Description
Pinelli’s death became a national scandal and it quickly became clear that the anarchists were innocent. The bombing (along with many others, before, contemporaneously and subsequently), had in fact been carried out by fascists acting as agents of the Italian Secret Service, Federico Umberto D’Amato’s Bureau of Confidential Affairs (Interior Ministry) and by the shadowy NATO-US-backed ‘Gladio’ ‘stay-behind’ resistance organization, recruited from among the ranks of hand-chosen extreme right-wingers and neo-fascists. The objective of this ‘strategy of tension” was to ensure that leftists and Communists could not come to power in Italy by creating a psychosis of fear of the left among ordinary Italians and a desire for strong, authoritarian government. This is the story of an extraordinary chapter in Italy’s history and the still unanswered questions surrounding the massacre of the Piazza Fontana on that cold day in December, 1969
