Aldo Moro

During Moro's premiership, a wide range of social reforms were carried out. The 1967 Bridge Law (Legge Ponte) introduced urgent housing provisions as part of an envisioned reform of the entire sector, such as the introduction of minimum standards for housing and environment.[38] A reform, promulgated on 14 December 1963, introduced an annual allowance for university students with income below a given level. Another law, promulgated on 10 March 1968, introduced voluntary public pre-elementary education for children aged three to five years. While a bill, approved on 21 July 1965, extended the program of social security.[39]

Moreover, the legal minimum wage was raised, all current pensions were revalued, seniority pensions were introduced (after 35 years of contributions workers could retire even before attaining pensionable age), and within the Social Security National Institute (INPS), a Social Fund (Fondo Sociale) was established, ensuring to all members pensioners a basic uniform pension largely financed by state, known as the "social pension".[40] A law, approved on 22 July 1966, extended social security insurance to small traders, while law of 22 July 1966 extended health insurance to retired traders. Another important reform was implemented with a bill, approved on 29 May 1967, which extended compulsory health insurance to retired farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers, and extended health insurance to the unemployed in receipt of unemployment benefits.[41] Moreover, a law of 5 November 1968 extended family allowances to the unemployed who received unemployment benefits.[42]

During his premiership, Moro had to face the outcome of one of the most tragic events in Italian republican history, the Vajont Dam disaster.[43] On 9 October 1963, a few weeks before his oath as Prime Minister, a landslide occurred on Monte Toc, in the province of Pordenone. The landslide caused a megatsunami in the artificial lake in which 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres (820 ft), leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths.[44]

The destroyed town of Longarone after the megatsunami

In the previous months, the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE) and the Italian government, which both owned the dam, dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.[45]

Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event. However, numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded in the previous months and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it.[46] The communist newspaper L'Unità was the first to denounce the actions of management and government.[47] The DC accused the PCI of political profiteering from the tragedy, promising to bring justice to the people killed in the disaster.[48]

Differently from his predecessor, Giovanni Leone, who even became the head of SADE's team of lawyers, Moro acted strongly to condemn the managers of the society, immediately dismissing the administrative officials who had supervised the construction of the dam.[49]

Moro with the Socialist leader Pietro Nenni

On 25 June 1964, the government was beaten on the budget law for the Italian Ministry of Education concerning the financing of private education, and on the same day Moro resigned. The moderate Christian Democratic President of Italy, Antonio Segni, during the presidential consultations for the formation of a new cabinet, asked the socialist leader Pietro Nenni to exit from the government majority.[50]

On 16 July, Segni sent the Carabinieri general, Giovanni De Lorenzo, to a meeting of representatives of DC, to deliver a message in case the negotiations around the formation of a new centre-left government would fail. According to some historians, De Lorenzo reported that President Segni was ready to give a subsequent mandate to the President of the Senate Cesare Merzagora, asking him of forming a "president's government", composed by all the conservative forces in the Parliament.[51][52] Moro, on the other hand, managed to form another centre-left majority. During the negotiations, Nenni had accepted the downsizing of his reform programs and, on 17 July, Moro went to the Quirinal Palace, with the acceptance of the assignment and the list of ministers of his second government.[53]

In August 1964, President Segni suffered a serious cerebral hemorrhage and resigned after a few months.[54] In December presidential election, Moro and his majority tried to elect a leftist politician at the Quirinal Palace. On the twenty-first round of voting, the leader of the PSDI and former President of the Constituent Assembly Giuseppe Saragat was elected President with 646 votes out of 963. Saragat was the first left-wing politician to become President of the Republic.[55][56]

Despite the opposition by Segni and other prominent rightist Christian Democrats, the centre-left coalition, the first one for the Italian post-war political life, stayed in power for nearly five years, until the 1968 general election, which was characterised by a defeat for DC's centre-left allies.[57] The socialists and the social democrats run in a joint list named Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which however lost many votes compared to the previous election, while the communists gained ground, achieving 30% of votes in the Senate.[58] The PSI and PSDI decided to exit from the government and Saragat appointed Giovanni Leone at the head of the a new cabinet, composed only by Christian Democracy's members.[59]

During his ministry, Moro continued the pro-Arab policy of his predecessor Fanfani.[62] He forced Yasser Arafat to promise not to carry out terrorist attacks in Italian territory, with a commitment that was named "Moro pact".[63][64]

The existence of this pact and its validity was confirmed by Bassam Abu Sharif, a long-time leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Interviewed by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he confirmed the existence of an agreement between Italy and the Popular Front thanks to which, the PFLP could "transport weapons and explosives, guaranteeing immunity from attacks in return".[65] Abu Sharif also declared:" I personally followed the negotiations for the agreement. Aldo Moro was a great man, a true patriot, who wanted to save Italy some headaches, but I never met him. We discussed the details with an admiral and agents of the Italian secret service. The agreement was defined and since then we have always respected it; we were allowed to organize small transits, passages, purely Palestinian operations, without involving Italians. After the deal, every time I came to Rome, two cars were waiting for me to protect myself. For our part, we also guaranteed to avoid embarrassment to your country, that is attacks which started directly from the Italian soil."[66][67] This version was confirmed also by former President of Italy Francesco Cossiga, who stated that Moro was the real and only creator of the pact.[68]

Moro also had to cope with the difficult situation which erupted following the coup of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya,[69] a very important country for Italian interests not only for colonial ties, but also for its energy resources and the presence of about 20,000 Italians.[70]

Moro with U.S. President Richard Nixon, in 1970

In 1971, Amintore Fanfani was proposed as Christian Democracy's candidate for the Presidency of the Republic. However his candidacy was weakened by the divisions within his own party and the candidacy of the socialist Francesco De Martino, who received votes from PCI, PSI and some PSDI members.[71]

Fanfani retired after several unsuccessful ballots and Moro was then proposed as candidate by the left-wing faction; however the right-wing strongly opposed him and the moderate conservative Christian Democrats Giovanni Leone was slightly preferred to him.[72] At the twenty third round Leone was finally elected with a centre-right majority, with 518 votes out of 996, including those of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).[73]

On 4 August 1974, a bomb exploded on the Italicus Express, killing 12 people and injuring 48. The train was travelling from Rome to Munich; having left Florence about 45 minutes earlier, it was approaching the end of the long San Benedetto Val di Sambro tunnel under the Apennines. The bomb had been placed in the fifth passenger car of the train and exploded at 01:23, while the train was reaching the end of the tunnel.[74] The effects of the explosion and subsequent fire would have been even more terrible if the train would remain inside the tunnel.[75]

According to what was Moro's daughter, Maria Fida, stated in 2004, Moro should have been on board, but a few minutes before departure he was joined by some officials of the Ministry who made him get off to sign some important documents.[76] According to some reconstructions, Aldo Moro would have been the real target of the attack.[77]

Map of the Free Territory of Trieste and its division after the treaty

During his premiership, Moro signed the Osimo Treaty with Yugoslavia, defining the official partition of the Free Territory of Trieste. The port city of Trieste with a narrow coastal strip to the north west (Zone A) was given to Italy; a portion of the north-western part of the Istrian peninsula (Zone B) was given to Yugoslavia.[82]

The Italian government was harshly criticized for signing the treaty, particularly for the secretive way in which negotiations were carried out, skipping the traditional diplomatic channels. Italian nationalists of the MSI rejected the idea of giving up Istria, since Istria had been an ancient "Italian" region together with the Venetian region (Venetia et Histria).[83] Furthermore, Istria had belonged to Italy for 25 years between World War I and the end of World War II, and the west coast of Istria had long had a sizeable Italian minority population.[84]

Some nationalist politicians called for the prosecution of Moro and his Foreign Affairs Minister, Rumor, for the crime of treason, as stated in Article 241 of the Italian Criminal Code, which mandated a life sentence for anybody found guilty of aiding and abetting a foreign power to exert its sovereignty on the national territory.[85]

Despite the tensions within government's majority, the close relations between Moro and the communist leader, Enrico Berlinguer, guaranteed a certain stability to Moro's governments, allowing them a capacity to act that went beyond the premises that had seen them born.[86]

The fourth Moro government, with Ugo La Malfa as Deputy Prime Minister, started a first dialogue with the PCI, with the aim of beginning a new phase to strengthen the Italian democratic system.[87] However, in 1976 the PSI secretary, Francesco De Martino, withdrew the external support to the government and Moro was forced to resign.[88]

The Red Brigades proposed exchanging Moro's life for the freedom of several prisoners.[3] There has been speculation that during his detention, many knew where he was hidden. The government immediately took a hard line position: the "State must not bend to terrorist demands". However, this position was openly criticised by prominent Christian Democracy party members such as Amintore Fanfani and Giovanni Leone, who at the time was serving as President of Italy.[100]

On 2 April Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri,[101] and Alberto Clò, three professors of the University of Bologna, passed on a tip about a safe-house where the Red Brigades might have been holding Moro. Prodi claimed he had been given the tip by the founders of the Christian Democrats, from beyond a grave in a séance and a Ouija board, which gave the names of Viterbo, Bolsena and Gradoli.[102]

During the investigation of Moro's kidnapping, some members of law enforcement and of the secret services advocated for the use of torture against terrorists, but prominent military like General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa were against this. Dalla Chiesa once stated: "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro, but it would not survive the introduction of torture."[103][104][105]

During his kidnapping, Moro wrote several letters to the leaders of the Christian Democrats and to Pope Paul VI, who later personally officiated in Moro's funeral mass. Some of those letters, as one that was very critical of Giulio Andreotti, were kept secret for more than a decade, and published only in the early 1990s.[3]

In his letters, Moro said that the state's primary focus should be saving lives and that the government should comply with his kidnappers' demands. Most of the DC's leaders argued that the letters did not express Moro's genuine wishes, claiming they were written under duress, and thus refused all negotiations. This position was in stark contrast to the requests of Moro's family. In his appeal to the terrorists, Pope Paul VI asked them to release Moro "without conditions".[106]

The corpse of Aldo Moro is found on May 9, 1978

When it became clear that the government did not want to negotiate, the Red Brigades had a "people's trial", in which Moro was found guilty and sentenced to death. Then they sent a last demand to the Italian authorities, stating that if 16 Red Brigades prisoners were not released, Moro would be killed. The Italian authorities responded with a large-scale manhunt, which was useless.[107]

On 9 May 1978, the terrorists placed Moro in a car and told him to cover himself with a blanket, saying that they were going to transport him to another location.[108] After Moro was covered they shot him ten times. According to the official reconstruction after a series of trials, the killer was Mario Moretti. Moro's body was left in the trunk of a red Renault 4 on Via Michelangelo Caetani towards the Tiber River near the Roman Ghetto.[109]

After the recovery of Moro's body, the Minister of the Interior, Francesco Cossiga, resigned.

In 2005, Sergio Flamigni, a leftist politician and writer, who had served on a parliamentary inquiry on the Moro case, suggested the involvement of the Operation Gladio network directed by NATO. He asserted that Gladio had manipulated Moretti as a way to take over the BR in order to effect a strategy of tension aimed at creating popular demand for a new, right-wing law-and-order regime.[110][111]

In 2006, the Harvard and MIT educated American psychiatrist and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Steve Pieczenik, was interviewed by Emmanuel Amara in his documentary film Les derniers jours d'Aldo Moro ("The Last Days of Aldo Moro"). In the interview, Pieczenik, an expert on international terrorism and negotiating strategies who had been brought to Italy as a consultant to Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga's Crisis Committee, stated that: "We had to sacrifice Aldo Moro to maintain the stability of Italy."[112][113]

Pieczenik maintained that the U.S. had had to "instrumentalize the Red Brigades." According to him, the decision to have Moro killed was taken during the fourth week of his detention, when Moro was thought to be revealing state secrets in his letters,[114] namely, the existence of Gladio.[113] In another interview former interior minister Cossiga revealed that the Crisis Committee had also leaked a false statement attributed to the Red Brigades that Moro was already dead. This was intended to communicate to the kidnappers that further negotiations would be useless, since the government had written Moro off.[115][116]

In April 2015, it was reported that controversies around Moro could cause the suspension or closing of the cause. The postulator has stated the cause will continue when the discrepancies are cleared up.[117] The halting of proceedings was due to Antonio Mennini, the priest who heard his last confession, being allowed to provide a statement to a tribunal in regards to Moro's kidnapping and confession. The cause was able to resume its initial investigations following this.

• Interview with Giovanni Moro, Aldo Moro's son by La Repubblica, 16 March 1998.