Scandal Rocks Italy

...Indignation against Montagna mounted when it became known that, on top of everything else, he had reported an income of little more than a thousand dollars on his tax return and, what is more, had gotten away with it...

...The total effect of these disclosures was to shift the spotlight away from the still unsolved mystery of Wilma Montesi's fate to the figure of the bogus marquis...

...The Colonel described Montagna as a former Fascist police informer, a Nazi spy, a procurer and suspected dope smuggler...

...The circumstance that Fanfani is leader of the Christian Democratic Left has led some observers to suggest that the move was aimed at his political rivals, Foreign Minister Attilio Piccioni and Vice Party Secretary Giuseppe Spataro, leaders of the party's right wing...

...Not long after this, the leftist press published photographs of Montagna and Scelba standing together as witnesses at Alfonso Spataro's wedding two years ago...

...Here are a few of the highlights: "Liberation??containment of the Soviet Empire by a reduced United States military budget, subject to the qualification that there may be ?®normal setbacks...

...To set things right and restore the Government's prestige, Scelba must not only fight Communism...

...Young girls of the Roman petit-bourgeoisie simply don't go bathing their feet on lonely beaches in the small hours of the morning...

...From the standpoint of American jurisprudence, much of what has happened so far in this case is positively fantastic...

...Meanwhile, Muto had been indicted for spreading slanderous reports...

...But the chief accuser in the drama was another woman, Anna Maria Caglio, Montagna's former mistress, who was out to revenge herself on the man who jilted her...

...instant retaliation??not dropping an A-bomb on Moscow at the next act of aggression, because Moscow has A-bombs, too, and would drop them on the United States...

...Not only is the case packed with everything to commend it to public interest, including sex, dope orgies, prominent names, and melodramatic scenes in which witnesses take the stand simultaneously and challenge each other's veracity to the intense delight of the onlookers...

...isolation of Joe McCarthy ??a program mapped out at the Commodore Hotel in New York in January 1953, under which the Senator has become the second most important individual in Washington and the most talked-about single person in the world...

...Their task has been further aided by the apparent reluctance of many Christian Democratic and Government leaders to clear things up...

...Communist propaganda has been trying hard to present the case as an indictment not so much of corrupt individuals as of the entire governing class...

...The United States has the initiative??Communist pressure increases in Indo-China...

...Three hours later, the document in question was retrieved from the Post Office and read in court...

...Teamwork??every high-placed Government official expressing an individual, and usually conflicting, view on the degree of the menace of the Soviet atomic program...

...In those days, the Government commanded a thumping majority in Parliament which would have assured adoption of all the legislation required to curb the Communists and restrict their unbridled abuse of democratic freedoms...

...It was Muto who first published stories of alleged dope orgies at an exclusive seaside hunting lodge where the Marquis entertained his powerful friends...

...The court adjourned in an uproar, and the following Monday, after a brief session, came the announcement that the Muto trial would be adjourned pending the results of a new inquest into the death of Wilma Montesi...

...She had mailed the letter back to Miss Caglio that very morning before coming to court...

...Though the mystery of how she met her death is still unsolved, the charges and countercharges that have stemmed from the mystery have burgeoned into what may well go down in history as the most sensational political scandal in Europe since the Dreyfus Case...

...But, under skilful cross-examination, holes began to appear in Miss Bisaccia's denials...

...Every edition is snatched up as fast as it hits the stands...

...For weeks now, the whole country has talked and argued about nothing else...

...In the provinces, scores, even hundreds, of Communist branches would be evicted from the spacious Government-owned quarters they have occupied rent-free for the past eight years...

...Though the announcement of impending anti-Communist measures has been widely welcomed, not even the Government's most fervent well-wishers are yet prepared to start cheering...

...Appearing in court as star witness in Muto's defense, she launched charges against scores of people...

...She finally admitted that she might have said such things but had been forced into it by suggestion...

...Yet, no one was ever indicted, much less punished, although there was plenty of evidence there to be gathered...

...WASHINGTON DEFINITIONS Joseph C. Harsch, writing in the Christian Science Monitor of March 24, compiled an amusing glossary of currently fashionable Washington terms and how they look to the opposition...

...The circumstance that the chief defense counsel in the Muto trial was Giuseppe Sotgiu, who, besides being one of Italy's ablest courtroom lawyers, is a card-carrying Communist, has given the comrades an inside track...

...A curious sidelight on this phase of the story was the disclosure that the Carabinieri??s investigation of Montagna had been ordered personally by Amintore Fanfani, then Minister of the Interior in the Pella Cabinet...

...This report rocked the courtroom and the nation...

...Twenty years of treason??twenty years of Democrats in office...

...But universal excitement over the case has reached the point where nobody bothers much about legal niceties, even if the elementary rights of citizens are invaded...

...Thus, after the resignation of Police Chief Tomasso Pavone, almost everyone had expected that Foreign Minister Piccioni would follow suit??not because he was himself in any way implicated, but because his mere presence in the Government appeared to prejudice the course of justice where his son was involved...

...To begin with, they would lose the best printing plant in Rome, where they publish their official daily newspaper Unita, as well as most of their monthly and weekly magazines and voluminous propaganda literature...

...It is hard to forget that, for six consecutive years as Interior Minister under de Gasperi, Scelba had opportunities for similar steps under far more favorable auspices...

...This tradition survived under the postwar democratic regime of Signor de Gasperi...

...Under Mussolini, high officials and their relatives could get away with murder, thanks to collusion between the authorities and the controlled press...

...The left-wing press in particular has had a Roman holiday...

...An immediate consequence was the resignation of Italy's Chief of Police, Tomasso Pavone, who was named as a close personal friend of Montagna...

...All this leads up to the announced reopening of the inquest into the death of Wilma Montesi, the comely brunette whose body was found a year ago on a lonely stretch of beach south of Ostia...

...Public opinion refused to buy the official version that the unfortunate girl had been drowned accidentally while bathing a foot-rash in the sea...

...The fact that de Gasperi was personally honest did not prevent considerable malfeasance in his immediate neighborhood...

...The Communist-controlled CGIL trade-union center would have to vacate its palatial national headquarters...

...in the process...

...The present Scelba Government commands but the barest Parliamentary majority...

...And then, on request of the defense, a confidential report on Montagna signed by Colonel Pompei, Rome commander of the highly respected Carabinieri, was read in court...

...Newspaper circulation has soared...

...Britain, Canada and India agree to promote United Nations membership for Communist China...

...This skepticism crystalized when a 24- year-old journalist named Silvano Muto launched a one-man magazine, financed by his wealthy parents, by publishing a different account of Wilma Montesi's death in which he implicated prominent figures??first and foremost Piero Piccioni, son of the present Foreign Minister, and a certain Marquis Ugo Montagna di San Bartolomeo, well known in the Rome hunting set and a close friend of many influential people...

...It is rather the outcome of a tradition that dates from Fascist times...

...For a time, soon after the trial opened, Muto's situation seemed rather hopeless...

...Moscow explodes an H-bomb...

...To many, it matters not that, in the process, they dilute these facts with heavy doses of slander and innuendo, as when they published the picture of Scelba standing with Montagna at the Spataro wedding, thus employing the technique of guilt by association rendered so familiar to Americans by Senator Joseph McCarthy...

...Today, the natural tendency is still for underlings to cover up for their superiors...

...Most of the hearsay evidence which has gone into the record would have been barred from an American court...

...Muto's original version was based on revelations reportedly made to him by Adriana Bisaccia, who he said had also taken part in the hunting-lodge orgies...

...All other issues have gone by the board...

...The sordid Montesi affair, involving Government officials and their relatives, threatens to undermine Premier Scelba's Center coalition Scandal Rocks Italy By Edmund Stevens Rome How serious is Premier Mario Scelba's government in its declared intention of cracking down on Italy's powerful, aggressive Communist movement...

...Not only did the report name Piero Piccioni first among Montagna's intimates, but it also revealed that Alfonso Spataro, son of Giuseppe, had been a partner to some of Montagna's real-estate deals, in which millions changed hands and handsome profits were reaped...

...More than 2,400 security risks??one avowed former Communist party member, anyhow...

...It bluntly accused Piero Piccioni of murdering Wilma Montesi and described him as the killer of a dope ring headed by Ugo Montagna...

...The popular mood is now such that, should a national election be held before the issue cools, the showing of the democratic Center might be sad indeed...

...If the Government goes through with plans to recover the former Fascist party and Fascist labor-front properties which the Reds occupied in the days of "liberation," the Communists and their front organizations would be roofless in many places...

...Meanwhile, a parade of witnesses, including her former close associates in Rome's existentialist set, testified to having overheard Miss Bisaccia talk about the Montesi case...

...The fault does not lie so much with the present government...

...Not only did it tend to corroborate Miss Caglio's overall veracity, but it seriously compromised some of Montagna's prominent associates...

...This was roughly how things stood on Saturday, March 20, when the Muto trial, which had seldom seen a dull moment, suddenly came to a dramatic climax...

...At first, her seemingly wild assertions encountered widespread disbelief...

...it is also loaded with political dynamite which may yet blow the whole Government sky-high...

...he must convince the country that he truly intends to clean out the Montagnas without fear or favor...

...If the Government really means business, its promise to end the Communist monopoly on trade with the Soviet bloc could deprive the party of its main source of income: commissions on two-way transactions amounting to an estimated $30 million annually...

...Meanwhile, it was confirmed that Montagna had no right to the title of marquis...

...On the stand, Miss Caglio's former landlady had testified that Miss Caglio, fearing that she, too, might presently be the victim of foul play, had left with her a letter to be released only in case these fears were verified, wherein she named those responsible for the death of Wilma Montesi...

...Seldom has the world witnessed vengeance more complete...

...Official reluctance has enabled the Communists to steal the show and cast themselves in the role of champions of morality and to claim the credit for bringing the facts to light...

...Moreover, the atmosphere engendered by the current wave of public scandal is hardly favorable to the launching of such a crusade...

...Miss Bisaccia later disclaimed any knowledge of the Montesi affair and denied she had ever made any declarations on the subject to Muto or anyone else...

...The almost indecent haste with which the public prosecutor wound up the initial inquest gave the public grounds for suspecting that influential persons wanted the whole episode hushed up...

...Even in an Italian court, the public reading of a confidential report prepared by an officer of the Carabinieri for his superiors, as well as the disclosure of the grave charges in Miss Caglio's letter, were highly unorthodox...

...But today things can no longer be hushed up as in Fascist times...

...Overnight, he became in the public eye the personification of corruption within the ruling caste...

...Many people suspect that its announcement was deliberately timed to divert attention from the discredit currently being shed on prominent names in the Government and the Christian Democratic party...

...But the Cabinet refused to accept his resignation...