His investigations revealed existence of Operation Gladio
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| Felice Casson identified the bomber behind the Peteano killings |
Felice Casson, the magistrate whose investigations exposed
the existence of the NATO-backed secret army codenamed Gladio, was born on this
day in 1953 in Chioggia, near Venice.
A former mayor of Venice and a representative of the
Democratic Party in the Italian Senate, Casson devoted much of his career in
the judiciary to fighting corruption and rooting out terrorists.
In 1984, his interest in terrorism led him to examine the unsolved
mystery of the Peteano bombing in 1972, in which three Carabinieri officers
were killed by a car bomb placed under an abandoned Fiat 500 in a tiny hamlet
close to the border with Yugoslavia in the province of Gorizia.
Casson discovered flaws in the original investigation into the bombing, which
at the time was blamed on the left-wing extremist group the Red Brigades, who
would later be responsible for the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro, a former
prime minister.
Afterwards, Italy launched a nationwide crackdown on
left-wing organisations and made more than 200 arrests.
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| Vincenzo Vinciguerra confessed to planting bomb that killed Carabinieri officers |
But Casson found no record of any investigation of the scene
of the bombing and discovered that a report claiming the explosives used in the
bomb was the same as previously used in Red Brigades activity was a forgery.
He reopened the case and his new investigation established
that the explosive used was called C4, a very powerful agent of which large
stocks were kept by NATO.
At around the same time he found details of the chance
discovery earlier in 1972 by other Carabinieri officers of a hidden arms cache
near Trieste, which had been mysteriously hushed up at the time. Among the weapons and munitions stored there
was C4.
Ultimately the investigation led Casson to order the arrest
of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of the right-wing extremist group Ordine
Nuovo – New Order – who confessed that he had planted the car bomb and
confirmed a connection Casson had already made between Ordine Nuovo and the
Italian secret services.
Marco Morin, the police explosives expert who had provided
false evidence about the explosives used at Peteano, was also a member.
Under questioning from judges, Vinciguerra went further,
linking a series of atrocities in Italy during the so-called Years of Lead,
beginning with the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in 1969, which killed 17 people, and culminating in
the massacre of 85 people at Bologna railway station in 1980, to a secret
organisation working on behalf of the Italian government and its allies.
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| Giuliano Andreotti admitted in 1990 that the Gladio operation existed |
He said that the Peteano outrage, after which the secret
services helped him flee to a place of refuge in Spain, had made it clear to
him that there existed “a structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of
giving a strategic direction to the outrages” and that it lay “within the state
itself.”
Vinciguerra said that it was “composed of civilians and
military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, to organise a resistance on Italian
soil against a Russian army...and which, lacking a Soviet military invasion
which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO's behalf, of preventing a
slip to the left in the political balance of the country (Italy). This they
did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and
military forces.”
The explosives used at Peteano actually came from another
hidden arms cache near Verona, which Casson concluded was part of a network of
more than 100 such caches belonging to NATO.
Naturally, the revelations of a convicted criminal could
easily be dismissed, yet the existence of Operation Gladio was confirmed in 1990 by the Italian
Christian Democrat prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, who in 1990 told a
parliamentary commission looking into the Years of Lead that Gladio had been
set up in 1953 as one of several “stay-behind” armies put in place across
Europe as NATO sought to be aware of any potential Soviet military action but
also to monitor any signs of Soviet-sponsored political activity.
Italy was a particular concern in the 1960s and 1970s
because of the rise in popularity of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian
Socialist Party.
Andreotti admitted that there was “a structure of
information, response and safeguard” in place, in which he and the Italian
president, Francesco Cossiga, had both been involved.
However, he said that 127 weapons caches had been dismantled
and that Gladio had not been involved in any of the bombings committed between
the 1960s and the 1980s.
Nonetheless, political historians note that each outrage,
whether judged to be committed by left-wing extremists or aimed at them - as in
the case of Bologna, a Communist stronghold -
tended to weaken the appetite for change and to strengthen the position
of the conservative Christian Democrats.
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| Parts of Chioggia have the look of Venice |
Travel tip:
Chioggia, where Felice Casson was born, is a historic fishing port
at the southern limit of the Venetian lagoon, accessible by boat direct from
Venice. It is actually a small island, linked by a causeway to the resort of
Sottomarina. Like Venice, it has a
number of canals but, unlike Venice, it is not closed to cars. The main street,
Corso del Popolo has a number of churches and some fine fish restaurants.
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| The Piazza della Vittoria in the centre of Gorizia |
Travel tip:
Gorizia has the appearance of an historic Italian town but it
has changed hands several times during its history, which is not surprising
given its geographical location. It sits
literally on the border with Slovenia and, in fact, is part of a metropolitan
area shared by the two countries, the section on the Slovenian side being now
known as Nova Gorica. It has German, Slovenian, Friulian and Venetian
influences, which can be experienced in particular in the local cuisine.
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