PROPAGANDA DUE

A secretive masonic lodge, the P2 was described as “an association for criminal purposes” by President Alessandro Pertini in October 1981. The existence of the lodge— which boasted over 900 members of Italy’s political, business, military, and journalistic elite—was discovered in March 1981 by prosecutors investigating the illegal activities of two of its members, the financier Michele Sindona (poisoned in prison in 1987) and “God’s banker,” Roberto Calvi, who had made huge illegal payments to Bettino Craxi, leader of the Partito Socialista Italiano/Italian Socialist Party (PSI), shortly before being found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982.The lodge’s political objectives, as revealed by its grand master, the ex-Nazi collaborator Licio Gelli, were to infiltrate members into the highest ranks of the state and media (the TV entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi was a member of the lodge) and to press for a presidential republic as a better bulwark against the danger thought to be posed by the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI).

The Italian Parliament outlawed the organization in December 1981 and established a Commission of Inquiry, whose May 1984 report confirmed that the P2 had indeed intended to manipulate Italy’s democratic institutions. Only then did Pietro Longo, leader of the Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano/Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI), as senior politician most directly involved in the scandal, resign from the government. During the inquiry it also became clear that Gelli had been closely connected with the Italian secret services and with right-wing terrorist groups, and with Giulio Andreotti, who was accused of being the godfather of the secretive association. No proof of this charge—which Andreotti indignantly denied—has ever been found. It does seem certain, however, that the P2 had friends in high places. Gelli was subsequently treated with extraordinary leniency by the authorities, and Italy’s high court has since denied—in the face of all the evidence—that the P2 was a subversive organization.