Giulio Andreotti

In 1946, Andreotti was elected to the Constituent Assembly, the provisional parliament which had the task of writing the new Italian constitution. His election was supported by Alcide De Gasperi, founder of the modern DC, of whom Andreotti became a close assistant and advisor; the two politicians became close friends despite their very different characters. However, De Gasperi later described Andreotti as a man "so capable in everything that he could become capable of anything".[9] In 1948, he was elected to the newly formed Chamber of Deputies to represent the constituency of Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone, which remained his stronghold until the 1990s.

Andreotti began his government career in 1947, when he became Secretary of the Council of Ministers in the cabinet of his patron De Gasperi. The appointment was also supported by Giovanni Battista Montini, who later would become Pope Paul VI. During the office, Andreotti had wider ranging responsibilities than many full ministers, which caused some envy.[19] Andreotti's main undertaking was representing the interests of Frosinone in the province of Lazio.[20] Lazio would continue to serve as Andreotti's geographical base of power later in his political career.[21]

As the state undersecretary in charge of entertainment in 1949, Andreotti established import limits and screen quotas, and provided loans to Italian production firms. The measures were aimed at preventing American productions from dominating the market against Neorealist films, a genre which exhibitors complained lacked stars and was held in low esteem by the public. As he phrased it, there were to be 'Less rags, more legs'. Raunchy comedies and historical dramas with voluptuous toga-clad actresses became the staple of the Italian film industry. To ensure that state funds were not used to prop up commercially unsustainable films, the screenplays were vetted, thereby creating a form of preproduction censorship. It was intended that Italian studios use part of their profits for high-quality films.[22] However, Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D., which depicted the lonely life of a retired man, could only strike government officials as a dangerous throwback, due to the opening scene featuring police breaking up a demonstration of old pensioners and the ending scene featuring Umberto's aborted suicide attempt. In a public letter to De Sica, Andreotti castigated him for his "wretched service to his fatherland".[23]

In 1952, ahead of local elections in the municipality of Rome, Andreotti gave proof of his diplomatic skills and gained credibility. In fact Andreotti persuaded De Gasperi not to establish a political alliance with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, as Pope Pius XII asked, to prevent a Communist victory.[24]

As Secretary, Andreotti contributed to the re-formation of the Italian Olympic Committee, which had been disbanded after the fall of the Fascist regime. In 1953, among other things, he promoted the so-called "Andreotti's veto" against foreign football players in Italian Serie A.[25]

After De Gasperi's resignation and retirement in August 1953, Andreotti remained Secretary of the Council under the short-lived premiership of Giuseppe Pella.[26]

Andreotti during the 1960s

In 1954, Andreotti became Minister of the Interior in the first government of Amintore Fanfani. From July 1956 to July 1958 he was appointed Finance Minister in the cabinets of Antonio Segni and Adone Zoli. In the same period, Andreotti started to form a corrente (unofficial political association, or a faction) within the Christian Democracy, which was then the largest party in Italy. His corrente was supported by the Roman Catholic right wing. It started its activity with a press campaign accusing Piero Piccioni, son of the deputy national secretary of the DC, Attilio Piccioni, of the murder of fashion model Wilma Montesi at Torvaianica.[27] After the defeat of De Gasperi's old followers in the DC National Council, Andreotti helped another newly formed corrente, the Dorotei, to oust Amintore Fanfani, who was the leader of the left-wing of the party, as Prime Minister of Italy and National Secretary of the DC.[28] On 20 November 1958 Andreotti, then Minister of Treasury, was appointed president of the organizing committee of the 1960 Summer Olympics to be held in Rome.[29]

In the early 1960s Andreotti was Minister of Defence, and was widely considered the de facto leader of the right-wing Christian Democratic opposition to Fanfani and Moro's strategy. In this period the revelation that dossiers on virtually every public figure in the country had been compiled by the secret service resulted in the SIFAR affair. Andreotti ordered the destruction of the dossiers; but before the destruction Andreotti provided the documents to Licio Gelli, the Venerable Master of the clandestine lodge Propaganda Due (P2).[30][31]

Andreotti was also involved in the Piano Solo scandal, an envisaged plot for an Italian coup in 1964 requested by then-President of the Italian Republic Antonio Segni. It was prepared by the commander of the Carabinieri, Giovanni de Lorenzo, in the beginning of 1964 in close collaboration with the Italian secret service (SIFAR), CIA secret warfare expert Vernon Walters, William Harvey, then-chief of the CIA station in Rome, and Renzo Rocca, director of the Gladio units within the military secret service SID.[32]

In 1968, Andreotti was appointed leader of the parliamentary group of the Christian Democracy, a position he held until 1972.

Andeotti's approach owed little to a belief that market mechanisms could be left to work without interference. He used price controls on essential food stuffs and various social reforms to reach an understanding with organised labour. A law of 11 August 1972 extended health insurance to citizens over the age of 65 in receipt of a social pension. A law of 30 June 1973 extended cost of living indexation to the social pension.

A devout Catholic, Andreotti was on close terms with six successive pontiffs. He gave the Vatican unsolicited advice on occasion, and was often heeded. He updated the relationship of Roman Catholicism to the Italian state in an accord he presented to parliament. It put the country on a more secular basis: abolishing Roman Catholicism as the state religion, making religious instruction in public schools optional, and having the Church accept Italy's divorce law, in 1971. Andreotti opposed legal divorce and abortion, but despite his party opposition, wasn't able to avoid the legalization of abortion in May 1978.[37][38][39]

Andreotti with Richard Nixon and Frank Sinatra, 1973

Andreotti was a strong NATO supporter, in fact in 1973 he was invited to America by the U.S. President Richard Nixon.

However, in 1972 he paid an official visit to the Soviet Union, which was the first one by an Italian Prime Minister in more than a decade. During his premiership, Italy opened and developed diplomatic and economic relationships with Arab countries of the Mediterranean Basin, and supported business and trade between Italy and the Soviet Union.[40]

On 28 January 1977 the Parliament approved the Land Use Law, which introduced severe constraints on construction, such as new criteria for land expropriations and new planning procedures. On 27 July 1978, the Fair Rent Law completed state control of rents with general rules for rent levels and terms of leases. A law of 16 February 1977 introduced ad hoc upgrading of cash benefits for the agricultural sector. In November 1977, pension linkage to the industrial wage was extended to all other pension schemes not administered by INPS. A law of 16 February 1977 extended family allowances to agricultural part-time workers. A law of 5 August 1978 introduced a ten-year housing plan, with the state making funds available to regions for public housing and subsidies for private housing.[44] As premier, Andeotti's urging of fellow leaders in the European Community was influential in the creation of an EU Regional Development Fund, which the south of Italy was to greatly benefit from.[37]

In 1977 Andreotti dealt with an economic crisis by criticising the luxury lifestyle of many Italians and pushing through tough austerity measures. This cabinet fell in January 1978. In March, the crisis was overcome by the intervention of Moro, who proposed a new cabinet, again formed only by DC politicians, but this time with positive confidence votes from the other parties, including the PCI. This cabinet was also chaired by Andreotti, and was formed on 16 March 1978.

Giulio Andreotti with Aldo Moro

On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day on which the new Andreotti cabinet was supposed to have undergone a confidence vote in the Italian Parliament, the car of Aldo Moro, then-president of the Christian Democracy, was assaulted by a group of Red Brigades (Italian: Brigate Rosse, or BR) terrorists in Via Fani in Rome. Firing automatic weapons, the terrorists killed Moro's bodyguards (two Carabinieri in Moro's car and three policemen in the following car) and kidnapped him.

During the kidnapping of Moro, Andreotti refused any negotiation with the terrorists. Moro, during his imprisonment, wrote a statement expressing very harsh judgements against Andreotti.[45]

On 9 May 1978 Moro's body was found in the trunk of a Renault 4 in Via Caetani after 55 days of imprisonment, during which Moro was submitted to a political trial by the so-called "people's court" set up by the Brigate Rosse and the Italian government was asked for an exchange of prisoners.

After his death, Andreotti continued as Prime Minister of the "National Solidarity" government with the support of the PCI. Laws approved during his tenure included the reform of the Italian National Health Service. However, when the PCI asked to participate more directly in the government, Andreotti refused, and the government was dissolved in June 1979. Due also to conflict with Bettino Craxi, secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), the other main party in Italy at the time, Andreotti did not hold any further government position until 1983.

Andreotti with the Socialist leader and Prime Minister Bettino Craxi

On 7 October 1985, four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) hijacked the Italian MS Achille Lauro liner off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. The hijacking was organized by Muhammad Zaidan, leader of the PLF. One 69-year-old Jewish American man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard.

The Egyptian airliner carrying the hijackers was intercepted by F-14 Tomcats from the VF-74 "BeDevilers" and the VF-103 "Sluggers" of Carrier Air Wing 17, based on the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga,[46] and directed to land at Naval Air Station Sigonella (a NATO air base in Sicily) under the orders of U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger; there, the hijackers were arrested by the Italian Carabinieri[47] after a disagreement between American and Italian authorities. In fact, the Prime Minister Bettino Craxi claimed Italian territorial rights over the NATO base. Italian Air Force personnel and Carabinieri lined up facing the United States Navy SEALs which had arrived with two C-141s. Other Carabinieri were sent from Catania to reinforce the Italians. The US eventually allowed the hijackers to be taken into Italian custody, after receiving assurances that the hijackers would be tried for murder.[48] The other passengers on the plane (including Zaidan) were allowed to continue on to their destination,[49] despite protests by the United States. Egypt demanded an apology from the U.S. for forcing the airplane off course.

The escape of Muhammad Zaidan was the result of a deal made with Yassar Arafat.[50]

Giulio Andreotti with Silvio Berlusconi in 1984

As Minister Andreotti encouraged diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union and improving Italian links with Arab countries. In this respect he followed a line similar to that of Craxi, with whom he had an otherwise troubled political relationship.[51] The Italian authorities had banned the Lion of the Desert war film about the Second Italo-Senussi War during the Italian colonization of Libya, because, in the words of Andreotti, it was "damaging to the honor of the army".[52]

On 14 April 1986, Andreotti revealed to Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham that the United States would bomb Libya the next day in retaliation for the Berlin disco terrorist attack which had been linked to Libya.[53] As a result of the warning from Italy – a supposed ally of the US – Libya was better prepared for the bombing. Nevertheless, on the following day Libya fired two Scuds at the Italian island of Lampedusa in retaliation. However, the missiles passed over the island, landing in the sea, and caused no damage. As Craxi's relationship with the then-National Secretary of the DC, Ciriaco De Mita, was even worse, Andreotti was instrumental in the creation of the so-called "CAF triangle" (from the initials of the surnames of Craxi, Andreotti and another DC leader, Arnaldo Forlani) opposing De Mita's power.

After Craxi's resignation in 1987, Andreotti remained Minister of Foreign Affairs also in the governments of Fanfani and De Mita. In 1989, when De Mita's government fell, Andreotti was appointed as new Prime Minister

In 1990 Andreotti was involved in getting all parties to agree to a binding timetable for the Maastricht Treaty. The deep Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union favoured by Italy was opposed by Britain's Margaret Thatcher, who wanted a system of competition between currencies. Germany had doubts about committing to the project without requiring economic reforms from Italy, which was seen as having various imbalances. As President of the European Council, Andreotti co-opted Germany by making admittance to the single market automatic once the criteria had been met, and committing to a rigorous overhaul of Italian public finances. Critics later questioned Andreotti's understanding of the obligation, or whether he had ever intended to fulfill it.[56][57]

In 1992, at the end of the legislature, Andreotti resigned from premiership; he was the last Christian Democratic Prime Minister of Italy. The previous year, Cossiga had appointed him Senator for Life. Andreotti was one of the most likely candidates to succeed Cossiga as President of the Republic in the 1992 presidential election.

Andreotti and the members of his corrente had adopted a strategy of launching his candidature only after effectively quenching all the others. The strategy was thwarted by allegations against him; moreover, the election was influenced by the murder of the anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone in Palermo.

In 1992 an investigation was started in Milan, dubbed Mani pulite. It uncovered endemic corruption practices at the highest levels, causing many spectacular (and sometimes controversial) arrests and resignations. After the dismaying result in the 1992 general election (29.7%) and two years of mounting scandals (which included several Mafia investigations which notably touched Andreotti), the Christian Democracy was disbanded in 1994. In the 1990s most of the politicians prosecuted during those investigations were acquitted, sometimes however on the basis of legal formalities or on the basis of statutory time limit rules.

The Christian Democracy suffered heavy defeats in the provincial and municipal elections, and polling suggested heavy losses in the election due in the spring of 1994. In hopes of changing the party's image, the DC's last secretary, Mino Martinazzoli, decided to change the name of the party to the Italian People's Party. Pier Ferdinando Casini, representing the centre-right faction of the party (previously led by Forlani), decided to launch a new party called Christian Democratic Centre and to form an alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's new party, Forza Italia. The left wing faction either joined the Democratic Party of the Left or stayed within the new Italian People's Party, while some right-wingers others joined National Alliance.

Andreotti in the late 2000s

Andreotti joined the Italian People's Party of Mino Martinazzoli. In 2001 after the creation of The Daisy, a centre-left alliance of parties, Andreotti abandoned the People's Party and joined the European Democracy, a minor Christian democratic[58] political party in Italy, led by Sergio D'Antoni, former leader of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions. Andreotti became immediately a prominent member of the party and was widely considered as the de facto leader of the movement.

In the 2001 general election the party scored 2.3% on a stand-alone list, winning only two seats in the Senate.[59] In December 2002 it was merged with the Christian Democratic Centre and the United Christian Democrats to form the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats.[60] Andreotti opposed this union and did not join the new party.

In 2006, Andreotti stood for the Presidency of the Italian Senate, obtaining 156 votes against the 165 of Franco Marini, former Labour Minister in the last Andreotti Cabinet. On 21 January 2008 he abstained from a vote in the Senate concerning Minister Massimo D'Alema's report on foreign politics. Together with the abstentions of another life senator, Sergio Pininfarina, and of two communist senators, this caused the government to lose the vote. Consequently, Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned. On previous occasions, Andreotti had always supported Prodi's government with his vote.

During the 16th term of the Senate in 2008–13, he opted to join the parliamentary group Union of the Centre – Independents of Pier Ferdinando Casini.

Salvatore Lima

Andreotti came under suspicion because his relatively small faction within the Christian Democrats included Sicilian Salvatore Lima. In Sicily, Lima cooperated with a Palermo-based Mafia, which operated below the surface of public life by using control of large numbers of votes to enable mutually beneficial relationships with local politicians. Andreotti said, "But Lima never spoke to me about these things."[61] By the 1980s the old low-profile Mafia was overthrown by the Corleonesi, an extremely violent faction led by fugitive Salvatore Riina.[62] Whereas old Mafia bosses had been cautious about violence, Riina's targeting of anti-mafia officials proved ever more counter-productive. The 1982 murders of parliamentarian Pio La Torre and Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa led to the Maxi Trial. Prosecutors, who could not be disciplined or removed except by their own self-government board, the CSM, were given increased powers.[63] After the January 1992 upholding of the Maxi Trial verdicts as definitive convictions by the supreme court, Riina embarked on a renewed campaign which claimed the lives of the prosecuting magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and their police guards. As Riina intended, the assassination of Falcone discredited Andreotti and prevented him becoming the president of Italy. It also led to prosecutors being seen as epitomising civic virtue.[64] In January 1993 Riina was arrested in Palermo.[61][65] In the aftermath of Riina's capture there were further Mafia bomb outrages that included terror attacks on art galleries and churches, which left ten members of the public dead, and led to weakening of rules on the evidence which prosecutors could use to bring charges.[63]

Labelled by Italian media as the "trial of the century", legal action against Andreotti began on 27 March 1993 in the city of Palermo.[66][67] The prosecution accused the former prime minister of "[making] available to the mafia association named Cosa Nostra for the defense of its interests and attainment of its criminal goals, the influence and power coming from his position as the leader of a political faction".[67] Prosecutors said in return for electoral support of Lima and assassination of Andreotti's enemies, he had agreed to protect the Mafia, which had expected him to fix the Maxi Trial. Andreotti's defense was predicated on character attacks against the prosecution's key witnesses who were themselves involved with the mafia.[67] This created a "his word against theirs" dynamic between a prominent politician and a handful of criminals.[67] The defence said Andreotti had been a long-time politician of national stature, never beholden to Lima; and that far from providing protection, Andreotti had passed many tough anti-mafia laws when in government during the 80's.[68] According to Andreotti's lawyers, the prosecution case was based on conjecture and inference, without any concrete proof of direct involvement by Andreotti. The defence also contended the prosecution relied on the word of mafia turncoats whose evidence had been contradictory. One such informer testified that Riina and Andreotti had met and exchanged a "kiss of honour".[69][70][71] It emerged that the informer had received a US$300,000 'bonus' and committed a number of murders while in the witness protection programme.[69][71][72][73] Andreotti dismissed the allegation against him as "lies and slander […] the kiss of Riina, mafia summits […] scenes out of a comic horror film".[69]

Andreotti was eventually acquitted on 23 October 1999.[66] However, together with the greater series of corruption cases of Mani pulite, Andreotti's trials marked the purging and renewal of Italy's political system.[66]

Andreotti was tried in Palermo for criminal association (until 28 September 1982) and mafia association (from 29 September 1982 onwards).[74] While the first-degree sentence, issued on 23 October 1999, acquitted him because the fact did not exist (on the basis of article 530, paragraph 2, of the Penal Code),[75] the appeal sentence, issued on 2 May 2003, distinguishing between the facts up to 1980 and those that followed, established that Andreotti had "committed" the "offence of participation in the criminal association" (Cosa Nostra), "concretely recognisable until the spring of 1980", an offence, however, "extinguished by statute of limitations".[76] For facts subsequent to the spring of 1980 Andreotti was instead acquitted.[76]

Both the prosecution and the defense appealed to the Court of Cassation, one against the acquittal, and the other to try to obtain an acquittal even on the facts until 1980, instead of a statute of limitations. However, on 15 October 2004 the Court of Cassation rejected both requests, confirming the statute of limitations for any offence until the spring of 1980 and acquittal for the rest.[77] The grounds for the appeal judgment read (on page 211):

Therefore the appealed sentence [...] has recognized the participation in the associative crime not in the reductive terms of mere availability, but in the widest and juridically significant ones of a concrete collaboration», that quotes the opinion of the Court of Appeal, is immediately followed by another sentence of the Court of Cassation: «The reconstruction of single episodes and the evaluation of their consequences was made in accordance with comments and interpretations that can also be not shared and against which other ones can be relied on.

If the final judgment had arrived by 20 December 2002 (limitation period), it could have resulted in one of the following two alternative outcomes:

- Andreotti could have been convicted on the basis of article 416 of the Penal Code, i.e. the "simple" association, since the aggravated mafia-type association (416-bis of the Penal Code) was introduced in the Italian Penal Code only in 1982, thanks to the rapporteurs Virginio Rognoni (DC) and Pio La Torre. (PCI), or

- the defendant could have been acquitted in full with the confirmation of the judgment of first instance.

In 2010 the Court of Cassation ruled that Andreotti had slandered a judge who had given testimony, by saying the self-governing body of prosecutors and judges should remove him from his position. Andreotti had said that leaving the man as a judge was "like leaving a lighted fuse in the hand of a child".[78]

Carmine Pecorelli's dead body in his Citroën CX, in 1979

Contemporaneously with his trial for Mafia association, Andreotti was tried in Perugia with Sicilian Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, Massimo Carminati, and others on charges of complicity in the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli.[79] The case was circumstantial and based on the word of Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, who had not originally mentioned the allegation about Andreotti when interviewed by Giovanni Falcone and had recanted it by the time of the trial.[80][14]

Mino Pecorelli was killed in Rome's Prati district with four gunshots, on 20 March 1979. The bullets used to kill him were Gevelot brand, a peculiarly rare type of bullets not easily found on gun markets, legal and clandestine alike. The same kind of bullets were later found in the Banda della Magliana's weapon stock, concealed in the Health Ministry's basement. Investigations targeted Massimo Carminati, member of the far-right organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) and of the Banda della Magliana, the head of Propaganda Due, Licio Gelli, Antonio Viezzer, Cristiano Fioravanti and Valerio Fioravanti.

On 6 April 1993, Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta told Palermo prosecutors that he had learnt from his boss Gaetano Badalamenti that Pecorelli's murder had been carried out in the interest of Andreotti. The Salvo cousins, two powerful Sicilian politicians with deep ties to local Mafia families, were also involved in the murder. Buscetta testified that Gaetano Badalamenti told him that the murder had been commissioned by the Salvo cousins as a favor to Andreotti. Andreotti was allegedly afraid that Pecorelli was about to publish information that could have destroyed his political career. Among the information was the complete memorial of Aldo Moro, which would be published only in 1990 and which Pecorelli had shown to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa before his death.[81] Dalla Chiesa was also assassinated by Mafia in September 1982.

Andreotti was acquitted along with his co-defendants in 1999.[82] Local prosecutors successfully appealed the acquittal and there was a retrial, which in 2002 convicted Andreotti and sentenced him to 24 years imprisonment. Italians of all political allegiances denounced the conviction.[83][84] Many failed to understand how the court could convict Andreotti of orchestrating the killing, yet acquit his co-accused, who supposedly had carried out his orders by setting up and committing the murder.[85] The Italian supreme court definitively acquitted Andreotti of the murder in 2003.[37][86]

Andreotti was accused of participation in a variety of plots. He was alleged to be the éminence grise behind the Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge, a secret association of politicians, civil servants, industrialists, military leaders, heads of the secret service, and prominent journalists conspiring to prevent the Italian Communist Party taking office. This theory posited control of elements ranging from the neo-fascist Valerio Fioravanti to Rome gangsters the Banda della Magliana and to Operation Gladio, a clandestine NATO organisation that was intended to fight a Soviet conquest of Europe through an armed resistance movement.

Andreotti was also accused of having a hand in the death of Aldo Moro and terrorist massacres in a strategy of tension aimed at precipitating a coup, as well as banking scandals and various high-profile assassinations.[91][92][93][94]

Cover of the Italian weekly Panorama featuring Andreotti

Fictional characters have been influenced by his image as a Machiavellian. A rejoinder that Andreotti made in reply to an inquiry if being in power was wearing him out, "Power wears out those who don't have it", was put into the mouth of the character of a powerful Mafia-linked politician in the film The Godfather Part III.[95] He was nicknamed Belzebù (Beelzebub) or "The Devil himself" by Bettino Craxi, a political opponent who later fled Italy while sought on corruption charges. Other disparaging nicknames included "The Black Pope" and "The Hunchback" (he had a malformed spine). Although relatively tall for an Italian of his generation, cartoonists sometimes portrayed Andreotti as a hunchback dwarf lurking in the background.[96]

A joke about Andreotti (originally seen in a strip by Stefano Disegni and Massimo Caviglia) had him receiving a phone call from a fellow party member, who pleaded with him to attend judge Giovanni Falcone's funeral. His friend supposedly begged, "The State must give an answer to the Mafia, and you are one of the top authorities in it!" To which a puzzled Andreotti asked, "Which one do you mean?"

In 2008 Andreotti became the subject of Paolo Sorrentino's film Il Divo, which portrayed him as a glib, unsympathetic figure, in whose orbit people tended to meet untimely and unnatural deaths. He reportedly lost his temper when he first saw the film, but later joked, "I'm happy for the producer. And I'd be even happier if I had a share of the takings."[9][97]

• Andreotti, Giulio. "Foreign policy in the Italian democracy." Political Science Quarterly 109#3 (1994): 529–537. in JSTOR