Peter Dale Scott: Systemic Destabilization!!

From an American standpoint, it is easy to see clearly how Italian history was systematically destabilized in the second half of the 20th century, by a series of what I call structural deep events. I have defined these as "events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break in, or 9/11, which violate the social structure, have a major impact on society, repeatedly involve law breaking or violence, and in many cases proceed from an unknown dark force: The examples in Italy, well known to Italians, include the Piazza Fontana bombing of 1969, the della Loggia bombing of 1974, and the Bologna railway bombing of 1980. These bombings, in which over one hundred civilians were killed and many more wounded, were attributed at the time to marginal left wing elements of society. However, thanks chiefly to a series of investigations and judicial proceedings, it is now clearly established that the bombings were the work of right wing elements in collusion with Italian military intelligence, as part of an on going "strategy of tension" to discredit the Italian left, encourage support for a corrupt status quo, and perhaps move beyond democracy altogether. As one of the conspirators, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, later stated, "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the political and military authorities to declare a state of emergency." Vinciguerra also revealed that he and others had also been members of a paramilitary "stay-behind" network originally organized at the end of World War II by the CIA and NATO as "Operation Gladio." In 1984, questioned by judges about the 1980 Bologna station bombing, Vinciguerra said: "With the massacre of Peteano, and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should by now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages - it lies within the state itself: There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity that is, to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army, a secret organization, a super organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives, and men trained to use them.