ITALIAN LEFTIST TERRORISM: DEFEATED BUT NOT DESTROYED

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• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 5, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 1, 1983
• Content Type: REPORT

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Directorate of Seerr
Intelligence
Italian Leftist
Terrorism: Defeated
but Not Destroyed
An Intelligence Assessment
Seeret
EUR 83-10242
October 1983
copy 3 0 6
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Intelligence
Italian Leftist
Terrorism: Defeated
but Not Destroyed
This paper was prepared b~
external contractor for the Office of European
Analysis. It was coordinated with the Directorate
of Operations. Comments and queries are welcome
and may be directed to the Chief, European Issues
Division, EURA
Secret
EUR 83-10242
October 1983
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Secret
Italian Leftist
Terrorism: Defeated
but Not Destroyed
Key Judgments Italian leftist terrorists have suffered severe setbacks during the past 18
Information available months from which they are unlikely to fully recover. Terrorism has all but
as of 30 September 1983 ceased and some 1,500 terrorists of the Red Brigades, Prima Linea, and
was used in this report.
the numerous autonomist groups have been convicted or are awaiting trial.
Estimates of the hardcore terrorists still at large range from 80 to no more
than 225.
The success of Italy's battle against leftist terrorism is partly the result of
more imaginative tactics by Italian authorities. These include a special unit
to coordinate antiterrorist measures, a security service reorganization, and
a temporary law permitting plea bargaining that elicited some 300
confessions and leads from suspected terrorists.
Government efforts have been complemented by a decline in the quality
and ideological commitment of terrorist recruits, by growing terrorist
factionalism, and by sheer battle fatigue. The Red Brigades after 1978
became increasingly dependent for new cadres on the far less disciplined
autonomous groups that preferred spontaneous protests and violence to the
Brigades' elitist and more calculating approach. Since the murder of
former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, the Brigades have also been
rent by ideological differences between those wanting to emphasize
methodical murder and those favoring the autonomists' approach of
capitalizing on popular socioeconomic grievances.
A third factor behind the decline of leftist terrorism is the failure to attract
many recruits among mainstream Communists and the growing hostility of
most Italians. Many potential supporters who had hoped for swift results
did not bargain on a protracted murder campaign.
We believe that leftist terrorism has been broken and that it will not be ca-
pable any time soon of a sustained offensive resulting in a series of deaths
and kidnapings:
? The terrorists still at large are dispirited and in disarray, judging by the
comments of those among their imprisoned cohorts.
? Italian schools, universities, and radical working-class strongholds are
unlikely to provide zealous new recruits in large numbers because of the
prevalence of career and job-related concerns and the waning of their
revolutionary impulses.
? Italian police and security services are now in a far better position to
monitor and block terrorist moves.
Secret
EUR 83-10242
October 1983
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Nonetheless, even in their present weakened state, terrorist groups are
likely to retain the ability to conduct occasional operations against
unguarded or unsuspecting lower-level Italian or US targets. Because
commando groups of only nine terrorists were able to kidnap Moro and US
Gen. James Dozier, terrorists may even target another high-level official.
Short of an assassination attempt that might discredit them further,
however, they would be hard pressed to emulate the prolonged, high-
publicity Moro and Dozier operations because they no longer have the
necessary support network. Thus, although the terrorist threat has substan-
tially diminished and it no longer threatens governmental stability, leftist
terrorism is likely to persist.
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Anatomy of the Decline
Improved Counterterrorist Tactics
Remaining Terrorists Taking Stock
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Italian Leftist
Terrorism: Defeated
but Not Destroyed
Leftist terrorists in Italy have suffered severe setbacks
during the past 18 months from which they are not
likely to recover fully any time soon. As late as
December 1981, the Red Brigades were still strong
enough to kidnap Gen. James Dozier and to plan
equally ambitious operations for the following year.
But those plans collapsed with General Dozier's res-
cue and the arrest of most of his kidnapers. Three of
the most important terrorists immediately began to
confess, prompting numerous other arrests. By July of
last year, then Interior Minister Virginio Rognoni was
able to inform the Parliament that over 400 leftist
terrorists had been captured since the Dozier kidnap-
ing. Police successes continued throughout 1982 and
into 1983, with the smashing of the relatively new
Brigades organization in Naples, the "Walter Alasia"
column in Milan, and the arrest of many important
figures in the Rome organization.
The other leftist terrorist groups, simultaneously ri-
vals and allies of the Red Brigades, suffered as heavily
from police action. The largest, Prima Linea, saw the
last of its fugitive chiefs arrested by January 1983.
The numerous "autonomist" terrorist groups, which
served as recruiting grounds for the Red Brigades and
Prima Linea, were hit hard even earlier by the police.
Leftist Terrorism, 1969-82'
Number of incidents
3,000
it Italian statistics on terrorist actions vary c(ins iderahls T tiese figures Loser
all types of terrorist incidents and reporting on the overall period of
terrorist actions. Compiled for the Italian C'onunLill iIt Part, then have
been considered valid by non-Communist experts Source Mauro 6allcm,
Rapporto sul Trrruriso. 1981, supplemented hs press figures 11t81-82
Terrorist ranks are now severely depleted. Estimates
of the number of remaining hardcore terrorists range
from no more than 80 to
225 (US Embassy Rome). Although quality and elan
are at least as important as numbers, police successes,
in our judgment, have gone far toward diminishing
these as well. In any case, there have been no political
kidnapings since the Dozier affair. Moreover, al-
though leftist terrorists still managed to murder 10
individuals and wound 10 others in 1982, they have
taken credit for only three murders this year. Some
violence-prone autonomists are participating in the
anti-INF demonstrations in Sicily, but we do not
believe they are hardcore terrorists. The most recent
terrorism has been limited to a bungled assassination
attempt and a holdup attempt last May in Rome by
some young amateurs and the murder last June of a
Turin magistrate-which some Brigaders disclaim.
Another indication that the back of leftist terrorism
has been broken is that no terrorism against politi-
cians accompanied the national election last June.
(See figure and box.)'
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Terrorism in Society
Although the Red Brigades are the best known
terrorist group in Italy, the cumulative effect of leftist
terrorism on Italian society cannot be understood by
studying the actions of the Red Brigades alone or
even by including Prima Linea, the second-largest
organization. According to published Italian security
service records, 120 persons have been killed in Italy
during 1974-83 by some 22 leftist terrorist groups. Of
these, only 68 were killed by the Red Brigades and 18
by Prima Linea. One hundred fifty-seven persons were
wounded, 78 by the Brigades and 25 by Prima Linea.
The number of extremists once galvanized by the
broader movement, however, is estimated by Italian
The decline of leftist terrorism is partly the result of
improvement in the government's counterterrorist ca-
abilit
(battle weariness and internal dissen-
sion in their ranks also played an important role.'
Moreover, the terrorists never attracted more than a
minuscule fraction of the political left away from the
reformist Communist Party or won support from the
increasingly hostile general public
Improved Counterterrorist Tactics
The Italian Government initially appeared helpless in
the face of Aldo Moro's kidnaping in 1978 and his
eventual murder. Two of its three intelligence serv-
ices-the intelligence arm of the police and the
defense intelligence service-were in the middle of
sweeping reorganizations brought on by earlier revela-
tions of their meddling in domestic politics. According
to US officials in contact with their Italian counter-
parts, old chiefs had been fired, civilians were trans-
ferred to a new military intelligence service, and
carabinieri officers were sent to a new civilian service.
studies on terrorism to have been some 10,000. The
Italian literature shows that semilegal autonomist
groups spawned hundreds of clandestine organiza-
tions; some 20 of these have been implicated in the
murder of individuals. Overall, leftist terrorists com-
mitted a, least half of the 13,000 violent acts record-
ed between 1973 and July 1982 according to a report
to parliament by then Interior Minister Virginio
Rognoni. The cumulative impact of this relentless
attack against selected symbols of the state, in our
judgment, was as important as the murder of Aldo
Moro and the kidnaping of General Dozier in mobi-
lizing the Italian state and the public to battle the
terrorists.
Although authorities had scored a few successes
against terrorists, no prisoner was willing to implicate
his comrades. The difficulty of infiltrating an organi-
zation that tested recruits by their willingness to
commit murder was further complicated by wide-
spread public suspicion that police informants had
earlier been involved in rightwing terrorist actions.
Security forces thus had little information, misused
what they had, and did not know how to get more.
The government decided temporarily to bypass its
intelligence services while they were being reorga-
nized and created a special antiterrorist group under
the energetic carabinieri general, Carlo Alberto Dalla
Chiesa. Armed with powers to hold suspects longer
without a hearing and to tap telephones more freely,
and acting rapidly on leads that had been ignored,
Dalla Chiesa got results. His first big success was a
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general offensive in April 1979 against autonomist
leaders such as Antonio Negri, Oreste Scalzone, and
Franco Piperno, who for years had overtly preached
"legal" tactics, such as demonstrations that frequent-
ly ended in violence, while denying responsibility for
the consequences. The government, in our judgment,
had been afraid to move against them lest it be
accused of acting illegally, but after the Moro affair,
both government and police were bolder.
In addition to Dalla Chiesa's effort, the government's
chief weapon against leftist terrorism was a new law
permitting the reduction of terrorists' sentences by as
much as three-fourths if they cooperated with the
police. Although the law was actually in effect only in
1981 and 1982, hopes aroused by its consideration
may have helped prompt Brigades Turin chief Patri-
zio Peci in April 1980 to become the first important
Brigader to make a full confession. In any case, the
enactment of the plea bargaining law was followed by
a flood of confessions and new leads.
Moreover, by 1980 the reorganization of the security
services had begun to have an impact. The new
Central Office for General Investigations and Special
Operations (UCIGOS) in the Interior Ministry and its
local subunits had become operational. Collaborating
with streamlined military and civilian intelligence
units, it was able to coordinate investigations through-
out the country rapidly and arrest terrorists quickly.
While the government's techniques became increas-
ingly proficient, Italian authorities carefully avoided
indiscriminate crackdowns that might have evoked
sharp criticism from Italy's civil liberties-conscious
public. Civil rights continued to be respected, and the
extreme left was given no excuse to claim that the
state had abandoned due process in favor of tactics
practiced against terrorists in states such as Uruguay
and Argentina
The Internal Weaknesses of Terrorism
Italian security officials readily admit that their own
improved efficiency and the growing disrepute of the
terrorists are only partly responsible for the waning of
leftist terrorism. They note that the confession phe-
nomenon also owes much to the general deterioration
in the quality and ideological commitment of Brigade
recruits and to the growing factionalism in the move-
ment that made some terrorists eager to implicate
their rivals.
Poorer Recruits. Despite their growing loss of support
among the broader public, Brigades recruiters were
able to co-opt new members from other leftwing
groups. Analysis of 83 Brigades
members on police most wanted lists in mid-1982
shows 55 percent were known to have belonged to at
least one other extreme leftist organization before
joining the Brigades, while 32 percent had belonged to
another violent organization. Brigades membership
eventually became less an initiation into terrorism
than a lateral move from a smaller group to a larger
and better organized one (see table 1).
These new recruits came mostly from th
1e~ ~s~iso
plined and motivated autonomist groups
Although few of the old-guard
Brigades leaders talked upon being arrested-after
Peci confessed in April 1980, no leader cooperated
with police until Antonio Savasta began to talk
following his capture in January 1982-some rank
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and filers formerly belonging to autonomist groups 25X1
did. So have many leaders and followers in the various
autonomist groups. Indeed, the more than 300 confes-
sions secured by police have come in large measure
from them (see table 2; box).
Ideological Differences. Leftist terrorism was dealt
another severe blow when the old dispute between
Brigades and autonomists over strategy and tactics
found its way into Brigades ranks 25X1
dissidents inside the Roman column, who first
opposed Moro's kidnaping and then his murder,
pushed in 1979 for a switch to lower-level targets.
They argued that the desired worker support would
come only if terrorism were visibly related to prob-
lems like housing, health services, or wages. After losing
their arrest.
the argument, they seceded and subsequently at-
tacked real estate speculators before ending their
campaign in a series of squalid robberies that led to
Dissent did not end there. In July 1980 L'Espresso
reported on a critical note drafted in prison by
Brigades founders Renato Curcio and Alberto
Franceschini "against militarism-for which the Or-
ganization is all, and the working class only its claque
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Table 1
Age and Terrorist Background of 25 Red Brigades Leaders a
Prior
Autonomous
Group Activity
Brigades
Activity
Prominent leader of "movementist" faction Naples
Rome columns.
Renato Curcio
1941
Founder of Red Brigades.
1969-76
Lauro Azzolini
1943
Member Executive Committee, on Moro kidnap team.
1969-78
Margherita Cagol
1945
Curcio's wife; killed by police 1975.
1969-75
Mario Moretti
1946
Most skillful and long-lasting Brigade leader. Planned
Moro kidnaping.
1969-81
Rocco Micaletto
1946
Chief Genoa column, Executive Committee.
1973-80
Alberto Franceschini
1947
Close associate Curcio; Brigades ideologist.
1969-76
Valerio Morucci
1949
One of Roman leaders; seceded in 1979. +
1976-79
Barbara Balzarani
1949
Member of Executive Committee, still at large. +
1976-
Adriana Faranda
1950
One of Roman leaders; seceded with Morucci in 1979. +
1976-79
Vittorio Bolognesi
1950
Leading member of Naples column. +
1980-82
Nicola De Maria
1951
A leader of breakaway Milanese "Alasia Column." +
1978-82
Mauro Acanfora
1951
Leader of Naples column. +
1980-82
Prospero Gallinari
1951
Roman column leader 1978-79; the man who killed
Moro.
1969-79
Bruno Seghetti
1951
Roman column leader 1979-80.
1976-80
Maria Carla Brioschi
Circa
1951
Cofounded Rome column; member of Executive +
Committee 1978-79.
1972-79
Luigi Novelli
1953
Leader of Roman column 1981-82.
1976-82
Patrizio Peci
1953
Leader Turin column 1979-80. Made first important +
confession.
1976-80
Roberto Ognibene
1954
Youngest of original Curcio group.
1969-76
Antonio Savasta
1954
Headed Veneto column 1980-82. Kidnaper of General +
Dozier.
1978-82
Leader Turin column until 1978; went to Naples to build +
column.
A leader in Turin column; sent south to help organize +
Naples column.
Companion Savasta, prominent Sardinian, Veneto +
column.
Franco Bonisoli
1955
Early Brigades recruit, member Executive Committee. +
1973-78
Pietro Vanzi
1956
Leader in Rome, involved in Dozier kidnaping. +
1978-83
These leaders belong to a single political generation. Few were
born before the end of World War II. Most participated in the
tumults of 1968-69, often as high school students. Fifteen of them
were at large in January 1980; 10 in January 1981; nine in January
1982; and one in July 1983.
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Table 2
The Most Active Terrorist Organizations, 1977-80
Azione Rivoluzionaria
Autonomia Operaia
Comunisti Combattenti
(Fighting Communists)
Formazioni Armate Proletari
(Armed proletarian formations)
Guerriglia Comunista
(Communist guerrilla)
Lotta Armata per it Comunismo
(Armed struggle for Communism)
Nuclei Comunisti Territoriali
(Communist territorial nuclei)
Nuclei Armati per it Contropotere Territoriale
(Armed nuclei for territorial counterpower)
(Armed proletarian nuclei)
Nuclei Combattenti Comunisti
(Fighting Communist nuclei)
Organizazzione Operaia per it Comunismo
(Workers' organization for Communism)
Prima Linea
(Front Line)
Proletari Comunisti Organizzati
(Organized proletarian Communists)
Ronda Proletaria
(Proletarian patrol)
Ronde Armate Proletarie
(Armed proletarian patrols)
Ronde Proletarie
(Proletarian patrols)
Ronde Proletarie di Combattimento
(Fighting proletarian patrols) -
Squadre Armate Proletarie
(Armed proletarian squads)
Squadre Proletarie Combattenti
(Fighting proletarian squads)
Unita Combattenti Comunisti
(Fighting Communist units)
Crimes Against
Life and Property
25
44
286
10
13
10
35
15
15
20
26
16
99
106
22
21
31
28
28
23
and reservoir." At about the same time, the "Walter
Alasia" column in Milan declared in a communique
that it would pursue an independent course and would
no longer respect the decisions of the overall Execu-
tive Committee and Strategic Directorate.' It served
notice that it would henceforth concentrate only on
targets of potential interest to workers in the
Lombardy area.
By 1981 the Brigades were fast splitting into rival
groups. The quarrel was effectively dramatized in
December 1981 when two different Strategic Direc-
tives-supposedly the action plan for the following
year-were issued publicly within days of each other.
The so-called movementists held that the political
party they strove to create was near fruition, and that
an elite military movement was no longer needed. The
movementists' leader, Professor Giovanni Senzani,
proclaimed the formation of a "guerrilla party" unit-
ing the Brigades, members of old autonomist groups,
The Red Brigades organization consisted of area "columns" in
Turin, Milan, Rome, Naples, and Venice. It was led on a day-to-
day basis by a four- to five-man Executive Committee that
coordinated the activities of the columns. The Strategic Directorate
consisted of 15 to 20 of the top leaders in the various columns who
met annually to devise the plan of attack for that year.
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Relations Among Terrorist Groups
For a long time, the relation of the autonomists and
Prima Linea with the Red Brigades was poorly
understood by police and observers, who assumed all
were in tow to the Brigades. The evidence that has
accumulated over the past 18 months from the
confessions of "repentant" terrorists has clarified the
pedigree of the various groups. All arose after the
tumult of 1968 and the "hot autumn" of labor strife
and wildcat strikes in 1969. All the groups were
violence prone, all assumed that the Italian Commu-
nist Party was hopelessly committed to an increasing-
ly revisionist course, and all shared the motto "Don't
change the state-fight it!" They disagreed strongly,
however, on organization and tactics.
Red Brigades founder Renato Curcio and his cohorts,
and to a somewhat lesser extent the leaders of Prima
Linea, looked to the example of Mao Tse Tung and
to urban guerrillas in South America. They foresaw a
and undefined larger groups presumably now ready
for armed revolt. The "militarists" replied by accus-
ing their rivals of adventurism, saying that the Bri-
gades must remain the armed nucleus of a future
party.
According to the statements of former Brigaders, the
split with its accompanying public polemics weakened
the overall combative power of the Brigades. Al-
though the two factions continued to parley with each
other, they no longer planned joint operations. Their
ideological differences were aggravated by a bitter
power struggle and mutual suspicion, all of which
persuaded several arrested Brigaders to talk
Lack of Public Support
The testimony of former sympathizers shows that as
murder followed murder, even those originally not ill
disposed toward the terrorists began to ask what
justified such tactics. Observers had once calculated
that 300,000 to 600,000 persons in Italy had varying
degrees of sympathy with the terrorists. Neither the
Red Brigades nor autonomists succeeded in mobiliz-
ing them. Instead, after the police had arrested some
1,500 active terrorists and another 1,000 had fled the
long, difficult struggle perhaps for 40 years, wrote
Curcio. In this struggle they thought only a tightly
structured, Leninist-type clandestine group of urban
guerrillas could survive and conduct the campaign of
"armed propaganda'-which would in a later phase
win growing support from a proletariat formerly in
tow to the PCI. The penultimate phase would be civil
war followed, as in the Chinese example, by victory.
The autonomous groups rejected the Brigades' Lenin-
ist model, which they thought too elitist and certain
to isolate them from the very masses they sought to
influence. They envisaged a struggle on two levels-
one overt, in which they would claim the civil rights
given them by the bourgeois state while contesting its
legitimacy, and a covert level in which they would
rely on spontaneous street violence as well as more
methodical clandestine activities.
country, their supporters failed to step forward to
replace them.
Part of the terrorist audience, in our judgment, had
expected quick and exciting results. They did not
bargain for a long murder campaign and began to ask
what relation it had to social causes, and what positive
measures the terrorists favored. They found no satis-
fying answer. The long struggle Renato Curcio had
written about proved to be unexpectedly long. By
1983 it had lasted 14 years and seemed to be going
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The extremists who began the terrorist struggle fore-
saw in their writings the revisionist policies adopted
by the Italian Communist Party in the 1970s and
calculated that they would produce widespread revul-
sion in the working class. Instead, the vast majority of
leftists have remained faithful to the PCI. The ex-
tremists are thus on notice that their small minority
has after long exertion failed to convert the mass of
Communists, even though the revisionist policies of
the party are now on full display.
Finally, we believe that the terrorist generation was
the product not of economic depression but rather of
great expectations fostered by the West European-
wide "economic miracle" of the 1960s and the related
revolutionary spirit that engulfed much of Western
Europe's youth and working class. The recent hard
economic times and the waning of revolutionary im-
pulses that produced a conservative trend among
youth and labor elsewhere in Western Europe during
the late 1970s also has affected Italy. At least for
now, Italian high schools, universities, and radical
working-class strongholds, the former spawning
grounds for terrorist militants, are quiet.
By early 1983 the combined effect of sweeping ar-
rests, ideological dissidence, and the terrorists' grow-
ing realization that radicalized workers and students
would not rally to them prompted several leading
terrorist figures to declare that their campaign was
over. "The cycle of revolutionary armed struggle
launched in the early 1970s on the wave of vast and
radical student and workers' movements is substan-
tially finished," says a document drafted by Renato
Curcio
Other terrorists have taken a similar line. A Prima
Linea leader who claimed to speak for his group said
at his trial in April 1983 that the armed struggle was
"useful" in certain instances in the past, but was "no
longer the right means to promote the welfare of the
masses." These statements are admissions of defeat,
in our judgment, but not declarations of unequivocal
surrender. Curcio's full statement makes it clear that
he still envisions some sort of militant action that does
Other imprisoned leaders, such as Mario Moretti,
arguably the brightest and most respected of the
Brigades chiefs-who organized many of the regional
organizations, led the Moro kidnaping, and ruled as
first among equals until his arrest in 1981-call for a
continued campaign. "The armed struggle is not
finished," said Moretti to a reporter who interviewed
him in a courtroom. "It will take a qualitative leap,
and adopt new forms." A continuing debate thus
divides those like Curcio, who seek new forms of
struggle that will appeal to the masses, and others
such as Moretti, who apparently think their defeat is
largely tactical and can be remedied by better organi-
zation, more effective clandestineness and a few re-
sounding successes.
We believe that both the Red Brigades and the
autonomists correctly diagnosed each other's weak-
nesses. Red Brigade clandestineness did isolate the
organization from the workers. But the spontaneous
tactics of the autonomists were also deficient, and
their loose organization created vulnerabilities helpful
to the police when the autonomists went underground.
Above all, in our view, both were wrong in believing
that a combative minority could by "armed propagan-
da" galvanize an army of partisans into provoking the
state to take repressive actions that would trigger civil
war.
It is unlikely, in our judgment, that leftist terrorists
will be in a position any time soon to mount another
sustained assault against Italian institutions. Terrorist
groups are likely to remain bedeviled by their internal
failings, the government's strengthened counterterror-
ist capability, and a hostile public. Nevertheless, the
quiet that has fallen over the terrorist scene and the
figures showing that relatively few terrorists remain
at large can be misleading. Terrorism as a mass
phenomenon may be finished, but the unwillingness of
many terrorists to admit defeat could still produce
spectacular violence.
not exclude violence
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 recruitment, we ieve t ere are probably enough
hardcore terrorists left to engage in limited new
terrorist activity. The Brigades characteristically used
an attack squad of four or five persons for murder or
woundings, and only nine persons carried out the
Moro and Dozier kidnapings. Such small groups, in
our judgment, could attack unguarded or unsuspect-
ing lower-level Italian or US officials, and they could
even set their sights again on high-ranking ones.F_
To have the most dramatic impact, a renewed terror-
ist offensive would probably have to take one of the
following forms:
? A prison attack, freeing a number of prisoners.
? A kidnaping or murder of a high Italian or US
official.
? An attempt to seize a nuclear weapon or an attack
designed to foil INF deployment.
An attack against a US military facility in particular
would require a level of organization and training the
terrorists seldom possessed at their peak, but given
luck and daring, even an abortive raid could become a
political success for the terrorists and revive their
morale
The cadres for an eventual resurgence of leftist
terrorism are not lacking, given the US Embassy in
Rome estimate that as many as 225 Brigaders and
Prima Linea figures may still be at large in Italy and
that hundreds more will eventually have to be freed
from prison because their terms have expired or
because of lack of evidence to convict them.
less a harbinger of renewed public sympathy for the
terrorist cause than it was a protest against his four-
year pretrial detention.
At least for the next few years, however, leftist
terrorism is likely to threaten only selected individ-
uals, and not the stability of the Italian state. Some of
the police attention trained on terrorism has already
shifted to organized crime and drugs, where the death
rates greatly exceed those exacted by terrorism-over
1,000 Mafia or Camorra murders in southern Italy
alone in 1982. Although the Red Brigades and other
terrorists have written a great deal about politicizing
prison populations, statistics suggest that few common
criminals were absorbed into Brigades structures. A
more important phenomenon, in our judgment, was
the degeneration of the autonomist political gangs
into almost purely criminal ones, robbing banks under
the guise of expropriation of the wealthy.
In the future some criminals might give their actions
a light wash of political justification, but a significant
number of criminals probably will not be drawn into
basically political terrorism. Although some Italian
press accounts claim that the Red Brigades in Naples
collaborated in 1981-82 with one of the Camorra
"families," it is difficult to see what advantage the
Camorra or Mafia could find in extensive collabora-
tion with leftist terrorism. These organizations have in
common systematic crimes frequently including mur-
der. But the criminals seek private profit, often
guaranteed by links with corrupt officials, while the
political criminals, by seeking to overthrow the whole
system, attract greater police attention and compli-
cate the practice of crime. Terrorist murder is thus
likely to exist alongside criminal murder, degrading
life in Italian cities but not ripping the basic fabric of
society.
Signs that leftist terrorism is recovering would include
a successful murder or kidnaping of a guarded, high-
level official, a wave of attacks against lower level
targets, or new theoretical proclamations outlining the
terrorists' rationale. The election of Antonio Negri,
the chief theorist of autonomist terrorism, to Parlia-
ment on the Radical Party ticket last June while he
was under preventive detention was, in our judgment,
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