Borsellino murdered and forgotten - Marco Travaglio
(21:30)

Via D'Amelio, a State-sponsored murder
Today is the 18th anniversary of the Via d’Amelio massacre and we simply have to discuss this issue, an issue that you will see in today’s newspapers, complete with headlines referring to some disappointment or the failure of yesterday’s demonstrations on the eve of this special anniversary. If the truth be told, there was no such failure. What there was, was a silent march to Utveggio Castle, the very castle from which someone first spotted Borsellino as he approached the bell-pushes of the intercom system of his mother’s home and that was the precise moment when the electronic signal was sent to blow up the entire square.
So, there were in fact tens of “Red Agenda” youngsters there yesterday. I agree that it wasn’t exactly a monumental demonstration, but then it was never intended to be such, but rather just a little pilgrimage. In a large cinema in the historic town centre, we presented this film and the cinema was jam-packed, notwithstanding the fact that it was exceptional hot and the air conditioning wasn’t working. Outside the cinema, there were even more people than the number that had managed to get inside, and they were at least able to able to follow the discussions on an outside screen. Salvatore Borsellino was obviously inside the cinema, as were Antonio Ingroia, Gioacchino Genchi, Nicola Biondo the undersecretary and all the youngsters that breathed life into the three days of demonstrations leading up to the 19th July. Claudio Gioè, was also there, the actor that read Manfredi Borsellino’s account of his father’s last day of life in the film that I mentioned earlier.
However, given that there were a few thousand people there last night, you’ll see that no one will say a word about it. It’s very convenient for the regime’s press to give credence to the idea that Palermo is dead, resigned to its fate. A Country that really doesn’t give a damn about the Capaci and the Via d’Amelio murders and one where, even if the whole truth never really comes out into the open, it doesn’t really matter at all. Unfortunately for them, the truth is far more powerful than these plugs or even lids that they certain individuals are trying to put on this story, also because the internal crisis in the system that we are living with on a daily basis is also adding on little bits of the truth. In fact, I was thinking about this yesterday evening while I was watching this film, made by youngsters that are young enough to be my kids. It is a film that reveals that there are thousands of people, some of them even very young people, who have understood precisely what happened at Capaci and in Via d’Amelio. We may still be missing some of the names and surnames of some of the main players in this affair, but we know exactly where they come from, we know all about the circles they move in, we know precisely who handled the negotiations, because there is simply no way that two officers of the ROS could have done so without the backing of the Government and probably also the opposition parties, otherwise they would never have dared to make such a risky move as to make a deal with Vito Ciancimino, just as Vito Ciancimino would never have dared to make such a risky move as to back any pact between the Cosa Nostra and the government institutions, so obviously everyone’s back was well covered and everyone must have been representing those organisations that they claimed to be representing.
As I was saying, each day some new piece of the puzzle emerges, also thanks to the work being done by certain journalists, intellectuals, magazines, editors, newspapers. Just yesterday, merely by way of example, while all the other newspapers’ led with some strange headlines, like “Tremonti against the idea of a technical government”, now there’s a headline to really get your juices going isn’t it, Il Fatto Quotidiano’s Marco Lillo was busy revealing the latest document that Ciancimino’s son had just handed over to the Palermo and Caltanissetta Magistrates that are each busy with their own investigations into the background to the Via d’Amelio massacre. It is a most important document in that it is a manuscript, handwritten by Vito Ciancimino himself in 1993, but written about whom? Well, according to Marco Lillo, about an important figure in the economy who was about to rise to the position of Premier. Back in April of 1993, two governments were about to change sides, the last government of the First Republic fell, namely the Amato government, while the Ciampi Government was being born. The latter was a coalition government headed up by the then former head of the Italian Central Bank, so he was probably the important figure that seemed to be about to rise to the position of Premier. Ciampi was the link between the First and the Second Republics because, after that coalition government, we then went to the polls in the elections of the 27th April 1994, which Berlusconi won.
Don Vito was in jail. He had been arrested in December 1992, immediately after having handed over to the Carabinieri, on Provenzano’s behalf and via his son Massimo who acted as postman, a number of maps showing the location of Riina’s hideaway, where Riina was subsequently arrested on 15 January 1993, just a short distance away from the Via Bernini villa where he had been hiding from the police. So Vito Ciancimino was in jail at that time and he wrote a letter in an ongoing attempt to get the parliamentary anti-mafia committee chaired by Luciano Violante to listen to him, however, Violante studiously ignored his appeals, so he then proceeded to write to Ciampi, telling him a number of interesting things. If the existence of this document were to be confirmed and its content certified as authentic and were it to be precisely dated, it would be a vital to the investigations and the trial regarding the alleged negotiations because, according to Vito Ciancimino, the regime was attempting to complete its last major task. I wonder what this biggest ever task and what regime he was referring to? For Ciancimino, the word regime was not a generic term. What Ciancimino referred to as the regime was in fact that bunch of crooked politicians that had often used him, and that he had used in turn when they were the agents that had been hanging around him for 30 years, partly in order to keep an eye on him, partly to guide him and partly to be guided by him. Police officers, agents from the Palermo anti-mafia squad and high profile politicians with whom Ciancimino had had certain dealings, that’s what he meant by the regime, that gray area that exists somewhere between the State and the Mafia and involves high profile individuals both in the Government and in the Mafia.

Vito Ciancimino’s latest letter
He claims that the regime is attempting to complete its last major task, a leopard-spot operation, changing everything so that nothing will change. As a matter of fact, Ciancimino was useful in that he helped them capture Riina and enable them to display the trophy that was Riina’s head while instead, behind the scenes, the State had put itself into Provenzano’s hands. The State never did search Riina’s hideout because it didn’t want to find any proof of the negotiations. That proof remained in Provenzano’s possession and so the latter became absolutely untouchable. He travelled freely all around Italy, without a care in the world, even though he had technically been on the run for 30 years and had held 6 meetings in Rome, the last one being just before he was once again placed under house arrest, but hardly under surveillance at all. Or rather, he was kept under surveillance until Provenzano came to see him, after which, since they would not and could not arrest him, the entire lot of them got away. So, the final major task was this leopard-spot operation that led to the removal of Vito Ciancimino, who was arrested after having in fact assisted in the capture of Totò Riina, and his replacement with someone else who would go on to complete the final negotiations, the final task that led to the establishment of the Forza Italia party shortly thereafter. According to a number of the investigators, the person who took over from Ciancimino was none other than Marcello Dell’Utri, who sprang into action precisely between 1992/1993, came up with the idea of the Forza Italia party and met with Vittorio Mangano twice during the course of 1993.
After this initial phase, Ciancimino adds: “I am part of this regime and I know full well that precisely because I am part of it, I will soon be taken out of the picture”. So he had already realised that he had been arrested because he was being taken out of the picture and deposed, he was no longer useful so it was better for him to be in jail so he couldn’t spill the beans, and then he adds: “after that first devious attempted solution suggested by Colonel Mori to halt the massacres, an attempt that was in fact scuppered by the murder of Borsellino, who was certainly firmly opposed to this agreement, they were finally forced by circumstances to accept the only possible solution in order to slow down this bloodbath that now represents only one part of the subversive strategy”. Then he adds: “On numerous occasions I pleaded in vain to be heard by the Anti-Mafia Committee”. We don’t know whether or not this letter ever got to its destination, namely to that important figure in the economy who was about to become head of the Government, but what we do know is that he was talking just a few months before the Capaci and Via d’Amelio massacres and just before the murders that took place in the summer of 1993. In fact, he states that this bloodbath was far from over and indeed, soon after, further massacres occurred in Florence, Milan and Rome. After all, if we’re talking prior to the Ciampi Government, then it had to be before April 1993, namely the Saturday after Riina’s capture, 6 or 7 months after the Capaci and Via d’Amelio killings.
Lillo writes that this letter is important for 3 reasons: Firstly because it dates Mori’s attempt to after the Capaci massacre but prior to the Via d’Amelio one, but I’ll explain later why this is so important. Secondly because it identifies the Mafia massacres as being part of a broader subversive scheme devised by an architect that heads up a system of which Don Vito himself is part, albeit a small part, in that he feels that the killing season has ended. Finally, because this letter, if it is indeed genuine of course, confirms the Magistrature’s most disturbing suspicions regarding the death of Borsellino, judge and close friend of Falcone, who also opposed to the negotiations. According to the letter attributed to Don Vito by his son, this could well be the reason why his death sentence was carried out so quickly.
Why are these facts so important, you ask? Well, the fact is that General Mori has never denied having held meetings with Vito Ciancimino, but he claims that these meetings took place only after the Via d’Amelio killing, thereby excluding and eliminating the possibility that Borsellino was killed because of his opposition to the negotiations, that is if Mori’s negotiations began after Borsellino’s death of course. If, instead, he had begun his negotiations prior to Borsellino’s death, then there would be reasonable grounds for suspecting that Borsellino, having been told about the negotiations, said “NO” and that was therefore removed from the picture in order prevent him from interfering with the negotiations.
This letter is useful because it confirms what Ciancimino has always said and what has been stated by a number of other Mafia turncoats, namely that, after the Capaci attack but before the Via D’Amelio massacre, Riina was extremely happy and chipper, because he said: they’ve been busy – namely his political masters – and we must give it another little shove. The little shove he was talking about was one that didn’t actually suit the Mafia because the Mafia had no reason to kill Borsellino so soon after Falcone’s death, but the State had already forgotten all about the Capaci massacre, just one month after the funerals of the Falcone, Francesca Morvillo and the bodyguards. The Anti-Mafia Bill that had been tabled by Martelli on the Saturday after the Capaci slaughter was immediately smothered in Parliament and never became law. After all, if things could just be left as they were for just a few more weeks, the entire thing would have been gone and forgotten forever.
Instead, the Borsellino murder, following just two months after the death of Falcone, caused a public furore that forced that Government to draft and promulgate that Anti-Mafia Decree, with all its provisions relating to turncoats, etc, on the 6th August, I think it was, so that second murder was definitely not in the Mafia’s interests. However, Riina knew full well that in the long term, that favour that he was doing for his political allies that had been very busy would, in fact, benefit the mafia and he would be well paid, so, against the Cosa Nostra’s immediate interests, he went ahead and committed that atrocity, thereby eliminating Borsellino from the picture.

There were indeed certain negotiations
If this letter proves to be genuine and dated as we believe, that would make it a genuine document of the period when, just a few months after those events, Vito Ciancimino attempted to tell the incoming Prime Minister, who was a technical man and therefore perhaps somewhat less a part of the political government circles and Violante’s Anti-Mafia Committee who would never want to listen to what Ciancimino had to say, that he knew precisely when General Mori began with his negotiations, and who better to know these things? He states that the negotiations began prior to the Via d’Amelio massacre and immediately after the Capaci ones. This claim would be indisputable because it was made back in 1993, long before the emergence of this diatribe that is General Mori’s version of events, which dates the negotiations to the period after the Via D’Amelio massacre. Indeed, we read in the letter that: after that first devious attempted solution suggested by Colonel Mori to halt the massacres, an attempt that was in fact scuppered by the murder of Borsellino, who was certainly firmly opposed to this agreement, they were finally forced by circumstances to accept the only possible solution, etc.
But what precisely was that possible solution? Obviously an agreement that was far more broad-ranging than that initially proposed by Mori, and here Ciancimino was obviously hoping to whet the addressee’s appetite and make them want to hear the rest of what he had to tell, but no one wanted to listen. The most interesting thing about these affairs is that the mafia members and the offspring of mafia members are far more willing to talk about them than the men of the State and the institutions are. We have had to wait 18 years for Claudio Martelli to appear on “Annozero” and remember that, after having been informed about the contacts between the ROS and Ciancimino senior, his Ministry of Justice had warned Borsellino, and Borsellino, as we can well imagine, stated that he was completely opposed to the negotiations. So even Martelli confirms that the negotiations had to have begun prior to the Via d’Amelio massacre, otherwise how could they have warned Borsellino if he was already dead? If the negotiations had begun later, they would have had to warn a dead man.
Liliana Ferraro, a manager at the Ministry and the person that took over from Falcone, also confirms that she had warned Borsellino, so it is obvious that, as far as she is concerned, the negotiations involving Mori and the ROS dates back to before the Via d’Amelio massacre and may indeed have been the actual cause of the massacre, as claimed by Vito Ciancimino. Then, last summer, after Ciancimino’s son had spoken about these events, along came Violante, pretty as you please, and suddenly also remembered, 18 years later, that indeed General Mori had urged him, as Chairman of the Anti-mafia Committee, leader of the communist party and a member of the opposition, to meet with Ciancimino. Imagine that! A Carabinieri General proposing, at least according to Violante, a private meeting between the communist head of the anti-mafia committee and the mafia-leaning former Mayor of Palermo, yet Violante never wondered why Mori had become a sort of messenger for Ciancimino’s appeals and, even worse, has never said anything in all these years in which the Public Prosecutors of Palermo put Mori on trial for having failed to search Riina’s hideout and then also for his failure to arrest Provenzano in 1995 at the Mezzojuso homestead.
He did absolutely nothing to assist with the investigations into General Mori’s actions, and only when Ciancimino’s son stated that his father also wanted some cover from the left-wing, from Violante in other words, the aforesaid Violante, now apparently affected by tarantism, suddenly remembers that little detail that could have been extremely useful at the time because it proves that there was a very close connection between General Mori and Vito Ciancimino, so much so, in fact, that General Mori was busily trying to place Vito Ciancimino with the right wing and, as we have seen, also with the left wing.
So the mafia members and the offspring of mafia members are talking far more than the politicians are. Perhaps then it is mere coincidence that all the politicians with short, selective or intermittent memories not only didn’t have their careers come to an abrupt end, but indeed have done extremely well career-wise. Both those that forgot everything and those that are now beginning to remember a bit more about what happened, but merely because they have been obliged to do so as a direct result of statements made by the Spatuzzos or the Ciancimino juniors of the day, or because of the papers of the father, which have come to haunt them, as if revealing the truth from the grave, which is that, paradoxically, the Mafia is more ready to talk that the State is.

I believe that this is the scenario that we are currently facing, so we’re waiting for the magistrates to reveal the names and surnames of those involved in the negotiations and to discover everything that there is to discover regarding these events. However, we have understood the overall picture of the massacres and I believe that it is well-summarised in that film presented by the “Red Agenda” movement in Palermo, entitled “Via d’Amelio una strage di Stato”. Have a great week and spread the word!