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The 'Piazza Fontana bombing' () was a bombing carried out by far-right terrorists on December 12 1969 at the offices of ''Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura'' ("National Agrarian Bank") in Piazza Fontana, Milan, Italy. Sixteen people were killed and up to 90 were wounded. The aim of the attack was to make the public believe that the bombings were part of a communist insurgency, in order to "push the Italian state to proclaim the state of emergency", according to neofascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra's confessions. This has been called in Italy ''strategia della tensione''.

Contents

Giuseppe Pinelli and 4,000 arrests

''Ordine Nuovo'' and David Carrett, officer of the U.S. Navy

See also

References

External links

Giuseppe Pinelli and 4,000 arrests

The terrorist act was initially attributed to anarchist bombers. Over 4,000 arrests were made in the aftermath of the bombings and one of the suspects, Giuseppe Pinelli, died after "falling" out of the fourth floor window of the police station where he was being held.^[1] Anarchist Pietro Valpreda was also arrested. He was jailed three years on preventive detention before being sentenced for the crime, and was finally exonerated sixteen years later.

''Ordine Nuovo'' and David Carrett, officer of the U.S. Navy

Far-right terrorist organization ''Ordine Nuovo'', founded by Pino Rauti, was then suspected. In 1989, Stefano Delle Chiaie was arrested in Caracas, Venezuela and rendered to Italy to stand trial for his role in this bombing. Despite his reputation, Delle Chiaie was acquitted by the Assise Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow accused Massimiliano Fachini. In 1998, Guido Salvini, judge in Milan, indicted David Carrett, officer of the U.S. Navy, on charges of political and military espionage and for his participation to the Piazza Fontana bombing, among other events. Judge Guido Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, Italian official for the US-NATO intelligence network, and ''pentito'' Carlo Digilio, who was suspected as a CIA informant. ''La Repubblica'' underlined that Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man at Milan, was surprised in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio, thus demonstrating that all was not over.^[2]
A June 20 2001 conviction of Italian Neo-fascists Doctor Carlo Maria Maggi, Delfo Zorzi and Giancarlo Rognoni (all members of ''Ordine Nuovo'') was overturned in March 2004. ''Pentito'' Carlo Di Giglio received immunity from prosecution in exchange of his information, as the ''pentito'' status allows.
A 2000 parliamentary report published by the center-left Olive Tree coalition claimed "that US intelligence agents were informed in advance about several rightwing terrorist bombings, including the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place. It also alleged that Pino Rauti (current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party), a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from a press officer at the US embassy in Rome. 'So even before the "stabilising" plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome,' the report says."^[3]
Christian Democrat co-founder of Gladio — NATO's stay-behind anticommunist organization in Italy — Paolo Emilio Taviani told investigators that the SID military intelligence service was on the point of sending a senior officer from Rome to Milan to impede the bombing. However, the SID finally decided to sent a different officer, from Padua, in order to put the blame of the bombing on left-wing anarchists. Taviani also declared in an August 2000 interview to ''Il Secolo XIX'' newspaper: "It seems to me certain, however, that agents of the CIA were among those who supplied the materials and who muddied the waters of the investigation." ^[4]

See also

★ Accidental Death of an Anarchist

★ False flag

★ Operation Gladio

References

1.
2. Strage di Piazza Fontana spunta un agente USA ("A US agent appears in the Piazza Fontana bombing")
3. US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy', ''The Guardian'', June 24, 2000
4. Paolo Emilio Taviani, obituary by Philip Willan, in ''The Guardian'', June 21, 2001

External links

★ February 11, 1998 article from ''La Repubblica'', with links to the full text of the judiciary sentence and the full report from the Italian Commission on Terrorism

★ [1] On this day from BBC news December 12th, 1969