Authors: David Yallop
The Puppet Master, who uses the secret code-name ‘Luciani’, continues to give impressive demonstrations that he is a man of extraordinary influence. In 1979 Gelli and Ortolani began working to bring about a political reconciliation between Christian Democrat leader and former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi. The exposure of nearly one thousand P2 members in 1981 slowed down these delicate negotiations. They have now flowered. At the time of writing the Prime Minister of Italy is Bettino Craxi, the Foreign Minister, Giulio Andreotti. Both men have much for which to thank Licio Gelli.
On April 8th, 1980, Gelli wrote from Italy to Phillip Guarino, a senior member of the Republican Party National Committee, which at the time was concentrating all its efforts on getting Ronald Reagan elected President. Gelli wrote: ‘If you think it might be useful for something favourable to your Presidential candidate to be published in Italy, send me some material and I’ll get it published in one of the papers here.’
Without any knowledge of the power that Gelli wielded it might seem a curious offer. How could a man who officially owned no newspapers guarantee a favourable mention and sympathetic coverage for Reagan? The answer was a consortium of P2 members plus the Vatican-controlled Rizzoli, the massive publishing group, with interests stretching as far as Buenos Aires. Among the many magazines and newspapers was
Corriere Della Sera,
Italy’s most prestigious newspaper. Other P2 members were planted throughout the television, radio and newspaper media of the country. The favourable comments about Ronald Reagan, carefully placed by Licio Gelli, duly appeared in Italy.
In January 1981, Licio Gelli was an honoured guest at the Presidential inauguration. Guarino later ruefully observed, ‘He had a better seat than I did.’
In May 1981, after the discovery of the list of nearly one thousand members of P2 that included several current Cabinet Ministers had led to the collapse of the Italian Government, Gelli continued his exercise of power from a variety of South American bases. An indication that Gelli was far from being a spent force can be seen in the movement of 95 million dollars by Calvi from Banco Ambrosiano to the Panamanian company of Bellatrix, one of the P2-controlled shell companies. This transfer, via a number of exotic routes including Rothschild in Zürich, Rothschild in Guernsey and the Banque Nationale de Paris in Panama, sprayed money in the most unlikely directions, including some 20 million dollars into Ansbacher & Co, a small merchant bank in Dublin.
One year later, in May 1982, with the Falklands war at its height, Licio Gelli, a man in hiding, on the run, wanted on countless charges, calmly came to Europe to help his Argentinian friends. The original Exocet missiles which Gelli had purchased for the junta had proved themselves to be a devastating weapon. As previously recorded, Gelli came to buy more. He stayed with Ortolani at a villa at Cap Ferrat and began secret negotiations not only with a variety of arms dealers but also with Aerospatiale, the makers of the missile. British Intelligence became aware of these negotiations and alerted their counterparts in the Italian Secret Service who promptly began to descend on the Cap Ferrat villa. They were prevented from getting to Gelli by the DST, the French Secret Service, who blatantly prevented all attempts to arrest Gelli. That is an example of the power of Licio Gelli.
While negotiating with a variety of potential Exocet suppliers, Gelli was also in daily contact with Calvi. The two Freemasons still
had so much in common. By the second week of June 1982 Calvi, like Gelli, was also a man on the run. With his Ambrosiano empire on the verge of collapse he had illegally left Italy, first travelling to Austria and subsequently to London. He and Gelli once again had a deep mutual need for each other. Calvi needed protection from the Italian authorities, Gelli needed many millions for the Exocet purchase. My research indicates that the French were planning to find a way round the arms sales embargo then operating against Argentina. The missiles would find their way to Argentina via Peru. French technicians were standing by to be flown out to modify the Exocets for the Argentinian Air Force.
For Gelli and Calvi their priorities clashed fatally. The war would not wait while the Puppet Master pulled his Italian strings. Calvi, at Gelli’s suggestion, travelled to London and to his death. He was ‘suicided’ on June 17th, 1982, the same day that General Galtieri was replaced as President of Argentina by General Bignone. Argentina had lost the war. Calvi’s P2 colleagues considered that by failing to divert money promptly for the Exocets he had contributed to that defeat.
In August 1982, the Argentinian junta secretly decided to recommence hostilities against the British forces guarding the Falklands. They considered that a quantity of Exocets could bring them victory and the islands.
This time Gelli dealt with a former officer of the Italian Secret Service, Colonel Massimo Pugliese, a member of P2. Again British Intelligence learned of the proposed deal. They ensured it aborted.
During the same month, August 1982, Gelli was encountering a problem with one of his secret bank accounts in Switzerland. It was not performing to order. Every time that Gelli, in South America, attempted to transfer money, the UBS in Geneva declined to comply with the instructions. Gelli was advised that he would have to appear at the bank personally.
Using a false Argentinian passport, he flew to Madrid and then to Geneva on September 13th, 1982. He presented his false documentation and was advised there would be a short delay. Minutes later he was arrested. He had walked into a carefully prepared trap. The account had been frozen at the request of the Italian Government who had been advised by the Swiss of the real identity of the account holder.
The account had been created for Gelli by Roberto Calvi. Into it the Milanese banker had poured over 100 million dollars. At the time of
his arrest Gelli was attempting to have the 55 million dollars remaining in the account transferred to Uruguay.
Extradition proceedings began immediately, with Gelli singing the same song that had previously been chanted by Sindona and Calvi. ‘I am a victim of political persecution. It is a plot of the left.’ While Swiss magistrates considered the issues, Licio Gelli was held in one of Switzerland’s maximum security prisons, Champ Dollon. Extradition proceedings involving any member of P2, as this book has already established, tend to be protracted. Gelli was still in Champ Dollon in the summer of 1983.
With Italy about to face another General Election in June, the parliamentary commission which had been investigating P2 was suspended. The Christian Democrat party fielded at least five P2 members at the election. Signorina Tina Anselmi, who had been chairman of the commission, was asked her views on P2 after two years’ intensive study of the secret society. She said:
P2 is by no means dead. It still has power. It is working in the institutions. It is moving in society. It has money, means and instruments still at its disposal. It still has fully operative power centres in South America. It is also still able to condition, at least in part, Italian political life.
The evidence overwhelmingly confirms the validity of Signorina Anselmi’s statements. When news of Gelli’s arrest became known in Argentina, Admiral Emilio Massera, a member of the ruling junta, remarked, ‘Signoi Gelli has rendered invaluable service to Argentina. This country has much to thank him for and will forever be in his debt.’
Admiral Massera, like General Carlos Suarez Mason, the First Army commander, like the organizer of the Argentine Death Squads, José Lope Rega, is a member of the Argentine section of P2. In Uruguay P2 membership includes the former Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, General Gregorio Alvarez.
If anyone in Italy or elsewhere considered that Tina Anselmi was merely attempting to score political points before an election they must have received a jolt on August 10th, 1983. Champ Dollon had one prisoner fewer than the day before. Licio Gelli had escaped. The Swiss authorities, attempting to cover their deep embarrassment, are now in the process of laying the entire blame at the feet of one corrupt guard, Umberto Cerdana, who officially took a derisory bribe of just
over £6,000 from Gelli.
*
If any reader of this book believes that Gelli escaped from Switzerland with the help of only one prison guard, they also probably believe that Albino Luciani died a natural death. A guard takes the equivalent of four months’ salary for an act that could now give him a prison sentence of seven-and-a-half years?
Nine days after Gelli’s escape the Swiss authorities approved the extradition request from Italy. The trouble was that there was no Gelli to extradite. Driven first to France by his son in a hired BMW, the pair were transported by an unwitting helicopter pilot to Monte Carlo. The excuse given to the pilot for diverting from Nice and landing at Monte Carlo was that Gelli was in urgent need of dental treatment. Via a yacht belonging to Francesco Pazienza, a man who claims to have been a good friend of the late Roberto Calvi, Gelli continued his search for a good dentist in Uruguay, where at the time of writing he sits still pulling strings from a ranch a few miles north of Montevideo. He is wanted in many countries, accused of many crimes, but the mass of information that he has so diligently acquired over the years ensures that he continues to be protected.
The Italian election in June 1983 resulted in Signor Bettino Craxi, one of the many beneficiaries of Calvi’s largesse, becoming Prime Minister. Told of Gelli’s escape he said: ‘The flight of Gelli confirms that the Grand Master has a network of powerful friends.’
If, and it is indeed a very large if, Licio Gelli is ever handed over alive to the Italian Government, he faces a variety of criminal charges. They include the following: extortion, blackmail, drug smuggling, arms smuggling, conspiracy to overthrow the legal Government, political espionage, military espionage, illegal possession of State secrets, involvement with a series of bomb outrages including the Bologna Station attack in which 84 people died.
The chain that link by link leads from a murdered Pope to Bishop Paul Marcinkus to Roberto Calvi to Umberto Ortolani and Licio Gelli is strong. For circumstantial evidence to succeed it must be strong, must sustain the closest scrutiny before a jury can bring in a verdict of ‘guilty’. No jury confronted with the evidence contained in this book could return a verdict of ‘death by natural causes’. No judge, no coroner in the world, would accept such a verdict on this evidence. That is beyond all argument. No evidence exists to indicate that
Albino Luciani’s death was the result of an accident. We are left with murder. Not, in my view, by person or persons unknown, but by persons all too well known, with, at the heart of the conspiracy, Licio Gelli. Gelli was a man who happened to number among his P2 members the brother of Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Francesco. His meetings with the powerful and famous included audiences with Pope Paul VI. Gelli was a man whose close friends included Cardinal Paolo Bertoli. Gelli’s closest P2 adviser, Umberto Ortolani, knew his way around Vatican City better than many cardinals. Ortolani, with his drawer full of Vatican honours and awards, was so close to the nerve centre of Vatican power that his was the villa, and he the host, at the pre-Conclave secret meeting that finalized strategy and brought about the election of Paul VI. It was Ortolani who conceived the idea of the multi-million dollar sale of the Vatican interests in Società Generale Immobiliare, Ceramiche Pozzi and Condotte d’Acqua. Ortolani was the P2 marriage broker, joining as partners the Mafioso and fellow P2 member Michele Sindona and Pope Paul VI. He collected vast commissions from one and Papal honours from the other. Gelli was also that collector of curious knowledge and information, including photographs of Pope John Paul II completely nude next to his swimming pool. When Gelli showed these snapshots to senior Socialist Party politician Vanni Nistico he remarked, ‘Look at the problems the secret services have. If it’s possible to take these pictures of the Pope, imagine how easy it is to shoot him.’ Indeed. Or poison his predecessor.
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Matthew 21:12/13
Albino Luciani had a dream. He dreamt of a Roman Catholic Church which would truly respond to the needs of its people on vital issues such as birth control. He dreamt of a Church which would dispense with the wealth, power and prestige that it had acquired through Vatican Incorporated; of a Church which would get out of the market place and reject the moneylenders where the message of Christ had become tainted; of a Church that would once again rely upon what has always been its greatest asset, its source of true power, its greatest claim to a unique prestige: the Gospel.
By the evening of September 28th, 1978, Albino Luciani had taken the first steps towards the realization of his extraordinary dream. At 9.30 p.m. he closed his bedroom door and the dream ended.
In Italy now, there is talk of making Albino Luciani a Saint. Already petitions of many thousands of signatures have been collected. Ultimately if this man who was ‘a poor man, accustomed to small things and silence’ is beatified, it would be more than fitting. On September 28th, 1978 he was martyred for his beliefs. Confronted with a man like Albino Luciani, with the problems his continuing presence would pose, the Italian Solution was applied. The decision that the Pope must die was taken and God’s Candidate was murdered.