Image:Aldo-moro.jpg
'''Aldo_Moro''' (Maglie, Lecce_Province, September_23, 1916 - Rome, May_9, 1978) was five times Prime_Minister_of_Italy. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years.
One of the most important leaders of Democrazia_Cristiana (DC, in English the ''Christian Democrats''), Moro was considered an intellectual and an incredibly patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party. He was kidnapped and killed in obscure circumstances, in May 1978, by militants from the Red_Brigades (BR).
==Early career==
His political career had started during the late times of Fascism, in the G.U.F. university groups. He joined and in 1941 became president of the F.U.C.I. (Federation of Catholic University Students). After World_War_II, Moro was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946, and helped drafting the Italian constitution. He was then re-elected as a member of the house of representatives in 1948, where he served as a member until his violent death.
==Historical compromise==
During the 1970s, he was one of the political leaders who gave the deepest attention to Enrico_Berlinguer's project of a so-called ''Compromesso Storico'' (historical compromise). The leader of PCI (Italian Communist Party) had proposed a solidarity between Communists and Christian Democrats in a moment of serious economical, social and political crisis in Italy, and Moro, then the president of DC, was one of those who had helped in finding a way to finally form a government of "national solidarity".
As leader of the parliamentary coalition he served as Prime_Minister from 1963 to 1968, and again from 1974 to 1976.
==Kidnapping and death==
Image:Moro_br_1.jpg]]
===Kidnapping, March 16, 1978===
On March_16, 1978 Moro was kidnapped in ''via Fani'' in Rome by a commando of left-wing Terrorists, known as the Red_Brigades and led by Mario_Moretti, after they killed all of the 5 escort agents ordered to protect Moro. After 55 days of detention, Moro was murdered in or near Rome on May_9. His body was found that day in a parked car, left between the headquarters of the Christian Democracy (DC) and the Italian_Communist_Party (PCI), with a clear symbolism.
Moro was kidnapped on his way to a session of the house of representatives, where a discussion was supposed to take place regarding the vote of confidence to a new government led by Giulio_Andreotti (DC), for the first time with the support of the communist party. It was the first implementation of Moro's strategic vision defined by the ''Compromesso storico''.
===Negotiations===
The Red Brigades (BR) proposed to exchange Moro's life for the freedom of several imprisoned terrorists. During the detention, it has been conjectured that many knew where he was detained (an apartment in Rome), and even Romano_Prodi (who would later become Prime Minister of Italy and president of the European_Commission) was involved in a strange story of indications of the street where Moro was detained: in a Séance held by several university professors in Bologna, the Ghost of Giorgio_La_Pira would have revealed that Moro was kept in ''via Gradoli'' in Rome, where indeed the Red Brigades had a hideout that was discovered on April_18. The séance story was likely a cover-up for a tip from the far-left extraparlamentarian environment in Bologna. It has been claimed that the hideout in Rome contained material received from Italian and/or NATO secret services.
When Moro was abducted, the government immediately took a hardline position: the "State must not bend" on terrorist requests. This was a much different position than the one kept in the kidnapping of Ciro_Cirillo, a minor political figure for which the government negotiated with terrorists. It has been suggested that some politicians, especially christian-democrat Giulio_Andreotti, took the chance of getting rid of a political competitor by letting the terrorists execute him.
===Aldo Moro's captivity letters===
During this period, Moro wrote several letters to the principal leaders of DC and to Pope_Paul_VI (who later personally celebrated his solemn Funeral Mass). Those letters, at times very critical of Giulio_Andreotti (DC), were kept secret for decades, and published only in the early nineties {{ref|moroLetters}}. In his letters, Moro advocated that the state's primary objective should be of saving people's lives, and that the government should strive to comply with his kidnappers' requests. Most of the leaders of the Christian Democrats argued that the letters did not express truthfully Moro's intentions, and refused to attempt any negotiation, in stark contrast with Moro's family's requests. In his appeal to the terrorists, Pope_Paul_VI asked them to release Moro "without conditions".
It has been conjectured that Moro used these letters to send cryptic messages to his family and colleagues. Doubts have been advanced about the completeness of these letters; Carabinieri's general Carlo_Alberto_Dalla_Chiesa (later killed by Mafia) found copies of the letters in a house that terrorists had in Milan, and for some reason this retrieval was not publicly known until many years later. According to a December_1990 "Guardian" article by Ed_Vulliamy, the first reason of Gladio's discovery was "a group of judges examining letters uncovered in Milan during October in which the murdered Christian Democrat leader, Aldo Moro, said he feared a shadow organisation, alongside "other secret services of the West ... might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country" http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html. Aldo Moro's son, Giovanni Moro states in an March 1998 interview to La_Repubblica that his father had spoken of Gladio in his letters http://www.repubblica.it/online/dossier/moro/moro/moro.html.
===Via Caetani, midway between DC and PCI===
When the Red Brigades decided to execute Moro, they placed him in a car and told him to cover himself with a blanket, that they were going to transport him to another location. After Moro was covered, they emptied ten rounds into him, killing him. Moro's body was left in the trunk of a car in ''Via Caetani'', a site between head offices of both DC and PCI, as a last symbolic challenge to the police, who were keeping the entire nation, and Rome in particular, under strict and severe surveillance. After the recovery of Moro's body in a road midway between the headquarters of the Christian Democracy and the Communist party in Rome (with a clear symbolism), the Minister of the Interior Francesco_Cossiga resigned, gaining trust from the Communist party, which would later make him the first President of the Republic to be elected at the first ballot.
===Antonio Negri, an ideal suspect?===
On April_7, 1979, philosopher Antonio_Negri was arrested and charged with a number of offenses including master-minding the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, leadership of the Red_Brigades, and plotting the overthrow of the government. A year later, he was found innocent of Aldo Moro's assassination. Almost all of the charges were dropped within months of his arrest due to lack of evidence. No link was ever established between Negri and the Red Brigades. Negri's unfounded arrest was finally seen as politically-motivated and humanely injustified, obviously manipulated in a plot to close the investigations.
===Unknown factors: P2 masonic lodge & Gladio===
Moro's capture and the causes of his elimination still are not clearly identifiable, despite several trials and dozens of separate investigations, as well as general internal and international attention. Much of what surrounds Moro's death is a mystery. Doubts have been advanced about the completeness of his captivity letters, published only in the early 1990s.
Some suggested that Moro's murder could have been orchestrated by the Italian Masonic lodge, P2, and that the Red Brigades (BR), which had an inside "supergang" team, had been deeply infiltrated by US intelligence (CIA). Gladio network, directed by NATO, has also been accused; In BR memberAlberto_Franceschini's book, Aldo Moro is described as Gladio's founder.
Much of this theory is predicated on the hypothesis that the hard work that Moro had done to admit members of the Italian Communist Party into a coalition cabinet was deeply disturbing to those interests. If Gladio's influence on Italy's Strategy_of_tension has been proven (see the Bologna_massacre as one example), no concrete proof have been found of Gladio's interference with Moro's kidnapping. However, Moro's widow later recounted his meeting with US President Nixon's advisor, Henry_Kissinger, and an unidentified American intelligence official, who warned him to abandon the strategy of bringing the Communist Party into his cabinet, telling him ''"You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration...or you will pay dearly for it."'' Moro was allegedly so shaken by the threat that he became ill and threatened to quit politics.http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html
== See also ==
*Strategy_of_tension
*Operation_Gladio
*Democrazia_Cristiana
*Red_Brigades
== References ==
*{{note|moroLetters}}Aldo Moro's letters from the "People's prison" (Italian).
*Interview with Giovanni Moro, Aldo Moro's son by ''La_Repubblica'', March 16, 1998
*The kidnapping is dramatized in the 2003 Italian movie ''Buongiorno, Notte'' (dir. Marco_Bellochio), released 2005 in USA as "Good Morning, Night".
== External links ==
*''Banca datti della memoria'': Moro's letters and +
*Memorial Moro on Strategy_of_tension
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{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Justice|before=Michele_De_Pietro|after=Guido_Gonella|years=1955–1957}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Public_Instruction|before=Paolo Rossi|after=Giuseppe_Medici|years=1957–1959}}
{{succession box|title=Prime_Minister_of_Italy|before=Giovanni_Leone|after=Giovanni_Leone|years=1963–1968}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Foreign_Affairs|before=Giuseppe_Saragat|after=Amintore_Fanfani|years=1964–1965}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Foreign_Affairs|before=Amintore_Fanfani|after=Amintore_Fanfani|years=1965–1966}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Foreign_Affairs|before=Pietro_Nenni|after=Giuseppe_Medici|years=1969–1972}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_Foreign_Affairs|before=Giuseppe_Medici|after=Mariano_Rumor|years=1973–1974}}
{{succession box|title=Prime_Minister_of_Italy|before=Mariano_Rumor|after=Giulio_Andreotti|years=1974–1976}}
{{succession box|title=Italian_Minister_of_the_Interior|before=Luigi_Gui|after=Francesco_Cossiga|years=1976}}
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