clean Hands, Some of them could to many aging ens halls of the Palace of Justice in Rome where, as happ

to the law, to the rebels, they developed some odd alternative loyalties: g to their still-zealous country, to their own responsibilities, and, accordin

former comrades in Milan, to living well. h on January 21 when "The crack appeared during the long Roman lunc bar a few steps from the barman of the Bar Tombini, a corner coffee d to the Rome’s Palace of Justice, found an electronic listening devid ceeldetape rly magis-

_ underside of an ash tray. He showed it to a distinguishe that now he under"trate, Renato Squillante, a regular at the bar, saying ng the last few stood why three or four ashtrays had been missing duri

acing them. _ days. Somebody was taking them, planting the bug, then repl d at him,

Squillance had two immediate suspicions: that the bugs were aime

A

and that the Milan Pool was behind

it.’

out for coffee little more than a month later, Judge Squillance went

festo, They with a colleague who wrote for the radical newspaper Mani of Justice, headed to another of Squillante’s favorite haunts near the Palace prot ected the Bar Mandara, an anodyne cafe. But changing bars had not

picked up their converhim, A listening device planted there by the Poolnoth ens, to hell sation, including Squillante’s remark that “if my ingfamilyhappand go to the with it. If the thing is serious, I’m going to take tropics. Bye-bye everybody ... and ciao.” press, the Pool When news of the bugs in the bars explhadodedalreinadythe demo nstrated an reacted quickly. Piercamillo Davigo, who the Finance Police enthusiasm for infighting by expressing a desirea tonewseecoll eague, lida Bocgeneral leave prison only “as a dead man,” and

llante and drive cassini, sent a squad of “their”? police to arrest Judge Squi age (sevhim back up to Milan, Arriving in Milan, Squillante, despite his in Milan’s enty-one) and some serious health problems, was locked up ome a national Opera prison (conditions at San Vittore having bec

scandal).

cratica of the Squillance himself was not part of the Magistratura Demo

ly re1970s. He was a kind of elder statesman in the Rome court, a high

arrest, head of the spected former prosecutor, who was, at the time of his

The Final Act? se 237 office of the GIP in Rome. But the men who leapt to his defense (and

who, in some cases, were suspects themselves, according to “leaks” to the

usual newspapers) were precisely the ex-comrades of the Red ‘Togas of Milan, many of them still MD members. But MD has always had two wings, one devoted mainly to the upholding of equality before the law, the other willing to sacrifice procedural niceties and “positivist” adjudicating to the class struggle.”

The case against Squillante was exquisitely political. It was alleged that

he used his office to favor some high-ranking politicos of Berlusconi’s

Forza Italia. These included Senator Cesare Previti, the legal counselor

in Berlusconi’s Fininvest and later Prime Minister Berlusconi’s defense

minister. Squillante’s main political offense had been committed eleven

years earlier, when he had investigated the possible illegal construction,

by Berlusconi of some television relay stations. Squillante had decided

not to press charges, an unforgivable loss of political opportunity for the radicals. The implication in the Clean Pens’ reporting of the case was

that he may have been bribed by Berlusconi’s television network. But there is no reason, other than politics, for the Pool magistrates to interest

themselves in that question eleven years after the fact. Indeed, they will

not be able to charge Squillante with anything on that count because the

statute of limitations for the applicable felonies is ten years. But the Pool

was engaged in open warfare with Berlusconi, and its Roman colleagues had failed it.

Squillante (whose a desperate hunger imprisonment) and was the word of an

health declined rapidly in strike he undertook as his Previti were the targets of attractive blonde Milanese

prison, partly because of reaction to the terror of a case whose main prop antiques dealer, Stefania

Ariosto, Romantically linked with both Previti and Vittorio Dotti, a dep-

uty who was then leader of Forza Italia in the Chamber of Deputies, Atiosto had suffered some jilting, and so tools revenge by walking into

the Pool’s offices and telling the magistrates some tales to which they must have been delighted to listen. The magistrates already knew her: A

trail of suspicious money had recently led them from Dotti’s bank account to Ariosto. One of the accusations was that Previti had corrupted

Roman magistrates. Ariosto said that she saw Previti give envelopes, pre~ sumably full of lire, to Squillante in Rome—once

outside an exclusive

slub, another time at a private dinner. She also claimed that a goat with ‘ts throat slit had been left at her door to scare her into silence.

So a new dossier could be opened in Operation Clean Hands. It ex-

sloded during the campaign leading up to the national election of April 21, 1996,

As the war of old comrades heated up, the Pool also accused Rome’s chief prosecutor Michele Coiro of bias because he had initially sought to

232 =~ Chapter 23

investihandle Squillante’s defense and had warned him that the Pool was been

o had gating him. The accusation is especially poignant because Coir out on the a founder of Magistratura Democratica. Thus a battle broke sans of

hodox” parti Left wing of the Italian magistracy between the the“ort“rev olutionary”

MD, who maintained close ties to the PDS, and

wing

s accusatied to Borrelli and the Clean Hands Pool.” Because of the Pool’ e-maned Gitions, Coiro was put under investigation by the CSM; whit

charged with carrying ancarlo Caselli, the chief prosecutor of Palermo, and Borsellino, also a mem-

‘on the work of the murdered heroes Falcone

ed forber of the more moderate wing of Magistratura Democratica, stepp rather a ward to handle Coiro’s defense before the CSM, But in the end Rome of his Italian solution was found: Coiro was pulled upward out prisons. Coito prosecutor’s position to be nominated director general of died in June 1997,

ons older than sixty"The code of criminal procedure specifies that persSquil lante, now quite five can be arrested only in very grave cases. Judge ill, was held in prison for three months before he was granted house arrest.

Valente, who The Pool’s next target in the investigation was Arnaldo

Section of the Corte di has now retired from the presidency of the First deci ded that the trial of Cassazione, Valente is the magistrate who had

should be the Finance Police officials accused of corruption by the Pool

te had resigned transferred to Brescia. When Borrelli attacked him, Valen

of President in protest, The resignation was withdrawn only at the request accused Scalfaro (in his role as president of the CSM). The Pool now of having Valente of having been corrupted by Berlusconi’s Fininvest, that it was taken money in exchange for changing a sentence. Valente said

Pool for his decision in a question of revenge sought by Borrelli and the defa mation. the Finance Police case. Valente sued Borrelli for

ni and The Squillarite investigation, with its accusation that Berlusco of

Previti had corrupted Roman magistrates, had the. merit, for the Pool, severely damaging Berlusconi’s electoral campaignwhose relationship with In fact, the testimony of Stefania Ariosto,

Dotti had lasted for eight years, was regarded as fairly

credible because it

e in its circle. It was showed a good knowledge of Fininvest and the peopl that she was accused of

after discovery of Ariosto’s liaison with Previti

trial. It was swindling in a series of cases that, as of this writing, still await

also discovered that she had more than $1.75 million in casino gamblingto

went losses; according to Judge Squillante’s attorney, in 1995 Ariosto

Italy’s the casino 300 out of 365 evenings, So she had borrowed from for the a witness notoriously dangerous loan sharks. Now, perhaps,The asdefen se was able to State, she would get some protection from them.

corner Atiosto in its questioning, and this time she was unable to specify

The Final Act? = 233

precisely when and where Previti (on Berlusconi’s behalf) was supposed

to have passed money to the supposedly corrupted magistrates.

The Pool’s accusations against Coiro, its imprisoning of Judge Squil-

lante, and its presumed role in bugging the Roman bars constitute an attack that may yet backfire. Its actions were so unprecedented that

President Scalfaro expressed shock and warned the judiciary against consuming itself in internal warfare.

Following the few days of headlines involving Squillante and Stefania

Ariosto, the Pool found that some of its erstwhile allies, especially PDS

politicians, were tempering their applause with some worries. D’Alema

displayed flashes of public anger at Borrelli’s effort to intimidate the Bi-

cameral Committee, that joint committee of the two houses of the Italian

Parliament charged with constitutional and systemic reform. Political sci-

entist Gianfranco Pasquino, who runs for office on the PDS ticket, was

quoted describing the Pool magistrates as “feeling themselves to be in-

vested with a divine mission and so they start a holy war.” Two arenas are the scenes of a change in the PDS’s attitude, a gradual kicking away of the ladder by which it has ascended to power. The first was the Bicameral Committee itself. Chaired by PDS Secre-

tary D’Alema, it produced a draft law for the justice item on its agenda

that fails to go to the heart of some of the abuses of due process we have

described, but would be a first step (if followed by more legislation in the

same direction) to posing some uncomfortable restraints on the Pool. The

proposal includes a separation of the careers of magistrates into a prosecutor track and a judge track. Although the wall between them would not

be too high,” that tight club of magistrates which puts the defense at such

a disadvantage in Icalian courts would become less tight. And it might

limit the ability, so useful to the Pool, of press and magistrates to call

prosecutors “judges,” with all the damage this does? A second measure would change the ratio of professional magistrates to parliamentary elec-

tees on the CSM and split the latter into two bodies: one for judges, one

for prosecutors. The idea that the restraints these measures offer would be uncomfort-

able comes from the Pool itself. Once again, as in its war against the de‘ee-laws and the inspections, it has leapt to the attack. But its changed

situation is shown by the new attitude of its old allies—D’Alema has not

welcomed the magistrates’ intervention and some of the press

has sug-

zested that they are overstepping propriety—and by the Pool’s decreased

ability to sway the public when it does not have Antonio Di Pietro with

ais star quality as its point man.

At this writing, the Parliament, starting with a weak committee draft,

aas produced no profound judicial reform, It will be difficult; justice has secome a subject of high politics in Italy.

234 om Chapter 23 A second danger to the untrammeled arrogance of the Pool is a product of the very political phenomenon that may have been a principal trigger of its launching of the coup in 1992: the Maastricht Treaty. The Prodi

government sustained by the PDS faces two harsh realities. First, impor

tant structural reforms in Italy’s spendthrift welfare system are a necessity

for Italy to stand a chance for acceptance in the first round of Europe’s

common currency. These had not yet been undertaken at the time of writing: Improvements in Italy’s economic numbers had come largely _ from taxation measures and a lucky period of very low inflation. But will block when the moment of sacrifice arrives, the second harsh reality

the lower house Prodi’s path: The government does not have a majority in(PRC) party, the

without Fausto Bertinotti’s Communist Refoundation

unreconstructed third of the old PCI that had been unwilling to stay with

from the housebroken and moderate PDS. Bertinotti has never budged

his position that the welfare state must not be touched. And he is unlikely

to feel the need to budge, because this posture has proved popular at the polls (specifically, in the administrative elections of spring 1997).

here. So a majority for the necessary legislation must be found elsew tracks—

On the other occasion when Bertinotti threw his body across the

during the vote to accept the UN’s charge to Italy for the mission to

Albania—the government went to Berlusconi’s opposition coalition and received the support it needed.

Maas"The Center-Left will have to go to Berlusconi once again for the the Alba-

tricht reforms. But this will not be a simple one-time fix, as was nia vote. Even after some initial budget victories by the government, a

new governing formula may become necessary, one that will sustain a

program of reforms that is likely to send workers marching in the streets and to cause the same social strains that France and Germany have experienced. Quiet talks that have gone on for some time could result in a wide

coalition linking Center-Left and Center-Right in a “government of

broad understanding” that would not need the PRC (nor Bossi’s Northern League), Whatever Prodi’s fate (other formulas for the prime ministership have been discussed), Berlusconi becomes the necessary partner.

l of But Berlusconi would be a partner with a whole clattering diarsena garanzia

Damoclean swords hanging over his head in the form of avvisi from the Pool, both delivered and awaiting delivery. His businesses, his associates (both business and political), and his own freedom and reputation are targets the Pool has labored hard to surround with the threat of destruction. Italian political commentators agree that Berlusconi’s price

for the cooperation D’Alema needs is a lifting of this threat. ‘The situation

illustrates three factors: (1) The question of what cases the Pool chooses to pursue remains a political question, not a Jaw-and-order question; (2) for the Pool, it is D’Alema and members of the PDS who have the possi-

i

The Final Act? ~> 235

bility of influencing its action, not the appropriate government ministries; and (3) snowing the political profiles of the Pool magistrates, we can

iguess that D’Alema will have some difficult persuading to do.

What Berlusconi does not know is whether D’Alema will succeed, Cerinly nothing has changed yet, Investigations into alleged Mafia connec-

tions in the 1970s have seen Caselli’s anti-Mafia Pool in Palermo grilling

Marcello Dell’Utri, Berlusconi’s friend and business associate,

All this is enough to transform D’Alema into an enthusiastic spokes-

‘man for judicial reform, giving him the delicate task of chairing the Bi-

cameral Committee considering the reforms against which Borrelli has

mounted his attack, while at the same time not devaluing his party’s natutal alliance with MD and other leftist magistrates. But we have seen that, despite many shared views and interests, the PDS and Magistratura Democratica are not synonymous. From the 1970s to the present, MD has contained a significant number of magistrates who are far more radical than the PCI/PDS, or whose interests may be Jacobin rather than Marxist,

and are disdainful of the party’s moderation. The question for them may be whether they are strong enough to be able to maintain their old revolutionary fervor.

- Despite more recent difficulties, the Milan Pool today is still intact and

has much of its old immense prestige. A PDS deputy, Ferdinando Imposimato, correctly spoke of “a reverential fear in relation to the entire- Pool”

(ie. not just Di Pietro). The “fear” may have been confined to those

ites who felt that a midnight knock on their door was a dreadful possi-

bility, but the Pool was genuinely revered by a large part of the public

‘and the clite knew better than to be anything but publicly admiring of the Pool, whatever they may have said privately. oe #8

The Italian public is now watching an increasing number of commenta-

tors and public figures expressing alarm about the Pool’s continuing arro-

gance

and

bellicosity,

and

suggesting

that

Italy

has

gone

through

something other than a nonpolitical clean-up that left the way clear for honest reformers to run the country. Slowly, unfolding is the story of the

inner workings of the first postmodern style of coup d’état. Whether it is

‘that, or a unique case, depends on whether there will be imitators, or even

another round in Italy. In France in the early spring of 1996, Socialist

Party leader Pierre Emmanuelli was charged with corruption—by a group of magistrates who did not hide their admiration for what their Italian bolleagues had accomplished. The accusation was illegal party financing.

It sounded familiar. But the French Socialists had been able to watch the political destruction of their Italian colleagues and so they knew to react immediately and differently. ‘They charged the magistrates with being po-

[icicized and walked out of a session of Parliament in protest.

(992.236 —— Chapter 23 Meanwhile, Spanish Socialists claim that Felipe Gonzales, while prime

minister, was hounded by a politicized magistrate right up to Gonzales’s

loss of the 1996 elections. In both countries, the magistrates themselves

have acknowledged their debt—for both strategy and inspiration—to the

Milan Pool. They will all be watching the next events in Italy. ~ Inthe final chapter, we postulate that the Milan magistrates were a de-

parture from the historic characteristics of Italian political culture. The

next events will show whether that culeure—a culture of compromise,

cooperation, mutual help, and behavior that is far more moderate than its thetorical garb—will once again overgrow the scorched clearing that has _been opened.

Notes

1, Mancuso was certainly guilty of all three sins. Inexplicably, the major press

_ did not find the accusations amusing. 2, Cited in Giancarlo Loquenzi, “E il picconatore sveld il golpe,” L’Opinione, 20 October 1995.

3. It-was from this speech that Mancuso omitted the famous four pages about

~

President Scalfaro and the SISDE funds, described in the last chapter. 4. Another protest would later be heard from Palermo, for different reasons. |

5. Text of address to the Senate by the Justice Minister, 18 October, 1995. 6, Barbara Spinelli of La Stampa, as cited in Daniel Williams, “Indecision Saps Strength from the ‘New Italy,” Washington Post, 27 January 1996, A20. 7. Carol Mershon and Gianfranco Pasquino, Introduction to their Italian Politics: Ending the First Republic (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 41.

8.

In the Chamber, with 630 seats (316 needed for a majority), the parties

“supporting the government won 324 seats, but 35 of them were held by Commu-

“nist Refoundation (PRC). This means that on any. measure rejected by the PRC,

“the government must appeal fo Berlusconi and the opposition to sustain it. Such

an appeal was necessary, and successful, on the vote approving Italy’s leadership

“of the UN mission to Albania. In the Senate, without the same proportional fea~ ture, where 158 seats make a majority, Prodi’s Olive Tree has 157 seats, but it is i

joined by 10 “Progressives.”

9, Cited in Marco Ventura, “Cossutta: soldi ai partiti, tutti coinvolti,” JJ Gior-

| nale, 20 November 1996. See also Antonella Rampino, “Fondi illeciti ai partiti,” La Stampa, 20 November 1996. Ee 10. Ibid. i

it. Ibid.

12. See Luca d’Alessandro, “Il rapporto degli 007 inviati nel 1994 da Biondi,”

Il Giornale, 20 November 1996. The inspectors’ report went on to acknowledge

that Parenti was not a good team player, often failing to touch the right bases and _ get the right permissions.

E

‘The Final Act? ~-> 237

13. Angelo Panebianco, “Una Maastricht per la giustizia,” Corviere della Sera, | 14, This is not a special pleading for Mensorio. ‘The authors know nothing about his guilt or innocence. 20 July 1997, 1.

_

15. Arturo Gismondi, /] Giornale, 9 June 1997. 16. Vittorio Feltri, “Inciucio alla molisana,” J Gtornale, 17 July 1997,

17. La Repubblica, 20 November 1995. 18, The most complete coverage of the resignation is in Corriere, 15 November

1996, which devotes several pages to it.

| 19. Paolo Conti, “E Borrelli lo boccid in politica: & cosi ingenuo,” Corriere, 11 October 1996, 3.

_ 20. Vittorio Testa, “Berlusconi: ‘finalmente la mascherata & finita,’ ” La Repubblica, 17 July 1997.

21. Arturo Gismondi, “La Lobby Giustizialista ha subito la prima sconfitca,”

1 Giornale, 24 July 1997.

5 22, Giuseppe Nicotri, “Ho pagato, ma non troppo,” L’Espresso, 12 December

1996, 65. See also Nicotri's book Fiat fabbrica italiana automobili e tangenti {Milan: Kaos, 1997). The existence of black funds is not new in Italy. It is widely

believed, and many investigations have verified, that most large Icalian companies

ave at least two sets of books and thereby are able to set aside some money,

aormally in banks outside Italy. This fact is interesting for che chicken-or-egg question of whether business normally takes the initiative to offer bribes to politi-

sans and officials or, as the businessmen claim, they are the victims of extortion, eaned on and having to pay if they want to continue doing business. Officials and doliticians have testified that they discovered the existence of company “black

‘unds” (and then profited from the discovery) that had already been set aside for

he purpose, among other things, of buying some favors, The difference between he shakedown and the offered bribe may not be significant for our purposes; but what is worth noting is the general pattern that the businessmen were generally relieved (with notable exceptions) and treated more lightly, whereas politicians ind officials were generally not believed and, accordingly, became more familiar vith jail cells. 23. So dubbed by the French writer Marie-France Pochna in an unauthorized

liography. ‘The title was so right that it stuck.

24, Cited in Alberto Custodero and Massimo Novelli, “Fiat, i fondi neri di orso Marconi,” La Repubblica, 15 June 1996. 25. Gian Antonio Stella, “E mani pulite scopti ‘il gioco dell’oca,’” Corriere, 8 March 1996, 6.

26. Ibid. 27, See Giuliano Gallo, “Coiro: non mi dimetto,” Corriere, 11 July 1996, 11.

28, “E Squillante assolve Berlusconi,” Corriere, 16 April 1996. 29. This and a previous reference to factions within MD should not be too

sriously plotted on some Left-Right spectrum. Ideological tidiness is here crisstossed by such a rich network of personal antagonisms and feuds that a very

etailed treatment would be necessary to sort it out—before it changed toorrow.

Davigo,” Corriere, 24 April cia boc stea sini la “E o, Car Di lo 30, Cited in Pao

track for

ly be required to stay in one © 31. ‘That is, a magistrave wo wald andprobab an examination for pass to e hav Id woul then switch, to trying n years before sntrance into the other track. 32, See Chapter 7. ini, Corviere, 11 July 1996, Buec do fre Gof by o mat osi Imp with w rvie Inte 33, 97, 2.

24

Se

Conclusion

his understanding of the Italian coup differs so greatly from the

conventional understanding that we should now consider why the

other version is much more broadly accepted, whether there are

other plausible ways to understand the event, and whether it really adds

up to a revolution or a coup. We will also try to judge the singularity of the Italian case among other countries, and the singularity of this event in

the normal path of Italian political life, Finally, itis fair to ask whether it matters, whether there is a serious danger here that still lurks, English-language reporting on Italy is inversely proportional to its

complexity. So popes, Mafia, earthquakes, crimes of passion, and cuisine

receive prominent media play, existing at the happy low end of the complexity scale, An election chat produces clear winners and losers might

occupy the middle ground, but Italian elections have never seemed to

make clear who was to be prime minister or whether investors and tourists should be alarmed.

As for the meat of Italian politics, scarred journalists knew that their

choices were to simplify it (closing their eyes to the ambiguities that the more experienced of them could see for themselves), forget it and find a 3ood murder or a new pasta, or ask for reassignment. Because British ind American journalists have excellent survival instincts, the list of those

shoosing each of the three alternatives is well known. So most foreign media have missed, almost entirely, a great political

war being waged in Italy. They are missing the chance to describe the first

postmodern style of coup d’état, carried out by a tiny Inot of magistrates,

ilmost certainly abetted by certain politicians and economic barons, with

he complicity of print media owned by the latter.

In 1992, Italy entered into a transformation that has proved as impor-

ant as its watershed election of 1948, which allowed De Gasperi’s Chris239

240 ~~ Chapter 24

tian Democrats to assemble the first governing coalition of the “First

Republic,” yet also vastly more complex. Iris a transformation that meets

some of the criteria of a revolution, But outside observers have had few

serious glimpses at the historic goings-on in this fourth-largest Western

industrial power, NATO ally, and charter member of the European Union and the G7. Reports, even in the quality press, have labored so hard to simplify the Italian tangle that, by now, the snapshot imbedded in British and American conventional wisdom is not just blurred but has left the main elements out of the frame entirely. Some scholars outside Italy are already clear about what has happened.

Political scientist Joseph LaPalombara wrote of “the determined, but also somewhat reckless, assault on the First Republic, unleashed by Italian

magistrates and the print media.”! He also wrote of “the result of the work of the magistracy, first to weaken the political parties, then to step

into both the executive and, in some instances, the legislative spheres. If

there is a serious danger to Italian democracy today, it lies in the fact that

the magistrates (as well as the presidency of the Republic, one might add)

have fallen into the habit of exercising their formal power in the interest

of highly dubious political ends.” If the days that lie ahead for Italy are to be observed with any coherence at all, then the main lines of the political struggle we have described must be understood. For starters, that which has been portrayed largely as a morality play, with courageous sheriffs finally rounding up some outlaw bands so that the honest citizens could finally elect Gary Cooper, must be recognized as a political struggle, not a drama of justice and reform. Although most of the key magistrates came from a radical-Left movement

of magistrates that had pledged, twenty years earlier, to wage the class struggle in the courtroom, and although their actions in the 1990s were

designed to put political power finally into the hands of the Italian postCommunist Left, as evidenced by where they chose to attack and where they did not, this was not a simple Left-Right clash. It was complicated by the following, among other factors:

© Major institutional questions, such as the proper institutional con-

fines of the judiciary, the political and judicial role of the president

of the Republic, and electoral mechanics.

¢ Party traditions that cut across the grain of the coup’s alignments.

(The post-Fascist National Alliance, for example, as a strong law-

and-order party that condemned the corruption of the old First Re-

public parties, initially gave strong support to the magistrates, even

when this stand antagonized its coalition partner, Silvio Berlusconi.

But when it became clear that the Milan Pool had coup politics rather than law and order on its mind, Fini and the Alliance switched.)

Conclusion >

241

* Personalities, some of them so large and vivid that, as often happens,

they bend history. (Examples include the Molisan ex-cop who is now

the most popular figure in Italy, Borrelli and his flights of fancy about his embodiment of the Italian people, the fragile businessmen and politicians who collapsed before the Pool’s pressure and the occasional combativeness of a Craxi, and the aggressively modern media glitter of Berlusconi.)

* Influences from beyond Italian borders (no longer the meddling of

,

the United

,

States and USSR,

but the pressures of the European

Union on Italian industrialists and, currently, on a government that

|

is thus Marxist the end leave an

»

| :

forced to seek help either in the splinter consisting ex-comrades or among the Center-Right opposition, of the Cold War, which did not trigger the coup but increasingly independent Italian voter free of East-West

of its plus does wor=

ties.) ® Recent history, which (1) had left in place from an authoritarian pe-

riod and post-Fascist constitution-writing a judicial system that gave the prosecution overwhelming advantages, (2) had made heroes out of magistrates who had fought other battles, (3) had seen the accumu-

| _

lation of immense power, with an unbridled appetite to extract advantage from that power, in the hands of Italian political parties, long labeled the partitocrazia, and (4) had kept the largest Communist

|

Party never to have held power,

Party in the West in the position of being the largest Communist

|i This complexity means that our seeking cause-and-effect connections loncer: ning the coup is really an effort to identify the most important

(mong a multitude of factors, with the paths from causes to effects usually

deing swirling currents rather than straightrivers. Thus the editors of the

irst major collection of essays in English on the coup were led to say that langentopoli was “part of a conjunctural crisis in Italian democracy which ‘esulted from major shocks to a political system that found it increasingly lifficult to reestablish a point of equilibrium after several of its traditional

Lupports were removed or weakened.”* ‘That is a sound scholarly proposi-

jon to which we can only assent. But the fact is that men plotted and. ilanned. They did not think about points of equilibrium but about power, bout allies and enemies, about political goals ini which they believed fer-

‘ently. They may have been pawns in a “conjunctural crisis,” but they

lid not think they were. Io see the struggle as they saw it—our aim here, jut not necessarily that of all social scientists—is to see a harsh episode if political warfare. When the actors bled, they saw blood, not the weakning of a democratic support structure. Closely tied to an accurate assessment of the nature of the coup is the

242 ~~ Chapter 24 question of why it happened when it did. Johns Hopkins’ Pawick MeCar-

thy, who edited a good volume on the 1992 elections, notes that they

making reflected a weakening of the Christian Democrats and Socialists, is accurate,

the power system more vulnerable to the magistrates, That and McCarthy’s sound analysis here is not in conflict with our thesis. Some of the change in 1992 may be seen as an adjustment after the May 1990 regional elections in which the effort to transform the PCI cost it

heavily and gave the Socialists a relative boost. In any event, Craxi and the

Socialists were still in a strong enough position after the election that he

could credibly claim the prime ministership. And the Pool had launched

its campaign before the election! The spreading scandal led President Scalfaro, in the summer of 1992, to decide against asking Craxi to form the new government, Historian Spencer Di Scala states Scalfaro’s reason clearly: “If the scandal ever involved the Socialist leader personally, the

republic itself would be endangered.” ‘Another idea, often used as an unexplained presumption in press re-

ports, is that Italy, whose politics had long been frozen by the Cold War that imperative of keeping the Communists out, was one more domino

was tipped by the fall of the Berlin Wall. The corruption and criminality whose exposure caused the First Republic to collapse had to be tolerated,

during the Cold War, in order to maintain the barrier against the implacable Communists. ‘This theory correctly recognizes some psychological conditioning that most certainly allowed voters to shift loyalties more easily. But it faces the difficulty that nobody could ever satisfactorily explain exactly how the End-of-the-Cold-War ‘Theory actually worked, It requires one to imagine a host of magistrates standing poised, arrest warrants in hand, for

many years, waiting for events in Moscow and the East to give them a green light to make a revolution in Italy, And it ignores the fact that, from the mid-1970s on, Italians who feared the PCI did not do so because they

thought it was a stooge for the Kremlin but, sather, because of purely

Italian concerns, especially about the PCI’s understanding of democracy.

Another simplified version of Italy’s transformation relates with more logic to the drama’s headline events. It appeared, to journalists of many

countries, to be the unfolding of a morality play. Thuggish political figures who had long been presumed to be corrupt were finally exposed.

(Captains of Italian business and industry, on the other hand, were the

subjects of shocked not-him-too pieces.) Each day brought a new install-

ment of the good guys’ ongoing victory over the bad guys, until even these stories got tiresome; there were simply too many bad guys. But the

result was a common understanding well summarized by the Washington

Post's Rome correspondent: “In 1992, the system [of patronage and ex-

Conclusion ~~ 243

pansive public spending] collapsed in discredit under the weight of exten-

sive graft prosecutions,”” = This Honest Sheriff;Theory remains the standard view of “what hap-

pened to Italy.” We have suggested that when one traces the events, a quite different picture appears, one of a coup that used a new form of political warfare. But does the Honest Sheriff Theory work equally well

as a coherent understanding of the events? Some very interesting considerations emerge when we ask what one has to believe in order to accept the Honest Sheriff Theory. What are its assumptions?

‘The first necessary asstimption is that the leadership of Italy’s industrial

giants, celebrated for their aggressiveness in advancing their company’s interests, reacted to major threats to the future of their enterprises by doing nothing to fight back.

_ What were these threats? First, there was the state of Italy itself as it

entered the 1990s, best described by diplomat-turned-columnist Sergio Romano:

Corrupt political parties co-exist with a weak executive, costly and ineffi~ | cient public services and an excessive state presence in the economy. Italian | capitalism is still litrle inclined to accept the strictures of the market economy, the mezzogiorno [Iealy’s south] is overrun by organized crime, and the country as a whole is burdened by an antiquated fiscal system.* These deficiencies of government and economic culture became more setious liabilities when the Maastricht timetable scheduled a deeper plunge into continent-wide competition on the short-term calendar. The distinguished economist Pier Carlo Padoan points to 1992 as the

homent of crisis. It was in this year that Italy was forced to exit from the European monetary system. Padoan underscores that moment because

‘the floating and devaluation of the ra marked much more than a curtency crisis. It was a full-fledged financial crisis which erupted as a consequence of tensions which had mounted in the entire [Italian] economy:

the appreciation of the lira had become increasingly unbearable for the

sxposed sector of industry.”? Italy’s industrial chieftains, perfectly aware

of their plight, faced this future in company with a government whose dld modes of help (protection, the expensive purchase of labor peace)

were less appropriate than in the booming days of the postwar Economic Miracle, whose bureaucracy was increasingly sclerotic and burden}ome—a government that was widely believed to extract resources from

the industrious northerners and channel it to impecunious southerners,

many of whom were on the payroll'in Rome.

| Historian Paul Ginsborg wrote, two years before the beginning of the Pool’s assault, that “[a]t the elite level, major figures of the Italian econ-

244 ~~ Chapter 24 omy like De Benedetti and Prodi warn that unless radical steps are taken soon to combat the inefficiency of services like the post and the tele~

phones, and to’ reduce the delays inherent in all state transactions, Italy

will be unable to meet the European challenge of 1992."

If radical steps were to be taken, the moment was at hand in 1992.

The first act of the Italian coup in February 1992 coincided with the

signing of the Maastricht Treaty. Membership in a new Europe meant an

end of che protection of Italy’s industrial giants. Some of Italian big industry felt itself in no condition to compete in the new Europe under the conditions described by Romano. Whether that was a neatly symbolic

coincidence, or the product of an active collaboration between certain

worried (and press-owning) industrialists and the Milan Pool, is a question beyond the current evidence.

The other new threat facing the captains of ltalian big industry was closer to home. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the price of the bribes and

kickbacks they had long been paying as a cost of doing business began to

skyrocket. Testimony emerging from Operation Clean Hands showed

that the sums being demanded as Italy entered the 1990s were so astronomical that, to inflate Everett Dirkson’s observation about some Ameri-

can budget items, a billion here and a billion there and soon you're talking

serious money. The pinch became real, even unbearable. Pool magistrate

Piercamillo Davigo remarked in 1993 that the chief condition for starting investigations into the long-standing system of kickbacks was that the price went up: “My opinion is that the system blew up because the money yan out.” While that does not really explain how the action started, only

suggesting the intensity of pain experienced before the coup, it is certainly

a correct assessment of one factor that was driving the business leaders."?

These two difficulties,

a more competitive European context and the

inflation of the kickback market, took place in the context of economic recession, increasing the need for the industrialists to take action. Most

writers have not looked hard at the relationship between these economic

factors and the Italian coup, perhaps because, as David Nelken has

pointed out, it is simply more prosaic than explanations relating to the

Berlin Wall o a crusade by honest sheriffs. Although, Nelsen, too, finds the idea prosaic, he admits that the Italian drama “may have come about because demands on business had exceeded previously tolerated limits.”

In considering the relation between the economic factors and the Pool’s

action, Nelken acknowledges the possibility of “a deliberate strategy by the Milan judges to bring down the government.”? (As we have seen,

the Pool’s real target was the regime, the First Republic itself, not just a government.)

At the very top level of Italian industry, towering over all those entre-

preneurs of Italy’s small and medium-sized industries that have gained a

Conclusion

>

245

‘eputation for dynamism, are the great barons such as Gianni Agnelli,

Cesare Romiti, and Carlo De Benedetti. Although others could be conidered, these three merit our interest because of some of the circumstan-

ial evidence—ownership of media that were the Pool’s uncritical cheering ection, refusal of the Milan magistrates to pursue cases against these inlustrialists in the same way they pursued other comparable cases, plus the

tistory of cavalier activism of the men themselves—that connects them to he coup. (The evidence is circumstantial; the connection cannot yet be

urther defined.)

‘Agnelli was the president of FIAT until 1996, when he stepped down

it age seventy-five. He is the grandson of FIAT’s turn-of-the-century

ounder, Giovanni Agnelli.° Known to Italians as Pavvocato, the lawyer,

ven though he never practiced law, Gianni Agnelli comes as close to 1eing royalty, in terms of style and the perception of his fellow citizens,

Ss any commoner in Europe. Suggestions over the years that the Parlianent should elect him president of the Republic were beneath his considration. It would have been a step down. As an entrepreneur and manager Agnelli earned a global reputation for tyle, flair, and a dashing willingness to take unprecedentedly strong acion to defend his interests. He would not have faced Italy’s, and FIAT’s,

risis of 1992 passively.

Agnelli was renowned for his shrewdness (or good luck) in the choice

if the executives serving under him, So Cesare Romiti, now over seventy limself, became FIAT’s managing director in 1976, after only two years

vith the company. Romiti masterminded the thorough restructuring and

he vast automating of FIAT in the early 1980s. We have seen the excepional treatment that Romiti was accorded by the Milan Pool, and his

ubsequent nailing by Turin magistrates.

As for Agnelli, in the early days of Operation Clean Hands many Ital-

ins, certain of FIAT’s deep involvement in the illegal financing of politi-

al parties, were waiting for the answer to the question put by the comic

ctor Dario Fo: “What, if they arrest God?” They didn’t. To date, even

he Tuvin prosecutors have not gone that far. An important part of the

cason is, as we have noted, that Agnelli has put himself in the position of ‘eing just a shareholder, not an operating officer of the company—the ame positioning that was ignored by the Pool in Berlusconi’s case. Carlo De Benedetti, only sixty-two (as of this writing), has been both

he CEO and the principal owner of Olivetti since 1978. Although his

ephardic family has been in northwest Italy for many generations, he is ot thought of as old-line Piedmontese and is said to consider himself

omething of an outsider, perhaps because he had to take refuge in Swit-

erland during the war, De Benedetti started with the family business, a retal-hosing plant that his father had run. Then he expanded into auto

246 ~~ Chapter 24

parts, ‘The enterprise was already very big in 1976 when Gianni Agnelli

brought him into. FIAT as CEO. A few weeks later, having alienated several members of the Agnelli clan, De Benedetti was out the FIAT door,

but with enough resources to buy several businesses. One of these was another old family enterprise, the Olivetti business machines company—

large on reputation for the advanced design of its products, but swimming

in red ink. De Benedetti rode Olivetti into its second corporate life as

Italy’s niche of the computer market, He made it, with the same aggres-

siveness we saw in the Agnelli family, into Europe’s leading maker of automated office equipment. De Benedetti has in common with Agnelli the kind of dash and arro-

gance that would look crisis in the face and never blink—and the fact that

both had picked up, along the way, a very large share of Italy’s most

important daily newspapers and weekly newsmagazines. They have some other things in common. They have lived, through

much of the postwar period, in a protected market; the tariff on cars that

might have competed with those FIATs that became the Italian family car

in the 1950s was about 45 percent of the imported cars’ value. De Bened-

etti and Agnelli achieved this comfortable protection, and all their other advantages, through close “cooperation” with Italy’s political leadership. And, as we noted, they have a well-earned international reputation as free-

booting activists, undisciplined by outside forces, ready to take forceful action to protect their interests.

We are asked, with the Honest Sheriff Theory, to assume that, for the first time in their grand careers, facing these fresh major threats to their

well-being, Agnelli, De Benedetti, and perhaps other Italian industrialists were inactive, did nothing, decided to sit and hope for better times. There

is, of course, a spectrum between passivity and activism, and Italy is rich in the sending of signals among the powerful for which there is no clear

record, The Bool appeared, from the very beginning, able so count on

these industrialists’ newspapers and magazines—-undoubtedly one of the conditions they spoke of that had not existed before, Second on the question of the active or passive allies of the Milan Pool, the Honest Sheriff Theory also asks us to accept the idea, based on the

pattern of the Pool’s actions, that somehow the biggest of the induscrial-

ists—enormously dependent on government contracts, licenses, permis-

sions—were the very least involved in the system of kickbacks and bribes, and that the PCI/PDS, with what was probably the most expensive (because the most extensive) of all the political party operations, had somehow

legally found the operating funds for which the other parties had had to struggle and cross the line of legality. We have examined the distinctive treatment received by certain compa-

Conclusion ~= 247 ties and by the PDS. In both cases, that treatment is circumstantial eviJence (only) of some harmony or association. ‘We are not alone in seeing the different behavior of the Pool in relation © the industrialists who controlled the supportive media. Nelken says

ibout these business leaders that, “despite admitting their participation in ‘he system of corruption, top managers of the calibre of Cesare Romiti, he managing director of Agnelli’s FLAT, and Carlo De Benedetti, of Ol-

vetti, were given only small starring roles in the drama of Tangentopoli.”* >atrick McCarthy says simply that Romiti and De Benedetti appear to

save been forgiven.'’ De Benedetti actually did not get off scot-free. Like

Xomiti, he suffered from the fact that the Pool is just a small slice of

he Italian magistracy; but, during this period, foreign investors did more lamage to De Benedetti’s interests than any legal troubles.

In the case of the PDS, we are making some assumptions of our own:

hat the budgets presented to the Parliament by the PDS were as phony 8 those of the other parties, and that party members’ dues and profits

rom the ferris wheels at Communist summer carnivals did not cover its

oxpenses,

| The third assumption one must swallow to believe in the morality-play ‘ersion of the Italian coup is that before 1992 the magistrates knew nothng about the corruption that was a staple of conversation at any Italian linner party, or that they did not know enough to begin investigations which require no indictments, no habeas corpus standards to be met)—in

hort, that they stumbled onto the magic city of Tangentopoli for the first

ime when Di Pietro raided Pio Albergo Trivulzio in February of that

tar, This would not be a necessary part of the Honest Sheriff Theory if

hat first raid was an anodyne affair similar to many others, and things list sort of snowballed. But as we have seen, based on their own words,

he Pool magistrates had prepared carefully for. what they knew was a ery big step. ‘The fact is that the judicial potential, to the extent that it is important,

¥as as present in previous years as in 1992. We saw in Chapter 8, as a

irologue to the beginning of the coup, an even better opportunity placed

4 Borrelli’s lap in 1990, which he declined to use.

' Since any Italian observer would find this assumption of magistrates’

gnorance untenable, the assertion is that, before 1992, the magistrates

icked the means to launch their campaign. That, of course, is precisely he question: What means? If they’d had no important increase in their upply of handcuffs and prison cells, if the information was plentiful and nen were just as willing, earlier as later, to give information and accusaions in exchange for release from the most terrifying experience of their

ves—then what means were lacking? Our quick review of the histories

£ other major judicial campaigns, of the lessons learned, and of the Pool’s

248 ~~ Chapter 24 tactics lead to an easy answer: The Pool needed political protection, from

somewhere, and it needed the assurance of media support, which, in turn would produce public support.

It needed these elements in such large doses that questions of its politi-

cization—and of its abuse of defendants’ rights and its selective targeting

and rule-busting use of “leaks” and avvisi di garanzia—would not be heard above the supportive din. No matter how unscrupulous and implacable the Pool itself might have been, it needed allies.

The fact is that no observer of the Italian scene has heard any Italian express surprise at the corruption that has been charged in the Clean Hands investigations. (The size of the bribes has evoked astonishment.)

There was already an extensive Italian literature on corruption. Mark Gil-

bert, who wrote the first scholarly analysis in English of the “Italian revo-

lution,” says that “{glossip—and something more than gossip—had swirled around the Milanese PSI, and Craxi personally, since the early 1980s.’"* LaPalombara is direct: “It is important . . . to avoid the facile

conclusion that the recent revelations were as much of a bombshell as the Italian press, as well as the magistrates, would have us believe.”"” McCar-

thy agrees: “This special brand of corruption was widely known before the Milan magistrates began to expose it.”"* Year after year, the magistrates did not move, or started investigations that were quickly side-tracked. As Romano Canosa puts it: [T]he question of the close connection between politics and business was

always, in the course of these years, left to sleep in silence, every once ina

while disturbed by an “exemplary” arrest (at which everybody, for a mo-

ment, would repeat the traditional commonplaces, such as the need for new

principles, the promise of “good initiatives,” etc., only to return, the moment after, to the usual habits and to the equally-usual silences).

‘The noisiest exception to the general failure to pursue obvious leads that

would have opened the gates of Tangentopoli dates back to 1981, when

the collapse of Milan's biggest private bank and the discovery of the body of financier Roberto Calvi hanging under Blackfriar’s Bridge in London rather forced the magistrates into carrying out some inquiries.

But in almost all the other potential cases, such as the obviously-ripe-

for-investigation construction industries in Rome and Milan, the magis-

trates faced a succession of local administrations of diverse political coloration,

All

the

political

parties,

including

the

PCI/PDS

(which

administered many dozens of Italian communes as well as a few provinces

and regions), were involved. The magistrates simply did not think they

had the political protection to be able to proceed. Only when the right

combination of forces—large-scale politics (the PDS), powerful elements

Conclusion ~>

249

of the business establishment, and the principal daily and weelly press—

were in place and ready to support could the magistrates proceed.”

Italian political parties, in the First Republic, were behemoths, quite

anlike those skeletal electoral alliances that pass for parties in the United States. If some of the parties were driven in their massive effort by the menace of the largest Communist Party in the West, and the Communists

were fueled by equally massive injections from Moscow and the Warsaw

Pact, the resulting party apparatuses nevertheless looked much the same. Further, it was the style of the Communists and Christian Democrats,

with the others imitating in limited measure, to try to provide, beyond

political activity, a wide range of help and leisure occupations. The parties

decupied huge palazzi in the center of Rome and impressive buildings in

most other Italian cities. They had expanding armies of party bureaucrats, published national daily newspapers, ran study centers and think tanks, dut out a stream of books and magazines, rented the biggest stadiums and

irenas for their rallies, and, even in the electronic age of big media bud-

sets, managed to afford costly floods of campaign propaganda.?' It was tbundantly clear that the parties were spending many times more than

the amounts they were legally collecting.

Each year, by law, the parties submitted their budgets to a parliamen-

lary committee for approval. The budgets submitted were transparently

shony, and were always approved unanimously, without questions, with-

out debate, without any visible opposition, as the parties scratched each others’ backs. ' And when, in the past, there had been small scandals, it was always

Jear that the entire illegal system of party financing was there awaiting ‘he assault of the judiciary, if the judiciary chose to act. In the early 1980s,

or example, a contractor caught in a Turin bribery affair claimed that 90 dercent of all businessmen getting government contracts gave kickbacks,

The case had no sequel. The 1990 Natali case shows a refusal to move that vas willful, not circumstantial. Several other cases made headlines briefly, hen disappeared. There were also occasional revelations of illegal financ-

ing of the Communist Party with no judicial follow-up whatsoever. "The accusations that resulted in Italy’s coup have the fairly vague law

lefining the legal and the illegal in the financing of political parties as

heir principal legal point of reference. In the spring of 1997, under urging rom the PDS itself, all the main political forces appeared to have reached

| broad agreement to de-penalize exactly the kinds of political party fiiancing that were at the center of Italy’s storm. The proposal was pre‘ented in the Chamber of Deputies by the floor leader of one of the exDC groups (the CCD), But in the last week of June it was voted down.

3oth the PDS, an original backer, on the Left and the National Alliance

mn the Right voted against it, contrary to what everyone had been led to

250 ~~ Chapter 24

the expect, Forza Italia and the CCD protested strenuously, accusing der post-Communists and post-Fascists of haying given in to a law-and-or

campaign launched by some magistrates.

to Even now there are no real legal restraints on the magistrates’ ability and open an investigation. As one legal scholar puts jt: “(TJoday nothing initiate a nobody is able to stop any magistrate who has the desire to

preliminary investigation, relative to anything, on the basis of mere ‘hy-

pothesis’ justified by simple ‘seasons for suspicion,’ even in the total absence of any evidence.” main So the question is simple. Given the gigantic operations of Italy'smone y the political parties, where did the magistrates, before 1992, think

‘was coming from?

by political In order to refute the evidence we have seen of a coup made job, the fourth

warfare, as opposed to Honest Sheriffs just doing their

necessary assumption would be that these same magistrates, who were

highly political in the 1970s, belonging to the most radical wing of Magistratura democratica, who issued declarations of their intention to carry out the class struggle, and transform Italy, through their work in the court-

cs in room—that these magistrates lost interest in politics or changed politi Milan Pool, the intervening years. The reference here, of course, is to the

na Parenti, perminus the two who resigned, Antonio Di Pietro and Tizia recruits haps minus Piercamillo Davigo, and to which must be added the (Greco, Ielo, Boccassini) who were too young to have been involvedcally,in the early days of MD. Di Pietro may now be serving the Left politi

but we find no trace of the Jong-term commitment to social revolution associated with the others.

"The magistrates could not have confused Operation Clean Hands and

its political ramifications with a Marxist revolution. Herbert Marcuse was

in vogue with young Italians in the 1960 and 1970s, and this “revolution”

had nothing to do with him either. None of the Pool magistrates were

PCI’s seen “carrying Gramsci,” (the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the

not “little red book”) and the Red Brigades of the Years of Lead would

the greying and recognize the Pool’s actions as revolutionary (although their way out of mote realistic veterans of the movement now making prison might be very admiring of their comrades in togas). But over~ throwing a regime, bringing the First Republic to an end, is not a bad day’s work for a political romantic.

a coup than a ‘One critical way in which the Italian drama was more (Coups revolution is, however, exactly the lacks of ideological coherctence. of struggles need not be ideological at all; often they are the mere produ

between factions.) Whatever coherence the thinking of these magistrates might once have had, there are now distinctive, but not disharmonious,

differences between them. Since none of them have published systematic

Conclusion “> 251 tracts of political thought, our shorthand characterizations were probably somewhat unjust in every case. Nevertheless, it is clear that, for example, Gerardo D’Ambrosio is openly willing to identify politically with the PCI/PDS. The chief, Francesco Saverio Borrelli may have started wanting allpower-to-the-magistrates as a step toward overturning the old establishment—and then may have advanced to being more interested in that step than in the goal. His megalomania became greater than the discipline of calculated political ends, finally leading Prodi’s justice minister, Giovanni

Maria Flick, to start an inquiry, not into Borrelli’s official actions but into his intemperate public statements and his “intimidation” of elected

officials, Other magistrates now openly speak of his “extremism.”® He has been publicly criticized for his intemperance by Elena Paciotti, the head of the National Magistrates Association: Borrelli’s overheated effort

to prevent the Bicameral Committee from considering reform of the judiciary led her to conclude that “as a citizen I’ve got to prefer a bad law voted by a free parliament to a good law imposed by authoritarian magistrates,”

Gherardo Colombo has set down his political thought more precisely

than the others. He did this in a volume that is also autobiographical, and

this is appropriate because the book concerns more a life lived in a kind

of radical-chic humanist soup than hard social thought. But Colombo

clearly equates virtue with a kind of social revolution, with those caring leftists who have been frozen out by the corrupt establishment, and with himself.

If this were Elizabethan drama, the others would want to keep their

eye on Piercamillo Davigo, whose subtlety is profound enough to leave partisans of both Left and Right convinced that he might really be theirs.

‘They are both guessing, because Davigo, whose demeanor is modest, has occasionally revealed that he rivals Borrelli in unbridled arrogance. His

announcement that “we're going to turn Italy inside out lilke an old sock,”

early in the Pool’s assault on the First Republic, revealed an ego-motor that did not stop running when the coup had succeeded.

Gianfranco Fini, once a supporter of the Pool, reacted to the latest outbursts by Borrelli and Davigo by asserting that “we are facing a delirium of omaipotence,” that the two magistrates “think they are a priesthood, are aristocrats, .. . I can imagine what would have happened if a military officer had expressed himself lilee these magistrates. It would have touched off an absolute rebellion.”?

The Pool’s new recruits are exceedingly tough and combative, and each has had occasion to demonstrate support for the ideological line of Magis-

tratura Democratica, although none was present at its creation. Paolo Ielo

proved his mettle, even before entering the Pool, at “archiving” investiga-

252 ~ Chapter 24 tory trails leading to the PDS, but his zeal may have led to the embarrass-

ing incident of the wiretapping (and public revelation of contents) of

__ telephone conversations between Craxi and his attorney. Iida Boccassini,

not softened by the support the Pool has received from some of the press, has been willing to let herself be seen on national television telling jourhalists to get out of her way, bulldozing clerks in another jurisdiction here she had come to. carry away some files, and generally showing a

ailed fist covered, not by velvet, but by more mail. Finally, hulking, bearded Fraricesco Greco has gotten out in front of all

the new generation by turning virulently on the Prodi government for its

ew interest in judicial reform, suggesting that it is worse than Craxi—a

verbal

extravagance that brought him before the CSM. Now in his mid-

Forties, Greco was a leader of student extreme Left groups calling for the

==" destruction of the bourgeois State, went on to Left extraparliamentary

politics, and then, as a magistrate, entered the “hardest” wing of MD. A

garantista heart may beat in his breast, however: He has sometimes dis-

sented on Poo! decisions to imprison a citizen to induce confession, and

journalists saw him crying on a colleague’s shoulder at the news of Gar-

dini’s suicide.

These magistrates are not all cut from the same cloth, but there is

© enough ideological similarity to make them an effective team, and to make

‘Antonio Di Pietro, however talented and successful an investigator and

prosecutor, so out of step that the one clear thing he has ever said about

his resignation was that politics forced him to leave. Now Berlusconi and

others are suggesting, since Di Pietro’s deal with D’Alema, that he had een a closet Red all along and has finally dropped the mask. There are stronger reasons, however, to look for the motives behind his entrance into elective politics under categories of (1) opportunism, (2) protection

(both for himself against prosecution, and for the PDS in discouraging, ith his help, a gathering storm of new investigations into PCI/PDS

funding), and (3) the absence of good alternatives (except a quiet life as. a

niversity docent). Recall that Tiziana Parenti, despite her background in

“leftist political movements, was doomed for departure as soon as she re‘used to join in the protection of the PDS.

Magistratura Democratica is ideologically associated with the PCI/PDS but, however tidy it would be for a conspiracy theory, we have seen that

a full identification of one with the other is too simple. Though drawn to the Communists from the very beginning in the 1970s, MD faced two serious barriers to full collaboration. One was that many of the “demo-

cratic magistrates” were well to the left of the PCI. The other was that

___

the magistrates were entering the period when the battle against Italian

terrorism would reach its apogee. Although some of the notable incidents

_ of violence were rightist terrorism, more frequent headlines were being

Conclusion ~~ 253

aade by groups such as the Red Brigades, which were explicitly Marxist.

© some of the magistrates had to ignore the ideological origins of the

ulture of violence if they were going to make war on terrorism. Some vere accused of not doing so—of having, at the least, divided loyalties. As we have seen, over a few years leading up to 1992, some of the most etermined of the MD militants got themselves transferred. into Milan. ‘his is not to suggest thar they had a long-term strategic plan in mind, ut simply that for these politicized magistrates Milan was the right place >: be.** It was the political home base of the Socialist politicians who

vould be the primary targets of any effort to overthrow the First Repub-

c, And Rome—the only other battleground big enough for their ambi-

ons—had a Palace of Justice, 2 “Fog Harbor” (where cases against

oliticians enter and are never seen again), that had long been in the hands f the most adamant protectors of the regime. In fact, we saw, in the later tages of the coup, the Milan Pool making war on the Rome prosecutor's

ffice, planting bugs, and sending police cars from Milan to arrest a oman judge. ‘Assumption number five of those supporting the Honest Sheriff The-

ry would be that che Pool and its allies were unable to anticipate the kely political fallout of their decapitation of several sectors of Italian leadship, that they were unable to see clearly into whose lap political control ould fall when the Christian Democrats and Socialists were gotten ont fthe way, or that they didn’t care. But their own words have told us that

te Pool magistrates were assaulting a whole political class and a whole stem, not individual wrongdoers. Moreover, their political backgrounds

id recent statements leave no room for doubt about whether they cared

pout the political result. Neither the Milan Pool nor Magistratura Democratica was a tool of the CI/PDS. In fact, Italy’s radical leftism of the 1960s and 1970s, from MD.

» the Red Brigades to the Student Movement, was a product of the PCI’s

im away from revolution—its embourgeoisement. Yet even those who stress the connection between the end of the Cold

‘ar and the Italian coup are acknowledging how obvious it was that the CY/PDS would be the group to benefit from any conflagration, As the

olls showed all the way up to the end of January 1994, the PDS alone,

ren without its ex-comrades of the Communist Refoundation Party, was

ready (in 1992) the hegemonic power center of the Left and thus posi-

oned to hold sway in all of Italy (not with a majority, but with strength

iore than twice that of any other force in the Center-Left arena), The

erlusconi phenomenon produced a victory in the March 27-28 national

ections that could not have been predicted even two months earlier. It

as another two years before the position of the PDS could be restored ad, in effect, the coup completed.

24 om Cuaprer 24

To accept the Honest Sheriff ‘Theory of what happened in Italy, one also needs assumption number six, that despite an abundance of constitutional guarantees and procedural rules concerning judicial secrecy, an extraordinary and inexplicable series of accidental leaks occurred. We are not

"here making the rash suggestion that the Italian magistracy is in general tight-lipped and efficiently discreet. Rather, our point is that the Pool’s “leaks” were not a series of accidents but a systematic flow of daily revela-

~ tions in certain newspapers of all the detailed accusations and suspicions

against leading business and political figures, And they were perfectly

explicable in terms of what the Pool needed for its project—the strong support of an inflamed public opinion. We saw that an Italian law, originally designed to protect the citizen,

calls for the delivering to him of a notification that he is under investigation. This avviso di garanzia is a confidential communication. It is not an indictment, does not indicate that the magistrates are ready to level any

charges. It is not correct to say, as some commentators have, that the

avviso di garanzia became the chief weapon of the coup. It was the news-

paper headlines about the delivery of avvisi to ltaly’s major political fig-

ures that effectively ended their political lives.

The fact is that throughout the Operation Clean Hands-era, the news_ papers and magazines whose owners were supportive of the coup abso-

lutely ignored or glossed over the difference between reception of an

_avviso—and arrest, indictment, and conviction. Receipt of an avviso was

_ treated as a criminal conviction. The attitude, clearly, was that only the

guilty received avvisi2’ President Scalfaro has launched numerous official appeals on this point. As early as July 3, 1993, Scalfaro, who had normally been a defender of the magistrates, realized what was happening to citizens’ rights: “Many times,” he said, “the news of the avviso comes to the

“citizen through the mass media and, for the public, such an avviso di _ garanzia constitutes an implacable guilty verdict.”® Scalfaro even used the presidential address on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic for such an appeal.” Throughout this book we have dealt with three distinct factors—abuse

of judicial confidentiality, collusion of certain media, and unwarranted

assumption of guilt by media and public—as though they were one, because the combination of the three was necessary for the results produced.

"Only the first can be affected by the judi

ial reformers who are how trying, mainly through the Bicameral Committee, to rein in the magistrates.

-_ The two factors relating to the media will remain, no matter how success-

ful the committee is.

The coup by the men in judges’ robes did not need courtroom confron-

tations (although there were a few such confrontations, a very few). It did not need the presentation of credible and persuasive evidence. All it

Conclusion >

255

needed was full and detailed publicity given to the Pool’s distribution of

several thousand avvisi.

‘To be clear, we should note that leaks are not unusual in Italian palaces

of justice, But the system of leaks operated by the Milan Pool, far from

_being the norm, was, in fact, unprecedented. As we saw, in Brescia, just a

few miles east of Milan and the place (as the Number Two magistracy in the region) to which cases such as the Cerciello case are transferred when there is a conflict of interest in Milan, judicial secrets were, once again, judicial secrets. And, under the most intense pressure, the Palermo magis-

trates were able to keep their work largely confidential up to the time they went into court to begin each of the “maxi-trials” against the Sicilian

Mafia. In the case of Operation Clean Hands, there could have been no law-

and-order purpose to this flow of information, which was, after all, harm-

ful to the workings of investigation, accusation, and judgment. Rather,

only a political purpose could have pertained."

In fact, a clear pattern developed in which the supportive press, owned

by industrialists with a heavy stake in the coup, received complete infor

mation almost in real time, while, as we saw in a few cases, “leaks” that

were not desired by the Pool would, when used by independent journal-

ists, trigger a clamorous reaction on the part of the Pool, complete with urgent meetings, the launching of investigations, and threats of prosecu-

tion.

One experienced journalist who watched this entire game finally had

had enough, This was Frank Cimini. Cimini talked to Prima Comunicazi-

one, the principal Italian periodical treating professional journalism. He

has covered judicial affairs for the last nineteen years, beginning with the

great terrorist trials of the 1970s,

Cimini, interviewed right in the middle of the coup, didn’t mince

words:

T’'m not revealing anything when I say that testimony and news flowed abundantly out of the Palace of Justice. . . . [Cimini recalls times when the journalists sided with the politicians,] Today (some journalists] seem to-come | from another planer{,] they are so completely lined up to give support to the magistrates. ... The story is simple: there are some fifty reporters who write uncritically positive stories on everything the Milan Prosecutor's office does; the fifty-first criticizes the Prosecutor and gets hit with a law suit for a few tens of millions [of lire] in damages. .. . For two years there has existed an anomalous relationship between the Milan prosecutor's office and the weeklies, Especially L’Espresso. Kor two years now they have received the full texts of interrogations—at times just a few minutes after the suspect has finished talking. .,. And then Pamparana of Tg5 [the newscast of one of Berlusconi’s television networks] uses a story

6 ~~ Chapter 24

inthe magistrates don’t like and gets booked as a suspect for violation of the vestigative secrecy. It’s a laugh. . .. The problem isn’t the reporters, it's source. .. . ‘The problem is the politics of the Milan prosecutor's office.” And to accept the Honest Sheriff ‘Theory one must also assume that it

is a coincidence that the newspapers and magazines that carried, for a couple of years, all the investigative details that were not supposed to be

_public were exactly those owned by the industrialists who received special ‘treatment at the hands of the Pool. This sector of the press reported each

“new charge as the revelation of a new truth about Italy’s corruption, not questioning either the facts or the methods used by the magistrates.”

Grabbing available scoops and writing exciting headlines can be exJained by the commercial needs of competitive journalism. Despite this valry, five daily newspapers worked very collegially, not competitively, 2 Operation Clean Hands, (The only one of these that lay outside the

ircle of ownership we have described was L’Unita, the daily of the PDS.) _ They even coordinated decisions not to publish.*

The political dynamic of the leakers is irrefutable from the facts pre-

sented. But most of the editors and journalists of these periodicals were

joing their work normally, Some showed personal concern about what

gas happening. Corriere’s great scoop announcing the avviso to Berlus‘coni was set in type shortly after midnight. An hour later, Corriere’s edi‘or, Paolo Mieli, wrote an editorial announcing his resignation, He told

runo Vespa: “It is not in the traditions of Corriere to use justice for

political ends.’°5 But his concern, and that of his colleagues who were

_ also worried about what they had just done, extended no further than the question of whether they had been used, for political purposes, by being

fed false information. If they had merely been used, for political purposes, ‘by being fed correct information, their journalists’ consciences would have

been clear. Once certain that the story was correct, Mieli did not run his

resignation editorial.

Beyond the leaks and the reporting lies the editorial position of these “Clean Pens” publications. A violation of preventive detention and other itizens’ rights was going on broadly and systematically. The Western

press, especially the press of the Left, has normally played the role of lefender of civil rights and custodian of the alarm bell to signal their

egregious violation. But these publications did not sound an alarm, or

“even voice a mild expression of discomfort, although a few of their “syn-

dicated” columnists (i.e., those who were not employees) did. The Cagli-

ari

case, which our account followed both before and after the suicide,

was a prime example of this silence, even when Cagliari’s letters from

rison became known. Our account did not omit such press interventions; they simply didn’t exist.

Conclusion ~-> 257

‘The list of assumptions can end here, although others suggest themselves, We have reviewed them because interesting facts emerge when they are tested, and because they demonstrate that the prevailing understand-

_ing of the Italian coup (or “revolution”), the Honest Sheriff Theory, re-

-quires some spectacular leaps into improbability.

Some Italians have, with considerable reason, come to see the politiciz~

ing of the judiciary as the number-one problem of Italian democracy today.

Some of these Italians are now in Parliament, serving on the Bicameral Committee that has, as one of its charges, a reform of the Italian judicial

“system. They openly state that they have seen

a group of magistrates,

never elected, neither appointed nor assigned ly an elected official, be-

_come assault troops of a coup d’état. In the course of the political battle, the Pool also became an overt politi-

cal power in itself, We saw that the Pool’s chief, Borrelli, asserted publicly

that maybe Italy’s politicians should not be trusted with the running of ithe country, that maybe the magistrates, in the end, should take over the

job.

fk ok ‘Scholarly panels continue to debate the question of whether or nota revo-

lution has just occurred in Italy. Some of those who deny it point, correctly, to the fact that the Tealian constitution looks the same as it did five years ago. There have been some electoral reforms, but-(1) these can be

changed again at any moment by a simple parliamentary majority (and consideration of such changes is certain to be a feature of Italian political ‘life for the next decade), and (2) the reforms did not generally produce the effects intended, | But all Italians, if one assumes the practice of Italian journalism to re‘flect current conventional parlance, have taken to referring ‘Republic and the Second Republic, although some say that public died with the Moro murder and others say that the of the Second Republic has only just begun and may take a

reach completion.

to the First the First Reconstruction long time to

For a political scientist who looks not at constitutions or common par-

lance, but at the facts of how politics is done, the conclusion may be that a revolution has occurred (although some old tendencies are beginning to reassert themselves, especially the appetite for centrism and cooperation

across ideological lines, rather than stern combat). Certainly the old mode ‘of operating, and paying for, gigantic mass political parties will not be used again for at least a generation: ‘loo many people who had never before thought of themselves as potential prison inmates are now terrified. Regional and national headquarters of the successors to the old parties are much more modest affairs than the palaces-packed-with-staff of the

258 =~ Chapter 24 First Republic. Even the post-Communist PDS, which comes closer than

any to representing the survival of an old mass party, has scaled back its publishing operations and many other activities that required a big staff.

Signs of return to some of the old habits abound, The Parliament has

overwhelmingly approved a law calling for “voluntary” financing of the

parties, involving ways to achieve the distribution of some public funds to the parties, despite the citizens’ clear disapproval as voiced in a referen-

dum.» (This violation of the people’s will is compared by Paolo Prodi to the politicians’ “sliding every day back toward proportionalism despite

the clear popular will for majoritarianism.”"””) The second change is the most important change, a revolution in itself: The country that probably led the West in frozen voting patterns is now one of the most fluid, For neatly all the life of the First Republic, being a Socialist or Christian Democrat or Communist was not a just a party

affiliation, It was certainly not a choice to be made, after reflection, at each election. Instead, it was part of one’s vital statistics, like religion and

home town. Elections produced so little movement in the relative party

totals that fractions of percentage points would cause boisterous celebra-

tion or agonizing reappraisal. This phenomenon has been stunningly re-

versed. The floating voter, a rare and always-endangered species in the First Republic, has become the typical voter, so much so that shifts of 20

to 30 percent occur in weeks prior to an election. This may account, in the last days of the First Republic, for some of the much deeper financial

gouging by parties as they shook down businessmen; if most voters are

undecided or only temporarily decided, then serious, expensive electoral

campaigning becomes a priority.

The third change that might define a revolution is the ending of consoci-

ativismo. For some political scientists interested in how politics was actu-

ally done, this arrangement was at the center ‘of the analyses of the last years of the First Republic, The Communists were, until the coup, formally out of power. But this does not mean that they were starved of

much of the sustenance of politics and patronage, or that they had no say in policy. The subterranean accord between much of the DC and the supposedly-opposition Communists was the core of late-First-Republic

patronage, spoils, job distribution, law-making, and education-and-media rule-making. The clearest sign of their accord, until the coup, was exactly the nmutually convenient approval of each other’s totally fraudulent bud-

gets in parliamentary committee. In a way, consociativismo has also died. There is no longer a Christian

Democratic Party. The coalition that swept to victory on March 27-28,

1994, saw the PDS, Communism’s successor, as the true opposition, and

it was treated as such by the governing parties. Now the forces that have grouped themselves around the PDS are in the saddle. The news since the

Conclusion +> 259

‘April 1996 election has appeared to show two great political coalitions at war with each other.

But there is a continuing effort to share, to use the old formulas to give the “outs” a share of that to which, in other countries, only the “ins” are

entitled, For some in the current ruling coalition, the “opposition” should ‘continue to have a share of the available spoils that is in mathematical harmony with its share of parliamentary seats, the old formula. The majority has been, for example, far more gracious in the seats and presiding roles given to those outside their coalition—in parliamentary committees,

independent control boards, and, especially, the Bicameral Committee to reform the constitution—than would be the case in the United States,

England, or France, Before Berlusconi it had been common practice, for

some years, to give the presidency of one of the two houses of Parliament to the opposition.*

A. sign that Italy has undergone a coup but not a revolution is this apparent endurance of the strong tendencies to move from confrontation

to cooperation (or at least deal-making), to narrow the meaning of being

“in? or “out” (so that the “ins” have little to fear from a reversal of

fortune), and to transform each side so that it gradually comes to resemble

the other side. These tendencies are powerfully at work in the consider-

ation of a large Left-Right governing coalition (as discussed below).

| In terms of political power, the magistrates themselves have been bene-

ficiaries of the coup. There has been a profound alteration of the equilibrium among the powers of State in favor of the judiciary, In a remarkable interview after leaving office, Giulio Catelani, who was the general prose-

cutor in Milan throughout the glory days of Operation Clean Hands, expressed his fear: In the void left by the other powers and in the absence of any kind of controls, the magistracy is passing jadgement on everything. And jurisprudence has become the sole governor of our life. This is a mistake. Politics must recapture its proper role, occupying the space invaded by jurispradence. . ,. The magistrates have remodelled this space with the instrument of jurisprudence... which has enlarged its own limits until it has encompassed all of our daily life. . . . The magistrate transforms himself into a commissar.

‘The interviewer asked for examples. Catelani spoke of the broadening of the concept of corruption: “The suspect must stay in prison because he’s corrupt, without the need to specify the act by which the corruption manifested itself.” More than four years of judicial investigations directed at throttling corruption in major public instivutions, and at throttling the old political

260 ~- Chapter 24 order, have altered the public’s relation to Italian justice. Intense media

attention, often with a political orientation—as in the lavish coverage of

the Pool’s inquiries and the live televising of the Cusani trial—carries profound risk of damage to the dignity, the privacy, and even the rights-of-

defense of the citizens subjected to penal procedures, as shown by the particular ferocity of the media attacks on the former political leaders of the First Republic. The drama we have watched illustrates another factor that was once mainly of interest to political scientists, but now has meaning for Italy’s everyday politics. That is the difference between unitary and when it comes to corruption. Even with no idea what the capita ratio would be between Italy and the United States, say that the spread of the inkblot is different. Corruption in contracts for building the Milan subway went from high to

federal states scandals-perwe can safely the letting of low on both

the paying side and the receiving side. On the other hand, President Clin-

ton’s problems with campaign donations has not engulfed state and city Democratic parties nor endangered Democratic mayors and governors.

And conversely Boss Daley’s troubles in Chicago did not threaten the

‘Truman administration. A strongly federal system has firebreaks, not always perfect but largely effective. That is not what is driving the profound

changes Italy is making as it moves toward a more federal system, but it is a probable benefit.

Whatever the differences stemming from structure, the impression re-

mains of a corruption so broad and deep that Italians would be justified

in paying almost any price, from the trampling of certain citizens’ rights

to, even this, a political coup that puts into power a political faction that

had consistently failed to win power democratically. This is not the place to explore the comparative analyses of political corruption, especially as there already exists a huge body of Italian analysis, both scientific and literary, that asserts that a high level of corruption runs through the entire

society, affecting even the smallest transactions. But Operation Clean

Hands had nothing to do with that everyday level, unless it is seen as the training ground for the corruption of Italy’s rulers. For what makes our

raising of questions about the motives of the Milan magistrates so difficult

is that they really did catch many of Italy’s rulers who, according to very credible evidence, were engaged in what Margaret Levi defines as “‘predatory rule.” But modern predatory rule is not without limits; rulers “do

not always rob their subjects blind.’*° Predatory rulers suffer two main

constraints: their relative bargaining power and transaction costs. As Levi points out, “Rulers will have more, bargaining power the more they monopolize coercive, economic, and political resources." Although “preda-

tory rulers tend to maximize control,’ Italian politics has been characterized by the effort to achieve a resource monopoly through alli-

Conclusion ~-> 261

ance with. those who hold other parts of the resources, rather than

through any kind of rough resource imperialism by individuals or factions. Transaction costs are the costs of implementing and enforcing polis. This relates to a common limitation on Italy’s rulers: “An important

sonstraint on the policy choices of rulers is their discount rates, that is,

‘he extent to which they value the future relative to the present.” Italian

solitical and business leaders of the First Republic scrupulously preserved profitable arrangements, rarely endangering them for the sake of enhanc-

ng today’s profit, Thus the arrangements had remarkable endurance. But ‘the pursuit of personal ends—within constraints—is the sine qua non of sredatory rulers,# A full understanding of the stage on which the drama of the coup was ited would require a synthesis of the many analyses that have been done m political patronage in Italy, both as a cultural phenomenon and as a tructure of incentives with its own legal and systemic basis. Comparative

tudies only partially confirm the Italians’ own belief that their clientel-

sm is unique in its strength. Whether or not this impression is correct, it ays little about where one should look for causes. Is the answer found in ocietal and governmental structures, in cultural characteristics, or else-

vhere, or all? All that is necessary for the current case is awareness that

he thick ties of dependence have not produced love, have instead pro~

uced a public ready to believe the worst about Italian politicians, a public

hat easily translated news stories containing only unsupported accusalons and suggestions into firm convictions that the accused were guilty.

is LaPalombara says, “Italians are critical of and antagonistic toward

olities because they are uncommonly familiar with it.” Indeed, he adds, [slociety reeks of politics. [Even] those who really hate polities cannot

scape it. ,.. What we have here . . . is a society saturated by politics.’

‘This “saturation,” which only describes without explaining, is, accord-

ig to the thesis of this book, boldly found in Operation Clean Hands

self, a political act, pre-announced by adherents to a political credo, pre-

ared by means of political alliances, and reaching its conclusion in the

reation of a new political situation, not in the simple incarceration of tooks, not in the cracking of a criminal conspiracy, not even in a moralisc reform.

As we saw, the corruption exposed had long existed and was long

own. In Italy, the political parties had developed the habit of plunder-

ig the State.” Occupying the State like conquered territory, they were

ten in a position to strike deals with all the major groups in the society. he scandals of the 1990s exposed the details of some of those deals, but

\e forces for exposure and change were themselves striking the same sort ideals, McCarthy calculates that Italy’s clientelism, which is not synon-

nous with its corruption but is what most of these deals amount to,

: © 262 ~~ Chapter 24 became systemic in the mid-1950s. The DC had, before then, been able

“to succeed on the basis of a widespread fear of Communism. When that

“weakened, clientelism provided the areas of dependence and the sure elec-

| ‘toral support." Martin Clark tends to put the turning point a decade earlier; saying that the DC-dominated

regime coming

out of the war

“Spracticed the politics of compromise and patronage, of temporary deals

“and temporary governments, of granting favors and buying support, and

f political ‘interference’ in administration.” But he also finds that the

|

egime, in doing this, was similar to those of the previous century. Mark

Gilbert spots the completion of the Italian “cleptocracy” in the early “4970s, when “the DC had evolved into a vast, corrupt bureaucracy,” and leans more on cultural characteristics than structure when seeking

| eauses.' Others would find the corruption to have taken root centuries

arlier, as Borrelli suggested when he blamed the Church, The mosttheuninpen

pibited and entertaining arguments for this view have come from

of Giordano Bruno Guerri.* AWithout settling these questions of timing, the dynamic is clear. Postrr Italy’s clientelism/corruption was based on the parties’ taking over he State’s resources so that they could distribute them to their support-

ers. Political competition thus gave them a continuing need for more re-

sources; the government sector of the economy increased continually.

The bulwark against such spreading statism in most modern democracies

is the business community and its political allies. But Jtalian postwar industry felt itself so weakened that it wanted the protection, the contracts,

if the help with labor relations, andall the other. services that the State,

owed to play a role, could offer. Weaklings and sicklings among Italian industries were taken into the great State (or parastatal) hospital, where

cure and release were not part of the schedule, Businesses that were not

actually taken over still had caught the contagion of looking to the State

“to

and

buy off redundant workers, to cover much of the cost of expansion,

so on. Even healthy businesses cut deals with Italian political parties.

‘The result was the politicizing of virtually every sector of Italian life.

this There were, of course, good Christian and Marxist explanations forlistic

| expansion. The Christian Democrats developed their own paterna ideas about caring for their flock, while the Marxists had their ideological

tification already intact, Neither were bothered by the shrinking of the

‘private sector (although this concern did divide some of the “currents”

‘of Christian Democracy). The question of the paternalistic State was clearly not going to be a problem for the Historic Compromise. And

aly’s most important political thinkers, however otherwise different,withall

seemed to arrive at some argument for statism, starting, of course,

¢ Fascists, and including Croce and Luzzatti.

‘he politicization of all parts of Italian life was some mix of cause-and-

|

Conclusion = 263 fect of a paternalism that is thus found in both structure and culture,

Ailippo Sabetti has shown that Edward Banfield’s celebrated finding of a ‘uinous (for civic society), amoral familism in one Italian town® may have

temmed from structures, reaching down to local government, with such

trong disincentives for any citizen action that any sensible villager would laturally become fatalistically passive and dependent.

Boe

oF

Does the importance of the story we have just!told stop at the Italian iorder? The answer is no, on two counts,

!

The first is obvious. Italy is a founding member of the European

Jnion, and an economic force usually ranked slightly above Britain in ize and importance, It is the quality of some of jts governments and the haracter of its politics that has put Italy on the brink of failing to meet he Maastricht convergence standards—a failure that would reduce Italy,

lone among the six founding members, to a second rank in Europe, one f those lesser states tagging along after the real economic (and therefore

litical) engines of the new Europe. A failure to enter Europe’s common

urrency would, in the view of many commentators and political leaders, icluding members of the current government, have an ugly impact on oth the discipline of Italian taxes-and-spending, and on Italy’s effort to revent northern secession movements from becoming serious threats to ie country’s unity. Italy is also a crucial member of NATO, of such importance in the

fediterranean basin that the question of possible Communist participaon in the Italian government was a major policy issue for the Alliance in

te 1970s, Those were the days when the central front was the focus of

festern security interests. But the central front is today a zone of tranbility compared with the “southern front.” As the West faces disorder

ad danger in the Balkans, the Maghreb, and the Middle East, Italy re-

laces Germany as the crucial large “front-line state” in the European

‘curity equation.

Italy matters. What happened there matters. But the significance of that new form of political warfare that we have ‘en may stretch beyond Italy and beyond this moment in history,

Can this Italian phenomenon be considered of a nature and of a rele-

ince to modern government in the West such that it spills over the con-

nes of Italy and its role? And by extension, justas the French Revolution

as a phenomenon that changed the “internal” politics of all Europe, can e “Italian revolution” (which we have preferred to label a coup) assume

character that would induce its exportation?

The fact that in an advanced industrial democracy the magistracy pro-

‘ses itself as a ruling class in this fashion is a new phenomenon, which teds analysis, just as in the 1960s the role of the armed forces in the

264 ~~ Chapter 24

countries of Latin America required analysis. In fact, the Italian phenome-

non is being emulated right now in France, Spain, and, with some differences, Greece. This circumstance is occurring in the context of “a trend toward judicialisation in contemporary regimes,” according to Carlo

Guarnieri.®* In the first two countries, the debt to the inspiration of the

innovative Milan magistrates has been openly acknowledged.** Historians may come to see judicial ascendancy as a product of the crisis of political power in the modern postindustrial democracies. Governability and the

intractability of the challenges to modern politics have been recurring

themes in the United States at least since Jimmy Carter. Is the role seen

here of prosecutors a transitory phenomenon, due to some unique contingencies, or is it the forerunner of a profound sickness in the workings of elective powers?

A similar debate was opened in the United States by a symposium of what have come to be called “Theocons” put together by the journal of the New York Institute on Religion and Public Life. The editors of the

journal, entitled First Things, wanted to address the “troubling judicial

actions that add up to an entrenched pattern of government by judges

that is nothing less than the usurpation of politics.”"7 That summation sounds, at first hearing, much like the Italian concerns voiced throughout this book, as does Robert Bork’s intervention: “The Justices are our mas-

ters in a way that no President, Congressman, governor, or other elected

official is.” He calls the justices “a band of outlaws” because they “coerce

... others without warrant in law.” And we recall the Pool’s assertion that the Parliament it had savaged was no longer legitimate, because most of its members had been shown to be corrupt, when we read the accusa-

tion of judicial decisions that “impugn the motives of legislators,” For that matter, Charles Colson warns of “the systematic usurpation of ulti-

mate political power by the American judiciary.” But the Theocons’ heated battering of the Supreme Court, instead of warning of a revolution, is calling for one, a conservative revolution. They directly suggest such a level of resistance and disobedience that it caused the resignation from the review’s board of such distinguished conservatives as Walter Berns,

Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Peter Berger."

But the American problem of judicial usurpation, if there is one (Roo-

sevelt, in trying to pack the Supreme Court, felt the same way, with the politics reversed), is distinctly different from the European cases we have mentioned. 'The American debate is about a Court whose interpretations of the U.S. Constitution are sorely displeasing to some Americans, as compared with magistrates, working on the ground in European cities, with law enforcement officers catrying out strong-arm missions where

demanded. The magistrates do not claim to be interpreting their constitution (despite the assertions by early MD magistrates that general clauses

Pe

Conclusion >

265

of the constitution could be treated as enacted laws), as do the American

ustices, On the other hand, the magistrates do openly assert the role of

lieir personal political beliefs and affiliations in their work, something

American justices might manifest but never acknowledge. It would be wrong, it appears, to suggest that the Italian phenomenon, which has early spread to some neighboring countries, has any family connection

vith the U.S. debate.

Nevertheless, whatever comparative studies may reveal, the Italian coup 5 one item in the general phenomenon of the increasingly important role

veing played by the judiciary in the policy and political process of the nost advanced industrial democracies today.

e

8

#

Sipolarism with alternation in government and true political combat is lot yet secure in Italy,

If Berlusconi can be brought to his knees by the magistrates, Forza talia, still young, still lacking the institutional characteristics of an en-

luring party, and now an election loser, may dissolve. The Center-Right aay not hold as a viable opposition alliance, or may pass into the hands

if Gianfranco Fini’s National Alliance.

PDS chief Massimo D’Alema has suggested, several times, the creation

f some version of a huge centrist coalition that would embrace all of the

aoderate Left and Right, leaving only the hard-line Communists (Rifonlaztone Communista), the Fascists (Fiamma), and the separatist Northern vague out in the cold.

Beneath a (limited) D’Alema-Berlusconi embrace, it would, for a pre-

isely limited program, also try to attract not only individuals and tiny roups still adrift after the crash of the First Republic parties but also the

ost of parties that are now more numerous than before the electoral 2form designed to reduce their number. Even though some PDS leaders, such as Interior Minister Giorgio Na-

olitano, give verbal support to a true bipolar system with a true opposion, D’Alema will be consistently driven toward the old Center-magnet y (1) the need to escape the daily agony of satisfying the Communist foundation Party, which is still necessary for a governing majority in

1¢ Chamber of Deputies, (2) the difficulty of making the changes in Ita-

’’s welfare state that the Maastricht game requires, and (3) the simple fact

rat the Center offers the only hunting ground for expansion of the PDS's ectoral and political base.

‘This political reality creates another; the need for the PDS, now that xe coup is at its endgame, to rein in the very magistrates to whom it owes much, If it does not do so, collaboration with Berlusconi is impossible,

snd there are magistrates in many cities who might at any moment have

266 ~~ Chapter 24 the means and desire to launch a serious attack on the PDS. New kings never permit those who made the last coup to hang around,

Hands So now the warnings begin, warnings that “if Operation Clean the struggle

sinks, everything sinks.” The Palermo prosecutor who leads against the Mafia, Giancarlo Caselli, said in November

1996:

“Today

what’s at stake is the legitimation of the new governing class.” But it was

the chief prosecutor of the troubled city of Naples, Agostino Cordova,

who cut to the heart of the “post-coup”:

lence, to "The action of the magistracy—turning, after a long . . . somnocided with deal with some notorious and widespread illegal situations—coin having specific interests of certain political battalions. ... The intended ofresult who been achieved, the magistrates no longer served the interests those the attihad benefitted {rom their initiatives. That produces the reversal of those tude of those political battalions that had sustained and applauded same magistrates.

Consociativismo, the rebuilding of the Center, and “a government of broad understanding” (a popular current formula), like the Historic Compromise before them, have in common the requirement of a concept

of democracy that is not competitive, combative, and pluralistic. Instead,

they require a concept of democracy as an organic whole. Those who

have made this unprecedented assault on the partitocrazia may, in the

end, have caused such bloodshed only to preserve and re-bottle the old

one (intoxicating) wine of “organic,” cooperative democracy. The consider

achievement of the coup that a modern Western liberal might unequivocally healthy—the expunging of some politicians who broke the law—could disappear back into a political culture so resistant to change that all the new faces will start reading from the old scripts.

But they will do so without the roles played by the old parties, the parties that produced Italy’s postwar economic miracle, that gave political education to several generations, that softened poverty, family tragedy, or

the harshness of the written law for thousands of Italians, and that brokered social conflicts that might otherwise have ripped Italy apart. The priest and the Communist mayor in the stories of Don Camillo were, after all, party men. They gave their town a government with no ideologi-

cal neatness whatsoever, but with humane rule, The town was not that

bad a place in which to live.

.

It surprises many foreigners, who carry in their minds the stereotype of the fiery Latin, to find that Italian political culture is characterized by compromise, humanity, and moderation. These qualities are punctuated, true enough, by flashes of rage; but such instances are rare. ‘Yes, enraged

partisans strung up the corpses of Mussolini and his mistress. But when it

Conclusion ~-> 267 came to a cold, systematic purging of Fascists and a punishing of political criminals, they failed utterly, Some of the most famous battles among the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, which appears from the record to have been an intensely warlike period, were mere ballets between armies largely made up of mercenaries. Thus a crucial day-long battle between armies representing Florence and Arezzo produced no deaths and only one injury, caused by a fall from a horse. And because many such battles were fought by foreign mercenaries, those rich cities were able to distance themselves even further from serious nastiness. So casual observers of the politics of the First Republic saw, on the surface, an epic Cold War struggle between the largest Communist party in the West and a Christian party closer to the Vatican than any other.

The rhetoric rang with Lenin and Jesus, with Gramsci and Mazzini, And,

at the beginning and through the early years of the Cold War, the clash was every bit as harsh as it seemed. But soon the reality behind the rhetoric made a segue into a gentle minuet in which no one got hurt, the oppo-

nent was helped to his feet if he stumbled, and spoils were carefully

shared. It was interrupted only by some terrorist bands in the Years of

Lead, whose leaders, every one, later declared from prison that their central error was a belief that Italians were ready for revolution.

‘What we have just observed in the story of the coup is a savage slice of a very atypical scythe through the field of Italian public life. The Milan Pool displayed a hard long-term purposefulness, an implacability, a cruelty, and a political extremism that are quite out of character for Italy.

The comparable moment would be the fiery (and similarly purposeful,

implacable, cruel, and doctrinaire) interruption by Savonarola, another man in robes, of the humane and moderate political life of Florence,

a

In the months spent in the compiling of evidence and the writing of this book, the authors saw its thesis transformed from a singular and shocking suggestion to an understanding ever more broadly shared in Italy, gaining

in credibility and losing'in newsworthiness every day. By the summer of 1997, our judgment in the last chapter that the alliance between the Milan

Pool and the PCI/PDS was based on a mountain of strong evidence, but

no smoking gun, was beginning to appear unnecessarily modest. The first

fall (1997) issue of MicroMega is advertised as featuring an article by the editor of this review, the central journal of the “PDS think tank,” described thus: “The Left has won with Operation Clean Hands, against Berlusconi and Fini.” Columnist and Professor Angelo Panebianco was

not surprised, calling it “the same old story, the'old de fucto alliance, the alliance of the old PCI in its final phase, between the principal party of

the Left and the most politicized part, the part that counts most, of the magistracy.”°

268 ~~ Chapter 24 - Columnist Gianni Baget Bozo, though disagreeing with Panebianco

on many counts, applauds the fact that the latter's column appeared in

Corriere della Sera, for so long an uncritical supporter of the Pool. As Baget Bozzo puts it, “For the first time the ‘Truth makes its appearance in Corriere, the public, but unspoken, Truth: that freedom is endangered by

the alliance between the Milan magistrates and the PDS.”

Tiziana Maiolo, a parliamentarian and former chairwoman of the Jus-

“tice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, is, as we have noted, a longtanding opponent of the Pool. She may be partisan, but she summarizes

"neatly:

What has happened on the fourth floor of the Palace of Justice in Milan cannot be considered a democratic event, because the Pool’s actions have | no place among the instruments of democracy. But it’s wrong to speak ofis |. “revolution” when the protagonists are in uniform or in judges’ robes, it called a coup. ... What kind of country is it where the government doesn’t govern, the opposition doesn’t oppose, the Parliament doesn’t legislate, the information media don’t inform, the courts don’t judge, and the prosecutors play the roles of government and legislature, communicators and historians? But it is no longer necessary to listen only to partisan voices. The thesis

of this book, which is still shockingly at variance with the conventional

svisdom about what happened in Italy, is finding its way into the com-

mentary of Italians who once rejected it. As, for example, the eminently

moderate political scientist and columnist Angelo Panebianco wrote on

‘The political offensive of those magistrates who garnered the attention of the mass media was strong and decisive. And—what was equally predictable—polities shattered, was sent reeling under its blows. . .. Politics, which has, up to now, pulled back in fear and trembling every time certain magistrates have raised their voices, must finally say: “Enough. We're going to proceed down our road because it is our sacrosanct right to do so,"

Panebianco suggests, turning us back to the beginning of this study, that Italian justice contains “very great evil” because it is still based on its Fascist presuppositions. He warns that if Italy does not recognize the dan-

gers and damages we have traced in this story of the coup,

then one must conclude that Italian democracy is, incurably, a democracy under judicial tutelage, that there exists, and has been delivered into the hands of a very small number of magistrates, a political power (and T empha-

i

Conclusion ~-> 269

_ size the word political) of intervention that is so strong, so frightening, that _ democratically elected politicians must, willing or not, submit to it.”

Then Panebianco acknowledges that not all Italian magistrates are exfemists like Borrelli and other members of MD he mentions. As exames of the many moderate, responsible magistrates who were at odds ith the radicals, he mentions two, Nordio and Coiro, who have been articipants in our drama,

|The reform against which Borrelli is now waging an exceedingly fre~ etic campaign would separate the magistrate’s career into a path for fosecutors and a path for judges. It is Borrelli and the extremists who

ave the public’s attention as they assert that the politicians working on ach a reform are all members of “a club of potential delinguents, people tho only want to pull out the claws of the magistracy so that they can lerrily begin stealing again.”* Part of the Italian public swallows these arguments but, says Panebiico, another important part is now beginning to have difficulty acceptig such “manifestly absurd theses as, for example, the one according to hich the unity of the [magistrate’s] career guarantees that the magistrate ill play the role of ‘impartial party,’

We have seen the emptiness of this thesis.

‘Carlo Nordio, the Venetian magistrate who has tried to bring greater dlitical balance to the investigation of Italian political corruption, sees

» risk whatsoever in the reforms that have inflamed the Pool, The magis-

ates’ independence is not endangered. And the reforms are, in fact, “in irmony with those proposed by the [European] parliament in Stras-

jurg.” The Pool’s campaign does not, Nordio claims, “correspond to e thought of the majority [of magistrates}.” When an interviewer asked r the names of those who agreed with Nordio, the Venetian mentioned

b most devastating name possible for the Pool’s effort to wrap itself in flected glory: Giovanni Falcone, the great martyr of the war against the afia.”? Finally, Panebianco suggests that Italian politics is at a fork in the road, tween maintaining “the most illiberal traits” of the country’s political

ture, or eliminating them, and thereby settling the crucial issue of who in command in Italy. “The politicians whose power comes from a popwr mandate must not forget it,””! So the question of how many Italians truly understand the events of 2 last five years becomes a central question, As for the people outside ly wying to make sense of this struggle, and the Italian politicians ose courage and independence will be tested, Panebianco, usually temtate and reserved in his writing, believes that “/e/hat is at stake in this swdown is the nature of Italian democracy.”?

270 ~~~ Chapter 24 Notes

1. Joseph LaPalombara, “Some Reflections on Italian Politics and Society,”

unpublished manuscript, 1995, 3.

2, Ibid., 8-9. 3, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds,, Introduction to The New Italian Republic (London: Routledge, 1966), 6. 4, Patrick McCarthy, The Crisis of the Italian State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 141. 5, Spencer Di Scala, Italy from Revolution to Republic (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 327. 6. An example of this reasoning is found in Emanuele Severino, “L'illegalita _ anticomunista madre di tutte le illegalita,” Corriere della Sera, 11 May 1993. 7. Dan Williams, “Mafia Accusations Put Ttaly’s Andreotti in Unwelcome Spotlight,” Washington Post, 3 September 1995, A29. 8, Sergio Romano, “After the Whirlwind,” Financial Times, 28 March 1995. 9. Pier Carlo Padoan, “Maastricht II: Can Italy Keep Up?” paper presented at CSIS/SAIS/IAI conference, Washington, D.C., February 1996, 10. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy (London: Penguin, 1990), 422, 11. Goffredo Buccini, “ “Tangentopoli, un puzzle senza fine,’ ” Corriere della Sera, 17 October 1993, 6.

12, David Nelken, “A Legal Revolution?” in The New Italian Republic, Stephen Grundle and Simon Parker, eds. (London: Routledge, 1996), 1995. 13, Grandfather Giovanni himself once “offered to help finance the Turin Fasist Party and . . . Valletta [PLAT’s postwar CEO] . . . was known to distribute largesse” to politicians, including those of the far Right, See McCarthy, Crisis, 6 14, Nelken, “Revolution,” 199, 15, McCarthy, Crisis, 6. 16. Mark Gilbert, The Italian Revolution Boulder: Westview, 1995), 127. 17. LaPalombara, “Reflections,” 6, 18, McCarthy, Crisis, 2. 19, Romano Canosa, Storia della Magistratura in Italia (Milan: Baldini&eCastoldi, 1996), 203. 20, We are ignoring here the factor of psychological conditioning. All countries go through mood shifts. Although we believe that this was not a significant factor for the triggering of Tangentopoli, some scholar not yet published could prove us wrong. 21. ‘The DC treasurer in Rome said he needed about $56 million a year to cover basic expenses. 22. G, Contento, “Il potere giudiziario tra azione politica e controllo dell’aministrazione,” Indice penale, 1995, 571.

23. Giuliano Gallo, “Caso Borrelli, Flick avvia un’inchiesta,” Corriere della Sera, 21 April 1997, 2. 24. Cited in Francesco Merlo, “I migliori,” Corriere della Sera, 21 April 1997,

Conclusion >

271

25. Cited in Francesco Verderami, “Fini: giudici con delirio di onnipotenza,”

Corriere della Sera, 24 April 1997, 2.

26. Milan and ‘Turin were long considered by the revohutionary Left to be the

cities where the revolution would begin.

27, Gilbert acknowledges that these newspapers “indisputably blurred” the

distinction between being investigated and being guilty, See Gilbert, Revolistion, 142. 28. Although he has warned about abuses, and probably did initially support

the inspections (as we claimed), Scalfaro’s failure to back Mancuso at the end had, we saw, other roots.

29. This problem was the subject of research carried out at Universita Statale

and Universita Cattolica, published in Zbloid (1996), the periodical of the Ordine dei Giornalisti della Lombardia. 30. Published in Ate? Camera dei Deputati, seduta congiunta, June 2, 1996.

31. An exception to this rule was the Pool’s use of leaks about other suspects? confessions and accusations to bring psychological pressure on suspects in the

same case.

32, Cited in Carlo Riva, “Un palazzo pieno di spifferi,” Prima Comunicazione,

April 1994,

33. The reference here is to that sector’s reporting, and editorials. The writing of a few columnists, especially in Corriere della Sera, does not fit this description. 34. Bruno Vespa, 1 duello (Milan: Nuova Eri-Mondadori, 1995), 34.

35. 36, (997, 37, 1997,

Ibid, 37. Marco Follini, “Il ritorno dei partiti,” 1 Mulino, 369, January-February 242, Paolo Prodi, “Misteri di partito,” J! Mulino, vol. 369, January-February 104-105.

38. This measure is sometimes a necessity, If a two-thirds majority is needed

© amend the constitution, the opposition cannot be shut out of the drafting.

jimilarly, the majority proposes a properly balanced slate of “lay” (nonmagisrate) candidates for the CSM, because 2 60 percent majority is required for parlianentary approval. So it is notall polite custom,

39. Cited in Stefano Zurlo, “Le toghe hanno abusato del codice,” Z! Giornale, ‘December 1996, 7.

40. Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California tress, 1988), 10. 41, Ibid, 12,

42, Ibid., 157-8.

43. Ibid., 13. Levi further notes: “The major implication of the theory of preda-

ory rule is that rulers will desire and formalize structures that increase their bar-

aining power, reduce their transaction costs and lower theit discount rates” ibid.,16).

44, 45. ‘ress, 46,

Ibid., 38. Joseph LaPalombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven: Yale University 1987), 57. Ibid., 83.

272 ~~ Chapter 24

:

"47, McCarthy, Crisis, 2.

‘

line with that of Frederic Spotts 48. McCarthy, Criss, 4-5. This analysis is inocr (Cambridge: Cambridge | and Theodor Wieser in Italy: A Difficult Dem acy ‘University Press, 1986), 141. 1984), 327. 49, Martin Clark, Modern Italy (London: Longman, 50. Gilbert, Revolution, 5.

© 51, Ibid, 19.

San Pietro a Musso52, Giordano Bruno Guerri, Gli Ztaliani sotto la Chiesa da ini (Milan: Mondadori, 1992). Society (New York: "53. Edward C. Banfield: The Moral Basis of + Backward Macmillan, 1967). ntegrano,’” in 54, Filippo Sabetti: “A Different Way of Knowing: The real “Mo

the Conference Group on Italian Italian Politics and Society, the Newsletter of

Polities and Society, No. 44, Fall 1995, 18-25. Italian Political Crisis,” West Ewro35. Carlo Guarnieri, “The Judiciary in the

‘pean Politics, vol. 20, no. 1, January 1997, 171.

out its quirky sidebars. 56. Nothing new can arise under the politicalnomsunenowith n to an international plot phe Lyndon La Rouche attributed the whole one of the authors is affiliated with the ganized by Henry Kissinger. Although tion was not consid‘came Washington think tank as Dr. Kissinger, asking his reac vered vital. no. 67, November 1996, 18. 57, Statenient by "The Editors, First Things, y,” Things, 21-22. 58. Robert H, Bork, “Our judicial Oligarch First Things, 27. 59. Russell Hitinger, “A Grisis of Legitimacy,”,” First Things, 34. 60. Charles W. Colson, “Kingdoms in ConflictThe First New Republic, 30 December 61, Jacob Heilbrunn, “Neocon v. Theocon,” 1996, 21. a Sera, 27 April 62, Interview with Cordova by Enzo d’Errico, Corviere dell 1997, a,” Corriere, 20 July 63. Angelo Panebianco, “Una Maastricht per la giustizi 1997, 1. accorge dell’alleanza tra |G. Gianni Baget Bozo, “Ora anche il ‘Corriere’ si toghe e PDS,” I! Giornale, 24 July 1997. wn inguisitore YS, Cited in Giancarlo I.chner, Borrelli: “Autobiografia” di (Milan: Giornalisti Editori, 1995). , 20 April 66, Cited in Angelo Panebianco, “La trincea della giustizia,” Corriere 1997, 1. 67. Ibid. 68, Ibid. 69. Ibid. iere, 29 June 70. Marisa Furagelli, “Nordlio: In Parenti ba esagerato,” Corr | 1997, 6.

71, Panebianco, “La trincea,” 1; emphasis added. 72. Ibid.

Chronology This book should not be used as a history of Italian politics from 1992 to the 1996 elections, or even as a history of Mani pulite. Its purpose is to provide evidence for an understanding of those events which is far from

he prevailing understanding. Therefore, many facts noted in this chrorology receive little attention in the text.

(985

Sossiga is elected president of the Republic. 1989

Parliament passes limited reform of judicial procedures. 991

\prif: Andreotti forms his seventh and last government, a coalition of the DC, PSI, Social Democrats, and Liberals.

992

anuary 9: Andreotti announces to the president that it is time for new

legislative elections.

imuary 14: President Cossiga says Craxi should form the next government.

inuary 30: Andreotti says his government has exhausted its mandate. ‘ebruary 2: Cossiga dissolves Parliament and calls April elections, ebruary 17: Di Pietro arrests Mario Chiesa, charging him with the infamous “funeral parlor scam.” farch 2: 148 party electoral lists are presented for the April elections. 273

274 ~ Chronology

member of European parMarch 12: Salvo Lima, DC leader in Sicily and the most intense phase of t, is assassinated in Palermo, launching

to the Mafia. DC, the y all eci esp ies, part l tica poli g kin lin ns tio iga est inv gue scores big gains. ‘April 5-6: National elections. NorParthetyrnSeeLea retary. Most DC leaders reject ‘April &: Forlani resigns as DC liamen

the resignation. on. ‘April 15: Forlani withdraws his resignati Maastricht Treaty. “April 17: Italian government approves

“April 23: The new Parliament meets.

elected president of the Chamber of [April 24: Oscar Luigi Scalfaro is ubl n Giovanni Spadolini. Deputies. Senate president is Rep cesicahis es it official mak on, ati ign res oun ann a sig Cos ent sid Pre April 25: three days later. ublic. Largest Rep the of ent sid pre ary por tem s ome bec ini dol Spa 28: [April se businessmen.

of Milane Operation Clean Hands arrest to date li and Paolo mer Socialist mayors of Milan, Carlo ‘Togno

May 1: Two for

Pillitteri, receive avvisi di garanzia. clean up the Milan Socialist Party. ay 4: Craxi names Giuliano Amato to should pull out of contention Craxi

for high office. by the Milan Pool. May 6: Big round-up of Milan politicians bardy regional cabinet. 8: The Pool arrests two members of Lom

May Citatisti receives an avviso. May 12: DC administrative chief Severino blic begins in Parliament, May 13: Election of new president ofleadtheer Repu ‘Antonio Del Pennino accused ties Depu of r mbe Cha an Republic

. by Milan magistrates of receiving stolen property voti ing for president. ritics exposed in parliamentary

May 17: Irregula y majority. Round after round fails to produce necessar May 22: Forlani resigns again.

Falcone, his wife, and three anni Giov rmo, Pale near ci, Capa At 23: May builder by the Mafia. Salvatore Ligresti, a Milan

bodyguards are killed and developer, is implicated in Tangentopoli.

sixteenth ballot. At the State May 25: Sealfaro is elected president on the assault politicians at-

Peneral for Falcone in Palermo, crowds verbally tending.

a bicameral committee to conMay 28: Scalfaro is sworn in and calls for sider reforins of the Italian State. DC and PST politicians. 30 to sent are isi guv th, mon this ing Jane: Dur to passing bribe moncy to Psi ‘The Lombardy PSI secretary confesses headquarters. ident of the Chamber of DepuJune 3: Giorgio Napolitano is elected pi res ties to replace Scalfaro.

1992 =

275

une 4: Scalfaro begins consultations to form the new government, says

he favors a “technical” government of experts.

une 9: Silvano Larini, the key to tracing PSI illicit funding through Swiss

banks, flees arrest by Pool magistrates, goes into hiding.

une 10: Franco Carraro, Socialist mayor of Rome, resigns. une

‘raxi withdraws from consideration as president of the council

of ministers (prime minister). Chiesa and 25 businessmen are indicted

in Milan. Lodi PSI Secretary Renato Amorese kills himself after being interrogated by Di Pietro, the first of the Operation Clean Hands sui-

cides.

une 1

ment.

alfaro asks Socialist Giuliano Amato to try to form a govern-

ily 2 and 4: Parliament approves Amato government. Debate features important Craxi statement about the Pool. The coalition includes DC,

PSI, Liberals, and Social Democrats. aly 8-9: The Chamber of Deputies approves the first requests for the waiving of parliamentary immunity received from the Pool. aly 14: An avviso goes to Socialist Gianni De Michelis, Andreotti’s last foreign minister,

aly 16: Ligresti is arrested,

ly 18: Avvisi go to Christian Democrats Silvio Lega, party vice secre~ tary, and Bruno Tabacci, former president of Lombardy regional government.

aly 19; In Palermo, a car bomb kills the other (after Falcone) great figure

of the magistrates’ struggle with the Mafia, Paolo Borsellino, and five

bodyguards.

ily 21: Crowds, including police, at the Borsellino funeral attack Scalfaro and Amato.

ily 22: Forlani withdraws his resignation again.

ily 30: The Pool arrests the Socialist leader on the Milan City Council, Loris Zaffra,

sugust 2: Popular Left columnist Giorgio Bocea uses the word revolution to describe the events of the moment.

august 6: An avviso goes to the former DC chief in the Veneto, Maurizio Creuso,

august 22: The Socialist daily Avanti/ publishes the first serious attack on

Di Pietro and his methods.

august 25: Craxi announces lawsuit against Di Pietro.

ptember 2: Socialist Deputy Sergio Moroni, under investigation by the Pool, commits suicide. Craxi criticizes the Pool; Socialist Justice Minis-

ter Claudio Martelli dissociates himself from Craxi’s criticism.

"276 ~~ Chronology September 23: Seven Roman officials and politicians are arrested for accepting kickbacks. October 3: Alberto Zamorani, ex-Vice Director of Italstat, says that 200

companies have been involved, for twenty years, in an organized system of kickbacks to political parties for highway contracts.

October 5: The lira sinks to its historic low against the German mark.

© October 12: The DC finally elects Mino Martinazzoli to succeed Forlani.

October 15: An avviso goes to Vincenzo Balzamo, administrative secre~

tary of the Socialist Party.

October 17: Indictments are requested against the mayor of Rome and nine former members of the city government. October 26: Fourteen businessmen, managers, and politicians are arrested for kickbacks in dam construction projects.

.

October 29: Chamber of Deputies ratifies the Maastricht Treaty. Liberal

Health Minister Giovanni De Lorenzo is accused by Naples magistrates

of buying votes.

November 2: Balzamo dies following a heart attack.

November 6: Thirty-four officials, mostly mid-level plus some private secretaries, are indicted in Operation Clean Hands.

November 19: Ligresti confesses to giving money to PSI officials.

November 26: Craxi receives sixty-three percent support at the Socialist . Party’s National Assembly. © November 27: The Socialist mayor of Naples, Nello Polese, resigns.

December 11: The Chamber of Deputies waives De Michelis’ immunity. fifty

December 14: Elections in fifty-five cities. The DC and PSI lose

percent of their votes in these cities. The Northern League becomes the second largest party in the North.

December 15: Craxi receives his first avviso, several hours after reading

about it in the press. He refuses to resign.

December 29: The leader of the PSI in Parma, Claudio Belletti, is arrested. 1993

January 8: Craxi receives a second avviso for illegal party financing, says “they want to erase me from politics.””

January 13: Parliament is asked to waive Craxi’s immunity.

January 15: The most important Mafia don in Sicily, Totd Riina, is cap-

tured in Palermo in the Sicilian police’s and magistrates’ greatest success. January 20: An investigation is launched into the ENI-Montedison affair. “= 9)

_

January 24: Craxi requests a parliamentary investigation of the financing

ofall parties.

January 29: Socialist Party headquarters are searched.

:

1993 >

277

anuary 31: The former director of the electric utility ENEL, Valerio Bitetto, is arrested, the 110th Operation Clean Hands arrest.

february 2: Pool magistrate Colombo orders Finance Police to enter the | Chamber of Deputies, allegedly to search for documents which were, in fact, published and available. Chamber President Napolitano protests.

february 3: Republican Antonio Savoia, member of the Regional Council f Lombardy, fearing implication in Yangentopoli, attempts suicide. Had he succeeded, he would have been the seventh.

february 7: Socialist Silvano Larini turns _ the lam. february 8: First avviso for kickbacks goes to Christian Democrat Vittorio Victory of the Left. DC vote shares thirty-nine percent

himself in after eight months on

on Rome subway construction Sbardella. Elections in Isernia. falls from sixty-one percent to

‘ebruary 9: Forlani’s name comes into ENEL case. Larini implicates

Craxi and Martelli in use of Lugano account for illegal financing. lebruary 10: Martelli resigns as justice minister because of publication of “news that an avviso was on its way to him. He also resigns from the EPSL

february 11: After sixteen years, Craxi resigns as secretary of the PSI.

lebruary 12: Former

Constitutional Court President Giovanni Conso

succeeds Martelli at Justice. Three other ministers who have received _avvisi stay in office. Former labor leader Giorgio Benvenuto elected PSI Party Secretary.

‘ebruary 13: An avviso goes to Gabriele Cagliari, president of the state nergy consortium ENI.

‘ebruary 15: Press announces that avvisi will be sent to Raul Gardini, ‘ormer CEO of the Ferruzzi Group, and the entire Board of Directors

f ENI at the time of Cagliari’s alleged crimes.

lebruary 17: Vincenza Tomaselli, Craxi’s secretary, is arrested.

‘ebruary 18: De Lorenzo’s refusal to resign weakens the Amato govern-

= ment.

‘ebruary 19: “The Day of the Arrests,” thirty-five in all in Rome and + Milan. De Lorenzo and Finance Minister Giovanni Goria resign. Guisy

“La Ganga receives his first avviso, resigns as Socialist leader in the

+ Chamber. Citaristi receives his thirteenth avviso.

‘ebruary 20: Avviso to Antonio Cariglia, president of the Social Demo“cratic Party.

ebruary 21: Former head of the Republican Party secretariat, Giorgio

Medri, is arrested.

‘ebruary 22; Two FIAT officials are arrested for violation of the party

| financing law. ‘ebruary 23: The entire regional administration of the Veneto resigns be-

278 ~~ Chronology cause of Tangentopoli. The lira hits a new low against European currencies, falls even lower the next day.

February 24: Conso offers a plan for ending the scandals, involving the return of illicit funds in exchange for light or suspended sentences.

February 25: Avvisito Giorgio La Malfa, secretary of the Republic Party, who resigns, and to Lorenzo Necci, former president of Enimont and

current head of Italy’s rail system. Former Director-General of the

Ministry of State Participation Sergio Castellari is found dead.

February 26: Gardini receives his avviso, eleven days after the news sto-

ties.

February 27: First reports of a PDS bank account for illegal funds.

March 1: PCI/PDS official Primo Greganti is arrested, the first important

arrest for “Red kickbacks.” March 2: Craxi appears before the parliamentary committee, which rec-

ommends to the Chamber on requests for the waiving of immunity.

March 4: Forlani accuses the Pool of “Gestapo methods” when they bring his former spokesman into court in handcuffs.

March 5: The government approves decree-law including Conso’s proposals, making illicit party financing a sort of misdemeanor subject to administrative sanctions, not a jailable crime. March 7: Borrelli attacks the decree-law on behalf of the Pool magistrates.

Scalfaro refuses to sign it: Carlo Ripa di Meana resigns as environment minister.

March 9: ENI president Cagliari is arrested,

March 10: In prison, Cagliari resigns as ENI President. He confesses to illicit financing of parties, but says he inherited the system from predecessor Franco Reviglio, now finance minister.

March 15: Avvisi to Christian Democrat Riccardo Misasi, former minister

for the South, and Liberal Party Secretary Renato Altissimo, who re-

signs the next day.

March 16: Cagliari gives details of party financing, mentions banker Francesco Pacini Battaglia (a leading figure in the 1997 scandal concerning Di Pietro’s alleged corruption) for the first time, March 21: Agriculture Minister Gianni Fontana resigns.

March 24: Naples offices of most parties are raided as Operation Clean |

Hands spreads south; seventeen Neapolitan Members of Parliament receive avvisi during the next three days.

March 27: First avviso for Mafia connections to seven-time prime minis~

ter, Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti.

March 29-30: Avviso to Reviglio, who becomes the seventh member of

the Amato government to resign under Clean Hands threat.

April 4: Socialist Franco Carraro is again elected mayor of Rome by city council full of avvisi recipients.

1993 ~-> 279

‘April 5; Another avviso to Andreotti, this time for illegal party Anancing.

April 10; Magistrates ask Parliament to lift Martelli’s immunity,

April 14:

Andreotti appears before the committee considering parliamen-

tary immunity.

April 18-19: Referendum on electoral reform, establishing partial majoritarian system, wins.

‘April 20: Rome city council is dismissed; the city will be administered under the interior ministry.

April 21: FIAT CEO Cesare Romiti goes to Milan for four-hour conversation with Pool, walks away with no avviso. Avviso to Defense Minister Salvo Ando,

April 22: Prime Minister Amato resigns.

April 23: Conflict between the Pool and Judge Italo Ghitti over treatment of FIAT executives becomes public. Revelation of Romiti’s meeting with the Pool. April 25: Scalfaro calls for a new government unconnected to political parties.

April 26: Scalfaro charges the Governor of the Banlk of Italy, Carlo Azeg-

lio Ciampi, to try to form a government. He would be the first prime minister in Italian history who is not a Member of Parliament.

April 27: Cagliari gives details of illicit payments to the DC and PSI. The Senate lifts Andreotti’s immunity.

April 28: Ciampi presents his new government, which includes three PDS

ministers.

‘April 29: Craxi speech to Chamber of Deputies, his principal statement ott the coup. The Chamber of Deputies refuses to lift Craxi’s parlia~ mentary immunity on all charges submitted by the Milan Pool, but

allows Roman magistrates to proceed on an illicit party financing

| charge. Pool chief Borrelli issues angry public statement, Mob gathers in front of Craxi’s hotel in Rome. Anti-Craxi demonstration in Milan.

Four ministers of the new government, including the three PDS members, resign before having taken office, protesting the Chamber vote. April 30: Demonstrations in several cities against the Chamber vote.

May: Borrelli begins effort to get Italians to inform on each other.

May 3: Auviso to former Socialist minister Rino Formica. Andreotti an-

nounces that he waives his own parliamentary immunity, but finds that this is not legal.

May 7: Ciampi government receives vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies.

May 9: Milan General Prosecutor Giulio Catelani says the Italian revolution, like the French, will take some time.

May 10: Mass arrests of state railway officials in Rome and Milan.

May 12: Ciampi government receives vote of confidence in the Senate.

=

280 ~~ Chronology

‘The president of the giant state holding company IRI, Franco Nobili,

is arrested, “May 13: Avvisi to former Christian Democratic minister Claudio Vitalone

and current environment minister, Socialist Valdo Spini. The Senate lifts Andreotti’s immunity. May 14: Terrorist bomb in Rome. Avviso to former Social Democratic ‘Party Secretary Carlo Vizzini.

_ May 15: One of the most ideologically rigid of Italian Communist leaders, Pietro Ingrao, resigns from. the PDS. Bologna economist Romano

Prodi, IRI president in the 1980s, named to the same post by the Ci-

ampi government.

May

16: Borrelli echoes Catelani’s reference to the French Revolution,

says Italy awaits only a spark for its explosion. May 17: Olivetti CEO Carlo De Benedetti admits that his company paid bribes to the DC and PSI.

| May 19: Judge Italo Ghitti expresses concern about the increasing role of magistrates.

May 20: Socialist Party Secretary Benvenuto resigns. May 21: Avvisi to two more former ministers, both from small “lay” par-

ties.

May 25: Avviso to former DC party chief Ciriaco De Mita.

May 26: Pool obtains new order to detain Cagliari, this based on ENI

insurance case. Duration of legal detention would have expired on

June 9.

May 27: A car bomb in via dei Georgofili, just outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, kills five and wounds twenty-nine.

May 28: Ottaviano Del ‘Turco and Raffaele Costa elected secretaries of what is left of the Socialist and Liberal Parties.

May 31: Avviso to former labor minister, Christian Democrat Franco _ Marini. Election in Valle d’Aosta. DC and PSI are big losers. June 2: A bomb is discovered in a FIAT outside Rome’s Palazzo Chigi,

|

the office of the prime minister.

June 6-7: First-round local elections for first-ever direct election of may_ ors, DC and PSI are almost wiped out, all the old governing-coalition lay parties lose ground, Winners are the Northern League and PDS (and Rete in Sicily).

June 10; Di Pietro advances proposals for incentives for informers to the convention of the National Association of Magistrates,

June 14: Northern League charges electoral fraud in ‘Turin, asks suspension of second round of voting. [June 17: Answering the voters’ opinion expressed in the referendum,

which referred only to the Senate, the Chamber also approves a majoritarian electoral system for seventy-five percent of its seats.

1993 s> 281

June 18: The Pool opens an investigation of the Ferruzzi Group.

June 20-21: Second round local elections. Northern League elects fifteen northern mayors. PDS wins most of the rest. DC is down to seven

mayors country-wide. Northern League’s Marco Formentini is elected

Mayor of Milan. Valentino Castellani (PDS-led coalition) is elected Mayor of Turin.

June 21; Defense presents new motion for Cagliari’s release. Denied on

June 24,

June 28: A shortfall of more than 200 million dollars is revealed at Montedison, almost 100 million more the following day.

July 7: Turin magistrates question Romiti. (Finally, on December 7, 1996, the Turin magistrates would announce their readiness to go to court with their slush fund case against Romiti. Four days later, Romiti would succeed Gianni Agnelli as President of FLAT.)

July 10: Borrelli rejects Scalfaro’s suggestion that the Pool’s methods were equivalent to torture, July 14: Salvatore Ligresti is re-arrested. Former Montedison Board

Chairman Giuseppe Garofano is arrested. Four days later he offers broad confession.

July 15: The Pool resumes questioning Cagliari for the first time since June 17.

July 16: Last hearing in the Cagliari case.

July 19: Four senior officials of security service SISDE are arrested.

July 20: Cagliari is found dead in San Vittore prison, an apparent suicide.

July 22: Argument between the Pool and Conso over preventive detention

becomes public with Conso’s Senate speech.

July 23; Gardini commits suicide in his Milan apartment. In connection

with the same cases, more arrests of Ferruzzi officials, plus financial

consultant Sergio Cusani, DC convention opens in Rome; Party Secre-

tary Martinazzoli proposes, and conyention approves, changing party’s name to Popular Party.

July 25: Garofano confesses to bribes paid to DC and PSI.

July 27: Car bombs in Milan and Rome kill five people.

July 29: Avvisi for the Enimont case go to Craxi, Martelli, and Forlani.

July 30-31: Ciampi announces parliamentary elections for spring 1994. Interior minister warns of “authoritarian results.”

August 3-4: The new electoral laws pass both houses.

August 7: Interior minister dissolves the Naples city council. August 8: Borrelli says his life is in danger.

August 13: Milan Judge Diego Curtd is charged with helping Enimont suspects,

August 24: Avviso to PDS administrative chief Marcello Stefanini causes open dissension within the Milan Pool.

“292 ~~ Chronology August 28: Pool magistrate Tiziana Parenti goes public with her dissent with colleagues over treatment of PDS and her own role.

September: Police seals on PDS files in Rome are violated; all the docu-

ments are “‘lost.””

September 3: Curtd is arrested. Three days later he confesses to accepting a bribe in the Enimont case.

September 13: Gianfranco Fini, leader of the ex-Fascist MSI, announces

his candidacy for mayor of Rome.

to September 20: Ciampi tells Scalfaro and Parliament that he is willing step down.

‘eptember 26: Northern League chief Umberto Bossi announces creation

of a parliament for his break-away republic.

September 27: Pool magistrates intercept, and suspend, a request for lift-

ing the immunity of PDS administrative chief Marcello Stefanini.

October: Documents on Red cooperatives are sequestered from the CCC

in Bologna.

October 4: The Pool closes the Stefanini case with no action taken.

October 11: Public feud among Pool magistrates over PDS investigations. Parenti is taken off the Greganti case.

October 14: Greganti is released. of October 17: Borrelli warns politicians with dirty hands to stay out upcoming elections before “‘we catch up to you.”

October 19: Milan GIP Italo Ghitti refuses the Pool’s efforts to “archive” the Greganti-Stefanini case, orders a new investigation.

October 28: The first hearings in the Cusani trial open in Milan and on

television. the inOctober 29: Scalfaro, as former interior minister, is implicated in vestigation of SISDE illicit funds. Two October 30: Rome magistrates issue arrest warrant for De Benedetti.

days later, he turns himself in, is given house arrest.

November 3: Scalfaro denies any knowledge of SISDE “black funds.”

November 4: Riccardo Malpica, former SISDE Director, testifies that he

gave illicit funds to Scalfaro. The Vatican bank, IOR, is named as holder of Montedison/Enimont bribe money.

November 17: Borrelli says the “great public trial” of the old regime has already taken place.

November 21-22: First round of local elections. The Left runs well throughout the country. Fini in Rome and Alessandra Mussolini in Na. ples, both MSI, run behind the Left but advance to the second round Centrist candidates fail to make the cut anywhere.

November 23: Silvio Berlusconi says he intends to enter active politics, and voices support for Fini in the mayoralty race in Rome.

1994 wer 283 November 30: Citaristi, under interrogation, says that Forlani and De _ Mita knew about bribes, illicit financing. ‘December 1: Former Budget Minister Paolo Cirino Pomicino implicates Amato in the Enimont case. Amato was PSI vice-secretary at the time.

December 2: Testifying at the Cusani trial, La Malfa admits having ac-

cepted illegal funds. The lira hits a new low.

‘December 5: Second round of local elections. The Left wins in the five

_ biggest cities voting, including Rome and Naples. December 7: Former administrative chief Alessandro Patelli confesses to

illicit funding of the Northern League.

December 10; Di Pietro and PDS leader Achille Occhetto have a long and _ unexplained meeting. December 14: Martelli admits having received illicit funds in the Enimont affair.

December 16: Christian Democrats debate whether to look toward a Ber-

' Jusconi alliance. The remnants of the PSI split between Craxi loyalists and party secretary Del Turco.

December 17: In the Cusani trial, Craxi lashes back at Di Pietro, admits

to participating in system of illicit party funding along with all other

parties, says everybody knew it, asks why the Pool does not proceed against the PCI/PDS. Forlani says he knew nothing.

December 19: Scalfaro, a life-long professional politician, says he hopes the parliament to be elected the following spring will have few profes-

sional politicians.

ecember 20: Northern League chief Bossi calls on Di Pietro, confirms Patelli testimony, pays back the money he received from the Enimont

deal. He then launches a campaign against the law on party financing,

ecember 21: Former Ferruzzi official Carlo Sama testifies that the PCI received funding from Gardini. December 22: The Northern League walks out of Parliament.

December 23: Cusani is released. ‘December 29: Borrelli blames the Church, partly, for Ttaly’s corruption. December 30: Borrelli puts himself forward as candidate for the presidency of the Milan Court of Appeals, the post his father held.

1994

January 11; Indro Montanelli resigns as editor of Berlusconi's I! Giornale

because he believes Berlusconi is about to become an active politician, thereby compromising the independence of the newspaper.

January 12-13: Prime Minister Ciampi submits his resignation, which

Scalfaro refuses three days later. Scalfaro dissolves Parliament, an-

"284 ~~ Chronology nounces elections for March 27 (soon changed to March 27-28 because

of Passover).

january 18: Christian Democrats split into Popular Party and Christian

Democratic Center, The former would become part of Left coalitions,

the latter part of Right coalitions. _ January 21: Nicola Mancino, implicated in SISDE “black funds” scandal, resigns as interior minister.

January 22: Martinazzoli inaugurates campaign for new Popular Party;

for the first time, the Christian Democratic Party will not be on an

election ballot. Gianfranco Fini, leader of the neo-Fascist MSI, an-

nounces process of transformation into the post-Fascist National Alli-

ance,

January

_

ossi indicates interest in allying his Northern League with

Berlusconi. But a few days later he says that a coalition involving the National Alliance would be impossible.

January 26: Berlusconi formally enters elective politics; his Forza Italia

struggles to find candidates for as many districts as possible.

| February 1: The PDS and seven much smaller parties agree on a “Progressive” coalition for the March elections. February 4: Bossi agrees to an electoral alliance with Berlusconi.

February 2: First major political rally for Berlusconi campaign. February 7: Fini agrees to a limited alliance with Berlusconi. February 11: The Pool arrests Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, followed by

other executives of Berlusconi’s firms over the next three weeks. March: The main Cusani trial receives much less attention than the star-

studded first hearings.

March 8: The Pool launches investigation of entire Fininvest empire, raids

Publitalia offices. Two days later Berlusconi accuses the Pool of playing

politics,

March 23: Magistrates raid Forza Italia headquarters in document search,

sequester candidate lists (which are public),

“March 27-28: Parliamentary elections, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia triumphs,

besting the PDS nationally by six-tenths of a percent, although the latter maintains its stready climb since the beginning of Operation Clean Hands. DC and PSI hit new lows (Martinazzoli resigns two days later).

Berlusconi’s Center-Right coalition (Forza Italia, Northern League,

‘National Alliance, one Christian Democratic splinter) will have a ma-

jority in the Chamber, a plurality in the Senate, with the Northern

League having won the most seats. Former Pool magistrate Tiziana Parenti is elected on the FI list.

April 13; Borrelli and Davigo say they will stay on the job, make their enemies “roll in the dust.” ‘Two weeks later the National Alliance reportedly offers the justice ministry to Davigo, who declines.

1994 >

285

April 16: Socialist Giulio di Donato becomes the first member of the new

= Parliament to be arrested.

April 29: Italo Ghitti, GIP for most Operation Clean Hands cases, steps

down to run for the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura. May 1: Borrelli predicts a political-institutional cataclysm in Italy leading _ to government by the Pool. But he says the magistrates will help govern | Italy only if the president calls on them.

Vay 7: Berlusconi offers the interior ministry to Di Pietro, who, after

_ consulting with Borrelli and Scalfaro, declines. Testimony from several _ sources indicates that Di Pietro still sees himself as the successor to

_ Berlusconi as prime minister.

May 10: Berlusconi finally manages to form a government after arduous

negotiating involving separate coalitions with Northern League and

National Alliance. Concern expressed in the United States and else-

_ where about inclusion of five National Alliance members. Vay 18 and 20: Senate, then Chamber, approve Berlusconi government.

_ When lower house committee chairs are announced over the next few days, Berlusconi has broken with usual practice by giving no chairman-

| ships, nor the presidency of either house, to the opposition.

Wlay 25: Stock market reacts negatively to rumors that the Pool is about to move on Berlusconi himself. une 12: Elections for the European Parliament. FI does well, PDS slips.

» Next day PDS Secretary Achille Occhetto resigns.

une 15: ine

The Pool arrests Citaristi.

calfaro expresses “solidarity” with Citaristi.

ine 17; In a letter, Milan General Prosecutor Catelani reveals his doubts

bout the Pool, says a search of Publitalia offices was a general fishing

xpedition, not a specific search for evidence relating to an open case. bne 26: First-round local elections. The Left progresses as cracks begin to show in Berlusconi's alliances.

ily: Files on Eumit case are “lost.” The Pool grills Paolo Berlusconi and, at some point, he admits to having given the order for payment of bribe

to Finance Police officers.

uly 1: Massimo d’Alema is elected PDS leader.

uly 13: Berlusconi government issues, and Scalfaro signs, the Biondi

| decree-law, beefing up defendants’ rights. It triggers a storm of attacks, especially from the Pool, but also a few notable supporters. Di Pietro, on live TV from Palace of Justice steps, says the Pool magistrates might

_all resign.

aly 16: Northern League opposes government on Biondi decree. Vice PM

Maroni claims text was changed after his approval, washes his hands of

involvement.

486 ~~ Chronology

| July 17: The Pool corrects Di Pietro’s threats: they might just ask for

|)

transfers. July 19; The government withdraws its support from the decree-law.

July 21: The Chamber of Deputies votes down the Biondi decree-lew. ee

‘Tiziana Maiolo calls Pool’s attempt to influence legislation “‘a subver-

sive act.”

July 26: Second arrest warrant for Paolo Berlusconi. August 5: Parenti is named president of bicameral anti-Mafia committee.

September 3: Beginning in Cernobbio, Di Pietro campaigns for his “legislative solution” to Tangentopoli. September 14: As climax of their campaign, the Pool’s stars appear at Milan’s state university.

September 27: Judge Ghitti goes public with his concerns about the Pool

and due process in Italy.

September 30: Brescia magistrates launch an investigation of Di Pietro. October 5: On the heels of the decree-law debacle, Biondi submits his resignation (refused), The government (unanimous cabinet vote) asks

Scalfaro, as president of the Consiglio superiore della magistratura (CSM), to evaluate the Pool’s attempts to undermine the government.

The CSM “archives” the request, never answers. Borrelli says the Pool’s investigation of Berlusconi’s business empire will reach the highest levels. October 8: Head of Milan lawyers’ association denounces the Pool’s vio-

lation of due process in its searches and investigations of Berlusconi’s

businesses.

October 13-17: Biondi announces an inspection of the Milan Pool, defends the move by citing a series of complaints and concerns about

Operation Clean Hands abuses.

October 25: Head of Milan lawyer’s association complains to CSM that Pool wire-taps violated lawyer-client relationships. Chamber President

Irene Pivetti asks Scalfaro for blue ribbon Tangentopoli inquiry; he re-

fuses.

November: Borrelli travels in Europe, calls for magistrates of the world to band together to defeat corrupt politicians.

November 17: Corriere reports that the PDS leadership considers Di

Pietro’s becoming prime minister to be the last hope for avoiding new elections.

November 20: First-round local elections, Big winner is PDS as Forza

Italia makes a poor showing. Some of Parenti’s statement to the inspectors reaches the press, indicating the Pool’s protection of the PDS.

November 21: The Pool sends an avviso to Berlusconi while he is hosting UN conference on crime in Naples. Borrelli telephones Scalfaro with

1995 >

287

the news. That evening, Scalfaro is heard to discuss a possible “presidential government” if the Berlusconi government should fall. November 22: Morning Corriere della Sera carries all the details of Ber-

lusconi’s avviso and the accusations against him. Berlusconi opens the . UN conference, then leaves and returns to Rome. That afternoon, carabinieri officers formally deliver avviso to Berlusconi in the prime min-

| ister’s office.

8

November 25: Di Pietro asks Borrelli for the assignment of representing _ the prosecution in a Berlusconi trial. November 26: Former President Cossiga accuses the Pool of engaging in “institutional guerilla warfare.” November 27: Demonstrations support Berlusconi. November 29: The Court of Cassation (First Section, chaired by Arnaldo

Valente) transfers the Finance Police part of the Pool’s investigation of Berlusconi to Brescia.

November 30-December 1: Pool magistrates react virulently to the transfer, attack the Court. (In early 1996, the Pool would accuse Judge Valente of talsing money from Berlusconi in a clear vendetta that led to

Valente’s [temporary] resignation.)

December 2: Borrelli sends letters to Catelani and Scalfaro complaining

about inspection, expressing disappointment in Catelani’s support of the inspection, and asking Scalfaro if he (Borrelli) can arrest the inspec-

_ tors.

December 4: Second round local elections, PDS and Progressive coalition win almost everywhere.

December 6: Di Pietro resigns,

December 8: PDS Senator Giovanni Pellegrino breaks ranks to express

concern about the Pool. December 13: Berlusconi submits to day-long interrogation by the Pool,

then issues a harsh statement saying they: had had no evidence. Pool

does not respond, December 17: The PDS announces no-confidence vote against Berlusconi

government.

December 21: Berlusconi proposes new elections. Fl-Northern League

alliance breaks, ending the government’s majority in Parliament.

December 22: Berlusconi submits his resignation, In a Corriere interview,

. Borrelli suggests the candidacy of Di Pietro as prime minister.

December 30; Scalfaro refuses new elections. 1995

lanuary 3: Venice magistrate Nordio sends avvisi to the heads of “Red cooperatives.”

288 ~~ Chronology January 12: Scalfaro promises new elections on June 11, according to Cos-

| sutta and others, January 13: Scalfaro asks Lamberto Dini, a member of the outgoing gov-

ernment, to try to form a government of technicians.

_

January 17: The Dini government takes office with a self-declared limited mandate of tasks, after which it will resign. It includes, as justice minis-

ter, ex-magistrate Filippo Mancuso.

|

January 25: In its party congress at Fiuggi, and with some defections, the MSI turns itself into the post-Fascist National Alliance.

January 25 and February 1: The Dini government is approved by the Chamber and the Senate.

February 2: Bologna economist and two-time IRI president Romano

Prodi declares his candidacy as a leader of Center-Left forces in opposition to Berlusconi. He will soon begin nationwide barnstorming aboard a bus featuring a new political symbol: the olive tree.

| February 5: Prodi suggests that Di Pietro might be part of his team. | February 11: D’Alema speaks to Northern League congress about a pos-

sible PDS-League alliance.

“February 24: Questioning the legitimacy of a government that is not a product of voter sentiment expressed in the 1994 elections, Berlusconi demands new elections. Scalfaro is adamant in his support of the Dini

|

=

government. © March 14: 'The Christian Democratic remnants in the Popular Party split once again, with the part headed by Rocco Buttiglione moving toward

alliance with Berlusconi.

"April 3: Finance Police General Giuseppe Cerciello makes a series of ac_|

cusations of abuse of office against Di Pietro and the Pool, including Marshall Nanocchio’s report that the magistrates were trying to make

:

him say the name “Berlusconi.” ‘The Di Pietro resignation takes effect as he becomes a private citizen.

“April 13: Berlusconi claims that Di Pietro had been opposed to the Ber-lusconi avviso. Di Pietro answers reporters’ questions about the claim _ cnigmatically, causing Borrelli’s. “guilty silence” charge against Di Pietro.

April 14: The incident of the man in the kindergarten playground triggers days of imaginative journalism (sce Chapter 21) and evokes declarations by the Pool of its solidarity with itself. April 24; Local elections, Widespread victories by the PDS, now Italy’s ~ largest party, and the Center-Left.

April 30: ‘The Vatican newspaper criticizes the Pool as “disoriented.” May 4: Justice Minister Mancuso orders a new inspection of the Milan Pool, He raises more questions about Cagliari’s death. May 7: More local elections, more Center-Left victories.

1995 >

289

lay 11: Mancuso suggests the Pool had refused to pursue the Greganti case.

“lay 20: The Pool accuses Berlusconi of being personally involved in the bribing of Finance Police officers to obtain tax leniency,

lay 26: The Pool begins a new round of arrests of Berlusconi’s business colleagues.

vlay 28: Based on an irregularity totalling six lire for every 100,000 in profit, the Pool makes a failed attempt to have Berlusconi’s Publitalia put into the hands of a commissioner. une 2: Press stories appear about a new inquiry by Brescia prosecutors

into corruption allegations against Di Pietro involving insurance executive Giancarlo Gorrini.

une 5: Brescia magistrates grill Borrelli about Di Pietro. They also ques

tion Marshall Nanocchio, who says that his discoveries about the “Red cooperatives” were ignored by the Pool.

une 26: Mancuso defends both his reopening of the investigation into Cagliari’s death and the inspection of the Pool against criticisms from

Scalfaro. uly 4; Brescia magistrates investigate actions of then-Pool magistrate De Pasquale in the Cagliari case.

uly 2: Brescia magistrates question Di Pietro for seventeen hours. uly 9: Revelation that Brescia magistrate about the cause of Cagliari’s death. August 3: A.new law tightening the rules ulgated. It draws heavily on the Conso August 25: I] Giornale exposes apparent

Di Martino has raised questions

on preventive detention is promand Biondi drafts, broad abuses in the allotting of

low-rent apartments managed by government agencies. PDS officials

are prominently mentioned. Roman magistrates launch an investiga~

tion.

September 14: As one result of Nordio’s investigation of cooperatives,

Venetian magistrates send avvisi for alleged violation of the party fi-

nancing law to Occhetto and D*Alema.

Jeptember 28: Franco Bassanini of the PDS confirms close working rela-

tionship between PDS and the Milan Pool, previews Iclo’s remarks of the next day.

September 29: During his trial in absentia, Craxi is vilified by one of the new recruits to the Pool, Paolo elo.

Detober 1: Ielo reveals phone taps in which Craxi appears to suggest that

Venetian magistrates are “cooperative.” ‘The Venetians trump lelo by

identifying Craxi’s interlocutor as his attorney, meaning that the Pool has broken the confidentiality of the lawyer-client relationship.

October 12: Borrelli denies Berlusconi’s accusation that Borrelli had informed Scalfaro of the avviso to Berlusconi before Berlusconi himself

290 ~~ Chronology

"was informed. Subsequently, Borrelli stops denying and starts explaining why he had done it. \ctober 19: ‘The Senate approves an unprecedented motion of no-confi-

= dence in a single minister, Mancuso, mostly for his investigation of, and

- accusations against, the Milan Pool, In the debate, Mancuso does not

read paragraphs he had written about Scalfaro’s role in SISDE’s black

later funds, although the press has the full text of the speech. Scalfaro Mandenies the charges, but neither he nor Dini suecessfully refute Pool _ cuso’s assertion that they both supported his investigations of the

= until the issue got too hot. _ October 27: Craxi, Martelli, Forlani, and Bossi all receive sentences in the _ Enimont case. November 15: Calabrian magistrates announce investigations of alleged Mafia connections of two parliamentarians, including Pool critic ‘Tiziana Maiolo. Dini, acting Justice Minister since the no-confidence vote against Mancuso, does just what Mancuso did to the Milan Pool: criti-

_ cizes the magistrates and launches an inspection,

‘November 20: Di Pietro attacks Prodi, says Prodi had tried to recruit him. (In July 1997 Di Pietro would join Prodi’s Olive ‘Tree as a candidate for the PDS’ safe seat in the Florentine commune of Mugello.)

‘November 22: The Pool sends a new avviso to Berlusconi concerning his

acquiring of the Medusa company. The next day, the Pool says it has

| found the Swiss bank link between Berlusconi and Craxi, presumably for illicit party funding.

ecember 20: Brescia magistrates announce their readiness to go to trial in their abuse-of-office and corruption case against Di Pietro. (In July

1997, fresh evidence coming from developer Antonio D’Adamo, who said he passed money and gifts through Pacini Battaglia to Di Pietro, would lead to the most serious charges yet against Di Pietro by the Brescia prosecutor’s office.) A top Forza Italia official says that the party’s funds come mostly from Berlusconi’s own pockets.

1996

_ January: Di Pietro begins, then abandons, an effort to form a centrist

political movement. (Later accounts show that he saw himself, at this time, as the next prime minister, and foresaw the worldwide exporta-

tion of Operation Clean Hands.) This was a successor to work done in

"|

:

/

© November 1995 by people associated with Di Pietro to form a new

political movement, True Democracy. January 14: Some texts of wiretaps on Di Pietro’s telephone become pub-

lic, showing him raising money for a Clean Hands Party, and discussing his own candidacy with party leaders across the political spectrum.

1996 ~=> 291

january 21: Barman of the Bar Tombini in Rome finds an electronic listen-

ing device under an ashtray, apparently aimed at magistrates from Rome’s Palace of Justice who frequent the bar. March 2: Electronic listening device at the Bar Mandara in Rome picks up

apparently compromising conversation involving Judge Renato Squil-

lante, When the news breaks, the Milan Pool acts quickly, sends police cars to Rome to arrest Squillante. ‘This is the beginning of the gradual public exposure of the Ariosto-Previti case, based on stories of bribes told by Stefania Ariosto, and the accusations of bias against Rome

Chief Prosecutor Michele Coiro, which fill newspapers during the

weeks leading up to the April elections, (Ariosto will later be sued for

calumny by all twenty-one of the people she mentioned in her sccounts.) The stories probably damage Berlusconi, closely associated with Previti. April 11: Finance Police officers pick up CCC documents, where they have been under seal in Bologna. Next day they discover that the main documents on Red cooperatives are missing. (In June 1997 Venice magistrate Nordio will indict PDS officials for stealing the files.)

April 21: National elections. The PDS becomes, by a narrow margin, the largest party, surpassing Forza Italia. ‘The victory of the Center-Left

coalition (the Olive Tree) dominated by the PDS is sufficient (with the

support of the Communist Refoundation Party in the Chamber of Deputies) for Romano Prodi to form a government, which would include Di Pietro as Minister of Public Works. (He would resign on November 14, 1996,) The PDS election victory effectively brings to a conclusion the Italian coup.

The Cast.of Characters _, These notes are not biographical sketches, but bare identifications to help

the reader. The entries do not include the scholars and journalists cited,

_unless they became actors in the political drama. GENNARO ACQUAVIVA

Senator. Socialist, Distinguished legislator, party official over several decades. Drew Northern League wrath for Senate eulogy to Cagliari.

GIANNI AGNELLI

“L’Avoocato” (the Lawyer). President of FIAT, Italy’s largest private ompany, from 1966 until stepping aside for Romiti in 1996, remaining

rincipal shareholder. Although the firm had long possessed ‘Turin daily La Stampa, Agnelli vastly increased print media holdings. As “the uncrowned King of Italy,” the preeminent symbol of Italy’s old money, old culture, new jet set.

Founder of FIAT in 1899, Grandfather of Gianni. Maintained control of company until his death in 1945, The idea of lending financial support to _ political parties was not foreign to him. LORGIO ALMIRANTE

eader of the Italian Social Movement (MSI) party and the MSI-DN

with Destra Nazionale, National Right). The dominant neo-Fascist

leader from the mid-1950s to his replacement by Gianfranco Fini in 1987.

~ Most of his party’s political successes were in the South. 293

294 ~~ The Cast of Characters

RENATO ALTISSIMO Leader of the Liberal Party (PLI) at the time of Operation Clean Hands. GIULIANO AMATO.

Prime Minister from June 1992 to April 1993. Socialist, professor, close

solleague of Craxi, gained initial attention for his ideas on constitutional and banking reform. Deputy Secretary of PSI, member of Parliament from 1983. Minister in several governments. Implicated in SISDE case 1993. Often mentioned as possible Center-Left coalition leader.

GIORGIO AMBROSOLI

Lawyer, financial expert who cracked Sindona case. Conservative Mi-

lanese (youthful member of Monarchist club), received assignments from government to investigate questionable banking situations. Uncomproinisingly honest, he was personally shocked by findings in Sindona ease, involvement of so much of Italian Establishment. Murdered by American

iafioso commissioned by Sindona in 1979. Immortalized in Corrado Sta-

jano’s books Un eroe borghese and 1995 film adaptation of book.

RENATO AMORESE

Leader of Socialist Party (PSI) in Lodi, Implicated in Tangentopoli in 1992, interrogated by Di Pietro, committed suicide,

GIULIO ANDREOTII

Seven-time prime minister, from 1972 to 1992. Minister in many govern-

ments, beginning 1947 with first De Gasperi government. Christian Dem-

‘ocrat, usually associated with, or led, party faction closest to the Church

(personally close to Pope Paul VI), protégé of De Gasperi. Although he played leading role during Historic Compromise days, was harshly criticized by Moro family and supporters for insufficient effortto save Moro. Charged by magistrates in various cities for alleged illegal party financing, Mafia association, and commissioning the murder of journalist Mino Pec-

orelli (avvisi for all three cases in 1993). Voluntarily agreed to Senate’s

lifting of his immunity.

STEFANIA ARIOSTO.

‘Milan antiques dealer. Chief witness in Pool’s case against Previti and Squillante. Accused of swindling, Shown to have suffered huge gambling losses,

The Cast of Characters ~> 295

VINCENZO BALZAMO Administrative chief of Socialist Party (PSI). Named by Ligresti in 1992 48 recipient of illegal funds, Died of heart attack 1992. -NRICO BERLINGUER

arty Secretary of Communist Party (PCI) 1973-84, during period (mid-

70s) of launching and development of Historic Compromise (usually, but questionably, considered Berlinguer’s idea and phrase) beginning in 973, through parliamentary support for DC-led coalitions, to its failure

1979) and consequent hardening of the party line to 1984. Of a noble jardinian family, started political action as adolescent in bread marches. ifelong Communist militant, Wife was devout Catholic, he favored co-

‘Operation with Catholic parties. Inherited Togliatti’s mantle as staunch supporter of First Republic, rejecting revolutionary tradition. Believed _ thar Allende experience in Chile taught necessity for Communist parties 0 govern in protective coalition other parties. His death in 1984 brought a million people into Roman streets, considered the last big Communist lemonstration.

*AOLO BERLUSCONI

Qwner and CEO of Edilnord, which controls daily J/ Giornale. Brother

f Silvio. Admitted authorizing illegal payments to political parties. Ac-

used of bribing Finance Police to obtain tax breaks, admitted in 1994 to

wing authorized the payments. Regularly arrested and harassed by Pool

eginning when Silvio entered politics in early 1994.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI Prime minister May-December 1994. Founder and leader of Forza Italia, ‘prising winner of March 1994 elections, delaying completion of the

an coup. Milan mall developer, friend and ally of Graxi, became the ajor entrepreneur in the rise of Italian commercial television, owner of

mportant print and electronic media throughout Europe, including Mon-

lori publishing house. Chief beneficiary of Mammi Law (Craxi goy-

nment), which ensured control of all three nationwide TV networks by

his Fininvest (Mediaset). First steps into elective politics in late 1993, with

nalified backing for Giancarlo Fini’s candidacy for Rome Mayor, An-

nounced his own candidacy for Prime Minister early 1994. Pool issued

viso to Berlusconi while he was hosting UN conference on criminality

Naples. Leader of Center-Right coalition (Polo), principal opposition

96 ~~~ The Cast of Characters

» Prodi government and Ceriter-Left Olive Tree. Loss in 1996 elections

5 Olive ‘Tree was very narrow. Beginning with his entry into politics, hief target and opponent of the Milan Pool. /ERONICA LARIO BERLUSCONI

art owner of Foglio Quotidiano publisher (daily IJ Foglio). Wife of vio, SAUSTO BERTINOTTI

seoretary of Communist Refoundation party (PRC). Veteran PCIes milimaant, Because Prodi government does not have Chamber of Deputi

voice ority without PRC, party has become troublesome (for majority)

of opposition to welfare reforms (especially pensions) needed for Italy to neet Maastricht convergence standards. Refused to support government ‘n sending troops to Albania.

LUCIANO BETTI

Financial director of Ligresti group. Testified to passing money to PSI. ENZO BINETII

Undersecretary of Justice in Ciampi government. Magistrate. ALFREDO BIONDI

Minister of Justice in Berlusconi government. Liberal. Lawyer. Member

of Parliament from 1968. Author of decree-law to beef up suspects’ rights, confidentiality of proceedings, evoking strongest storm of protest yet from Clean Hands Pool, inchiding Di Pietro’s threat that they would all

resign, Initiated inspection of Pool, citing long list of complaints as justification. Biondi resigned in the face of attacks from Pool. ILDA BOCCASSINI

Milan magistrate, younger, “second generation” member of Clean Hands Pool, Lead role in Squillante affair. Made front pages with charges, counter-charges in feud with ex-magistrate Parenti.

The Cast of Characters ~~» 297 RINALDO BONTEMPI

Member of Parliament, PDS. Accompanied Borrelli on 1994 trip to Brus-

sels to propose cooperation among European magistrates. , FRANCESCO SAVERIO BORRELLI

Milan magistrate. Chief of Clean Hands Pool. Served in Milan from 1980,

Passed up attempt to open vast political corruption investigation in 1990,

was finally ready to launch Operation Clean Hands in 1992. Considered

leader of “Magistrates” Party,” often speaking openly of need for greater

power for magistrates in Italian political mix. Encouraged Italians gener-

ally to become informers, Has shown interest in an international magistrates’ “Cominform.” Battled against two different inspections of his

Pool, raised possibility of arresting inspectors for interfering with Pool’s work, Outspoken attacks on reforms being considered by Bilateral Com-

mission (1997) became an issue in themselves, caused harsh exchange with

Commission Chairman D’Alema.

MANLIO BORRELLI

President of the Milan Court of Appeals 1952-59. Father of Francesco Saverio. Neapolitan who became charismatic figure in Milan cultural

‘scene.

PAOLO BORSELLINO

Sicilian magistrate. Along with his partner Falcone, hero of struggle against the Mafia. Murdered in 1992 by car-bomb in Palermo. UMBERTO BOSSI

Secretary of Northern League (Lega Nord) party and founding father of

the “Republic of Padania.” Medical student, Began with Lombard League in 1980s. His line, blaming southerners for Italy’s ills and heavy burden

on northerners, struck a popular chord in north, Generally considered

populist Right. By carly 1990s, League was largest party in many northem cities, won Milan mayoralty. Mildly implicated (disclosure failure) in ‘Tangentopoli (1993). His advocacy has wandered between federalism and

‘secession, between refusal to participate in Parliament and participation in Berlusconi’s 1994 governing coalition, His walk-out of coalition brought an end to Berlusconi government.

298 ~~ The Cast of Characters MAURIZIO BROCCOLETTI

‘Treasurer of SISDE intelligence ser'vice. Made récording of meeting implicating Scalfaro, others, in receipt of “black funds.” EDMONDO

BRUTI LIBERATI

Milan Magistrate (not Pool member). Prosecutor. Veteran leader of Milan Magistratura Democratica.

GIANSTEFANO BUZZI

PDS leader in Lombardy. Arrested by Poo! 1993. Released after several

days, writing strong testimony to bad conditions in San Vittore prison, rough tactics used by Pool. GABRIELE CAGLIARI

President of National Agency for Hydrocarbons (ENI) 1989-93. Engi-

ner, manager. Vice-President Enichem, ENI presidency usually held by executive close to PSI, as was Cagliari. Arrested 1993, resigned immedi-

ately, confessed to passing funds to PSI and DC, held in preventive deten-

tion more than four months until his death in prison. Apparent suicide, although questions have been raised by justice minister, magistrates.

MARGHERITA CAGOL A Red Brigades leader killed in shootout with carabiniert in 1975. PIETRO CALOGERO

Padua judge. Developed theory (Calogero Theorem) of leftist revolution-

ary network headed by ‘Toni Negri, successful in convicting Negri. ROBERTO CALVI Milan banker, and financier. Owner

of Banco

Ambrosiano. Jailed for

fraud in the bank’s 1981-82 scandal (involving DC, Vatican, Sindona,

etc,), Listed as P2 Lodge member. Calvi’s body was found hanging under

Blackfriar’s Bridge in London. Recent investigations suggest murder more

likely than suicide.

Ihe Cast of Characters =~ 299

ENZO CARRA

Spokesman for DC Secretary Forlani. Arrested by Pool. GIANCARLO CASELLI

Magistrate. Palermo prosecutor, head of anti-Mafia pool, from 1992. © Member of Magistratura Democratica, moderate wing. Principal succes-

sor to Falcone and Borsellino in, struggle against Mafia. Although critical of Biondi decree (1994), his practice and statements are generally different m Milan Pool’s. Defended Coiro against Pool’s charges before Consig-

ito Superiore della Magistratura (1996). ANTONIO CASSESE

_Judge of International Court of Justice in The Hague. Former law profes‘or, chairman of Committee for the Prevention of Torture and of Inhu-

man or Degrading Sentences or Treatment (CPT) of Council of Europe.

Presided over ex-Yugoslavia war crimes trials. ERGIO CASTELLARI

Director General of Ministry of State Participation. Implicated in Zan-

__gentopoli. Suicide.

GIULIO CATELANI

Milan General Prosecutor during main years of Operation Clean Hands.

Oversaw, but did not really control, Borrelli and the Pool. Statements

fcen supported Pool, but he worried about Pool’s “fishing expedition”

‘aids and Pool magistrates’ protagonism. Letter outlining his concerns

was partly responsible for justice ministry inspection of Pool. Proposed

e-criminalizing the party financing which was central to Tangentopoli

scandals.

_ GIUSEPPE CERCIELLO

|

General of the Finance Police, Complaint to justice minister about Pool’s

reatment of one of his marshals (a suicide) was part of basis for inspecion of Pool. Accused of corruption by the Pool (receiving bribes from

Berlusconi’s companies), named in 1994 avviso to Berlusconi, held in prison for nine months without trial. ‘Trial in Brescia backfired for Pool,

with charges of abuse of office against Di Pietro.

300 «~~ The Cast of Characters MARIO CHIESA

Director of Pio Albergo Trivulzio, major Milan charity. Socialist, Milan

ward heeler, so job came from spoils system. Arrested in February 1992

for taking kickbacks on maintenance contracts and for choice of funeral

parlors for cadavers from charity’s old peoples home. Held in preventive detention for several weeks until he confessed and turned state’s evidence, "This was opening act of Operation Clean Hands. CARLO AZEGLIO CIAMPI

Prime minister April 1993-May 1994. Governor of the Bank of Italy 1979-1993. Minister in succeeding governments. SEVERINO CITARISTI

Administrative chief and treasurer of the Christian Democratic Party

(DC). Named by Ligresti in 1992-as recipient of illegal funds. Recipient

of record number of avvisi. Arrested 1994 after having retired from party

post.

FRANCESCO COCO Genoa judge assassinated by Red Brigades. MICHELE COIRO

Magistrate. Rome Chief Prosecutor. A founder of Magistratura Demo-

cratica. Accused of bias (1996) by Milan Pool for helping Squillante, in-

vestigated by Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura. Nominated Director

General of Prisons, but died soon after (1997). NAPOLEONE

COLAJANNI

Veteran PCI/PDS politician. GHERARDO COLOMBO

Milan magistrate, member of Clean Hands Pool. Also worked on Sindona

case and P2 cases. Consultant to parliamentary committees, Author of

autobiographical/philosophical I! vizio della memoria. Ordered 1993 police “invasion” of Parliament to search for publicly available documents.

Co-creator of “Theory of Regency.” Took over prosecution of Berlus-

coni when Di Pietro resigned.

The Cast of Characters ~~ 307 GIOVANNI CONSO

Justice Minister in Amato and Ciampi governments February 1993 to May 1994. Magistrate, professor, president of Constitutional Court. Re= placed Martelli as minister when Martelli implicated in Tangentopoli. Drafted, but then renounced, failed 1993 decree-law beefing up suspects?

rights. In dramatic Senate speech, criticized Pool after Cagliari death.

Forced to resign under political attack from Milan Pool.

FRANCESCO COSSIGA

President of the Republic from 1985 to 1992. Two-time prime minister 1979-80. Resigned as interior minister after Moro kidnapping, later expressed regret for development of heavy use of pentiti while he was minister, Member of Parliament 1958-85. Christian Democrat although a cousin of PCI Secretary Enrico Berlinguer. Candid outbursts while president generally antagonized the Left. Resigned before end of term. ARMANDO

COSSUTA

Member of Parliament. Veteran PCI leader, now Communist Refounda-

tion (PRC). In 1996, appealed to PCI/PDS leadership to come clean about

party’s illicit financing.

MAURIZIO COSTANZO

Very popular television journalist and personality. Developed following

at RAI-TV, went to Berlusconi’s networks. Independent views are often

at odds with Berlusconi,

BETTINO CRAXI

‘Two-time prime minister from 1983 to 1987. Milan Socialist leader, over-

turned old PSI leadership to become party secretary in 1976 until Opera-

tion Clean Hands destroyed him politically in 1992. As a principal spoiler

of Historic Compromise and foe of judicial activism, Craxi incurred antagonism of both PCI/PDS and magistrates. Successfully fought Pool’s effort to lift his parliamentary immunity. Resigned as party secretary

1993, His admissions of illicit party financing, acceptance of political re-

sponsibility, with claims that everybody did it, including PCI/PDS, were

high points of parliamentary debate on Amato government confidence

vote, Senate immunity debate, and his testimony at Cusani trial. Cusani

trial testimony, focusing on relation between PCI/PDS and Pool, caused

302 ~~ ‘The Cast of Characters D’Ambrosio to criticize Di Pietro for giving Craxi so much leeway. In

exile in Hammamet, Tunisia. DOMENICO

CRISTIANO

Police officer, Witness in Nannocchio case. Held in Peschiera military prison with Cerciello. SERGIO CUSANI

Financier, financial consultant. Accused by Pool of being middle-man between Ferruzzi and political parties. His arrest and trial were headline events of Tangentopoli. First hearings (1993) in trial were televised,

watched by huge audience. Convicted, sentenced to eight years for illegal

payments to political parties. From prison, accused some journalists

(“Clean Pens”) of accepting money to influence stories (especially re

Montedison),

ANTONIO D’ADAMO

Major Milan construction czar. Once Di Pietro’s friend, D’Adamo

ac-

cused him in 1997 of having accepted money and gifts, through Pacini Battaglia, in exchange for protection from Operation Clean Hands.

VITTORIO D’AIELLO Lawyer. Attorney for Gabriele Cagliari. MASSIMO D’ALEMA. Party Secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) 1994—present.

Raised in loyal PCI family, national secretary of Young Communists, editor of PCI daily newspaper L’Unita. Agreed with Romano Prodi to form Olive Tree coalition of PDS and smaller parties, leading to 1996 victory

and Prodi governinent, Chairman of Bilateral Committee which recommended reforms of government, elections and justice to Parliament in 1997,

CARLO ALBERTO DALLA CHIESA

Carabinieri general, hero of struggles against terrorism and the Mafia.

Son of carabinievi general, studied law with Prof. Aldo Moro, gained first notice in well-publicized anti-Mafia work in Sicily. Given responsibility

1ue Cast OF Unaracters > 303 for national anti-terrorism effort in 1978, during which he developed ef-

ective use of pentiti. Sent to Palermo in 1982 as high-profile anti-Mafia refect, almost immediately assassinated.

GERARDO D’AMBROSIO

feteran Milan magistrate. Deputy to Clean Hands Pool chief Borrelli. Openly partisan for PDS. Often protected party from damage from Pool, specially magistrate Parenti, taking cases away from her when necessary. jupposed target of 1995 “assassination attempt” described in Chapter 21. TERCAMILLO DAVIGO

ilan magistrate, member of Clean Hands Pool. His politics do not apear to fit with those of his leftist colleagues. Co-creator of “Theory of

egency.””

ARLO DE BENEDETTI

EO and principal shareholder of Olivetti, Principal owner of large

edia group (La Repubblica, L’Espresso). War years in Switzerland, En-

red family metal-hosing business. Briefly FIAT CEO (1976), used rofits from that to buy his family’s weak computer and office machines ‘m in 1978, made Olivetti European leader in office machines, major owner of Italian print media. Implicated in Banco Ambrosiano scandal.

‘onfessed to kickbacks on government contracts, but was treated lightly

y Pool.

ALCIDE DE GASPERI

ight-time prime minister continuously from 1945 to 1953, the central

igure in immediate postwar Italy, the winning of the crucial 1948 elecion, and the founding of the First Republic. Born in what was then Ausian territory (Trento), elected

to Austro-Hungarian

Parliament,

a

founder of the (first) Popular Party (PPI). After imprisonment by the scists, spent all of the 1930s in Vatican Library, a founder, during

WWII, of Christian Democratic Party (DC). *

“MARCELLO DELL'UTRI President of Publitalia, advertising firm in Berlusconi group. Personally ‘close to Berlusconi, Arrested by Pool 1994. Interrogated by Palermo mag‘ates in 1997 about Mafia connections.

304 ~~ The Cast of Characters

FERRUCCIO DE LORENZO Liberal politician, Father of Erancesco. Arrested by Pool 1993. FRANCESCO DE LORENZO

1989-92, Liberal Minister of Health in last two Andreotti governments

in Member of Parliament, One previous ministerial portfolio. Implicated

from drug ‘Tangentopoli for kickbacks on hospital construction and bribestouch ed peofirms for certification of new medicines. Because the latter ples’s health, De Lorenzo was target of unusual level of public opprobrium, Hlis health deteriorated badly in prison. ANTONIO DEL PENNINO

Republican politician, closely associated with Spadolini. Implicated in Tangentopoli for alleged Milan subway kickbacks.

GIANNI DE MICHELIS

in last Andreotti govMinister in several governments. Foreign minister Veneto . Noted internaernments. Socialist politician, party leader in the ring a book on tionally for long hair, jet-set night clubbing, even authoinnova tive foreign discos in Europe, he surprised many by being activist, minister. Implicated in Tangentopoli, left politics. CIRIACO DE MITA

Member of Party secretary of Christian Democratic Party (DC) 1982-89. supporter Parliament from 1963, Leader of a Left faction of DC, active

of Historic Compromise with PCI, and therefore consistent opponent of

tated Craxi. Regional DC chieftain in area of South including that devas

by 1980 earthquake, tainted by corruption scandals in government earth-

quake relief effort. One of few DC leaders not atiacked by Pool,

FABIO DE PASQUALE Italian Milan magistrate. Briefly a member of Clean Hands Pool. Exposed d some misuse of EC funds 1992. Worked parts of ENI case, and so handle

n. of Cagliari interrogation and question of his prolonged incarceratio BARTOLOMEO

DE TOMA

energy issues. Businessman, Socialist, close to Craxi. Advised Craxi onof ENI money. His testimony implicated Ligresti and Craxi in passing

BRUNA DI LUCCA

Wife, widow of Gabriele Cagliari. Accused Clean Hands Pool of responsibility for husband’s death. Suggested Di Pietro resigned because manip-

ulated by Borrelli.

ROBERTO DI MARTINO

Brescia magistrate. Investigated Cagliari’s death, responsibility of Pool, CLAUDIO DINI

President of Milan’s subway system when Operation Clean Hands began.

Architect. Caught in Zangentopoli scandal. LAMBERTO DINI

Prime minister from January 1995 to April 1996. International banking

figure, with IMF in Washington from 1976, Director General of Bank of

Italy from 1979 until becoming treasury minister in Berlusconi government, then succeeded Berlusconi., Headed supposed government of technicians with limited mandate, But it depended on support of PDS and

Center-Left allies, went beyond original mandate, became an increasingly political government. After leaving office, formed Centrist “Italian Re-

newal” party, part of Olive ‘ree coalition, Foreign minister in Prodi government.

ANTONIO DI PIETRO

“Tonino.” Senator, Milan magistrate, member of the Clean Hands Pool.

From rural Molise, emigrated to Germany as a laborer, attended law

school at night while working as a police officer. Service as magistrate

mostly in Milan, short stretch in Bergamo. 1984 panel turned down his candidacy for tribunal seat because of his use of informers and breaking of confidentiality. As the lead figure in the Tangentopoli scandals from

the beginning in 1992, became the most popular public figure in Italy.

Cerciello investigation in Brescia led to 1994 accusations against Di Pietro

for abuse of office, corruption; new testimony re-opened corruption case

in 1997, Offered interior ministry by Berlusconi, declined. Resigned mag-

istracy December 1994, became university docent, Minister for Public

Works in Prodi government (1996), resigned. Victorious Olive Tree candi-

date for Mugello Senate seat 1997.

306 ~~ The Cast of Characters VITTORIO DOTTI

a Italia. Party leader in the Member of Chamber of Deputies. Forz Chamber. JAMES DOZIER

na by leftist terrorists, held ‘American general. Kidnapped 1981 in Vero then freed in biggest success to hostage in Padua for more than a month, date of State against terrorism. VITTORIO D’URSO

Party (PSL). His testimony imAssistant administrative chief of Socialist plicated Craxi in ‘Tangentopoli. AMINTORE FANFANI

, last in 1982-83. Regular minister in Six-time prime minister, first in 1954ocr at from 1945. Professor. Member other governments. Christian Dem

from 1972. of Parliament from 1946. Senator for Life

GIOVANNI FALCONE,

against the Mafia, including Sicilian magistrate, hero of some successes mafiosi. Invited to serve in 1986 maxi-trial which convicted important at Capaci in 1992 when nated Martelli’s justice ministry 1991. ‘Assassi

Mafia blew up his car, also killing wife and three guards. VITTORIO FELTRI

der e of, then successor to, paper'simplfoun Editor of I! Giornale. Colleaguthe apartment scandal of 1995, icating Indro Montanelli, Paper broke PDS and D’Alema, GJULIANO FERRARA

. Journalist and television Editor of most popular newsweelsly, Panorama Part owner of II Foglio. personality, Member of Berlusconi government. SERAFINO FERRUZZI

Ferruzzi Group. From farming 3U/

GIANFRANCO

FINI

ecretary of the National Alliance (AN) party. A member of the neo-

_Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) from an early age. Dauphin of tra tional leader Giorgio Almirante. Became the party leader in 1987. Guided the party through the transformation (1993-95) into the new ‘post-Fascist” AN, leaving some recalcitrants by the wayside. As candi-

_ date for Mayor of Rome in 1993, made it through to second round before losing. Joined the Berlusconi coalition to form the government following

he 1994 elections, has been allied with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FD) since

then. Now one of the two large parties, with FI, in the Center-Right position alliance.

GIOVANNI MARIA FLICK inister of Justice in Prodi government. Lawyer, professor. As minister,

xpressed concern about some of Borrelli’s intemperate public state.

ents, asked for an inquiry.

-RNALDO FORLANI

Prime minister 1980-81. The “P” in “CAR” informal ruling group with Craxi and Andreotti, Generally moved party in direction of PSI, away

from PCI. DC leader in the Marche. Minister in several governments, Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (DC) 1989-91, Party’s candate for president of the Republic in early balloting 1992; resigned when

any Christian Democrats deserted him. Interrogated on live television y Di Pietro during Cusani trial, claimed no memory of illegal party

financing.

CEO of Montedison 1987 until his suicide in 1993 after publication of

avviso di garanzia from Milan Pool. Replaced father-in-law Serafino Feruzzi as CEO of Ferrwzzi group. World-class yachtsman, dashing sports

and society figure. Took over Montedison chemicals firm, Ttaly’s second

largest private company, in 1987, Master-minded deals with ENT to cre-

ate, then terminate, Enimont, deals involving largest kickbacks uncovered

308 ~~ The Cast of Characters by Operation Clean Hands. Cusani’s arrest caused Gardini to believe

Pool would soon have enough information to arrest him, led immediately to his suicide.

GIUSEPPE GAROFANO

President of Montedison, His arrest in Geneva, after he had left the company, was the beginning of Montedison scandal. ANTONIO GAVA

Christian Democratic leader in Naples, Father Silvio was also Naples DC

chieftain, President of Naples Provincial (City) Council 1963-93. Presi-

dent of Regional Council. Member of Parliament from 1972. Minister in several governments, including stint as interior minister. Long reputed to

have connections to organized crime. Accused of receiving bribes for DC 1993.

LICIO GELLI Founder and leader of Propaganda 2 (P-2) Masonic Lodge in Rome, ex-

posed in 1981 as nest of prominent rightists plus major Establishment

figures

(including

Michele

Sindona),

strongly

suspected

of plotting

against Italian democracy. Fascist when young, After scandal, disappeared

from Italy, captured in Switzerland, escaped, recaptured, Released, never

convicted.

ITALO GHITTI

Milan magistrate. Served as judge (GIP) to whom most Operation Clean Hands requests for preventive detention came, almost all of which were

granted. Public disagreements with Pool over handling of FIAT officers (1993), use of preventive detention, treatment of cases implicating PDS.

Elected to Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, where he has continued to voice concern about imbalance between prosecution and defense. GAETANO GIFUNI

Secretary General of the Quirinale (President’s palace). Accused by Mancuso of participating in attempted cover-up of Scalfaro’s role in SISDE scandal,

‘The Cast of Characters > 309 GIANCARLO GORRINI

__GEO of major property insurance company MAA. In 1994 corruption nvestigation

of Di Pietro, alleged

through Rocca to Di Pietro in 1991.

to have given money,

automobile

ANTONIO GRAMSCI o-founder, leader, chief theoretician of Communist Party (PCI). Many

“years in prison until his death in 1937. His writing, more fragmentary

tes than a coherent treatise, maintained a powerful hold on PCI mili-

tants for the next fifty years. FRANCESCO GRECO.

ilan magistrate, younger “second generation” ? member of Clean Hands

Pool. Harsh public criticism of government in 1997 evoked negative reacion from Scalfaro, CSM.

PRIMO GREGANTI

‘Comrade G.” Communist Party (PCI) official. Admitted receiving Enitnont (Ferruzzi) money, but claimed to have pocketed it, not passed it on to party. Documents sequestered in Parenti’s investigation of Red cooper-

atives were put in his office, police seals broken, documents lost.

MAURIZIO GRIGO ‘Milan magistrate, GIP during final days of Cagliari episode, PAOLO IELO

Milan magistrate, member of Clean Hands Pool. Sicilian, alleged to have been PCI activist, Member of Magistratura Democratica. A later “second

generation” recruit to Pool (1993), had previously distinguished himself

by “archiving” judicial proceedings against PDS, did the same for Pool in case of alleged East German financing of PCI/PDS, other accusations against Stefanini. Tapped Craxi’s phone and revealed (1995) details of con-

sation between Craxi and his attorney, causing harsh reaction, even

from Pool’s allies.

JORGIO LA MALFA

Party secretary of Republican Party (PRI). Son of distinguished PRI

leader and anti-Fascist Ugo La Malfa. His receipt of an avviso from n Peat ji