ABSTRACT: A collection of documents on the radicals' libertarian antifascism: to recognize fascism means to understand what it has been and above all what it can be. Apparent antifascism too often hides a complicity with those who represented the true continuity with fascism, the reprise of laws and methods typical of that regime. (" WE AND THE FASCISTS", The radicals' libertarian antifascism, edited by Valter Vecellio, preface by Giuseppe Rippa - Quaderni Radicali/1, November 1980)

Before the summer is over Freda and Ventura will be released from prison. They will have done four and a half years of preventive custody, but there has been no sentence that explains whether they have done time because of having placed bombs in Piazza Fontana or because they stole chickens. No sentence has furnished plausible indications on the organisers and perpetrators of the massacre. That's not bad as a score, if it is true that our country is distinguished not only for economic chaos and a decrepit government, but also for having an exceptionally strong left wing. Something has gone wrong, but what?

For a certain kind of leftist the only thing wrong is that the two are going to be freed. The weekly review "Tempo" wants them kept in prison until the trial (even if it should take ten years, understandably); "La Repubblica" (a Rome daily, ed.) is feeling touchy because a lawyer has complicated things by asking for more thorough investigations regarding those responsible for the massacre; the "Quotidiano dei Lavoratori" (1) is pissed ---------------------------------------------------------------

Translator's notes

1) "The Daily Worker", at the time official organ of Democrazia Proletaria, a small leftist party.

off. It's hard to take. After seven years we come away almost empty-handed.

Why not say it clear and loud? Why not admit that we have only won a defensive battle - getting Valpreda off the hook (2) - and lost the rest? It is time to start the Piazza Fontana affair from the beginning: hard as it is to accept, you can't keep on asking for summary justice, prison without a trial, for two defendants. Here a traditional defect of the old and new left crops up: their authoritarian vocation, the lack of interest in questions of freedom which they demand for themselves but deny the society as a whole.

Try telling them that to keep a man in prison for years without putting him on trial is kidnapping. That's pietism, they will answer, that's crappy moralising, the boy scout pledge, conservatism. Is it revolutionary in that case to imitate the opportunism of a regime that is totally compromised in the massacres, that sets up one guilty person here and another there, ranging from one kind of extremism to the other and trying only to save itself? Is it revolutionary to deny the constitutional rights of right-wing citizens without even giving them a trial?

This left is frightening that plays around with special courts and judges freedom - even today! - to be a bourgeois whim.

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2) Pietro Valpreda, an anarchist, was accused of perpetrating the Piazza Fontana bombing and held in prison for many years before being absolved.

One ought to reflect seriously on the situation in Germany, on

that repressive legislation advanced by the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats who are united in the denial of dissent and civil rights. Because in Italy too there are already precedents: there is the Scelba law (penalising crimes of opinion, ed.) recently relaunched against Fascists and now, as was to be foreseen, used to strike at the left. And there is the Reale law (for arrest on suspicion, ed.): where does one get the nerve to ask for it to be abrogated when it seems actually too lenient in the terms set for preventive custody?

If Freda is a "Nazi" and Ventura a "Fascist", that is their business: the question here is whether it was they who placed bombs on December 12. The only way to know is to put them on trial. Like every citizen who is detained they have the right either to be put on trial or released. And it is also a right of ours - even more it ought to be one of our political objectives - to get a little closer to finding out about the government's responsibility.

But they are about to be freed by now. And they will leave behind them the same misty uncertainty that surrounded the previous "red track" and the "monster Valpreda". As defendants who were kept in prison for many years without trial, they were subjected to intolerable violence. And the worst of it is that there are no certain elements of proof that can be laid to them for Piazza Fontana. On the contrary, if one stops conscientiously gnawing for a moment at what is proposed from time to time by the SID (Military Intelligence Service, ed.), the Ministry of the Interior, and the Christian Democrats, if one closely examines the judicial inquiry for the December 12 bombing, one immediately notices that something doesn't add up. The bombing has become a state swindle.

If up until yesterday one could consider a budget to be satisfactorily in the black that entered the liberation of Valpreda on one side and the imprisonment of Freda and Ventura on the other, today such a budget looks like bankruptcy. After seven years the systematic postponement of the trial still continues. Several partial investigations are still under consideration that partly contradict each other and in any case they are truly meagre as a basis for proof. Recently the blitz arrests of Maletti and La Bruna only served to show that the role of the SID in the bombing has still entirely to be cleared up - as are: the clearing of the policemen responsible for the assassination of Pinelli; the acquittal during the investigation of figures such as Elvio Catenacci, Antonino Allegra and Bonaventura Provenza; the numerous removals that cause the infinite postponement of the verification of the political and organisational responsibility for the bombing: Giannettini, Delle Chiaie, Rauti, Attilio Monti, Guid

o Paglia (in the end cleared of charges). With regard to the organisation that perpetrated the bombing, the Public Prosecutor had to consider three hypotheses: 1) the neo-Fascists; 2) revolutionary right and left wing groups; 3) revolutionary right and left wing groups exploited by reactionary political circles. In short, nothing definite.

Even less was achieved in the way of proving personal responsibility. The investigation produced certain proof of the terrorist activities of Freda's group in 1969, but it is truly lacking in proofs of Freda's and Ventura's involvement in the December 12 bombing. Practically speaking, it is based on the identification of a progressive line of development in the attacks in three phases: bombs at the Milan fair and railway station in '69; bombs on trains in the summer of '69; bombs on December 12. But joining the first two to the third there is only a logical connection plus a few clues.

There is a strong piece of evidence against Freda: the purchase of 50 timers in September '69 which were very probably used in the December 12 attacks according to the results of the investigations. Therefore it is highly probable that Freda was in some way involved in the organisation of the bombing. But what was his role, with whom, with what help, was it a secondary role or not? It is a certainty that the investigation has acquitted him of having placed the bombs; nor has it succeeded in keeping track of what happened to the timers between September and December of '69. The investigations lack of certainty on this point is revealed by a curious detail: Freda maintains that he handed the timers over to a phantasmal Algerian named Hamid who used them for terrorist attacks against Israel. The witness Maria De Partada confirms this but the judges don't believe her. So why didn't they charge her with false testimony?

The other piece of evidence - the bags used for the bombs that are supposed to have been purchased in Padua.

There is even less against Ventura, almost nothing: only the evidence of his presence in Rome on December 12. In order to trap him they have tried to show that he gave a false reason for his trip - a classical method when direct proof is lacking.

The least one can say is that the investigation grinds to a halt on the threshold of December 12. It proves nothing about who planned the bombings, about the role of the separate government corps and the reactionary circles, and not even about the perpetrators. At best it contains some half-truths.

So in Catanzaro today we have an unheard-of mess: 1) a legal procedure against Valpreda; 2) one against Freda and Ventura; 3) an investigation (making no progress) that leads to the SID. We may be wrong, but this situation leads to maneuvering and provocations. There are already some who want to reopen the Valpreda case and the Communist lead.

The "Fascist Ventura" has become the "Ventura case". This individual, who as a defendant has really had unfair treatment and whose information has turned him into a protagonist of the December 12 investigation, has been struggling fro a long time to get his violated rights restored. Let us have a brief look at what it is about.

1) Ventura demands for himself and Freda the right to a trial and to provisional liberty in the meantime. On this there can be no doubts.

2) Ventura accuses the Milan examining magistrate, D'Ambrosio, of having misrepresented the correct date that custody pending trial began for him and Freda. The two were arrested on December 4, 1971 and charged with complicity in subversion. On March 21, 1972 a sentence of territorial jurisdiction caused the trial to pass from the court of Judge Stiz to that of D'Ambrosio who issued an arrest warrant on the bombing charge the following August 28. Ventura contests the decision of D'Ambrosio to fix August 28 as the beginning date for protective custody against the opinion of the public prosecutor who had set the date of March 21. The decision is controversial, but the Catanzaro court, which on the previous May 3 had rejected the request for provisional liberty of the two defendants, decides in favour of D'Ambrosio.

3) Ventura complains that the deposition of the sentence to postpone the trial to March 18, 1974 as well as the lifting of the inquiry (still underway) of Giannettini, Rauti, Biondo, Loredan and others has made it practically impossible for the accused to defend themselves against the continuation of the preliminary investigation.

Ventura's charges do not stop here: he also accuses D'Ambrosio of having used against him or Freda elements collected in the Valpreda inquiry where they had no possibility of control or defense. There is the denunciation of the provisions for segregation and solitary confinement since two years ago in the Bari prison imposed during the preliminary investigation and hearing. There is the contesting of the omission of the interrogation of several witnesses who, according to Ventura, could support his alibi for the train bombings of August 1969 and for December 12 - etc.

There is no possibility of considering the merits of these charges without a careful analysis of the trial documents. For the moment, however, we are interested in discussing another element that Ventura puts at the centre of his self-defence: in substance, he demands that he be given recognition of his democratic faith. On what does he base this request?

What Left Is Ventura Talking About?

In the letters which we are printing (at the end of this article) Ventura is peeved with Spadaccia because the latter calls his leftist militancy a pretence. "It is as if I were boasting", he protests,. "My position politically and in the trial", he says, "has always been anti-Fascist". He makes mention too of "the battle of the left that he has always tried to further with his political initiative in the trial". And finally, he protests "the democratic loyalty of his political experience".

Our impression is that Ventura can more easily manage to demonstrate the weakness of the evidence against him than he can his "democratic loyalty". Nevertheless, the accusation of superficiality made by Spadaccia and the serious violations of his rights as a defendant compel us to discuss this point as well. If Ventura likes, he can reply to our arguments.

It is necessary to state a premise however: If Ventura maintains that his ideas are democratic today, he has every right to say so and no one can contest it. But if he insists on recognition of the democratic nature of his actions in and before 1969, it is a different matter. Here his word is not enough, there is the question of his behaviour, and on that our ideas diverge from his. For example, nobody can deny that he was the activator of the second Piazza Fontana inquiry; but the fact itself of his being in a position to do this requires a very convincing explanation, and according to us that is not what emerges from the trial documents. At best one gets the impression that Ventura is superimposing two different factors, using his position in the trial and his present way of thinking to support a democratic interpretation of what he did in 1969. Indeed, he gets pissed off with Spadaccia because he believes that "it is enough to have had to do with a few secret services to claim to be a left-wing activ

ist"; my actions at that time should be judged by the part I took after the inquiry began, he says. And why ever should they?

I was not an instigator, he say; on the contrary, I followed the Freda group in order to report on them to a SID agent (Giannettini) who, in turn, gave me information to pass on to "my comrades". My work as an informer, he affirms in the second letter to Spadaccia, was "intended to reach leftist groups and circles for their use". What groups, what circles? In short, what left is Ventura talking about?

Giannettini, The Comrades and Me

Let's see. On April 1, Ventura gave an interview to a journalist of the "La Repubblica". The interview was not published; but we will print the part that concerns this discussion (the rest of it regarding the Maletti and La Bruna case).

"Do you insist on the fact", the journalist asked, "of having been a left-wing informer who penetrated the Fascist terrorist group?"

Ventura replies: "During 1969 I observed and investigated the work of subversives for exchanging information and material with Guido Giannettini and others.

"Since I knew of the functional relationship Giannettini had with the SID, I received his reports with the precise foreknowledge of their source, that is to say, that they were transmitted to the national security authorities and, reciprocally, had indirectly originated with them. Only on a basis of this kind could I establish the agreement for an exchange of information between Giannettini and me that began in 1968. And only on this kind of reciprocal basis could Giannettini entrust several dossiers to me between 1969 and 1970. They regarded: neo-Fascist gangs (a file that was published in part in the appendix to the book "Gli attentati e lo scioglimento del Parlamento", Padua, 1970); (1) the

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1) "The Attacks And The Dissolution of Parliament".

international structures of the CIA and its connected services; on the Latin American guerrilla organisations (the Tupamaros in particular); and others. I intended using this annotated collection of information for publications on each individual subject as, to a certain extent, I did".

"If that is the case, how is it that you chose to work not for a leftist organisation but for an agency that certainly did not enjoy the reputation of being progressive?"

"But I didn't work for anyone other than myself and my comrades who put my information to use. There was never a relationship of subordination or common cause between me and Giannettini or me and the SID.

"My intelligence work was independent and functional to the reports that bound me to the leftist individuals and groups who utilised it.

Whom Did I Inform? Tirana

"Before being used for publication, the information I gathered and the files that Giannettini passed to me went to two groups of the extra-parliamentary left. Through one of the directors of one of the two groups mentioned, all o f the material gathered up to then was transmitted in spring of 1969 to the Rome embassy of the Popular Republic of Albania. All the files Giannettini passed me kept arriving at the same embassy up until 1970 as well as all the data I had gathered and which I recounted in my declarations at the trial.

"The trial brought out the proof of the political relations and the probatory connections emerging form the facts I have described here. So, if I "worked" for anybody that occurred in the direction and in favour of leftist spheres".

If these statements are true, they constitute a direct accusation of the SID which would have learned of the existence of the terrorist activities of the Venetia group precisely from Ventura. As far as the leftist groups to which Ventura claims he passed the information, they would be certified jerks, no matter if they were on the left. The only thing certain, in fact, is that neither he nor these supposed leftist groups ever let this information out. Ventura keeps strict silence until he is arrested and trapped by the investigating magistrate. How does he explain this? Why didn't he sing when the anarchists were put in prison for the April 25, 1969 bombings in Milan? Why didn't he do anything to prevent the bombings of the trains which could have been just as bloody as the Piazza Fontana massacre? And again: December 12 arrives, police and judges invent the Communist lead, they defenestrate Pinelli, the reactionaries get a breathing space - and what does Ventura do? He informs Tirana. Christ! Interna

tional proletarianism is all very well, but he could have had a look at Rome and its environs too, couldn't he?

However, begin to give the names and addresses of these leftist groups: that will be spitting in their faces, but it won't be good enough to save him who remains an informer that led back to the SID. Rather little for being considered a "leftist". Even less, actually, for claiming to be uninvolved in the events of '69.

There remains his publishing activity and his contacts with men of the left for this purpose. But Ventura knows that this activity can be looked at in one way or another according to the position he held in Freda's organisation. That is, it could be considered a cover for terrorist activity or even the real work of a person who considers himself to be a "leftist" despite all. But inasmuch as we do not understand how his activities in '69 can be considered leftist, for us only the first hypothesis is tenable. Tirana is far away. Beijing even further. And then, there is nothing very democratic or leftist about the spy and the informer. On the contrary, they don't appeal to us at all.

What Is The Use Of These Labels?

All in all, we do not find evidence to prove that Ventura was an agent provocateur to the damage of leftist groups. And it is also possible that he did not place the December 12 bombs. On this point the inquiry is not in the least convincing. To deny him the qualification of leftist does not however automatically make him a Fascist. Apart from revolutionaries and Fascists there is an infinity of shadings in this world. One's ideas can be confused, one can be a "qualunquista" (2) or politically indefinite, one can limit oneself to playing the violin. But Ventura is not content with less than being accredited as a leftist and accuses us of ignorance of "the facts of the trial". But if he is going to put it on that basis, he has no one to blame but himself: if to understand that he was democratic in '69 one has to spend months studying the trial documents, it means that something is wrong.

And then, why go on with this game of labels? Does Ventura imagine that by being accepted in some parish of the left he will more easily find people to defend him? The worst of it is that he may not be wrong.

Mario Signorelli

("Prova Radicale", June 1, 1976)

----------------------------------------------------------------2) Qualunquista, an Italian term much used in political parlance referring to an attitude of diffidence towards all political parties and to the party system in general.