| Golpe Borghese | |
|---|---|
| Part of theYears of lead andNeo-fascist activity in Italy | |
 Front page of the newspaperPaese Sera on the failed neo-fascist coup | |
| Date | 7–8 December 1970 |
| Location | Rome |
| Goals | Overthrow of centre-left national government |
| Methods | Coup d'etat |
| Resulted in | Coup suspended |
TheGolpe Borghese[a] was a failed Italiancoup d'état allegedly planned for the night of 7 or 8 December 1970. It was named afterJunio Valerio Borghese,wartime commander of theDecima Flottiglia MAS and a hero in the eyes of many post-War Italian fascists. The coup attempt became publicly known when the left-wing journalPaese Sera ran the headline on the evening of 18 March 1971:Subversive plan against the Republic: far-right plot discovered.
The secret operation was code-namedOperation Tora Tora after the Japanese code word for theattack on Pearl Harbor.[1] The plan of the coup in its final phase envisaged the involvement of US andNATO warships which were on alert in theMediterranean Sea. Italian journalists have claimed the USCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly followed the coup, with PresidentRichard Nixon allegedly being personally informed of it. Yet in leaked documents, the US ambassador to Rome is quoted saying"The last thing we need right now is a half-cooked coup d’état … We wouldn’t support it."[2]
The botched right-wing coup took place after theHot Autumn of left-wing protests in Italy and thePiazza Fontana bombing in December 1969, while inReggio Calabria theReggio revolt was supported by neofascists and ongoing. The failed coup involved hundreds of neo-fascist militants fromStefano Delle Chiaie'sNational Vanguard, and army dissidents under Lt. Colonel Amos Spiazzi, helped by 187 members of theCorpo Forestale dello Stato, who were to seize the headquarters of the Italian public television broadcasterRAI.[3][4] The plan included the kidnapping of theItalian PresidentGiuseppe Saragat; the murder of the head of the police Angelo Vicari; and the occupation of RAI, theQuirinale, theMinistry of the Interior (from which Vanguard militants would seize weapons), and theMinistry of Defense. Spiazzi'sMilan-based battalion also planned to occupySesto San Giovanni, at that time a workers' town and a stronghold of theItalian Communist Party. Apparently, some militants briefly entered the Ministry of the Interior, but Borghese suspended the coup a few hours before its final phase. A submachine gun (aBeretta Model 38) not returned by one of the militants was later viewed as a key piece of evidence in thesedition trial.[3]
According to Borghese, the neo-fascists were actually gathering for a protest demonstration against the upcoming visit of PresidentJosip Broz Tito ofYugoslavia, which was later postponed. This protest was supposedly called off because of heavy rain.[5] According to the later testimony of Spiazzi, the coup was in fact fictitious: it would have been immediately suppressed by government forces through an emergency plan calledEsigenza Triangolo (Triangle Exigency) similar to the 1964Piano Solo, which would have provided theChristian Democratic (DC) government with an excuse to declaremartial law and enact special laws allowing the deployment of thousands of government troops, as well as military and civil police, to seize control of political parties and publishers and undertake mass arrests and deportations, to quell the ongoing social unrest and left-wing protests.[6] Ultimately, Borghese, for unknown reasons or acting on a tip-off, aborted the coup at the last minute as the plotters moved into position.[6]
Participants at the semi-clandestine rallies seem to have believed that they would take part in the arrest of politicians and the occupation of key installations by sympathetic army units. When Borghese called off the coup late that night, the presumed plotters, reportedly unarmed, improvised a late spaghetti dinner before returning home.[7] Several members of theNational Front were arrested and a warrant was served for Borghese. Borghese himself fled to Spain and died there in August 1974.[8]
On 18 March 1971, the leftist journalPaese Sera was published with the headline:Subversive plan against the Republic: far-right plot discovered. The first arrests concerning the coup attempt were made on the same day. The first people arrested on 18 and 19 March were Mario Rose, a retired army major and National Front secretary; Remo Orlandini, also a former army major, a real-estate proprietor and close associate of Borghese; and Sandro Saccucci, a youngparatrooper. An arrest warrant for Borghese was also served, but he could not be found.[9] Later arrestees included businessman Giovanni De Rosa and a retiredAir Force colonel, Giuseppe Lo Vecchio.[10]
The investigation into the coup attempt was resurrected afterGiulio Andreotti became defence minister again. Andreotti handed over a report by the secret service to the Romepublic prosecutor in July 1974,[11] revealing a detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the conspiracy and links to members of the secret service.[1] Shortly thereafter, GeneralVito Miceli, a former head ofSID, was brought for questioning before the investigating judge.[12] Miceli's interrogation led to his arrest two days later.[13] Miceli was then sacked, and theItalian intelligence agencies were reorganized by a 1977 law.
Three trials were started for conspiracy against the Italian state. In 1978, Miceli was acquitted of trying to cover up a coup attempt. Saccucci, Orlandini, Rosa, and others were convicted of political conspiracy,[14] which also included Delle Chiaie, whose specific role is unclear. According to a 1987UPI news cable, he had already fled Italy to Spain on 25 July 1970.[15] However, according to other sources, Delle Chiaie led the commando team which occupied the premises of the Interior Ministry.[16] At the appeal trial in November 1984, all 46 defendants were acquitted because the "fact did not happen" (il fatto non sussiste) and only existed in "a private meeting between four or five sixty-years-olds".[17][18] TheSupreme Court of Cassation confirmed the appeal judgment in March 1986.[19]
The final trial connected with theGolpe Borghese began in 1991, after it was discovered that evidence involving prominent persons (Licio Gelli and admiral Giovanni Torrisi) had been destroyed by the secret service before the first trial. Andreotti, minister of defence at the time the evidence was destroyed, declared in 1997 that names had been deleted so that the charges would be easier to understand. This last trial ended without convictions because theperiod of prescription for destruction of evidence had passed.[17]
According to the journalist René Monzat, investigations lasted seven years, during which it was alleged that theGolpe Borghese had benefited from military accomplices, as well as from political support not only from the National Front and from MSI deputy Sandro Saccucci but also from other political personalities belonging to the DC and to theItalian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI).[16] According to Monzat, investigations also discovered that themilitary attaché at the US embassy was closely connected to the coup organizers and that one of the main accused declared to the magistrate that US PresidentRichard Nixon had followed the preparations for the coup, of which he was personally informed by two CIA officers.[16] These facts were confirmed through aFreedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Italian newspaperLa Repubblica in December 2004. However, only a few marginalized sectors of the CIA were in favour of the coup, while the main response was not to allow major changes in the geopolitical balance in the Mediterranean.[17]
According to several state witnesses (pentiti) such asTommaso Buscetta, Borghese asked theSicilian Mafia to support the coup. In 1970, when theSicilian Mafia Commission was reconstituted, one of the first issues that had to be discussed was an offer by Borghese, who asked for support in return for pardons of convictedmafiosi like Vincenzo Rimi andLuciano Leggio. ThemafiosiGiuseppe Calderone andGiuseppe Di Cristina visited Borghese in Rome. However, othermafiosi such asGaetano Badalamenti opposed the plan, and the Mafia decided not to participate.[20]
According to Leggio, testifying at theMaxi Trial against the Mafia in the mid-1980s, Buscetta andSalvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco were in favour of helping Borghese. The plan was for the Mafia to carry out a series of terrorist bombings and assassinations to provide the justification for a right-wing coup. Although Leggio's version differed from Buscetta's, the testimony confirmed that Borghese had requested assistance by the Mafia.[21] According to thepentitoFrancesco Di Carlo, the journalistMauro De Mauro was killed in September 1970 because he had learned that Borghese – one of De Mauro's childhood friends – was planning the coup.[22][23][24]
The failed coup has gone down in history as "a comic-opera coup staged by naive incompetents, which posed no real threat to the state" and newspapers wrote about it as "the coup that never was".[11] Nonetheless, the secret service reported connections with the Nixon administration and NATO units inMalta based on claims made by Orlandini. Orlandini asserted that the plotters would receive assistance from a NATO fleet, though this never materialized.[25]
A comic film directed byMario Monicelli and starring popular Italian actorUgo Tognazzi was released in 1973 and was in the selection of Italian films for the1973 Cannes Film Festival. It is calledVogliamo i colonelli (We Want the Colonels, in reference to the contemporary US-backedGreek military dictatorship). In this film, Tognazzi portrays a boisterous and clumsy far-rightMP called Tritoni trying to stage a coup against the government. Though the botched attempt sinks in ridicule and chaos, and Tritoni has to go into exile, right-wing political measures are nevertheless enforced, such as forbiddinglabour strikes and political gatherings. The character's name Tritoni (Triton) is a direct reference to Borghese and his military past as the leader of an assault frogmen unit. The film is peppered with joke references to the fascist period, the post-war neo-fascistItalian Social Movement and the Decima MAS frogmen unit.
