Giovanni Pellegrino, I was a Senator of the Republic from 1987 to 2001 and Chairman of the bicameral Commission of Inquiry into the Massacres. Yesterday, former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato asked France Macron to apologize to Italy and the families of the 81 victims in the Ustica massacre because of the downing of the DC9 Itavia plane with a French missile. what do you think?
And I agree with him. As I wrote in my last book, Ten Years of Solitude, Ustica remains the only problem we faced in the massacre commission that cannot be said to have been finally resolved. Cossiga has also endorsed the fact that the downing of the DC9 was caused by a French missile. : today President Macron will not cost anything to explain it, putting an end to a long history of mysteries and pain.The relatives of the victims of that massacre have already been compensated because, after successive judgments starting from June 27, 1980, the responsibility of the Italian state is revealed: it did not do what it should have He did it to ensure the security of heaven and he is capable of it.”
Amato speaks of the “NATO reason” allegedly trumping state reasons in this matter. “An apparatus of soldiers from different countries denied the truth, believing that the damage would be irreparable for NATO,” he added. Has the sovereignty of our country been violated?
“Amato represents Italian institutions at the highest level. He is convinced that France did not tell the truth about Ustica because it is bound by NATO secrecy. There is some echo of this in the work of the massacre committee. General Niccolo Pozzo, who from 1973 to 1982 was the closest collaborator of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa at the head of the Armagh, was in Corsica in 1980 and spoke of the impressive traffic of French military aircraft that left the southern bases of the island. It is possible that it happened, says Amato, but the leaders of the Air Force remained committed to this secret above the state.
It is a very grave betrayal: they lied to the head of state, who commands the armed forces, to the prime minister, and to parliamentary committees. However, none of them paid the price. Why?
The Air Force immediately suspected that the DC9 had been shot down by the Americans, who were “cracking” the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea without notifying the Italian Air Force. And she remained trapped in this suspicion even when she realized that this was not the truth. Judge Priory, who investigated the massacre, accused the Air Force commanders of the crime of attacking the constitutional bodies enshrined in the Penal Code and which he called high treason in Article 77 of the Military Penal Code of Peace, instead declaring the typical crimes that the law dropped the wrong directives of the restrictions such as forgery and abuse Use and omission of official business. The accusation of high treason was imposed and eventual acquittal could have been foreseen, even notwithstanding a change made in the meantime to the law of high treason, according to which the penalty would only be effected if the same treason had been committed by violence.”
He says France and NATO have nothing to lose if the Ustica issue is clarified. However, there will at least be a political price to pay at a time when North Africa is unstable and NATO, with the conflict in Ukraine, is experiencing a crisis of credibility, don’t you think?
“Secrets of the empire have always been an inescapable element of human history. Authority has the need to never tell the whole truth. Of course, we will move closer and closer to the democratic space when the time and space occupied by secrets are reduced to a minimum. NATO has always kept secrets, and it does so jealously. Think of Gladio.’
A paramilitary organization, the result of an agreement between the CIA and Italian intelligence, to counter a possible invasion of Europe by the Soviet Union and the countries acceding to the Warsaw Pact. It was Andreotti who confirmed its existence, but almost all the countries of the Coalition had similar ones.
Not only Andreotti. Before him, Gladio’s secret had been revealed by people very close to Aldo Moro, who had delivered secret documents to the Red Brigades which were later found in photocopies in the Red Brigades’ hideout on Via Monte Nevoso in Milan and originally in the Small. Garden behind Br’s hideout on Via Fracchia in Genoa. Political leaders have always been the ones to reveal secrets, so why not do it now because there will be no consequences?”
Is there anything about the rebuilding done by Amato and Cossiga before him that doesn’t convince you?
“I am not convinced by the fact that the plane that was supposed to carry Gaddafi on board was the same one that went down in Sila. I am not convinced of how much time has elapsed between the discovery of the wreck of the Libyan Mig in Calabria and the Ustica incident. I’ve always thought it more likely that there was a fugitive from the Libyan plane, especially since there is confusion in reconstructing the episode. On the committee, we heard a general in the Air Force almost admit it. One of the policemen said that upon arriving at the scene, he saw a soldier leaving the spot where the MiG was with a flying piece under his arm. And the pilot didn’t even have a flight plan, they even found one written in pencil. I think it abandoned, ran out of fuel and crashed. For the rest, everything Amato says is highly probable. I would just like to add that the text that the D’Alema government sent to Chirac and Clinton to ask for clarification was not only agreed with Priory, but also with me and with Enzo Manca, the vice-president of the massacre commission. Now we have to wait for a gesture of goodwill from the French.”
Senator, why should this gesture come now? Relations with the French were not and will not always be perfect.
Someone might say: Why not now? There has always been competition between countries. Along the western and eastern frontiers, Italy was an enemy of the Eastern Front and a close relative of the Western Front. All along the north-south line, we’ve always been rivals of France and England. The truth of those years lies at the crossroads of these two frontiers, and we cannot write it on our own. We are an overly emotional country.”
In 2008, it was Cossiga who reported on the French missile being fired at the DC9, but nothing came of it. Why?
“Amato’s words allow me to make amends even for my mistake. I have always underestimated the statements made by Cossiga 15 years ago, considering them as one of his innocent statements. But as Amato says, Cossiga was very intelligent and was more than understanding and talking about Italy’s role in the Cold War, which was nothing more than a global low-intensity war.
But in this case the armed forces – starting with the air force – did not hold the Italian government and constitutional machinery in high esteem, don’t you think?
I will answer you with an unpublished anecdote. When the massacre committee listened to General Arbino, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, it explained to him that anarchy had occurred in Ustica. And he answered me with these exact words: “Dear President, there is no point in hiding behind your finger, for us in 1980 a third of the Italian parliament was the enemy.” They continued to live in the logic of the Cold War: the Communists were the enemy, and therefore politics could not reveal everything. Politics and the events of those years are not understood except from this standpoint.
But they were lying to the state institutions, and the parliamentarians of the Italian Communist Party were elected by the citizens.
“They lied to those they did not know and regarded them as a danger. We should all be grateful to the Italian Communist Party, because it got rid of the danger of civil war in our country, but we should not forget – in order to understand that season – that the security apparatus of the Communist Party “The Italian was an armed secret service. But the democratic equilibrium held firm, and democratic guarantees were emphasized. Certainly, sometimes even at the expense of the truth.”
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