Twenty years ago, his name was found on Licio Gelli's secret list of members of the fascist and spooky (in the Intelligence sense of the word) P2 Lodge, long before he entered politics.
From Searchlight, "the International Anti-Fascist Magazine", May 2002:
In his testimony given last year before the Commissione Stragi (Commission on terrorist massacres), General Maletti, who in order to escape justice took refuge in South Africa under apartheid, said that the creation of "second generation Red Brigades" was discussed at the highest level of the Italian government. He did not deny that some of their members were trained at Campo Maraggiu, in Sardinia. This was the secret training ground for the Gladio forces, which were linked to a network of fascist organisations. The favourite of the CIA, and undoubtedly of Henry Kissinger himself, was Ordine Nuovo, led by Pino Rauti, the avowed admirer of Hitler and Himmler. Only last year Rauti made an electoral deal with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. At the very top of the secret plans however was the fascist Licio Gelli, head of the notorious P2 Masonic Lodge.
Gelli, known to the CIA and friendly with the former US President Ronald Reagan, recruited about 1,200 members, including Maletti and other heads of the secret services and the military. P2 was later described by an investigative commission as a "government within the government". It was a subversive organisation, a military coup in waiting, with men ready to take control of key structures throughout the country. An attempted coup did in fact take place during the night of 7-8 December 1970, when the Home Office in Rome was briefly taken over. Known as the "Borghese coup", it was called off at the last minute apparently because Gelli did not get the green light from the United States.
On the list of P2 members found in Gelli's villa in Tuscany was the name of Berlusconi. Among the many mysteries in the tycoon's early career concerning the source of the funds that enabled him to buy estates in Milan and later launch his television channels with licences given to him by the corrupt Christian Democratic-Socialist government, the Gelli link highlights the Gladio-P2-Berlusconi-CIA jigsaw.
Berlusconi is now flanked by deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, the former secretary of the fascist MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), and by Umberto Bossi of the racist Northern League. The rise of what has been described as the most dangerous political triad in Europe appears to be the successful fruition of a long sought objective. "The CIA wanted to assist nationalism with the extreme-right contribution", declared Maletti to the Commission.
Given the efforts of both the United States and Britain in setting up the Gladio network in Italy in 1949, which relied on fascists as the most trusted soldiers to keep the Communists at bay, it would seem that Prime Minister Tony Blair's steadfast support for and efforts to give legitimacy to Berlusconi's government, even when it appears anomalous and disreputable in the eyes of the world, is just a rerun of old alliances outside parliamentary democracy going back more than 50 years.
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/ItalyMay2002.htm
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