A roving reporter who covered Italy’s top politicians explains to The Grayzone how his country was reduced to a joint US-Israeli “aircraft carrier,” and raises troubling questions about an Israeli role in the killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
Eric Salerno, an investigative journalist with decades of experience, has revealed how Israel’s Mossad closely observed and covertly influenced a violent communist faction responsible for the March 16, 1978 kidnapping and assassination of Italian statesman Aldo Moro.
Throughout his 30-year tenure covering Italian leaders, Salerno exposed the clandestine ties between Italian authorities and Israeli intelligence in his 2010 book Mossad Base Italy.
According to Salerno, Moro, arguably Italy’s most significant postwar leader, became an obstacle to powerful interests intent on keeping Italy aligned with the West. He suggests Moro’s foreign policy vision would have altered Italy’s trajectory had he lived, noting, “that’s what they were afraid of in the United States.”
The 1978 abduction of Moro by the radical Red Brigades, a meticulously executed daylight raid resulting in the death of all five of his bodyguards, shocked Italy. Moro was executed two months later, an unresolved tragedy that still haunts the era known to Italians as The Years of Lead, marked by political violence and intelligence conspiracies.
In Italy, many experts see parallels between this event and Operation Gladio, a secret campaign where the CIA, MI6, and NATO trained right-wing paramilitaries who engaged in false flag attacks, robberies, and assassinations aimed at undermining leftist movements. These covert operations helped destabilize socialist forces across Europe.
Moro, a leader of the progressive Christian Democrat faction who served five terms as Italy’s prime minister, threatened the postwar status quo by negotiating a “compromesso storico” (historic compromise) with the Italian Communist Party. “It was something that probably part of the Italian political establishment was afraid of, even in his own party,” Salerno observes.
While his dealings with the Communist Party are widely known, Salerno has also uncovered Moro’s less-publicized connection with Palestinian resistance groups. Allegedly brokered by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, this agreement allowed the PLO and other groups to transport weapons and personnel through Italy freely in exchange for Italy being shielded from terrorist violence. Scholars regard this arrangement — called the “Lodo Moro” — as a flexible and evolving pact, described in detail here.
The Lodo Moro likely originated in 1973 during Moro’s stint as foreign minister, coinciding with Italy’s secret release of Palestinian militants arrested for planning to attack Israel’s El Al airline from Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. This move reflected Italy’s wish to maintain independence from Western powers amid economic pressure, particularly an oil embargo linked to the US’s support for Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
Salerno stopped short of claiming Mossad orchestrated Moro’s kidnapping and assassination outright but admitted to The Grayzone, “I think their idea was, ‘we’ll see what happens, and if it’s necessary, and we think it’s the right time, we can help one way or another.’”
For over ten years, the Lodo Moro served as a shield protecting Italy from the wider regional violence that erupted after the 1967 Six-Day War involving Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Nonetheless, the violence eventually engulfed Moro himself.
Mossad Base Italy
Salerno’s work, Mossad Base Italy, is perhaps the most detailed account of the secretive and ongoing cooperation between Israeli intelligence and Italy’s government, despite being scarcely known among English readers since its 2010 release.
The book traces this covert alliance back to before Israel’s May 1948 founding, highlighting Rome’s role in supplying Zionist militias like the Haganah with arms and training via fascist and neofascist figures, thereby aiding their campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
Salerno explained to The Grayzone, “The Israelis didn’t want Rome to become a satellite of the Soviet Union, and the US had the same position. The country was essentially the West’s front line against the Eastern bloc.” He added that Italy’s geographic proximity to Yugoslavia and Warsaw Pact countries, as well as strong Communist sympathies post-WWII, made it a critical Mediterranean “aircraft carrier” for Western operations. Italy’s strategic position, bordered by almost 5,000 miles of coastline and just 90 miles from Tunisia via Sicily, earned it the title of the Mediterranean’s “gatekeeper” as documented here.
Salerno concludes that since WWII, every Italian government has covertly supported Mossad and Israeli military intelligence. Yossi Melman, a veteran intelligence reporter for Haaretz, confirmed in his review of Salerno’s book that “Israeli espionage agents confirm that Italy’s intelligence services are among the friendliest in the world toward their Israeli counterparts.”
He persuasively argues that the Mossad and Israeli Air Force were in many ways “born in Rome,” with Italy’s intelligence tasked with “extremely classified missions” on behalf of Tel Aviv. Remarkably, this volume has not been translated into English.
Salerno links Italy’s consistent pro-Israel tilt in intelligence circles to both political pragmatism and national remorse over Italy’s complicity in Nazi-era Jewish persecution. Italy’s postwar leaders, he says, “felt… that they had to help the Jews because the Jews had been suffering under the previous regime.”
“Objective evidence” Mossad downed Italian airliner
The traditionally cooperative relationship between Rome and Tel Aviv encountered tensions with the rise of Christian Democrat administrations including Moro’s. Reports indicate that Israel retaliated with covert acts of sabotage inside Italy.
In late 1973, Mossad tipped off authorities leading to the arrest of five members of the Black September Palestinian group accused of planning to destroy an Israeli airliner at Rome’s main airport using surface-to-air missiles. Moro arranged their release a month later and their transport to Libya.
These Palestinians were flown first to Malta on Argo 16, an Italian transport plane regularly used for ferrying Operation Gladio agents and delivering CIA/MI6 arms to clandestine depots in Italy. When Mossad learned of the militants’ release, it reportedly became “very annoyed,” according to Italy’s former counterespionage chief Ambrogio Viviani.
On November 23, 1973, Argo 16 crashed shortly after departing Venice Airport, killing the entire experienced crew.
Initial investigations deemed the crash accidental, but in 1986, the Venice prosecutor reopened the case. The inquiry stalled when security forces refused to cooperate, withholding evidence. Judge Carlo Mastelloni later told Salerno there was “objective evidence” indicating Israel was behind the downing.
“It’s all tied to the famous ‘Moro agreement,’” Mastelloni claimed. The plane’s destruction was a “retaliation” for freeing the Palestinians and an “explicit warning” about Italy’s compromises toward “Tel Aviv’s enemies.” Despite this, Lodo Moro remained in effect, raising questions about whether Mossad escalated its tactics.
‘Mossad decided to transfer the Middle Eastern conflict to Italy’
Argo 16’s destruction was not the sole deadly event during Italy’s Years of Lead linked to Mossad. In May 1973, a hand grenade attack on Milan police headquarters caused four deaths and 45 injuries. The perpetrator—a supposed anarchist—was quickly arrested, but further investigation revealed he was Gianfranco Bertoli, an informant for Italian military intelligence and member of neofascist groups including the Gladio-linked Ordine Nuovo.
Bertoli had spent the previous two years intermittently living at Israel’s Kibbutz Karmiya, where he regularly entertained representatives from the French far-right Jeune Révolution and maintained contacts with French intelligence. These facts led Salerno to question if Mossad was involved in fomenting “the strategy of tension,” a notion supported by Italian magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato, who presided over initial trials concerning the Red Brigades and Moro’s murder.
“It must be acknowledged the Israeli secret services had perfect knowledge of the Italian subversive phenomenon from its very beginning, engaging in it with constant ideological and material support,” Imposimato declared in 1983. He added, “Mossad had decided to transfer the Middle Eastern conflict to Italy,” aiming for political and social destabilization. Israel sought to “induce America to see Israel as the only allied point of reference in the Mediterranean and thus gain greater political and military support,” he explained.
During a March 1999 parliamentary hearing on terrorism, Red Brigades founder Alberto Franceschini confessed that Mossad had approached the group via an intermediary shortly after their 1974 kidnapping of magistrate Mario Sossi. Franceschini said Mossad made a “disturbing” offer to fund them, not to control their actions but merely to ensure their continued existence, telling them:
“We don’t want to tell you what you have to do. That is, what you do is fine with us. We care that you exist. The very fact that you exist, whatever you do is fine with us.”
Franceschini explained that from the US perspective, a more destabilized Italy was more unreliable, making Israel seem like Washington’s reliable Mediterranean ally. Before his death, he admitted that Israel had “offered weapons and assistance” to the Red Brigades with the explicit intent to “destabilize Italy.”
Salerno told The Grayzone that in one of his final interviews, Franceschini “confirmed to my colleague from Corriere della Serra that the Mossad had been in contact from the very beginning with the Red Brigades,” describing these ties as “very normal in the way the Mossad acted with all kinds of, let’s call them subversive organizations, all over Europe.”
The possibility of Israeli involvement in shaping Moro’s fate—or sabotaging peaceful resolutions—is further supported by statements from prominent Italian politicians indicating that Israel “co-financed” and “influenced” the group claiming responsibility for Moro’s murder. Such revelations remain ignored in mainstream English-language media.
In July 1998, Giuseppe De Gori, Moro’s party lawyer during several related trials, testified before a parliamentary commission that Mossad “had always controlled” the Red Brigades without formally infiltrating them. He recounted how in 1973, a Mossad major and colonel “presented themselves” to the group, exposed internal infiltrators, and offered “weapons and whatever they wanted as long as they pursued a different policy.”
The Red Brigades declined, but from then on, Mossad closely monitored them. De Gori said Israeli intelligence “hated” the “anti-Zionist” Moro and exploited their ability to funnel information to the Red Brigades to steer their actions.
De Gori emphasized that Mossad did not need direct access to the Red Brigades, hinting that indirect Israeli influence played a role in deciding to kill Moro after nearly two months of captivity. While the Italian government refused to negotiate, a clandestine meeting among Christian Democrats on May 8, 1978, sought to arrange Moro’s release.
“Moro was killed immediately afterward, so someone must have been there who reported this news,” De Gori testified. In 2002, he told author Philip Willan that Mossad sealed Moro’s fate by recruiting a skilled forger to produce a Red Brigades letter falsely declaring the statesman dead by mid-April 1978. The letter claimed Moro was already dead, making any rescue impossible afterward, De Gori explained.
Bargain with Palestinian resistance puts target on Moro’s back
De Gori is not alone in blaming Mossad for Moro’s death. In May 2007, Giovanni Galloni, former vice president of Italy’s High Council of the Judiciary, asserted that not all participants in the kidnapping belonged to the Red Brigades.
He emphasized the fatal execution of Moro’s bodyguards using just two weapons operated by highly skilled shooters unassociated with known Red Brigades members.
Galloni implied Washington and/or Tel Aviv hired these assassins. Moro had expressed concerns months before his abduction that US and Israeli intelligence had penetrated the Red Brigades. Reporting this to the US ambassador led to an ambiguous denial from Washington, which claimed it shared “everything we know” with Italian intelligence.
Galloni questioned, “Which secret services? The real ones, or the ones that were in their hands?” referencing the Anglo-American spy and terror network in Rome known as Operation Gladio.
Additional evidence tied to an Israeli role appeared during a June 2017 hearing before an Italian parliamentary committee, when former magistrate Luigi Carli, involved in the original Moro probe, stated Mossad had “co-financed” the Red Brigades.
When questioned why Israel would support an armed communist faction, Carli cited former Red Brigades collaborators who revealed Mossad agreed to help fund the group, an arrangement Carli found “strange.”
However, they explained that undermining Italy’s internal stability would “enhance Israel’s prestige and authority” throughout the Mediterranean, according to Carli.
Detailed interviews with ex-president Francesco Cossiga, published after his 2010 death, offered further insight into Mossad’s motives for eliminating Moro and orchestrating large-scale false flag bombings in Italy. Cossiga was the first prominent Italian figure to acknowledge the existence of the Lodo Moro, revealing that while the US government “of course” knew about it, much of Italy’s political class remained unaware.
Cossiga recounted an incident as prime minister in November 1979, when police stopped a truck carrying a surface-to-air missile. He then received a telegram from George Habbash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, admitting ownership and assuring the missile was not intended for Italy. Habbash demanded its return and the driver’s release, warning against violating the PFLP’s “agreement” with Rome.
“No one could tell me what this part meant,” Cossiga said, learning the significance only “many years later” upon discovering the Lodo Moro agreement.
At that time, Italian authorities had reopened the 1980 Bologna Centrale bombing investigation, which killed 85 and injured over 200. The inquiry led to convictions in absentia of neo-fascist Gladio-linked terrorists like Robert Fiore, a known MI6 asset who fled London where extradition was refused. The Bulletin of Italian Politics highlighted the missile seizure and Lodo Moro as critical factors in the case.
The investigation considered if the Bologna bombing was “carried out by the US or Israel to punish Italy for its pro-Arab stance.” Cossiga lamented that Italy “never really had space for its own foreign policy” due to American dominance but asserted Italy pursued a “national agenda” in the Middle East, taking “certain liberties” with both Arab states and Israel.
“People forget” the Christian Democrats were consistently “a pro-Arab party,” Cossiga noted, naming Moro and Giulio Andreotti, the longtime Italian leader who exposed Operation Gladio in October 1990. Cossiga claimed Andreotti believed—though never publicly stated—that the US caused him “judicial problems” because of his Arab sympathies.
Salerno challenges labeling Andreotti as “pro-Arab,” suggesting instead he was “pro the rights of Arabs.” He recounted Andreotti telling him, “if I was born in Gaza, I would be a terrorist.”
Moro rescue committee set up to fail
During Moro’s 55 days in captivity by the Red Brigades, Italian authorities insisted that the “state must not bend” to “terrorist demands,” making clear no negotiations or prisoner exchanges would take place.
Moro’s body was eventually found in a car trunk in central Rome, shot ten times.
Many Italians remain deeply skeptical about the government’s hardline stance, given its readiness to negotiate in other kidnappings before and after Moro’s death.
Magistrate Mario Sossi, whose 1974 kidnapping allegedly prompted Mossad outreach to the Red Brigades, was released after a month in exchange for some radicals imprisoned by the state.
When Christian Democrat politician Ciro Cirillo was abducted in April 1981, Italian officials directly negotiated with his captors, paying ransom for his freedom. Later that year, US General James Dozier was rescued swiftly by a US-Italian joint task force.
Former general Roberto Jucci contrasted Dozier’s rescue with Moro’s in a 2024 interview, stating: “One of them, they wanted to set free; I have my doubts about the other.”
Jucci, charged with training a special forces unit theoretically tasked with freeing Moro, suspects “the real goal was to get me out of the way” to ensure Moro would never be found. Notably, no rescue raids occurred during Moro’s long captivity.
He told La Repubblica that the official Moro rescue committee was “advised by a man sent by the US” and largely composed of members tied to the fascist, Gladio-linked Masonic lodge P2. These actors pursued a different agenda than the public’s hopes, seeking Moro’s political and physical destruction.
Jucci believes that had Moro remained alive, “Italy’s politics would have developed differently.” He argues the leader could have been freed if all institutions had cooperated. British Ministry of Defence files declassified in 1990 reveal London’s deep awareness of P2’s role in undermining rescue attempts, describing the lodge as a subversive force using terrorism to provoke repression against Italy’s democracy.
The documents further cite “circumstantial evidence” suggesting “one or more of Moro’s kidnappers was secretly in touch” with Italy’s security services, with investigators deliberately ignoring leads that might have saved Moro.
Mossad continues Italian ops amid Gaza genocide
Presently, mainstream Italian politics show scant remnants of pro-Arab sentiment. Salerno explains that the US and Israel no longer require Italy’s destabilization as the nation’s economy has weakened. He argues the current government is effectively “a continuation, even an extension, of the old fascist regime,” with officials reportedly keeping statues of Mussolini in their homes.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has openly expressed minimal support for Palestinians and little interest in recognizing a Palestinian state, even after revelations in November 2024 that Mossad hired an Italian private intelligence firm to spy on her and her cabinet.
Salerno explains, “I think that basically, the government that we have here in Italy at the moment is a government that would like to criticize many things that are happening,” but “it can’t criticize Israel too much because of what the Italian fascist regime did to the Jews during the war.”
Regarding the recent mass demonstrations and strikes supporting Gaza, Salerno remarks, “What is happening today in Palestine in Gaza is something exceptional.” Yet, due to decades of silence in Italy on Palestinian suffering, both “the great population of Italy and the governments of Italy” have “never done very much to really help the Palestinians.” Now, he notes, “all of a sudden, we have discovered we have the Middle East and the Palestinian question.”
Mossad remains active in Italy. This was underscored in May 2023 when a houseboat capsized on Lake Maggiore, killing four of the 23 aboard. While initially reported by mainstream media as a tragic accident, it soon emerged that all passengers except the captain and his wife were Israeli and Italian intelligence operatives.
The 10 surviving Israelis were quickly evacuated to Tel Aviv aboard a military plane before police could question them, apparently with the consent of Italian officials. Investigations suggested the gathering was a joint Israeli-Italian intelligence mission focused on tracking “Iranian non-conventional weapons capabilities,” possibly monitoring local industries or wealthy Russians suspected of aiding Moscow’s drone procurement from Tehran.
A eulogy for the Israeli agent who died, identified as Erez Shimoni, was delivered by Mossad chief David Barnea, indicating Shimoni’s high status within the agency. Although the boat’s captain was convicted of negligent homicide, Italy’s military police promptly announced no inquiry would be conducted into the operatives’ activities.
Original article: thegrayzone.com
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