A Nation in Torment

On a cruel seesaw of suspense, the vigil for Moro goes on

We communicate the completed execution of the President of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, by means of suicide. The body is submerged in the muddy waters of Lake Duchessa. --Red Brigades Communique No. 7 April 18,1978

Aldo Moro is being treated scrupulously . . . The release of the prisoner can be considered only in connection with the liberation of Communist prisoners. The D.C. and its government have 48 hours to respond starting at 3 p.m. on April 20 . . . or we will carry out the sentence handed down by the People's Tribunal. --Red Brigades Communique No. 7 April 20,1978

Not since the actual kidnaping itself, more than a month earlier, had Italy endured a week of such agony and torment. Was former Premier and Christian Democratic Leader Aldo Moro dead? Or was he alive--perhaps only briefly reprieved from the death sentence that his captors claim to have passed down on him? While police and soldiers continued to search cars at roadblocks across the country, the government threw thousands of specialized troops into a fruitless search for his body. Then, after receiving the second communique--as well as a new letter from Moro pleading for his life--Premier Giulio Andreotti and his colleagues once again faced the question of whether to negotiate with the kidnapers or stand firm in their resolve that there would be no concessions.

In the end, the answer was no: the ruling Christian Democrats firmly rejected the kidnapers' demand to bargain for an exchange of jailed terrorists. They did propose that the international Catholic relief organization, Caritas, act as intermediary to seek other "possible ways" to save Moro's life. In a dramatic eleventh-hour move, Pope Paul appealed directly to the kidnapers. "I beg you on my knees, free the Honorable Aldo Moro simply, unconditionally," the Pope wrote in his own microscopic handwriting on his personal notepaper, "not so much because of my humble and affectionate intercession, but because of his dignity as a common brother in humanity, and for the cause of real social progress." The deadline passed with no word on Moro's fate: the vigil went on.

The first ominous step-up in the war of nerves had come over the previous weekend in a message from the terrorists announcing that Moro had been sentenced to death following his "people's trial." The following Tuesday police found the first Communique No. 7. In a mocking reference to West Germany's announcement last fall that three jailed terrorists had committed suicide in their cells, the message said Moro had been executed by "suicide," which "must not be only a prerogative of the Baader-Meinhof group." It went on to say that Moro's body could be found in a tiny lake high in the Apennine mountains 70 miles northeast of Rome. Helicopters carrying frogmen and Alpine troops converged on the mountainside. The lake, virtually unreachable except by sophisticated mountaineers, was nearly frozen solid. After two days of searching, a body was found; it turned out to be that of a local shepherd who had apparently drowned himself.

Then Rome's daily Il Messaggero received an anonymous call that an envelope was in a trash basket in a department store entryway. There reporters found the second Communique No. 7, along with a Polaroid photograph showing Moro, shaven and groomed, posed behind a copy of Wednesday's edition of a Rome newspaper that reported his possible death. The new message charged that the execution communique had been a "false and provocative" hoax staged by "Andreotti and his accomplices." The terrorists threatened to carry out their death sentence on Saturday unless the government agreed to negotiate for the release of "Communist prisoners" who are "condemned to slow death by terms amounting to centuries of imprisonment." Moro's captors have always been ambiguous about how many prisoners should be released. There are presently about 400 prisoners in Italian jails who could be defined as far-leftist, about 150 of whom are members of the Red Brigades and associated groups, including Leader Renato Curcio and 14 other defendants currently on trial in Turin for armed insurrection.

Officials had already noted that the execution message had shown uncharacteristic signs of hasty composition; unlike previous communiques, it was sloppily typed and was delivered in only one city, Rome, instead of four. Eventually, government experts concluded that the earlier message may have been a diversionary tactic to distract police, either because Moro was being moved or there was a danger of discovery. In fact, the initial Communique No. 7 had been found little more than an hour after police discovered a Red Brigades support base in a Rome apartment two miles from the kidnap site. The hideout, filled with assorted weaponry, stolen license plates, explosives and other sophisticated equipment, was uncovered when a resident in the apartment below complained of leaking water.

There was also a possibility that the tactic might have been a cruel psychological set-up for the terrorists' final demands for a bargain. The surge of emotional relief that Moro was still alive brought new pressures on the government for a conciliatory gesture toward the terrorists. Breaking a long silence, Moro's family made an appeal to the government to reconsider its refusal to negotiate. Some Christian Democrats, as well as Socialist leaders, favored exploring other avenues of negotiations, since under Italy's legal system releasing prisoners would be technically difficult. But with the Communists and others in the five-party parliamentary majority insisting on a hard line, Andreotti and Party Secretary Benigno Zaccagnini decided not to change their stance on the ground that yielding at this late stage was not only wrong but could lead to a government crisis.

According to police, the Red Brigades have only about 700 to 800 members. They can count on the support or complicity of about 10,000 sympathizers, most of them unemployed youths and students. Despite their relatively small numbers, attacks by the Red Brigades and other extremist groups rose from 750 in 1976 to 1,300 last year. In the past three months alone, terrorists were responsible for 17 deaths and 227 injuries, plus some 900 bombings.

In Turin, Curcio and his fellow defendants have repeatedly turned their trial into a forum of venomous propaganda, snarling threats at judge, prosecutor and their own court-appointed lawyers from the cagelike dock in which they are chained during the proceedings. Since Moro was kidnaped on March 16, other Red Brigades members have killed a prison police officer in Turin, a police officer in Milan, and wounded a former mayor in Turin and an industrialist in Genoa. So skillfully were the Moro communiques delivered that some Italians joked that the terrorists' "postal system" was more efficient than the real one. One of the problems police have had in infiltrating the group is that recruits, often drawn from sympathizers in prison, are ordered to participate in a major crime--kidnaping or armed robbery--to prove their loyalty. Police undercover agents are reluctant to expose themselves to such risks.

Noting the extraordinary skill with which Moro's abduction was carried out, one investigator observed, "That kind of precision gunfire--killing the five bodyguards without once even grazing Moro--was done by individuals with many thousands of training rounds behind them." The similarities to the kidnaping of Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer in Cologne last year points to probable links between the Brigades and West Germany's Red Army Faction. One theory is that Moro was actually kidnaped by a German hit team imported for the job, who then turned him over to the Italians.

Many Italian politicians now believe that the Brigades are being aided by foreign intelligence services using them as stooges in an international plot. Those who subscribe to such suspicions are divided on whether the threat is from East or West--or meant to benefit left or right. The Communists suspect Western "reactionary circles" of trying to provoke a right-wing backlash or takeover to stop their push to power. Last week Moscow echoed that charge, as the Soviet news agency Tass accused the CIA of interfering in Italy's internal affairs with a "strategy of tension." Christian Democratic speculation centers on East bloc involvement, either by the Soviets or the Czechs. There is even a theory that the threat is actually aimed at undermining Enrico Berlinguer's independent Communist Party and forcing it back into the Moscow orbit.

In seizing Moro, perhaps Italy's single most influential politician, the terrorists left no doubt that the focus of their attack was the political rapprochement between Italy's Catholic and Marxist politicians that has allowed the country to have a functioning government. A quiet, devoutly religious and almost priestly mannered law professor, who insisted on giving his lectures at the University of Rome even during the years he served as Premier, Moro, 61, was his party's foremost political strategist. Skilled at shaping compromises, he forged the first center-left alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Socialists back in 1963. He was also the principal architect of the present governing agreement that earlier this year ushered the Communists into the parliamentary majority for the first time since 1947. His family, including three daughters and a son, has always been close-knit. Moro's wife Eleonora, 62, is a onetime psychologist who now teaches at a public lycee in Rome.

If the terrorists had hoped to break up the Communist-Christian Democratic accommodation, they have so far clearly failed. Andreotti's government won an overwhelming vote of confidence on the day of the kidnaping; since then, the Communists have backed government proposals for tougher antiterrorist decrees. Leaders of both major parties, moreover, have expressed a determination to continue Moro's program. "The only way to honor him now will be to carry on with his policy," said a Communist policymaker last week. In an effort to show that the government was functioning as usual, Premier Andreotti pushed ahead with an ambitious economic program aimed at reducing Italy's giant public-spending deficit (to $28 billion), controlling its 14% inflation (Europe's highest) and spurring new investment (to a projected growth rate of 4.5%). "To forget the economy," he said, "would be to play into the hands of the terrorists, because unemployment and alienation are elements that can furnish nourishment for violence."

Coming as it did at the end of a painful eight-week political crisis, Moro's kidnaping raised fresh worries that Italian democracy might not be able to withstand the new strains. After all, the country's notorious political instability has long been deplored--not least by Italians themselves. Yet in Italy, as indeed anywhere in a time of trouble, there was a feeling that life would and must go on as usual. The prevailing attitude was perhaps summed up best by Umberto Nordio, president of Alitalia. On the day of Moro's kidnaping, Nordio was chairing an executive meeting at the airline's glass skyscraper outside Rome when the news broke and brought activity in the building to a standstill. "It's a terrible, terrible thing, but it's not the end of the world," Nordio said. "The best thing we can do to counter the terrorists is to get right back to work." And so they did.

Even the optimists do not deny that Italy has an imposing catalogue of ills to worry about: 1) the inability of the police forces to stem a six-year rise in terrorism; 2) unemployment at 1.6 million, Europe's highest; 3) an educational system stretched beyond its limits; 4) a slothful, swollen bureaucracy that tends to isolate citizens from government; 5) a decline in traditional moral values and a generation of alienated youth. As one government official remarked, "Fortunately, the Red Brigades are not many. Otherwise we would have a civil war on our hands."

Observes a young college graduate: "There is a great sense of betrayal among Italians of my generation, not only by the country's politicians but by its intellectuals and teachers." The frustration starts with the education system and ends with unemployment. This year almost a million students are registered in Italy's universities, using facilities intended for half that number. Thousands of students no longer bother to go to overcrowded lecture halls or to take exams for their degrees. "Why bother to graduate at all when you aren't going to find a job?" says an architecture student. By the end of last year, half of all Italy's unemployed were under 30, and half of that number were university graduates.

The Communist Party, once the hope of many Italian youths, has lost much of its credibility as a radical force. This is partly because of its practice of defending the jobs of its union supporters but also because of its chic, middleclass, Establishment image. As a result, many Italian young people have turned extremist, joining splinter groups or urban guerrillas like the Red Brigades. Moro's kidnaping has also sparked some soul searching among Communists. The leftist magazine L'Espresso recently carried a cover with the question: IN WHAT WAY HAVE WE OF THE LEFT FAILED? Explains Rome University Sociologist Franco Ferrarotti: "The Communist Party insisted on maintaining a monopoly of power and isolated and alienated its left wing. But the Communists need a strong left wing as they draw closer to government. Now the party is trying to sustain the contradictory position of being both the party of struggle and the party of power."

Father Bartolomeo Sorge, editor of the Jesuit review Civilt`a Cattolica, believes that many of Italy's current ills can be traced to the decline in church influence during the "economic miracle" of the 1960s. "The Communists obtained 12 million votes in the general elections, and it's obvious there aren't 12 million Marxist-Leninists in Italy," says Sorge. "The fact is that the Communists had won social acceptance." Bruno Visco, a Naples lawyer, agrees with Sorge that "the Italian malady is of a moral nature, a crisis of faith and ideals in a country that has reached an incomparable level of skepticism, cynicism and derision for the institutions of the state."

Despite these nearly insoluble issues, Italians point with some reassurance to the time-tested resilience of what they call il filone (wide thread)--the cohesive main strand of Italian life that has proved remarkably enduring for a relatively young nation. For all its troubles, Italy is still a country that can boast of a tradition of excellence--good food and drink, an incomparable artistic heritage, beautiful cities--as well as a generosity and warmth of spirit. Even the economic indicators are not all bad. Inflation is pointing downward. There was a 7% export increase for 1977, as well as a replenished monetary reserve and a stabilized lira. The "hidden" economy of family and cottage industries that provide a cushion against hard times is humming along as usual.

"Here in Florence, life is tranquil," a dapper young Florentine salesman in a blue blazer observed on a train departing for Rome last week. He opened his hands in a gesture of grim resignation, then pulled his attractive girlfriend closer and nuzzled her long brown hair. "After a while, it's like anything else you read in the papers. I know it sounds terrible, but life goes on." So, too, does Moro's--and Italy's--nightmare.

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