The Brotherhood (35 page)

In 1976 an official in Italy's Interior Ministry had declared that Gelli controlled 'the most potent hidden power centre' in the country. It took five more years,
and Gelli's own connivance,
for the real extent of his power to be revealed. As the magistrates ploughing through the files from the Villa Wanda stated, Gelli had 'constructed a very real state within the state', and was attempting to overturn the Republic.

Of the many political groupings in Italy, Gelli's files showed that only the Communist Party had no links with P2. All the others - Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans, Radicals, Neo-Fascists - had members in the Lodge.

When the magistrates finally presented the Gelli papers to the Italian Parliament in May 1981, they had sorted them into ten heavy piles. There was immediate uproar and calls for the four-party coalition government of Christian Democrat Prime Minister Aldo Forlani to resign. As it became clear how completely Gelli had infiltrated not only the corridors but the most secret and vital centres of power, increasing pressure was applied to Forlani to have the documents published. He was finally forced to agree, but fought to hold on to the premiership by a mere reshuffle that would expel the
Piduisti
from the Cabinet. But the Communists, the second largest political grouping in the country, now doubly strong by virtue of the fact that only they among Italy's parties were completely free of involvement in P2, resisted furiously.

And the Socialists' leader, Bettino Craxi, although he had thirty-five P2 members within his own party, seized his opportunity and refused to be part of any coalition headed by a Christian Democrat. After seventeen days of desperate negotiations with his former political allies, Forlani reached the end of the road. The government fell and Craxi made his bid for the premiership.

When Craxi, too, failed, the eighty-five-year-old President Alessandro Pertini invited Republican Party leader Giovanni Spadolini to attempt to form a new coalition. Spadolini succeeded, becoming Italy's first non-Christian Democrat premier since the Second World War, and heading a government made up of five separate parties.

As more and more documents were scrutinized it became clear that Gelli had his Freemasons in every decisionmaking centre in Italian politics, and was able to exert significant influence over those decisions. Even top secret summit meetings between the leaders of the coalition had not been secret for Gelli because of the substantial presence at the meetings of Social Democrat leader Pietro Longo, who was P2 member 2223. P2 had reached the very heart of government activity in the Palazzo Chigi. Mario Semprini, the Prime Minister's closest collaborator and his Chief of Cabinet, had been a member of P2 for over four years (membership No 1637), and was regularly passing secrets to his Venerable Master.

Another Christian Democrat officer, Massimiliano Cencelli, a former minister and a friend of masonic Justice Minister Sarti, was also a spy for P2. Lodge member 2180, Cencelli worked at the Office for the Co-ordination of the Secret Services.

Many P2 members were close associates of Forlani.

These included Enzo Badioli, the powerful chief of the Christian Democrat Co-operatives, and Gianni Cerioni, MP for Ancona.

Others were close to the President of the Senate, Amintore Fanfani, who was from Gelli's home town of Arezzo.

The catalogue of the powerful becomes tedious by its very length. A typical example of the enormity of Gelli's own influence over the lives of these men is the case of Mario Pedini who had suddenly been appointed a minister when he joined P2 and as quickly dropped by the government when his Lodge membership lapsed in 1978.

Other P2 members included the Minister of Employment, the Under-Secretary for Industry, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Commerce Minister.

It became apparent that nothing of vital importance had occurred in Italy in recent years which Gelli had not known about in advance or shortly after. Many vital developments were the result of his covert actions from the centre of his secret web. At the height of his power, the most bizarre actions were taken by successive governments, each of which were in Gelli's pocket.

Magistrates sifting the documents from the Villa Wanda found hundreds of top secret intelligence documents. Colonel Antonio Viezzer, the former head of the combined intelligence services, was identified as the prime source of this material and was arrested in Rome for spying on behalf of a foreign power. Following his interrogation, police raided the offices of a fashionable Tuscan lawyer and two suitcases crammed with incriminating documents were discovered. Dr Domenico Sica, head of the enquiries into P2 in Rome, was confident the papers had belonged to Gelli. They backed up the evidence in the Villa Wanda papers in the form of receipts for subscriptions paid to P2 by its members, and also receipts for bribes paid to Lodge members for 'services rendered'.

The extent to which P2 had destabilized Italy is exemplified by the events following President Pertini's actions immediately he was informed of the scandal. Among the members of the Lodge were two of his own executives, men he had liked and trusted. They were Sergio Piscitello (Master of Ceremonies of the Quirinale) and Francesco Gregorio, Pertini's diligent secretary for many years. Without hesitation the President suspended Piscitello and demoted Gregorio to typist. Three government ministers who believed the P2 lists were genuine wanted to follow Pertini's example. They couldn't. As one observer put it:

The trial of strength with the concealed power of P2 has been exhausting for the weakened Forlani government. For days and days the ministers have been asking for some sign of good will (from Lodge members in high office), even simply to go on leave or to be available to the committee of enquiry, or to delegate their tasks to subordinates.

But the 'Piduisti' have turned down every request, especially those within the military establishment.

On the weekend of 16 and 17 May, generals and admirals included on the membership lists met to work out a common strategy for their own survival. They decided to declare themselves victims of a plot and sit tight, defying the investigators to find concrete evidence against them.

At this point the fearful power of Gelli was found to have undermined not only the national security of Italy, but to have struck at the roots of western strength in southern Europe and the Middle East. NATO was forced to support the attitude of the corrupt Freemasons in Italy's armed forces. Officials in Brussels and Washington suggested discreetly that it was not the right moment to create a vacuum of power in the Italian army, navy and secret services. To replace the Defence Chief of Staff (P2 member No 1825), the Chief of Military Counterespionage (P2 member No 1603), and the Chief of National Security (P2 member No 1620) might, said NATO, have grave repercussions on NATO's south flank forces, where the Lebanese crisis had taken a dangerous turn.

27

The Chinaman Report

A bizarre incident occurred in early July 1981. Gelli's daughter Maria flew into Italy under her own name, knowing she would be instantly recognized. She was arrested at Fiumicino Airport, Rome, and her luggage was seized. In a compartment in a false-bottomed suitcase, Customs officers discovered five packages of documents relating to P2. They included statements from several , Swiss banks in the names of Italian politicians and political parties, and also a document which appears to have been a forged 'secret report' by the CIA on attempts to subvert western Europe in general and Italy in particular. Why would Signora Gelli return to Italy with incriminating P2 documents that had already been safely removed from the country? What motive was so pressing that she took the step knowing she would be imprisoned on charges of espionage? For an answer to this, and to the question of what Gelli really was up to, we must also look at what was
not
contained in all the bundles of documents from the Villa Wanda, nor in Maria Gelli's suitcase, nor any of the other P2-related papers.

Without the benefit of inside information such as I was later to have, journalist Peter Hebblethwaite came close to the truth in his article 'Gelli's Babies', which appeared in
The Spectator
on 6 June 1981:

We know that he [Gelli] did business with east European countries.
...
As we have already seen, he boasted about his friendship with Ceausescu. Yet there are no names of any Italian Communist politicians or any east Europeans in this vast store of material. But no one can do business with a Communist country without such intermediaries. It follows that their names have been deliberately suppressed. By whom? Not by the Italian Government, which would have every interest in revealing them. By Gelli himself? If so, the suspicion would be aroused that Gelli deliberately 'planted' all this material, arranged for his disappearance, and is now observing the fascinating consequence of his handiwork from some safe villa on the Black Sea coast.

Licio Gelli - ruthless Fascist, torturer of partisans in the Second World War, friend and adviser of Peron and co-ordinator of right-wing corruption in Italy - was an agent of the KGB. This alone answers all the questions that rise up around his sinister figure. It explains how a document describing the structure of the KGB came to be among the Venerable Master's files; why Maria Gelli returned to Italy - to throw the country, and its attempts to recover from the scandal, into further confusion. She even brought with her a forged letter to her father that alluded to purported arrangements for bribing the members of the judiciary actually investigating P2. It explains how the P2 affair, described by many as the most damaging of all Italy's scandals, was linked with the attempted assassination of the Pope on 13 May 1981, even as P2 was coming to the boil. Western intelligence experts are now generally agreed that the attempted killing was inspired by the KGB.

Loyal to no one, obsessed with power for its own sake, Licio Gelli was determined to use whatever means he could to achieve his ambition: the ruin of those colourless weaklings, the Christian Democrats, who for nearly forty years had run the country which had spawned him, then spurned him for his turpitude. A man filled with such

hatred can become a precision instrument in the hands of the Soviet Secret Service, intent as it is on implanting the seeds of disruption wherever it can in the West. According to an impeccable source within British Intelligence, Gelli was recruited by the KGB soon after he set about the task of building up
Raggruppamento Gelli Propaganda Due.
Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has closely monitored P2 since its inception. It detected KGB involvement in the affair at an early stage.

From the beginning, Lodge P2 was a KGB-sponsored programme aimed at destabilizing Italy, weakening NATO's southern flank, sweeping the Communists into power in Italy and sending resultant shock waves throughout the western world. It achieved its first aim, partially succeeded in its second, came close to realizing the third, and all but failed in the fourth.

MI6 and other western intelligence services have been trying to convince their governments of the enormous growth of the KGB's activities since 1965 (P2 was formed in 1966). Senior officers in British Intelligence regard the KGB as the 'biggest conspiracy in the world', according to one well-placed informant. But their warnings have so far fallen on muffled ears. Even the more hawkish western leaders like Reagan and Thatcher are reluctant to accept the enormity of the threat as it is assessed by MI6 and America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).