An absolutley incredible story involving the existence of a “shadow” police force and intelligence agency organized privately with the goals of gathering intelligence on, among others, the regular Italian police and intelligence organizations themselves, as well as possibly engaging in vigilante justice, has been occupying the front pages of Italian newpapers and scandalizing the public in the last few days.
The secret “parallel” police and intelligence force is called the
DSSA (Department of Strategic Studies on anti-Terrorism) and it was created clandestinally with the express purpose, according to its leader, of building up a “reputation” as a successful anti-Muslim terrorist organization among certain international organizations (CIA?, MI6?) which could provide it with the funding and resources it needed to operate outside the allegedly corrupted network of secret services and police forces offically recognized.
The whole operation bears a remarkable resemblance to Operation Gladio of the late 1970’s. Gladio, as I’ve written extensively elsewhere, was a Cold War-inspired effort which involved a mafia-infiltrated radical-right wing massonic organization called the P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by a man named Licio Gelli.
In that case, the international connection of P2 with the CIA and remnants of the US military (so-called “Stand-By’s”) left over from the Second Word War has long been well-established fact. The goal of Gladio was to discredit the Communist party and all communist movements through so-called “counter-terrorism activities” which, much like their counterparts in Latin America, often consisted in destructive terrorist acts and the attributution of responsibility for these acts to the Communists and other subversives.
The latest development in the DSSA scandal, as reported by today’s issue of L’Unità, is an extraordinary public declaration made by a Forza Italia member of Parliament and VIP, Carlo Taormina.
From L’Unità:
The illegal antiterrorism structure [DSSA] even has its prestigious defenders, such as the parliamentary lawyer of Forza Italia Carlo Taormina. “It’s not surprising- he asserts – that the same magistrates who have incriminated the State Police for having confronted the barbaric wave of the Black Block and of the social centers of Agnoletto and Casarini, today arrests and torments those who instead should be thanked for having taken on the burden of trying to bring down the prolifereting terroristic web that has occupied the national territory.
Ummm….proliferating where exactly,BTW??? Can you provide some evidence for that assertion, please. Alright, damnit, I’ll just take your word for it!!
But here’s the quote which adds a new element to the mystery:
“The structure headed by [Giorgio] Saya [the head of DSSA] – Taormina afferms- provided to the Ministries of Internal Affairs and of Defense, to Sismi [Italian foriegn intelligence service], to Sisde [Italian domestic intelligence servece] and to the Digos [another secret service] information via formal acts. It isn’t credible, therefore, that it was outside and independent of the institutions of the State and that it even operated against it. The official contacts demonstrate, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the DSSA operated in strict collaboration with organs of the State and therfore in full legality.
Well, no, of course not. The fact that the Berlusconi governent allowed, perhaps even authorized, the creation of an underground spy network of any kind without Parliamentary approval does not make it constitutional. Indeed, under the Consitution of 1948 “secret” or “special” judicial entities are expressly forbidden.
For Taormina, “we must be grateful to those who, in a spirit of collaboration, intend to make up for the incapacities, intentional or unintentional, of the governmental structures that haven’t been able to prevent the vast penetration of the bases of Islamic terrorism, toward which the magistrature looks on with benevolent awareness, releasing from prison terrorists or other highly dangerous persons……
It could be more than probable, indeed I think its certain – he adds – that the DSSA has acquired some very delicate knowledge regarding things such as the kidnapping of [Fabrizio] Quattrocchi, the true story behind the kidnappings of the two Simonas and of Clementina Cantoni and, more in general, regarding the story of the Irachi kidnappings, with particular reference to their organization in accord with certain sectors of the Italian Red [as in Communist]criminality.
Of course!! The Red criminality is just running rampant all over Italy these days. This is especially obvious up in the North with all those Swastikas and posters of Mussolini waving about after nearly every soccer match!!
