PIAZZA FONTANA, WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG
by Beppe Grillo 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/PIAZZA-FONTANA-NOI-SAPEVAMO/119592284739264#!/note.php?note_id=391240116266&id=101748583911&ref=mf
Translated from Italian by Mairin OHailche: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=137246282969550&id=100001149409592&ref=mf
Key refs.: Piazza Fontana bombing, Gen. Maletti, Rosa dei Venti, Portella delle Ginestre massacre

................

The United States won the Second World War, this is something that no one can dispute. It happened back in 1945. Since then 65 years have passed. They loved it so much here in Italy that they have never left even though, as everyone knows, house guests are like fish: if they stay too long they begin to stink.

Ever since the Portella della Ginestra affair, the CIA has always played the role of the butler who is always the first person to come under suspicion, even though he is innocent of any wrongdoing. Three men went to South Africa to interview General Maletti, former head of counterespionage for the SID. Maletti stated that behind the events of Piazza Fontana lay the shadow of the CIA, the American secret services that wanted to destabilise the country in order to bring about a swing to the right, as occurred in Greece under the Colonels and in Chile under Pinochet.

In Italy today  there are still dozens of American military bases, American nuclear bombs and the biggest American military base in Europe is currently under construction at Dal Molin [Vicenza]. Just yesterday, Mafia supergrass Antonio Di Perna said that "Perhaps Enrico Mattei (former President of ENI, Ed) was murdered because he was a thorn in the Americans’ side ". The Italian armed forces have become the United States’ askaris in senseless conflicts from Iraq through to Afghanistan. Dear Americans, the War is over and even the Berlin Wall has fallen. Now go in peace.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Interview with Andrea Sceresini and Maria Elena Scandaliato, authors of the book entitled: “Piazza Fontana – Noi sapevamo” (Piazza Fontana – We Knew It All Along).


Andrea Sceresini: "My name is Andrea Sceresini and, together with Nicola Palma and Maria Elena Scandaliato, I co-authored the book entitled “Piazza Fontana – Noi sapevamo”, published just a few weeks ago. I believe that it still makes sense to talk about the events of Piazza Fontana today, 41 years later. It still makes sense because we are talking about events that have never really been properly explained, and because these events are symptomatic of an era, namely the era of the Strategy of Tension, of terrorism and of the limited sovereignty that existed in Italy during the 1970’s and thereafter; a situation that has somehow dragged on until now and that, unsurprisingly has never been properly explained. We have never really been able to understand the truth about what happened, about Piazza Fontana, about the various attempted coup d’états that took place in Italy from the early Seventies (in other words, starting with the Borghese Coup) through to the mid-Seventies, or about the other bombs and the other massacres that killed dozens and dozens of people during the 1970’s.

The meaning of Piazza Fontana today

Yes, it has meaning. It is meaningful because a recent survey conducted amongst a number of young people in Milan revealed that the majority of high school students are convinced that the bomb in Piazza Fontana was instead placed by the Red Brigades, so it has meaning because they are part of what should be the public culture of this country.

Maria Elena Scandaliato: "The reasons behind the massacre are the same as those behind the creation of the entire strategy of tension, namely to create a kind of social tension in Italy that would somehow justify authoritarian control over the population, similar to what occurred in Greece but in a different form, as there was no need for a military coup like the one that occurred against the colonels in Greece just a few years earlier.

So these are the reasons, which can essentially be traced back to the Cold War that existed in Europe at the time and that was of particular concern to Europe, also because we must also remember that, at the time, Italy had the strongest Communist Party in all of Europe and so, after the "Hot Autumn" of ’69 and following a series of workers' rights victories and battles it was thought necessary to eliminate the communist threat ; and the Strategy of Tension met this need, which was not only an Italian need, but also an international and an American need. Not only were we a member of NATO, but we were also NATO’s aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, so we had to be an indisputable, firm and strong point of reference. That is why the strategy of tension was implemented and it was, in some ways, a winning strategy.

Andrea Sceresini: "According to what [general] Maletti says, and according to what our judiciary has stated, or rather what they suspect as a final ruling has never been issued in this regard, the United States had supplied the attackers with explosives. The bombers were the neofascists of the Padua-Veneto cell of the “Ordine Nuovo” (New Order) organisation, and the Americans supplied them with explosives and logistical support. All of the American bases in northeastern Italy were somehow involved in actively supporting the neofascist groups by providing them with training , arms, munitions and men. These facts had already come to light in the years immediately following the Piazza Fontana bombing; for example, in the Rosa dei Venti investigation conducted by Judge Tamburino in '74, which revealed these facts, as did the Salvini inquiry.

So the Americans provided the logistical support, the explosives and, above all, gave the bombers carte blanche to act, which they did totally independently. It was not some CIA agent who placed the bomb in Piazza Fontana, but instead a bunch of Italian neofascists, armed with American explosives, who carried out the attack.

Maria Elena Scandaliato: "There is no doubt that ever since the Seventies, American interference has continued unabated, and there is also no longer anyone who denies this. In the Seventies, there were those who even denied the existence of any NATO or American military bases in Italy because of the very real risk of a nuclear war, in which Italy would have been a prime target due to the fact that this country was one of the prime missile launching sites. Then there was also a left wing area that continued to question whether or not Italy should even be a member of NATO in the first place.

Today, all this is no longer the case, yet American forces still remain in Italy, and no one even questions their presence any longer. In my opinion, they are even more deeply rooted here than before, yet no one questions their presence, neither the right wing  - oh well, no one from the right wing is ever likely to question it , but not even the left wing questions their continued presence. All the parties in the Italian political spectrum steer clear of discussing the American presence, and above all the rules and regulations under which American and NATO bases continue to operate in Italy.

Nevertheless, the risk of Italy landing up in the middle of a potential nuclear war is still very real, even though no one talks about it, even though no-one bothers to raise the issue of this very real risk.

Andrea Sceresini: "There are still many unanswered questions, and even after having spoken with Maletti and various other members of the secret services, as opposed to individuals linked to the far right wing terrorist organisations, etc., we realised that everyone is still very scared to speak out. There is a truth that many of them admit to knowing, but have never spoken about. There are certain records from the judicial interrogations of individuals linked, for example, to the “Rosa dei Venti” inquiry, which are still classified as State Secrets today, 40 years afterwards, so no one can know what these individuals actually said during the course of these questioning sessions. People are afraid to talk about what really happened, even Maletti himself. For example, we visited Licio Gelli and he told us that when Maletti came to Italy in 2001 to testify with regard to the Piazza Fontana attack, he only had so many days of safe-conduct, let’s say ten days in all. He testified, after which he went to visit Gelli at Villa Wanda, where the two met and Gelli asked him: “What the hell are you doing here in Italy? You must go back to South Africa immediately. Tomorrow you must catch a train, go to Marseilles and then climb on a plane bound for South Africa because it is dangerous for you to stay here”.

This is pretty much the attitude held by most of these individuals, so what is it precisely that is so unmentionable? Is it perhaps Andreotti’s involvement? I don’t think so because, after all, Andreotti has in any event been openly accused regarding every other affair as well, from the Pecorelli case through to his alleged Mafia connections, so obviously there must be something far bigger involved, that is probably still going on to this day. Maletti told us that one of the men who was at Piazza Fontana on that day had later become a minister, in Berlusconi’s previous government, which is also mentioned in this book. Which means that these individuals are pretty much still around today, the very same people, the structures haven’t changed, nor have the situations, so confessing, telling the whole truth would create problems for political stability, even today. This is proof that anyone who does indeed know the truth would do better to simply keep quiet.

What sense is there in remembering

Maria Elena Scandaliato: "People want to know the truth about an affair that is part of public memory. For example, we are talking about Ordine Nuovo as an extreme right-wing, neofascist organisation that claimed tens of innocent victims in their attempt to achieve the objectives of what we could classify as pure terrorism, in other words, to sow panic and terror amongst the population by means of indiscriminate attacks. We’re talking about major and extremely serious attacks here, attacks that actually killed tens of innocent people.
What Andrea was saying earlier, namely that if you ask the average Milan university student who he/she believes was really responsible for placing the bomb in Piazza Fontana back in '69 he/she would say that it was the Red Brigades; this makes you realise that everything has been blanked out. If you speak to average 20-year-olds with average general knowledge, they don’t even know what “Ordine Nuovo” was. But if we put the lives of so many innocent victims on the other side of the scale, these youngsters should know about Ordine Nuovo, at least as much as they know about the Red Brigades, but none of them know about the former!

This is a serious matter, and it is proof of just how much of our collective memory has been totally covered up, put into a box and dropped into the sea. Italy's public and political memory, the communal memory that they talk about these days is nonexistent, it's just a sham, it has no meaning, it’s empty, without any content, indeed, in our opinion, there is no communal memory.

Andrea Sceresini: "Then there is the matter of the many other CIA operations in Italy that no one knows anything about, for example, the operation codenamed “Blue Moon”, which no one seems to know anything about but that nevertheless came to light in the case dossiers at the time of the Rosa dei Venti trial, and also in those relating to the most recent Piazza Fontana trial. "Blue Moon" was an operation conducted by the American secret services in Italy involving the introduction of heroin into the student movement, with the aim of distributing the drug amongst our young people in order to decrease the militancy of workers, students etc. According to the documentation, this operation was actually carried out, although no one appears to know anything much about it. We also knew nothing about it until we read about it in the court documents, although heroin claimed something like 6 or 7 thousand victims in Italy during the Seventies. Obviously there is a common desire not to know, not to go digging, not to find out anything about these things, not to remember them and not to hand them down to the next generation.

Maria Elena Scandaliato: "These events, namely the bombs and the massacres, are the foundation on which the Italian Republic was built, and this is something that we must not forget. If we want to go digging around  we'll find that even before the Portella della Ginestra massacre this is what was going on, even before that. Today’s Sicily was built up on these very same foundations and today’s Italy, Berlusconi’s Italy, where there is no political opposition in Parliament, where there is essentially one single party, which I believe is the case, I say this Italy rests on these very same foundations, namely on terror attacks, the Strategy of Tension and the limited sovereignty imposed on us by the United States. This is Italy as we know it. We can best understand why Italy is what it is today by taking a closer look at these foundations.

"How Italy was liberated by the CIA and the mafia" - Interview with Nicola Biondo (in Italian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V4zI66CXig