The assassination of Italy's John F. Kennedy

On Via Fani, a downward-sloping hill in northern Rome, Italy, four small, angular Fiat cars were parked. In the cars sat men and women wearing crew uniforms belonging to the staff of the Italian airline Alitalia. It was 08:45 on the morning of March 16, 1978. The sun was shining and the weather forecast predicted a pleasant day with temperatures up to 16 degrees. A few minutes to nine, a blue and larger and more exclusive edition Fiat approached the Via Mario Fani road. In it sat one of Italy's most prominent politicians, the 62-year-old law professor Aldo Moro, who was chairman of the Christian Democrats and former prime minister of Italy. Then it suddenly went fast. One of the waiting cars drove in front of Aldo Moro's Fiat and cut off the road in front of it, while two of the other cars blocked the road behind the bodyguards' car. Both cars were trapped, and four men jumped out from bushes along the road with machine guns in their hands. 91 bullets were fired in seconds, hitting all the bodyguards. Aldo Moro was forced unharmed into the Fiat 132 which stopped next to his own and drove away. Four dead and one mortally wounded bodyguard were left behind.

Sources used in this episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA5TGFME_pg
https://www.berlingske.dk/kultur/hvem-graed-egentlig-da-aldo-moro-blev-myrdet
https://www.information.dk/udland/2008/05/sandheden-aldrig-kom-frem
https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/udland/55-dage-der-rystede-italien
https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/udland/55-dage-der-rystede-italien
https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/udland/55-dage-der-rystede-italien
https://www.berlingske.dk/kultur/hvem-graed-egentlig-da-aldo-moro-blev-myrdet
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/25/world/moro-s-killers-among-32-jailed-for-life-in-italy.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581425/US-envoy-admits-role-in-Aldo-Moro-killing.html
https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/the-kidnapping-and-killing-of-aldo-moro
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/17/aldo-moro-murder-mystery-italy
Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988, (London: Penguin, 1990) p.361
R. Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, (London: Verso, 1990) p.282.
https://mondediplo.com/2011/10/11terrorists
https://jacobin.com/2018/05/red-brigades-aldo-moro-pci-historic-compromise
https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/the-kidnapping-and-assassination-of-aldo-moro.html

Music used in this episode:
Dramatic Suspense: https://pixabay.com/music/suspense-dramatic-suspense-116798/ by https://pixabay.com/users/ashot-danielyan-composer-27049680/
Anuch – Our champion - Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/anuch/our-champion
bella ciao Guitar: AhmadMousavipour: https://pixabay.com/music/solo-guitar-bella-ciao-guitar-ahmadmousavipour-11996/
Sweet sorrow by Albert Behar: https://uppbeat.io/track/albert-behar/sweet-sorrow

See pictures from today's story and follow me on: TerrorTalks on Facebook and TerrorTalks on Instagram

Transcript

The assassination of Italy's John F. Kennedy
On Via Fani, a downward-sloping hill in northern Rome in Italy, four small, angular Fiat cars were parked. In the vehicles sat men and women wearing crew uniforms belonging to staff from the Italian airline Alitalia. It was 08:45 on the morning of 16 March 1978. The sun was shining, and the weather forecast predicted a pleasant day with temperatures up to 16 degrees. The four cars kept various places on the road: two of them at the top of the hilltop of the road, one on the opposite side of the road and the last one near the junction at the end of the hill where the road ended. The 10 men and women in the cars sat quietly and watched the road as they waited patiently, if a little nervously.
A few minutes to nine, a blue, larger, and more exclusive version of the Fiat approached the Via Mario Fani Road. One of Italy's most prominent politicians sat in it, the 62-year-old law professor Aldo Moro, chairman of the Christian Democrats and former prime minister of Italy. One of his bodyguards drove the car while another sat beside Aldo Moro in the back seat. Aldo Moro looked down at some papers and talked with his bodyguard. Behind them drove a white Alfetti with three more of Moro's bodyguards.
At the corner of Via Trionfale, which crosses Via Mario Fani, stood a young woman waving a bunch of flowers. A little later, he got on a moped and drove away. Then, it suddenly went fast. One of the waiting cars moved in front of Aldo Moro's Fiat and cut off the road in front of it, while two of the other cars blocked the road behind the bodyguards' car. Both cars were trapped, and four men jumped out from bushes along the road with machine guns. 91 bullets were fired in seconds, hitting all the bodyguards. Moro was forced unharmed into the Fiat 132, which stopped beside his own and drove away. Four dead and one mortally wounded bodyguard were left behind.

The Italian parliament was getting ready to approve a new government that morning. It was the parliament where Aldo Moro was on his way to when he was kidnapped. It was a historic moment because the government resulted from a collaboration between the Italian right and the left. For the first time, the Communist Party PCI also pointed to Giulio Andreotti, the chairman of the Christian Democrats, as prime minister.
At 10 o'clock, about an hour after the kidnapping, the phone rang at the Italian news agency ANSA. Here, a voice said that the left-wing terrorist organisation The Red Brigades was responsible for the kidnapping of Aldo Moro. Aldo Moro was an Italian politician, law professor, and one of the most influential leaders in the party, Democrazia Cristiana, in Danish the Christian Democrats. He had a reputation for being a skilled and patient negotiator. In addition, he was the politician who was elected the most times as Prime Minister in Italy after the Second World War, a total of five times in more than six years between 1963 and 1976. During these periods, he was, among other things, behind a series of social and economic reforms that modernised Italy, and he was also known as one of the founders of the modern Italian centre left.
The press agency ANSA immediately contacted the Christian Democrats, and shortly afterwards, the president of the Italian lower house called the Chamber of Deputies, interrupted the vote with the message about the kidnapping. The assembly was shaken. The politicians held crisis meetings for several hours and discussed what to do. Later that day, however, they resumed the vote, where the government was approved by a large majority, including the votes of the traditional opponents in the Italian Communist Party PCI.

But what could be the reasons a left-wing terrorist group resorted to such drastic measures as kidnapping one of Italy's highest-ranking and most respected statesmen? As so often, history and social conditions play a significant role in the present. That is why we now rewind to the time in Italy after the Second World War.
As many listeners may know, Italy was under a right-wing fascist dictatorship with dictator Benito Mussolini in power from 1922 until he was executed by communists at the end of World War II on 26 April 1945. Fascism is an authoritarian political movement, and the term originated in Italy and is characterised, among other things, by nationalism, national greatness, and the state as a central and authoritarian focal point for the entire society.
Among other things, it was the influence of this fascist past as well as the fear of extreme right-wing power grabs, which the world witnessed with, for example, the colonel rule in Greece and Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile, which contributed to the fear that something similar could happen in Italy again. It is also part of why extreme left-wing terrorism developed drastically in Italy compared to many other European countries. One of the leaders of the Red Brigades, Sergio Moretti, stated at one point:
"I grew up fearing they were planning a coup, like in Greece or Chile. And that they wanted to kill us. In fact, they had already started."

In addition, Italy had several societal conditions during the 1970s, which meant that terrorist organisations such as the Red Brigades had good hotbeds for radicalisation. First, the educational conditions in Italy were hopeless. There were no formal entry requirements to be admitted to the university, so there were almost a million students in educational facilities designed for half that number. When teenagers finished primary school, they could look forward to a life of unemployment, so many chose to enrol in university instead. Although some students struggled, in 1977, for example, a year before the terrorist attack on Aldo Moro, only 10% of students completed their education. For many, studying seemed pointless. Almost 750,000 young people under 30 were unemployed, and many saw this as a sign that society had failed and needed rebuilding. So, the universities had become a focal point for left-wing extremists who believed the solution was armed revolution.

One of the left-wing, extreme organisations that attracted rootless, marginalised, and frustrated young people was "Brigato Rosso" in Danish the Red Brigades. The organisation's ideological basis was a Marxist-Leninist philosophy. They advocated one-party rule, state control over the economy, and opposition to liberal democracy and capitalism. This is the type of ideology that the government in, for example, Cuba and China is officially based on, although in practice, it gradually does not live up to it.
The Red Brigades were founded in 1970 by Alberto Franceschini, Renato Curcio, and Margherita Cagol, who met as students at the University of Trento and later married. The Red Brigades' founding occurred in connection with a social conflict in the late 1960s. Labour strikes rocked factories such as the international giants, the Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli, and the German technology manufacturer Siemens in particular. This led parts of the labour movement to eventually advocate "armed propaganda" as a method of struggle. In some of the first actions, locked-out workers destroyed factory foremen inside or destroyed their vehicles.

The Red Brigades operated in Italy during a period known as the Years of the Lead or, in Danish, the "Lead Years". It was a period characterised by social conflicts, where the working class demanded better pay and better conditions and violent acts of terrorism committed by both right-wing and left-wing extreme groups. The years of lead lasted from the late 1060s to the beginning of the 1980s and cost many innocent people their lives. The Red Brigades' attacks alone claimed the lives of 50 people between 1974 and 1988.

Initially, the Red Brigades were active in the province of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. Still, gradually, they spread their activities to other major cities such as the capital, Rome, in the south, the port city of Genoa in the northeast and Venice in the northwest. The 1975 manifesto of the Red Brigades declared that their goal was one.

"Concentrated attack on the heart of the state because the state is an imperialist collection of multinational corporations".
Over time, the organisation's goals sharpened to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle and a desire for Italy to withdraw from NATO. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the Red Brigades became feared and infamous for their violent acts of sabotage, bank robberies, kidnappings and murders of industrialists, factory owners, bankers and politicians who were perceived to be exploiting the workers or who they otherwise way perceived as "enemies" of the working-class revolution. Bank robberies and kidnappings, often for ransom, were the Red Brigades' primary source of income, and they justified the violence to themselves and the outside world as being in the service of the noble cause.

According to the official sources, which are based, among other things, on the later trial, Aldo Moro was driven to a ground floor apartment in an apartment complex in the Portuense district in southern Rome after the attack. The neighbourhood is 7-8 kilometres outside the centre of Rome, and the apartment belonged to a member of the terrorist organisation The Red Brigades, who had taken responsibility for the kidnapping. Moro was hidden and trapped in a custom-built windowless box behind a bookshelf. Among other things, he spent his time writing letters to various newspaper editorial offices. He also wrote letters to his family and the then Pope Paul VI. In the letters, Moro wrote, among other things, about the possibility of negotiating his release and asked for help from his party colleagues and some of Italy's most powerful men. But Moro also launched attacks against leading figures in his own party, the Christian Democrats, and against the party's policies. In a letter dated 8 April 1978, he wrote:

" Of course, I cannot prevent myself from underlining the wickedness of all the Christian Democrats who did not agree with my position [...] My blood will fall over them."

Some of the letters and nine messages from the kidnappers were hidden in various places in Rome, after which a selected newspaper editorial office was contacted and told where they could find it. However, doubts have been raised about whether Moro had the freedom to express himself 100% honestly and independently. His wife stated that she recognised his writing style, but one must assume that the terrorists had to read and approve them before they were sent. Other letters were later found at one of the Red Brigades' residences in Milan.

Italian politicians were divided into two wings: one favoured negotiation, while the other ultimately refused this solution. The latter included most Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, several of whom favoured the death penalty for the terrorists. The other wing argued that any negotiation would appear to legitimise the terrorists' violence. Moreover, that solution would not be accepted by the Italian police forces, which had seen several members fall during the war on terrorism in the previous years.
The Italian journalist Indro Montanelli later defended that the politicians did not want to negotiate with the terrorists.

" Everyone in this world has the right to be afraid. But a statesman (and Moro was the state) can't try to induce the state to a negotiation with terrorists that overall, in the kidnapping of Via Fani, had left on the asphalt five dead between Carabinieri and policemen."
Aldo Moro was told by his kidnappers that the police were looking blindly for him and that his party, the Christian Democrats, would not negotiate with the terrorists because they believed that they were the ones who dictated the contents of the letters.

In the attached messages, the Red Brigades tried to negotiate their demands. At first, they tried to get some of their imprisoned comrades released, but in the penultimate message, they agreed to exchange him for a single terrorist.
Pope Paul VI, who was listened to in Italy then, also gave a public speech on 22 April 1978, a little over a month after the kidnapping, asking the Red Brigades to return Moro to his family. The Pope stressed that it should happen unconditionally. Moro, who had previously written a letter to the Pope, reacted angrily to the latter point, according to his captors, feeling the Vatican had let him down. However, the stated "unconditional" is disputed since, according to some sources, it was added to Paul VI's letter against his will. However, this was denied by several members of the government.
On 9 May 1978, the Red Brigades sent a message in which they wrote:
" For what concerns our proposal of an exchange of political prisoners in order to suspend the condemnation and to release Aldo Moro, we can only record the clear refusal from the DC. We thus conclude the battle begun on 16 March, executing the sentence to which Aldo Moro has been condemned".

It was 6:00 a.m. on 9 May 1978 when Aldo Moro was awakened by his captors. He had now been held captive for 55 days and was told that morning that he was to be moved to a new secret location. He was told he had been "pardoned" and would be released. The terrorists put him in a wicker basket in the boot of a red Renault, covered him with a red carpet, and then drove him to the underground car park of another holding site on the Via Montalcini Road in the historic centre of Rome.
Unfortunately for Aldo Moro, this was a lie. When Red Brigades member Mario Moretti opened the trunk, he fired so many bullets at Moro that his semi-automatic 9-mm Walther PPK pistol eventually jammed. He fired the last shots with another gun to ensure that Moro was dead. The bullets went through Moro's lungs, killing him on the spot. They then drove the car with his body to the road Via Caetani, where it was parked at approximately nine o'clock, an hour after the murder.
At 12:30, a phone call was made to Francesco Tritto, Aldo Moro's friend and assistant. A person who introduced himself as a member of the Red Brigades said
"Go to Via Caetani in Rome. In a red Renault 4, you will find the body of Aldo Moro".
"I can't", Tritto stuttered but was interrupted by the voice that said flatly.
" You must"  .
At 1:30 p.m., the police found Aldo Moro's body at the location indicated by the anonymous caller. Moro was believed to have died between 9 and 10 the same morning. Moro was wearing the same grey clothes he wore during the kidnapping. The tie had several blood stains, traces of sand were found in pockets and on socks, and traces of vegetables were also found. Eventually, the terrorists stated that they had deliberately added these clues to mislead the investigators. In the trunk were also some of Moro's personal effects, a bracelet and watch, and some spent cartridges. Moro also had a wound on his thigh, probably from the initial assault on the Via Fani.

"The court is set".
23 people from the Red Brigades were accused of kidnapping and killing Aldo Moro, who was abducted in Rome on 16 March 1978, and of killing his five bodyguards. 40 other defendants were charged with 11 murders, 11 attempted murders and four kidnappings between 1976 and 1980. The jury of 11 men and one woman, who had listened to witnesses in the case for nine months, had now deliberated for a week and had reached a decision.
32 members of the Red Brigades were sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro and other crimes. Other defendants among the 63 defendants received sentences ranging from four months to 30 years. Four were found not guilty. The defendants who attended the sentencing were in cages with metal bars and remained silent as Judge Severino Santiapichi read the jury's verdicts.
When he finished, a couple of the defendants sat staring into the air with serious expressions. Most of them laughed and joked. Some smoked cigarettes or chewed gum, and a few climbed onto the cage bars to wave to their relatives at the back of the courtroom.

Some Red Brigade terrorists who had participated directly in the attack were prosecuted in absentia because they had previously managed to escape. This applied, among other things, to Rita Algranati, the woman who, as a signal to her co-conspirators, had waved a bouquet of flowers and fled on a moped. Among those convicted was Mario Moretti, one of the founders of the Red Brigades, who had fired the fatal shots. He was given six life sentences for his crime, but after serving 15 years in prison, he was paroled in 1998.
The government welcomed the sentences as a significant blow to the Red Brigades, partly responsible for a decade of violence in Italy.

At the trial, the prosecutor had argued that Moro was killed because the Communist Party PCI had won over a third of the votes in the 1976 election. Therefore, Moro did not think that they could continue to be kept out of influence:
"He had understood that a renewal process was necessary to avoid a serious crisis in Italian democracy. This is, in many ways, the crisis we are experiencing today", 
senator for PCI, Sergio Flamigni, who has researched the Aldo Moro case for many years, said in 2008 to the Danish newspaper Information.
The testimony during the trials showed that not all the Red Brigades leaders had agreed with the execution of Aldo Moro. In fact, Moro's killer, Mario Moretti, called Moro's wife before the murder and asked her to press the leaders of the Christian Democrats for negotiations. But the final decision was made after a vote, with the majority voting to kill him.

The kidnapping of Aldo Moro was at least as shocking to the Italians as the assassination and killing of John F. Kennedy was to the Americans. Although it was officially cleared up and the masterminds and assassins were arrested, charged, and convicted, it is still shrouded in mystery, and much evidence points to the truth being far more complex at best and, at worst, diametrically opposed to the official version.

First, more physical evidence spoke against Aldo Moro, having been in the apartment in the Portuense neighbourhood of southern Rome. According to Aldo Moro's brother, Judge Carlo Alfredo, who authored a book about the kidnapping, the vegetable scraps and sand found in Aldo Moro's pockets were more suited to his being held captive near the sea. Furthermore, after barely two months of confinement, Moro's body still had an excellent muscle tone, which does not suit a person locked in a cramped cell with little room to move in. Both parts are confirmed in the official autopsy report.
Another thing that contradicted the official explanation was the whole premise that the left would benefit from destroying the democratic process and government formation. In fact, it was the first time since 1947 that the Communist Party was so close to government influence, even if it was indirect. But the Red Brigades would apparently have been against that, as a break with the centre-right would have secured them a vital role in a revolutionary war against capitalism. Someone also believed that the Red Brigades aimed to hit the entire Christian Democratic Party, the leading exponent of a regime that, in their first communiqué after the kidnapping, wrote: "... having oppressed the Italian people for years".

But what could be a possible explanation for the abduction of Aldo Moro?
Those who dispute the official interpretation of events believe that both the United States and Russia were interested in getting rid of Moro in the middle of the Cold War at the time of his death. Italy was a member of NATO and allied with the US, but for the historical reasons I described earlier, it had many supporters of socialism and Europe's largest communist party. New signals were coming from Italian politics with cooperation over the middle, which was unpopular in the United States and Russia. Aldo Moro was among the politicians on the right who wanted to give the communists influence on the home front in Italy and Europe and implement "a kind of people's Europe", in which none of the major powers were interested. If Aldo Moro died, the cooperation policy would also die. The retired Supreme Court judge Ferdinando Imposimato authored a book five years ago entitled "Why should Aldo Mori die?" and believed that there are several answers:
"There were politicians who wanted him dead because they wanted power. Then there were the international interests. For example, the Soviet Union did not want the Italian example to be transferred to other countries. On the other hand, the CIA worked for those who wanted to eliminate someone who was a risk to the Western bloc, and the CIA controlled and financed the Italian intelligence service. So, there were several interests." 

The theory I just went through sounds downright conspiratorial, but maybe some of it makes sense. This is far from the first example of the US and Russia meddling in and trying to influence the domestic politics of other countries. There are demonstrably many examples of this.
The theory is also supported by Steve Pieczenik in the documentary "Aldo Moro's Last Days" for the television station France 5 in 2008. Here, he claimed that at the request of the Italian government, he was sent to Italy by then-President Jimmy Carter as a psychiatrist and expert in hostage-taking.
"We had to prevent the communists from coming to power and fascist elements from overthrowing the state,"
Pieczenik explained. 
"The logical consequence of my strategy was that the price for Italy's stability might be to sacrifice Aldo Moro."
In particular, the government was afraid that Moro would succumb to the pressure and reveal state secrets – such as that part of the Italian army, with American help, was leading a shadowy underground struggle against communism.
Whether one believes the official interpretation, the alternative version, or a mixture of these must be up to the individual listener. The absolute truth about what happened to Aldo Moro and its background has not come out yet. What remains in any case is that this is another story of a terrorist attack with an innocent victim. Aldo Moro had opinions that in a democratic society, he had every right to have without risking his life for them. Terror can be directed at ordinary people in major attacks, but it can also be directed at politicians, in both cases, to spread terror and enforce the terrorists' policies.
The story of the Red Brigades and Aldo Moro is, like so many other terrorist attacks, a clear proof of how senseless terror is. The Red Brigades were responsible for the deaths of many innocent people, and in the end, they got nothing out of their terror that they could not have gotten through a democratic debate. However noble their goals may have looked on paper, if one subscribed to their communist ideology, their actions were as inexcusable as any other terror. The Red Brigades organisation and terror in Italy finally died in the late 1980s, with many of their leaders sentenced to long prison terms. And that is a good thing.

You have listened to TerrorTalks, a podcast about terror and radicalisation.
This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Natasja Engholm, while Niels Peter Nielsen voiced the men in the story. Also, thank you to consultant and journalist Lars Hvidberg, who contributed with sparring and wise thoughts. You will find the episode's sources in the show notes where you listen to your podcast. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would give the podcast a positive review and tell friends and family who might be interested in listening along.
Tune in to the next episode, where I talk about an attack back in history that hit everyone but the intended target.
Also, feel free to go in and follow TerrorTalk's social media on Instagram and Facebook, where you can see pictures from today's story.