In the insert OGGI 7

A Gladiator tells his story

This edition of OGGI 7 contains an exclusive series of articles: Nino Arconte talks and affirms to have been an ex-member of the organization Gladio. In his story many episodes are retold through his interpretation and his memories as an ex- gladiator: The Moro Affair and the long shadow of the KGB who manipulated the Red Brigades: the mock suicides of Gardini and Cagliari; the attempt on the Popes life and the Stazi; the "Kennedy Module," to the point of reaching the hypothesis that behind the massacre at the Bologna station, stretches the shadow of the Libyan leader Gheddafi. Oggi 7 also contains an exclusive interview of Jane Barnabei, the mother of Derek Rocco, the young italo-american  presently held on death row at the Boydton  penitentiary, in Virginia. Jane claims  what seems to be a cash turnover in  the prison and affirms: "Everything the prisoners need must be purchased within the structure. Unfortunately the prices are triple the amount of those of the normal stores." Her story in her own words of how her world was torn apart. [NDR: in Italia, non è che le cose siano molto differenti...chissà se Caselli lo scoprirà?]

OGGI 7 Magazine
July 26 1998
Encounter of an ex-Italian Gladio soldier
G71, this was Antonio Arconte's Code name, an ex-soldier who is fighting for recognition for his services in the "Second Century Wolves" during the cold war. "Italy cancelled us, as if we had never existed, to cover up it's mysteries."

STORIES OF GLADIATORS
Written by Stefano Vaccara

"Hello Vaccara? I am Nino Arconte, I have already spoken to your director who said you would take care of my story. He has already told you who I am and why I am calling, correct?". On a sultry June day, one of those days in which New York was giving you a taste of the hot summer to come, between the sky scrapers, a phone call arrives and the receiver scorches even though the air conditioning is on maximum. "Yes, Mantineo mentioned it and said that you would call. I'm listening". "Yes, but not on the phone", says the voice pronouncing in a Sardish accent, "Give me your address and I'll be right there. I have a plane to take in six hours, it's good it we move fast, I have so much to tell you and I can't on the phone because I have files to give you". A little earlier the director had announced that a certain Antonio Arconte had called the editorial office claiming he was an ex-gladiator, so to say a secret service agent for the Italian military , and being part of the special corps known under the name Gladio, having operated during the Cold War within the  Nato structure called "Stay Behind": "He says he's here in New York to consign documents to the United Nations, he's returning to Italy but before he leaves he wants to tell his story to the newspaper. Stefano, see what it's about, something interesting could come out of it". The story that you are about to read is the result of a two hour  recorded conversation with Antonio Arconte, of pages and pages of documentation he consigned in New York before his departure, everything integrated through a correspondence via internet in which the ex-gladiator accepted to clarify certain parts of his story to the reporter. I read the files and the documents that he consigned. The events were reconstructed the way they were told by Arconte. In the end the decision to publish his story doesn't derive from the certainty of what has been declared from an ex-gladiator corresponding to the truth, assuring a bit of Italian history,  but from the conclusion that, once reasonably convinced that Antonio Arconte was part of the secret service apparatus of Italian defense ( the famous SID), his personal story and his reconstruction of certain events can show the importance of certain aspects of the story, or better said of the Italian "mysteries", that have remained in the shadows or have not been considered important. Massacre in Ustica and Bologna, Moro abduction, attempt on the Popes life, Gardini suicide, this is how an ex-gladiators story is intertwined with some of the darkest pages of the Republic. "I put my memorials on the Internet, naming them 'The real story of Gladio', in this manner I believe to have saved my life." He tells about his mock suicide and those of Gardini and Cagliari.

THE ULTIMATE MISSION

Arconte arrived in my office with his suitcase packed. "I'm leaving, I've completed my ultimate mission. I did everything possible, and now I am finally at peace with myself.". This is how Nino presented himself, a 44 year old man who looks like twenty and besides sharing the same name he also resembles the boxer, Nino Benvenuti, with in addition the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger. "In the article call me G71, it's my code name. We Gladiators only knew each other by code name. For those who worked with me, reading this story, the name Arconte won't mean anything, but they'll recognize G71."

I turned on the tape recorder and G71 started to speak, without interruption for 120 minutes, shuffling through his documents and waving them at me frenetically, in his bouncing back and forth from one argument to the other I perceive not only his lack of time but also his worries about not being understood or fully believed. "Maybe I haven't been clear" G71 repeated several times, "but you'll find everything in these pages called 'The real story of Gladio'. They are numerous but read them and you'll understand everything."

"The real story of Gladio", this is how G71 titled his memorials. "I put everything on the internet, I purposely created a web site (htpp://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4031). In doing this I believe to have saved my life. This is the way the first page of G71's Internet website begins: "I am writing this story in Ajaccio, in Corsica, on February 10th 1997, the anniversary of Tet of the year of the Wooden Tiger ( 1975 ) to avoid that with my death, my cancellation and that of my fellow soldiers, reach being  carried out, and of us remains nothing more than defamation and slander as has been reserved for us during these past years of infamy. If I die before ending my ultimate mission, I entrust you, people on the internet, with our story, the real one! The story of the three Centuries of the Gladiators of Stay-behind Italy. The Gladiators of  S.I.D. : what they did and what occured.

The Three Centuries

G71 explains how the three centuries were divided: "The first Century was called 'Eagles' they were aviators, some were parachutists from Folgore. The second Century was called Wolves, I belonged to this one, composed of Marines and Army. Then there was the third Century called Doves. They weren't military, they were civilians, even women, that had to give support for information. Some of them were later accused of having participated in massacres, but it wasn't true and in the end they were acquitted. We were a secret structure belonging to Nato. Now nothing remains of the Eagles nor the Wolves. We are either dead or have been erased, disappeared, or have never existed for the state of Italy.

"When I wrote to Cossiga, Craxi and Andreotti, because at the time they had constitutional responsibilities, only Cossiga responded with two generic lines. And while we were attacked and questioned by the judges the politicians were passing the bucket. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with us, we all seemed to be bandits, nobody enrolled us, nobody gave us any orders, nobody paid us. Only now the interviews come out that Cossiga and Andreotti said that we were established in the Nato framework, that we weren't an illegal organization, instead well trained soldiers who did their duties
This way I was thrown into jail on false accusations of which I was later acquitted, and nobody from the government intervened to say who I was, who was in reality the person they had unjustly arrested."
But why did G71 come to New York, and of what does his "ultimate mission" consist of?

" We were cancelled, you understand, cancelled or we 'committed suicide'. When we became Gladiators, after having received a mock discharge from the Army and received cover work for our missions, we were instructed  what to do in case of annihilation, if our country had fallen in the hands of the enemy. We were supposed to denounce everything to the international courts of human rights in Strasbourg and to the Onu. And that's what I did. I brought the proof of persecution in the act on my behalf and for those that hit my fellow soldiers, who were less fortunate because they lost their lives on missions or they 'committed suicide'. I suffered a "tentative suicide', on February 28th of '93.

The mock suicide

During my training, that I still practice out of passion, escalating the cliffs between Capo Marrargiu and Poglina, in Sardinia, I was grabbed by two men who tried to throw  me off the cliff onto the rocks below: they were only capable of falling with me, but even this time I climbed up again. I returned to Alghero to procure disinfectant for my wounds, some pretty deep, and for several days I tried to find some kind of news about the incident in the paper, but nothing was published, not even about their car that had been left in full view on the road side. About ten days later I went back personally and all traces of the happening had been removed and the car was gone!"

You  didn't report it to the police?

"To who?, to those who accused me of being a dealer and made up false proof against me? To the judges who were condemning me? I understood that they were following me because of my past and I only thought about defending myself."

Arconte was arrested in 1991, accused of drug dealing. After several appeals and sentences, he was able to prove that the signed testimonies of the police officers that said they saw him deliver 5 grams of hashish were false. "They then had to admit that they signed papers of which they had no knowledge of their contents. In another county, even if they were police officers, they would have been punished. I imagine that someone must have paid for these false accusations, don't you think? Instead nothing, absolutely nothing was done to them." During the same time period, when he was president of a cooperative group that was building family houses, he was accused of embezzlement of funds and was convicted. Here too Arconte appeals to prove that the accusations were made up. "They even used photo-montage. I denounced all of this in the Strasbourg Court, along with the rest of the persecution regarding the cancellation of my past as a gladiator. Do you know what they call my case? Arconte against Italy. But I am not against Italy, I'm against those who took possession, those who corrupted the institutions. In Strasbourg they said I was right, it's all on the internet web site, you can see the sentence with the respective protocol numbers. Just these past days I received notice from the European Commission that Italy owes me 'an equitable compensation within three months', certainly a symbolic amount in respect to the damages I suffered, but it's better than nothing. You cannot trust the Italian magistracy anymore, and I find it difficult to continue to hope in good faith. I speak of certain people, luckily not all, because otherwise today I would still be in jail. Some of the authorities have sold themselves to those who wish to see Italy in certain hands. I am not talking about politics, I am talking about people who don't do politics. We're not talking about people who could be elected. They are occult underground powers."

Excellent Gladiators

"This is how somebody like Raul Gardini ( The president of Ferruzzi shot himself in July five years ago during the 'Tangentopoli Questionings' ) can commit 'suicide', thanks to authorities who archive as a suicide a case where they find no gunpowder on his arm, the gun is without his fingerprints,  and is found on a table opposite the bed where the body is found. And the same happened with Cagliari, president of the Eni, a few days earlier. He also committed 'suicide' in prison with a bag over his head. I knew Gardini, he wasn't the type of person who would commit suicide, absolutely not the type."

How did you meet him?

"On a mission. He was also a gladiator. He belonged to the third century, 'The Doves', the one made up of civilians."

Gardini a gladiator?

" I was informed from our commando that he was one of us, from the moment in which I was to work on an operation with him."

A picture from 1970, taken in a training camp of the "SAS" school in Viterbo. Nino Arconte is in the first row on the very right, and was immediately enrolled in SID.

"In every cell of the Red Brigades there was a referent in direct contact with the KGB". " Behind the massacre in the Bologna station, the long shadow of the Libyan leader: a retaliation for the shooting down of the airplane in Ustica."

FROM MORO TO GHEDDAFI

Gardini a gladiator?

"I was informed from our commando that he was one of us from the moment in which I was to work on an operation with him".

And what was Giardini's function in Gladio?

"I cannot say with certainty what I didn't know then, and now I can only use my intuition. I prefer to talk about what I am 100% certain of. Gardini had connections in certain areas, and like all those in the Third,  he collected useful information and furnished them to our commando. Our operations were based on collected information elaborated and verified by the third century. During that time, as entrepreneur, Giardini received demands for money which he declared unable to deliver. They were probably 'tangenti' demands from a political party or from forces that could be hostile towards us at least that is how they were considered by our commando…..but that is my intuition today. From them, whomever they may have been, Gardini was menaced and intimidated in his personal interests and in his company. I presume it had something to do with the silos in the United States, where I was in April of 1982 with three other gladiator aboard a Ferruzzi ship, the Maria Esperanza, to be precise on the Mississippi, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in Mirdle Grove. It was nothing in particular: it consisted in convincing certain saboteurs that it was better that…..they disappeared from Raoul Gardini's surroundings. A somewhat boring mission, like others, and that's why other than a short mention I didn't describe it detail in "The real History of Gladio" . We returned two months later…mission completed once again. I met Gardini on other occasions, in the company of Charlie Bernard Moses, our liaison officer in Rome with the United States, in his home in S. Teodoro street in Rome, or in Charlie's art gallery in Margutta street. By all means, our ruin was also his ruin!".

But why would Gardini have been "murdered"?

Gardini was assassinated because he believed that those hands were truly clean, and he wanted to tell the whole truth about the generous illicit financing as entrepreneur, not as a gladiator! He had to be stopped by all means. The truth had to be withheld from the Italian people.

I am not certain that Cagliari was a gladiator, it came to my mind later because he too wanted to pour out the truth to the prosecutor about the money given to the parties….Then he too was "murdered" around the same time in '93, two days before that, several of my fellow soldiers were 'murdered' (said to have committed suicide), all this happened within a distance of four months from my own failed tentative 'suicide'. How could they archive the suicide of a robust person like me, hanging from his bathroom door knob, as was the case of one of my fellow-soldiers? Who were the assassins? The occult powers that were created in Italy from the Warsaw pact".

But it doesn't exist anymore since about ten years….

"Yes, but the people that in Italy operated with the Stazi, with the Bulgarian service, with the real KGB, who were at the service of the Libyans, where are they all now? Were they discovered, by chance? In  1980 during the Ustica and Bologna massacres, the Libyan dissidents that we had brought to Italy and who provided information for us were killed like dogs on the street. Where those responsible for these homicides identified?"

Could you be more specific with your accusations? Who was responsible?

" No, it wasn't the Italian Communists, they were making politics. The occult powers cleared the way because it was convenient for them and on the inside, their own men where hidden within that political group."

The Shadow of the KGB

"The one who gave the orders to the commander of Gladio was Aldo Moro, and he was killed, but a few months before they did it they devoided our General Miceli. Only a coincidence? And with us, once they got a hold of our codes, exactly at that time, they sent us on senseless missions, just to get us killed, to eliminate us. They say that the Red Brigades were maneuvered by the CIA that didn't want the compromise of history, all bullshit. Aldo Moro had already made an agreement with Enrico Berlinguer, a good man, who I voted for several times because he was more liberal that the others. Now it's known that the day of the abduction, Moro was to announce to the Parliament the new government with the support of the communists, but Berlinguer was to announce pulling away from the Soviet Union and of the international communism. These are the agreements we knew about as well as the Americans. It wasn't penetrated by the CIA. The Red Brigades were composed of elated students who sincerely believed in a revolution through an armed battle, but in their structure composed of cells with images of soviet model, there you have it, in each of these cells there was a referent in direct contact with the KGB, without the others knowing. We knew this.

Moscow wanted to interrupt the understanding Moro-Berlinguer, but the latter, with his hardheadedness of a good Sard, while realizing that they were trying to stop him, continued all the same and with even more conviction."

"The Kennedy Module"

"Last May, the Pope's Swiss guard was assassinated, Alois Estermann . Who was Estermann? A spy for the Stazi, the east German secret service. The story was reported in the news papers, but what they didn't see is what we recognized immediately, the so called 'Kennedy Module', as was called it in the military schools. It was a technique used since way back when from the Soviet KGB, and was given it's name because of the manner in which they assassinated  the poor American President. It was a system brought to perfection by Beria, the chief of the KGB in the Stalin days. This is the way it worked: the first rule was that dead men don't talk; now, if I had to kill someone I had to find a  culprit, I would construct it, I'd prepare it and would then kill him at the same time as who I wanted dead."

So according to you the corporal Tornay is to Estermann what Oswald was to Kennedy?

"Exactly, both assassinated as not to find the real instigators."

But why is it that today, in 1998, who somebody want the Pope's official guard dead, even if he had once belonged to the Stazi?

"What do you mean why? The inquiry  on the assassination attempt on the Pope's life has been reopened. With Alì Agca it was the same thing, the 'Kennedy Module' to cover the Soviet instigators. Alì Agca was already supposed to die in Piazza S. Pietro. Instead he was lucky and behaved, he played crazy. Now Estermann was there that day, you can see him on the picture during the assassination. I guess he knew to much about the instigators, since he worked for them."

Even if it was proved that the orders arrived from Moscow, now the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, so who would commit these homicides today?

"It's obvious that the Russia of today has nothing to do with it. Long live Yeltsin, but it is clear that when a regime collapses that existed for seventy years, as did the Soviet Union, those who served it remain inside the states apparatus. Those who took part in the attempt on the Popes life, haven't necessarily disappeared, possibly one or the other is a liberal today. Making an attempt on the Pope wasn't a war action, but a crime. Whoever did it will want to hide it forever."

Let's return to your story, according to you, gladiators were occupied outside of Italy. A different story as was expected when the existence of Gladio was discovered…

"Never had anything to do with internal causes, always had missions abroad. I've been in all of North Africa, in South Africa, in Russia and other counties farther than Cortina, in Viet Nam. For all of these missions, that I specify on the internet site, I used the cover of a mercantile Marine Official. I  embarked on ships that arrived directly into the port where I was to accomplish my missions. It consisted of, for the most, training  troops of soldiers, rebels, who were opposed to the regime of the Soviet sort, to give and obtain information, and to aid in the escape of dissidents.

"This is what I did in Angola during and after the 'carnation revolution', when after the fall of the last Portuguese colonies, it became an easy target for the Cubans sent from Moscow. Or in South Africa, when I was sent in to bring back Steven Biko, who the Apartheid regime and the Soviets wanted to eliminate,  because he wanted to break off relations between the ANC and Moscow, since it was flirting with the racist South African government. But Biko didn't want to escape. He died a few days after I had unsuccessfully tried to take him with me."

But who decided these operations?

"The commando".

You mean Vito Miceli?

"As long as Miceli was number one, then came Gian Adelio Maletti, who was later convicted to 14 years and now lives in South Africa. They took orders from the Italian government. Miceli from Moro, Maletti from whoever came after him. Our service was one carried out on the inside of the NATO during the Cold War. I knew nothing of the internal implications, of the massacres or of the tension.

"When I read certain things in the news paper I thought they were joking, and then when the arrests came along I understood that it was for real. But I never operated in Italy. We were military and fanatic too, in the sense that for us Italy represented fetish, we could never have done anything against our people, against any civilian population, because we were military, not terrorists and we obeyed a code of  honor. It was others who did certain things. Like in Ustica and at the Bologna station.

The Maltese Operation

From the long story told by G71, the part that to us seems to be the most coherent with this moments international reality, are the reports from the end of the seventies, between Italy, Malta and Libya. Of all the arguments given by Arconte, this one is for us, the one that deserves the most space. Let's take a step backwards.
In the month of November 1973 Arconte, or more precisely identified as G71 Vo 155 M (G stood for Gladiator, 71 was the year of his training course, M. for Military Marine, VO stood for voluntary, and 155 was his personal number, but having been the cub, the youngest of the course, he was known to everyone as G71) arrived on his first mission abroad. The objective: the Libyan regime of colonel Gheddafi that had been in power for three years.

"I was to present myself at the Aviano base where I was to receive my orders of destination and objectives of my mission. We were to arrive on a base in the south of Sicily by plane. From there the II century was to reach, by naval means, the golf of Sirte until the international water limits, and from there continue with rubber boats to the Bengasi beach, therefor the military airport behind the city.

"We were supposed to help some Libyan rebels who were trying to overturn Colonel Gheddafi and reinstate a democracy. Once we were to arrive at the airport, we were to be joined by the first Century, therefor converging in Tripoli and there, the rebels were to guide us to a nomad camp towards Gheddafie's tent. But shortly before our departure we received a reverse order from our top official, General Miceli; The plane that we were to take had been hit by a missile. He added that we had been betrayed and were to have all died on that plane but a change of orders at the last minute had saved us. In fact the first order would have already had us on that plane straight for Aviano, to load the equipment and other personnel."

The plane that had been gunned down was the Argo 16, for which the Venetian magistracy was responsible for. But let's return to the rapport in the seventies between Italy, Malta and Libya. The island had been an important bridge in the Mediterranean for the last century, in the seventies it completed it's independence from Great Britain. London had tried to make an agreement to keep the use of the ports for it's ships, but the Maltese industrialist government of Dom Mintoff had dictated unacceptable conditions. Let's take a look at what Sergio Romano wrote in his "Guide to Italy's foreign politics": "Mintoff dedicated his time mainly, with great irritation to the English, in a mercantile diplomacy that consisted of selling the geological position of his country at a very high price".

"While he negotiated with London, the types of English bases on the island, he accepted a proposition from Gheddafi who offered economic assistance under the condition that from those bases no supplies leave for Israel. When it became clear that the English were not inclined to accept Mintoff's blackmail attempt, Italy tried to negotiate to avoid that Malta slip in the adversary camp and end up inheriting the responsibility that Great Britain, under those conditions, was not willing to assume. Mintoff embraced the services offered by Italy, he took the help and accepted in 1980 that the Italian government grant the island neutrality, but considered itself still free to make agreements behind it's back with other counties, mainly with Libya and the Soviet Union…But Italy 'concluded Romano, "was no longer in the position to exercise 'imperial' guardianship, nor to resist firmly to the mercantile politics of the Maltese first minister.  With Mintoff as with Ghedaffi, the Italian diplomacy adopted a style that excluded prejudicially the use of firmness and was only able to obtain mediocre results."

Picture on the left, the Libyan leader Ghedaffi, who's hand is to have been behind the Bologna station massacre. On the right, the business man, Raoul Giardini, who according to Arconte, was such an inconvenient Gladiator that he was "murdered".

And according to Arconte, that is what Italy paid for, following it's intervention to try to maintain Malta within the western range. The summer of 1980 was countersigned by grave episodes.

A VERY HIGH PRICE

The ex-gladiator G71, in his reconstruction named "The Maltese Affair", emphasizes how in Italy , that was going through a difficult economic crisis, and in addition to oil from the Ghedaffi regime received generous purchases for it's companies and also financing    ( the Libyan state bank acquired an important amount of Fiat shares, which made of Ghedaffi the second main shareholder of the biggest private Italian industry)

"There existed, and is probably still existent today, a robust  Libyan lobby tied to these interests….Libya was Italy's major oil furnisher and  Italy was Libya's first commercial partner."

At this point Italy's economical interests to keep a  good rapport with Libya collide with it's  interests and NATO's to avoid that Malta become a satellite for Ghedaffi and therefor for Moscow .

"The Soviets were searching for a base for their fleet in the Mediterranean." recalls G71. "After the Yom Kippur war between Egypt and Israel, Sadat changed alliance in 1974, lining up Egypt with the west. The Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean (SOVMEDRON) was still looking for a base. Anyone who would have occupied Malta could have installed batteries of long range anti-airplane missiles that would have undermined the credibility of the USA's aid to Israel, and generally the capacity of intervention of the USA in the middle east in the defense of the oil camps vital for the western economy. If Libya had succeeded in bringing it's arms to Malta, Ghedaffi's prestige would have grown immensely in the Arab world.

The Italian government proceeded and initialed the treaty for political military assistance that provided the defense and the integrity of the Maltese territory  through armed Italian forces,  conspicuous financial aid and availability  to furnish equipment for the oil research (research that Ghedaffi saw in contending the territorial waters to Malta) in exchange for a neutral political situation. In this manner Italy was able to hold Malta in the western camp. Exactly that is Arconte's thesis; Italy paid a very high price for it's intervention.

A boiling Summer

These are the loose pieces of that summer in 1980 put together by G71: "The 11th of June the slaughter of the exiled Libyans present in Italy began. On June 27th in the skies of Ustica the DC9 Itavia is shot down, having left from Bologna to Palermo with a two hour delay, while being followed at a distance equaling less than ten minutes from a Boeing 707 flight of Air Malta (flight KM 153). On July 10th two fisher boats are sequestered from Libya with 19 Italian fishermen aboard (They were released two years later). On July 18th  a Libyan Mig 23 is found on the Sila mountain, it had been gunned down on the 27th of July by two gladiators of the 'Frecce Tricolore', Mario Naldini and Ivo Nutarelli (I Century Eagle), who died in 1988 during an exhibition in Germany, in Ramstein, in an accident that caused the death of 80 people.

On the 2nd of August the ship in search of oil from Eni Saipem takes it's position on the banks of Medina demonstrating, for the most for Malta's internal use, for it's beleif in pro-Italian politics of Minoff against the pro-Libyan politics strongly supported on the island. Also on the 2nd of August, thanks to the Italian government, Zamberletti signed the agreement protocol relative to the treaty that excluded Libya from controlling the island. On the same day the station in Bologna blew up. On August 6th part of the Libyan army rebels and attempt a coup d'ètat against Ghedaffi. The conspirators  were defeated by a military unit from East Germany ( guided by KGB agents), who saved colonel Ghedaffi. Ghedaffi then blamed the coup d'ètat on Italy, three Italian business men were arrested held for affiliates of the insurgents ( III Century 'Doves', released six years later). On the 24th of August an intimate Libyan war ship menaces to bomb the Italian ship 'Saipem 2' if they don't interrupt their search for oil on the banks of Medina and leave. They just avoided a battle between the Italian ships, that intervened to defend the 'Saipem', and the Libyan Ships. The F104 planes from Trapani Birgi circled the skies over Malta. On the 2nd of September  Italy commits itself to guarantee the territorial integrity of Malta and the next day the Maltese premier flies to Rome to solidify the understanding. On the 9th of September the agreement between Italy and Malta is ratified, and it is foreseen, among other things, that American and Soviet ships be excluded from the islands ports.

After having told this episode Arconte shows us an E-mail that he received in German and then had translated into English , from March 23, 1998, that read: "My name is Alex Pavlov, ex-colonel for the KGB. I was at the Tripoli base radar station in the eighties. I read 'The real story of Gladio'….I know that it is all true, most of all the Maltese Affair. I should tell who ordered me to accuse the United States in that slaughter, but I can't yet, I feel that I am in danger. I will speak only if I can obtain political asylum in the USA. I hope that you will be able to save your life. Good luck, my ex-enemy. Alex Pavlov".

The Libyan runway for the Ustica bombing was most likely beaten, the Libyan mig found in Silo cannot be ignored. But is it possible that Ghedaffi is even behind the Bologna station massacre? And if all of you from the Gladio suspected this then why didn't the Italian government react?

"Nobody wanted to go to war with Libya. And then, as I once said, there existed and still exists a strong pro-Libya lobby in Italy, that worked and works in favor of a normalization in  relations. Those who ended up in jail for the Bologna massacre, the neofacists Fioravanti and Mambro, had nothing to do with it, they were only convenient expiratory scapegoats.

We don't know how strong the "Libyan lobby" in Italy, of which Arconte speaks, is, but it is worth remembering that just two weeks ago the Prodi government has continued to approached Italy in the normalization of terms with Libya, signing a document of agreement that ruptures, the isolating curtain built around the Ghedaffi regime in the west.

The facts of the summer of 1980 enable G71 to formulate a theory: behind the massacre of Bologna could be the hand of the dictator of Tripoli. The Italian government, as well as the investigating magistracy, haven't they ever considered the same theory? Did they ever investigate the runway indicated in the "Malta Affairs"? And if they didn't, then why? Would the elements still exist, with the distance of almost twenty years, to reopen an investigation in this direction?

At the end of his story, G71 alias Antonio Arconte born in Oristano, we ask him: admitting that Italy is in the hands of the 'enemy' as you say, aren't you afraid in returning to Sardinia for your safety and that of your family?

"I revealed all that I know. To have me killed now would make no sense, it would only demonstrate that what I denounced was true. Since 1993 I've stopped being threatened with attempts on my life. I have completed my ultimate mission. I have won my battle."