Portrait of a Black Terrorist

Neither God nor master, says the frontispiece.

Published by an anarchist collective. Stefano delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist, by Stuart Christie. That's Black, as in Black Shirts, not black as in Black Panthers.

Starts with a chronology of events in Italy from the start of Western occupation of Italy onwards. Apparently an American Admiral Stone got Angleton to prevent the arrest of Prince Valerio Borghese, who I think was the same one convicted decades later for shooting a tourist. The chronology focuses on the acts of the occupiers and the new government recruiting from former fascists, even hardcore Salo loyalists, and specifically refusing to admit members of the Resistance into the police or intelligence services. Extensive persecution of the resistance, as was. Pedrini Belgrado spent over 30 years in prison when prosecuted for Resistance activities. In fact delle Chiaie first achieved fame by removing the Resistance flag from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Rome. Well, that's what it says here, under the heading "1961".

It should be noted that this was published before the Gladio revelations, but nonetheless paints a picture of its establishment in Italy.

A couple of MI6 operatives are outed. A John McCaffery signed an affidavit implicating himself with Michele Sindona in an attempt to overthrow the Italian government, that's the Sindona from the P2/Calvi affair. Another, one Scicluna, ran another coup plot, with a former partisan he had "run", in the jargon, as case officer during the war, one Sogno. Sogno and Scicluna were also associated with Brosio, sec-gen of NATO, and with the aforementioned McCaffery. Fiat is specifically mentioned as providing extensive financial support for these activities, they are also of course big wigs in the Bilderberg Group.

I first heard about this book on a website for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, upwards of a decade ago, by a conspiracist called nessie. His stuff was long ago removed from the site, although I think there's still some on the Wayback Machine, in an article about the murder of Gino Pinelli by the Italian Police. delle Chiaie turned out to have been blamed for pretty much everything in post-war Italy, and this book is openly sceptical of his role. 'main coordinator of the "Black Orchestra"', it says, 'or deliberately set-up as such by more elusive figures?' Two coups, three major bombings, dozens of deaths, I'm sure he was involved in it all. I doubt he was clever enough to set it all up. The book credits him with murdering dissidents, helping establish death squads in Europe and South America, providing mercenaries for wars in Africa, partnering with drug dealers and being a "regulator" for P2. The evidence for the issuace of the arrest warrant, however, came from "supergrasses" in the Italian right-wing and intelligence communities, a notoriously unreliable source of information.

During a wave of anti-fascist demonstrations in 1960 delle Chiaie, then of Ordine Nuovo, formerly of MSI, later to found Avanguardia Nazionale, was recruited by the Interior Ministry by proxy of the MSI to work against the left-wing elements in an underhand capacity. AN was set up at about this time and generously funded by various insutrial barons. One of the early AN members, Aliotti, a vicious fascist criminal, went off to be conscripted for national service in the army, and came back repentant, which is an odd reaction to military service. He denounced Aliotti as a government stooge. He was arrested with a car full of explosives, which he claimed the police planted on delle Chiaie's orders to frame him. Might have been right, because charges were dropped for "lack of evidence". Maybe someone misplaced all those explosives that were in his car, these things happen. Perhaps they're the same explosives that turned up back in the same car, along with Aliotti's body, after he "commited suicide". I know when I die I want to go with my terrorist paraphernalia around me.

Links to the regime of Batista in Cuba. We all know the sort of thing Cuban exiles get up to.

A journalist called Giannetini is credited with being the go-between for NATO, the Italian spooks and delle Chiaie.

The book then chronicles the activities of Otto Skorzeny in Iberia, the flight of the OAS after their defeat in France/Algeria to Portugal and the Portuguese revolution. delle Chiaie, it turns out, was a registered employee of the Aginter Press, the Portuguese Gladio, as well as working for the OAS. The Aginter Press considered him to be running the infiltration of the Left in Italy. A number of delle Chiaie associates visited the new fascist regime in Greece, only to return as "socialists", at least so far as the direction of their terrorism was concerned. Strategy of Tension in action. Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Cicero near Chicago was financing this stuff, through Sindona, along with the Vatican bank. It has mafia ties, apparently. Markincus, infamous Vatican banker, comes from Cicero. A number of links to Nixon, including David Kennedy, president of the bank and later in Nixon's first cabinet.

When Pinelli was killed he was posthumously thrown from a high place, as the CIA manual requires. Of course the book covers Italian events in some depth.

Eventually delle Chiaie was implicated in a coup attempt publicly enough that the spooks had to smuggle him out to Franco-ist Spain. There he joined Skorzeny's international terror-for-hire network, Paladin. He had a number of links to Libya, as did the organisation he was associated with. Paladin murdered people in Spain and France, recruited mercs for service abroad, ran at least one bank robbery netting tens of millions of dollars in the money of the day, largely in gold. They killed someone who had got some information on P2.

He ended up in Pinochet's Chile next, after a few years of Iberian mayhem. Arrived with Prince Borghese to propose the formation of the Condor network, designed to eliminate dissidents across international boundaries. He also set up a partnership with Townley, or a minor collaboration rather, of the Chilean DINA. Four years after his first trip to Chile he was off to the South permanently, running from Spain.

Don't know what he spent the next few years doing. Turned up here and there. Dealing with the mafia, helping them move drugs. The odd European terror attack, through his network. Turned up at the meeting of the World Anti-Communist League in Paraguay. This and that. He turns up again in 1980, for the so-called Cocaine Coup in Bolivia. Provides the Fiances of Death, or whatever they called themselves. Where they killed off the small-time dealers competing with the coup bosses.

I see Sindona stole 45 million from a Franklin National Bank. Similar amount and name to the Franklin scandal. I think it was Hopsicker who pointed out that names often carry on through several covert ops. Silverado, for example.

It covers P2. Apparently the money in Calvi's account which was being taken by Gelli when Gelli was arrested was meant to fund South American tyrannies. Calvi was a member of a London Masonic Lodge, as well as P2, although I remember that the UGLE always claimed they had nothing to do with these odious continentals, although of course they only recognised the Italian Grand Orient on condition that they in turn recognise P2.

Good appendicies, too. But unfortunately it's a biography without an end. After the Cocaine coup collapsed, as it eventually did, delle Chiaie made his get away, unlike some of his co-conspirators.

I notice that I tend to tail off after the start of a book. Good book, anyway.