Moro, a multilevel case study
An introductory note for a meeting with the students of UNINT
Before answering your questions, I would like to draw your attention to some aspects that make reading my book very topical. And which show that the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro, beyond the content, of the individual discoveries, is a multilevel case study.
The value of the book is given by the overall view. So many questions (that you can meet in your academic and professional life) will only have an answer by keeping your eyes open , so that you can reach a better point of observation. This will allow you to draw new conclusions, new solutions and you will understand, in a different way, even apparently known facts. That will accomplish what Paolo Alto behavioral school in California (read if you can the book CHANGE, in italian translation by Boringhieri) called a “Change 2”. You will not change the movement of the hands on the clock face, but change the clock.
This applies to human behavior in general, but above all, to knowledge. And in a university course we are dealing with knowledge. Looking at things, (a fact, an event) , from a better point of view, will allow you to see it in a different way.
Finally, there is another element that will help you follow the edge of the skein: the chronology of facts and circumstances surrounding the fact. As for the Moro case, the second edition of the book, published on November 1, 2019, on the occasion of the anniversary of the the forty years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is enriched not only by three new final chapters (for about 100 more pages) but also by a chronology of noteworthy facts. Not of “all “the facts concerning the Moro case, but of the "remarkable" ones to understand the new "explanation" of the case that is provided by the book.
Time is an important interpretative key. Already the Romans claimed “Tempus regit actum".
The problem for those who study the facts is the excess of information. We are literally drowned in a sea of information; how do you find the key? For example, the materials collected by the second Parlamentary Committee on the Moro case, that I was able to consult, constituted a terabyte of documents. The was much "rubish”, and this made difficult to try to find an interpretative key.
What was necessary as for the poet Dante in the Commedia, a Virgil, a guide. And for me it was the three official reports from the Committee, approved by Italian Parliament and Giuseppe Fioroni, the Chairman of the Committee, coauthor of the book.
But even so, they alone would never be enough.
I have followed the Moro case for decades, not in the sense that I am a Moro specialist. Other colleagues have followed all the processes, etc. and they have been, perhaps unaware active players, in the construction of that “form of a necessary truth “ , the only possible before the fall of Berlin Wall, but it’ a “truth” that is shredded into pieces now.
As Corriere della Sera writer, however, I had the opportunity to investigate some turning points which opened my eyes on the case. Par example, the publication of the Mitrokhin archives decreed at the end of Nineties by the Prime Minister D'Alema, an interview with Admiral Martini in which he exclusively told me (2001) what happened during the kidnapping of Aldo Moro when he was the number two of the SISMI. And following the Vatican events (IOR and beyond) gave me a meaning to the fact that the last fugitive of the Moro case, the man who never spent a day in prison, a man who shot in via Fani, was the son of an ex number 2 of the Vatican Press Office. Etcetera. Hundreds of new facts led me to read the new acts, the insights of the second Moro Committee, in a potentially unified way, and led me to defined the kidnapping and killing of the President of Italian Dc , “ as the largest operation of the Cold War, before the fall of the Berlin Wall”. Those facts were true breckthroughs.
Another topic. The importance of the geopolitics of international relations do not rely just on diplomatic relations. The role of STASI (the secret service of the DDR) in Chile in the time of Pinochet is a striking example of this, documented in the book on the basis of a series of elements. This greatly helped me in providing a key to interpretation.
Let’s fun (but it is true) . My curiosity started from the fact that on Wikipedia (yes!), searching for the date of his death , I read that the President of the DDR (the worst communist regime after the URSS) , Honecker died … in Santiago de Chile, under Pinochet (a rightist, a fascist). Something surprising… ahmmm! I deepened it, I read several books (one in particular quoted in my book) , and read the transcription of the hearing of the current Prosecutor General of the Cassazione, Giovanni Salvi, in the Moro Committee proceedings. Well, it was dedicated (another surprise) in great part to” the Condor operation” in Rome. Another piece of the puzzle that got stuck in the right place. And so on.
A good analyst must examine reality without prejudice. He must find unexpected news, while information that can confirm mainstream positions, whether historiographical or political, is normally more appreciated. And disinformation "by exaggeration" is appreciated even more.
The role of scholars is to provide objective information, instead .Objective facts that can show us something new, facts that can add to our knowledge.And don't go from one mystery to another.
Here mysteries have not been revealed but secrets stolen. Secrets that have been brought to light by an exceptional fact: the decision taken by the Renzi government in 2014 to declassify thousands of law enforcement documents. Those secrets (kept so for forty years) , however, in a certain sense, still had to be stolen, that is, brought to light for the public.
There is one last aspect that I want to emphasise. In the chapter "A wall of mirrors", one of the new chapters of the second edition, the role of "misinformation", of the so-called "active measures”. They have built for decades the "media" version of the Moro case.
The Greek philosopher Plato stated that fairytale builders rule the world. Here is what happened, and in the book I show evidence of it.
But forty years after the events, it was time to break the wall of mirrors. My book is a contribution to the history of our country.
To write your degree thesis, you must find a key, and follow it ,with patience and bitterness. From a psychological point of view, the process of "discovery" in a research is similar to that of ”scientific revolutions": a restructuring of the field of knowledge. Even what we already knew become something different.
After passing your exams and degree, if you want to read a truly exceptional book from this point of view, I point out to you: Thomas Khun "The structure of scientific revolutions", and what happens when knowledge reaches a new level.
Finally, I hope you enjoyed my writing style. It is a book of facts, but I found it fantastic to discover that the "Montenevoso" ( where Carabinieri discovered a main hideout fo the Red Brigades in Milan ) was also a boundary between Italy and Yugoslavia , id est between West and East, in the post war era, and that Casimirri was "the son of Captain Corelli”, the character who inspired the movie with Nicolas Cage and Penelope Crux .
My, it’s a Netflix series ready book!
Thanks for your interest and patience.
