Correspondents' Correspondence An Italian Thriller
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. An Italian Thriller ROME—The plot has all the...
...Now the credibility of the PCI and its leader has been seriously jeopardized...
...Meanwhile, the PCI has launched an inevitable counterattack, calling for a thorough parliamentary investigation to ferret out the whole truth on the Cirillo case...
...On the other hand, the request for an investigation of Cirillo's release is quite legitimate...
...Cirillo was responsible for large public works, a forthcoming international airport among them...
...It is not a movie script, however...
...Possibly due to the recent clash with the Soviet Union over the Polish issue, the Communist hierarchy is in a state of disarray seldom witnessed before...
...The Communist (PCI) daily Unitd accused two Christian Democratic (DC) Cabinet members of having negotiated with Raffaele Cutolo, imprisoned leader of the Camorra (Naples' version of the Mafia), for the release of Naples DC party boss Ciro Cirillo, who was held for 88 days by the Red Brigades and freed in April '81...
...This version left many people incredulous, yet it was not openly challenged...
...a forged "secret" document prominently played by an opposition newspaper suggests that an underworld leader contacted in his prison cell by high government officials served as an intermediary...
...An effort is also underway to uncover the authors of the forgery and figure out who lured the party organ into publishing it...
...He resigned last month under heavy political pressure from the Left...
...In addition, Unitd retracted the story and Petruccioli resigned...
...Managing editor Claudio Petruccioli, apparently fully confident of his young colleague, told party headquarters he had a blockbusting document proving that members of the DCs highest echelon had been guilty of dealing with the Red Brigades through the Camorra...
...Unitd based its charges on a faked Interior Ministry document...
...The official story following his release was that the ransom had been arranged by an unnamed family friend holding no public office...
...The colossal gaffe stemmed from cub reporter Marina Maresca's vigorous assertion that she had received the document from an influential and unimpeachable source...
...An Italian Thriller ROME—The plot has all the ingredients of a cheap thriller: An important politician is kidnapped by terrorists and released several weeks later after the payment of a huge ransom...
...He promptly received the imprimatur of Enrico Berlinguer's office, if not the PCI Secretary himself...
...It is typical of the Communist mentality to blame capitalist agents whenever something goes wrong, but this time PCI can hardly sell the Italian public on tales of conspiracy...
...and in the background is a love story between a young female reporter—author of the "scoop"—and a slippery publicist somehow involved in the forgery...
...And once that criticism died down, the matter remained dormant until this past March when Unitd reopened it on the basis of what proved to be a crude forgery...
...The police were merely taken to task for failing to block bank accounts as they have done in similar situations, while the DCs were condemned for pursuing the sort of deal with the Red Brigades that they had indignantly ruled out when Aldo Moro was in the hands of the terrorists...
...More than one leading Communist has ascribed Unitd's goof to serious flaws in the PCI's present political strategy...
...and Berlinguer came under a thinly disguised attack within the party...
...Let it be said, however, that the Communists will not replace Berlinguer in a week or a month...
...No Machiavelli masterminding a sinister plot could have banked on Unita's unprecedented gullibility...
...For another, there is no strong opponent in view at present...
...It is the sensational Cirillo case, which violently exploded here last month...
...Moreover, the DCs may well be vulnerable, for the political game in Naples is played in a fashion that makes the old Tammany Hall bosses look like starry-eyed crusaders.—SILVIO F. SEN-IGALLIA...
...Within a few days Maresca, who refused to divulge her source, and her lover, Felice Luigi Rotondi, were in jail...
...For one thing, such a decision can be made only by the Party's national congress...
...There is little to be gained by the second tactic...
...PCI parliamentary leader Giorgio Napolitano formally apologized to the Christian Democrats on the floor of the Houseof Deputies...
...In fact, under different circumstances such haste in exploiting an unsubstantiated charge against the majority party would have been unthinkable...
Vol. 65 • April 1982 • No. 8
