By Philip Willan
ROME — Licio Gelli, the head of the secret Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge, had
reason to feel satisfied as he celebrated his 90th birthday April 21.
Lucid and in apparently good health, he has been courted by the media, is the
subject of a new book and tv series and may be the protagonist of
a mooted Hollywood movie entitled “The Conspirator”. His eminent P2
brother, Silvio Berlusconi, is Italian prime minister, implementing many elements of Gelli’s political programme. A job well done, one might think.
More than a quarter of a century has passed since the discovery of the P2
membership list in a mattress factory near the town of Castiglion Fibocchi but there is still no consensus as to what membership entailed. Nor do we know exactly who belonged. Gelli’s list contained 962 names, including top figures from business, politics, media, armed forces, secret services and the judiciary. The parliamentary P2 Commission concluded the list was a reliable guide to genuine membership, but a number of individuals with names on it succeeded in convincing the courts they did not belong. Gelli has often hinted that the complete list was much longer than the 1,000 names that came to light in 1981.
There is less doubt over the political significance of the lodge, however.
Many observers see it as an instrument for projecting American power into
the turbulent politics of cold war Italy, which abutted on Iron Curtain
Yugoslavia, stretched out towards the Mediterranean and was home
to the largest Communist party in the west.
Today Gelli is candid about his own political preferences — an
unrepentant fascist and admirer of Benito Mussolini, whom he met on
his return from the Spanish Civil War. At age 17, Gelli enrolled as
a black-shirt volunteer under the assumed name of Livio Gommina – operating
under an alias would become second nature later. In Spain he
lost his brother, Raffaello, confirming him in lifelong aversion to communism.
Gelli’s political programme is outlined in documents prepared for
P2 members, and the venerable master has watched with satisfaction as many of its elements are implemented by brother 1816, Sig. Berlusconi. The abolition of the state television monopoly and of compulsory military service, a reduction of the number of members of parliament, political control over prosecutors, and psychological testing for magistrates are all under discussion or in effect. A wide-ranging reform of education and “the employment of the armed forces for public order operations” are initiatives taken recently by the Berlusconi government. Both are in Gelli’s 1975 “Scheme for a General Recovery of the Country.”
Whatever one may think of Gelli’s policy suggestions – some were
perfectly sensible – his strategy for achieving power was disturbing.
Corruption was the key to success. In policy documents from
the 1970s he explains clearly that trade unionists, journalists and politicians
can be bought. The outright purchase of the Christian Democrat
party, he estimated, would cost around 10 billion lire ( dlrs 10 million). And for
“well-chosen men of good faith” to win control of key positions in parties, the press and unions, a sum of 30-40 billion lire was sufficient.
It was this need for funding that brought Gelli into contact with
scandal-linked financiers such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, who
became lodge members. The possession of sensitive information suitable
for blackmail was always an ingredient in Gelli’s repertoire and the
same was true of Sindona and Calvi. Both met premature
deaths; Sindona after drinking poisoned coffee in prison in Voghera in
1986 and Calvi ending up hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in
London in 1982. In the case of Sindona it was suicide that looked like
Murder. For Calvi it was almost certainly murder dressed up as
suicide.
In an interview with a biographer, Francesco De Rosa, Gelli
surmised “that many of the things that Sindona knew had been passed on to
Calvi. And I am not just talking about financial agreements, possible future
alliances, but also about compromising material, documents and other things
that could have unleashed an earthquake. This, I believe, could be what links
their deaths.”
Calvi had been attempting to blackmail the Vatican, shortly before he left Italy on his
final journey to London, in an effort to recover the money he had made
available to the Solidarity trade union in Poland, Gelli told De Rosa. “Calvi
represented at that time a certain way of doing business in Italy. A financial
sector that paid large sums to the political world.” Gelli had been
strategically placed to mediate between men like Calvi and that venal political
world. By the end, Gelli may himself have become one of Calvi’s blackmail
victims as the banker struggled to raise funds to stave off the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. A 1982 Italian intelligence report suggests Calvi “went to London to meet Gelli or his emissaries, taking with him highly blackmailing documents. Here he was killed and the documentation taken from him.”
In recent interviews Gelli has become relaxed about discussing
his cold war activities, admitting links to American Intelligence and drawing a parallel between P2 and the secret NATO stay-behind organisationGladio. In a frank book-length interview with the journalist Sandro Neri, he described freemasonry as “a kind of subterranean diplomatic channel”. The purpose of P2 “was to guarantee Italy privileged access in its international relations”.
In his interview with Neri, entitled “Licio Gelli: The Venerabile’s Word”,
Gelli boasted he had known personalities within the CIA and American conservative circles. “I met Richard Nixon at the inauguration ceremony for an American president. I certainly had dealings with (Rome station chief and later CIA director) William Colby. But I didn’t take orders from anyone. At most, I gave advice,” he said. Faithful cold war ally though he was, the venerabile had few illusions about the relationship between Italy and the US: “We were just a colony of the USA.”
Gelli nurtured international ambitions for his masonic lodge, which were cut short by the discovery of the membership list. Latin America, and Argentina particularly, were favourite stamping grounds for Gelli and associates. The international dimension of his project was represented by WOMTA (the World Organisation of Masonic Thought and Assistance), which held its first congress in Rio de Janeiro in 1976. As secretary general, Gelli invited masons to come together to combat “the menacing spectre of international communism”.
Gelli hoped to recruit freemasons from every country in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba. WOMTA’s first chairman was a Brazilian, Heitor Correa de Mello, and councillors were from Italy, Uruguay and Argentina. One vice-president was Cesar de la Vega, head of Argentine freemasonry, who played a crucial role in the 1973 return to power of General Juan Peron. Then, too, Gelli was in the thick of the action, with Peron on the plane from Madrid to Buenos Aires and working to woo freemasons and military officers to the cause.
The pervasive kind of power that P2 afforded members is underlined by an operation Gelli organised in 1977: a visit to Italy by his friend Admiral Emilio Massera, head of the Argentine navy and a member of the Argentine P2. He was also responsible for a large slice of the dlrs.14 billion Argentina spent on arms between 1976 and the Falklands war in 1982, and was visiting to order Italian weapon systems. Gelli’s control of the situation was enviable: Massera was a member of his lodge and so were many influential individuals whom he met.
A programme, among documents donated by Gelli to the state archive, shows the closed masonic world in which the two operated. At 6.30 p.m. on October 26 Massera had an appointment with five of Italy’s leading bankers at Rome’s Grand Hotel. Of these, four – including Calvi – were P2 members. An hour later the admiral was meeting Italy’s treasury minister, lodge member Gaetano Stammati. At 9.30 a.m. the following morning it was time to meet 10 leading figures from the Italian business community; six were members of Gelli’s lodge.
Just how useful the network could be was explained by Gelli in a letter to
Federico Barttfeld, Argentine ambassador to Italy and another member of the
P2 family. Gelli assured him that the journalists who would interview Massera during his stay would be exclusively selected individuals from the major Italian news organizations. Their questions would be vetted in advance and actually drawn up by the Argentine delegation, passed to the editors of Italian newspapers — “naturally friends” – who would in turn pass them on “to the journalists, of proven faith, chosen to conduct this interview.”
The first major step in Gelli’s rehabilitation came in 1994. The Rome appeals court ruled that P2 had not conspired against the democratically elected government. Gelli and intelligence officer Gianadelio Maletti were convicted of obtaining and making arbitrary use of documents covered by state secrecy, but the principal charge against them was rejected. The verdict effectively undercut the conclusions of the parliamentary P2 Commission, which said Gelli’s lodge threatened democracy.
Meetings of Gelli and followers at his Tuscan home, Villa Wanda, in
the early 1970s were not part of a coup plot, the court ruled. They represented
rather “a mix of superficiality, presumption and megalomania perfectly
compatible with the character of Gelli and of some of his guests.” This
reductive view of Gelli’s relations with coup plotters and extremists is endorsed by his most recent biographer, historian Aldo Mola. Italians were “brainwashed” into believing the worst of Gelli and of masons, Mola claims in his book.
Mola, an expert on freemasonry and member of the board of auditors of
Berlusconi’s Fininvest company as far back as 1978, argues, with
the appeals court judges, that P2 was an inadequate instrument for the
political crimes of which it stood accused. But he somewhat undercuts his
argument when describing the important role played by Gelli in Argentina. “Those who met him in Madrid or Buenos Aires noted that Gelli was an insider in the palaces of power. Influential. How had he made it without a party or a personal fortune behind him? Power is a Presence. All the more incumbent for being invisible.” This was exactly the
kind of irresponsible influence that Gelli’s critics accuse him of wielding in Italy.
In my meetings with Gelli I have always been struck by the affable and
reassuring image he manages to convey. “He gave the impression of a mild-
mannered provincial banker, with grey hair, a grey suit and a slightly bulbous
nose in a placid-looking face,” I observed after our first encounter in 1989.
This was also the impression of Angelo Rizzoli, who joined P2 to seek financial
protection for his Corriere della Sera and ended up losing the newspaper. “He had a cordial, affable manner, with a certain bonhomie, he was reassuring,” Rizzoli said.
It is perhaps this image of an inoffensive, affable old man that will remain in the memory
of many Italians. A TV series dedicated to his life recently broadcast on the Odeon TV network generated huge controversy before it began, but proved bland and un-alarming. The Gelli who emerges from the latest media portrayals remains indecipherable — a witness to historic events, but a man whose true role is still shrouded in mystery.
Philip Willan is the author of two books that deal with Gelli’s activities:
Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, and The Last Supper:
The mafia, the masons and the killing of Roberto Calvi, available on www.
amazon.com.