The German Connection

Did the Red Brigades have help in Moro's kidnaping?

Ever since the brazen daylight kidnaping and subsequent assassination of former Premier Aldo Moro last spring, Italian investigators have been intrigued by indications that there may have been a West German connection to the crime. Some eyewitnesses reported that they thought they heard German spoken at the scene of the abduction. Police also noted that the manner in which the kidnaping was staged and the precision execution of Moro's five bodyguards were curiously similar in style to the kidnaping six months earlier of German Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer in Cologne.

Now Italian officials report that they have found more evidence of links between Italy's terrorist Red Brigades and West Germany's more sophisticated Red Army Faction. Among the clues:

> Detailed expense notations were found in a Red Brigades hideout in Rome that police say was used by the Moro hit team. The notes refer to airline flights made to Vienna and four German cities by someone using the code name Fritz.

>Two West German automobile license plates, found in the same hideout, were not listed as stolen in either West Germany or Italy, and thus presumably were taken directly to Rome. (Italian license plates belonging to the cars used in the Moro attack were found at the same time.)

>A satchel used to conceal weapons in the Moro kidnaping was found at the scene. It was a German-made case of a type not normally exported to Italy.

>Grenades found in the hideout have been traced to a cache of stolen arms in Switzerland that was also used by members of Germany's Red Army.

West German police tend to discount the theory of a connection between the Schleyer and Moro cases, though they do not rule out the possibility that the two terrorist groups may have ties. Italian investigators think there is more to it than that. Following the return of two investigating magistrates who cross-checked their evidence in West Germany, Italian authorities now believe that the accumulated clues indicate the direct participation or at least the active support of German organizations in the Moro affair. The Italians are working on the hypothesis, moreover, that the ten-to twelve-man hit team that abducted Moro may have been composed of outsiders, possibly including Germans, who then passed the politician to a second group, probably Italians. A third group is thought to have issued the regular communiques stating the terms for Moro's release.

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