The Terrorists Declare War

Moro's kidnaping causes shock and anger

The ceremonies began with an uncommonly festive air. In the spacious Hall of the Frescoes in Rome's Palazzo Chigi, Giulio Andreotti, newly installed as Premier of his fourth government, was swearing in 46 new Cabinet Under Secretaries. After that, he would go to the adjoining Chamber of Deputies to present his new government and initiate the vote of confidence that for the first time in three decades would bring Italy's Communist Party into the parliamentary majority. Just as the oaths were being completed, an official raced up with a message. Andreotti's face froze. The news: Aldo Moro, 61, chairman of the ruling Christian Democratic Party and a five-time past Premier, had been kidnaped moments before in a machine-gun ambush. A commando team of twelve terrorists had shot and killed five police bodyguards, grabbed Moro and escaped into city traffic.

The abduction was carried out with deadly precision. At 9 a.m., after first attending his daily Mass, the punctual Moro left his apartment in the Trionfale quarter on the north side of Rome and got into the back seat of his blue Fiat 130. His police driver and his bodyguard sat in front. An Alfa Romeo, carrying three plainclothes policemen, followed closely behind. About half a mile from Moro's home, a white Fiat station wagon came to an abrupt halt at a corner stop sign, forcing Moro's driver to brake sharply. The police escort car slammed into the rear of Moro's vehicle. Then two masked men jumped out of the white Fiat, opening fire on Moro's driver and bodyguard, killing them where they sat. Standing at the corner, ostensibly waiting for an airline bus, were four or five men wearing the uniforms of Alitalia personnel. As the shooting started, they pulled out hidden weapons and peppered the police car with a heavy fusillade. A few residents rushed to their terraces, but a terrorist warned them away with a wave of his submachine gun and a few words spoken in Italian with a guttural foreign accent.

One woman, who watched the kidnaping from a window, told police that she saw one of the terrorists step up to

Moro's car, open the rear door and pull out the passenger. "Only later," she said, "did I realize that it was Moro. They walked toward a light blue car parked a short distance away." She added that Moro moved calmly and did not appear to be injured. The terrorists and their victim vanished immediately. A flower vendor, normally stationed on the corner, reported later that his tires had been slashed the night before; the terrorists clearly had wanted him out of the way.

In a country almost inured to brazen violence, the abduction of so lofty a public official sent Italy reeling in shock. The government quickly launched the biggest man hunt in postwar history. Thousands of police, joined by 30,000 Italian troops, threw a cordon around the capital. Roadblocks were set up on all highways out of Rome. Homes and apartments of suspected radicals were searched, countless youths stopped and quizzed.

At week's end the Red Brigades, Italy's most infamous terrorist gang (see box), produced a Polaroid photograph of the captured Moro and a handbill warning that he would be subjected to a "people's trial." The typewritten flyer, emblazoned with the awkward five-pointed Red Brigades star, was sent mysteriously to Rome's daily Il Messaggero and left in a phone booth near the RAI state-run TV headquarters. It did not otherwise state any specific demands for Moro's release, but said further communiques would follow. Nonetheless, there was a growing belief that foreign extremists, probably Germans, had helped plan Moro's abduction. Noting the similarities to the kidnaping last September of Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer in Cologne and the military precision of the Moro operation, one official observed that "such a perfect crime means that it was accomplished with the skill of picked men."

Terrorism has seriously afflicted Italy for four sorry years, but no instance of kidnaping, extortion or assassination has ever before so enraged the nation or so threatened its tenuous political posture. As chairman of the Christian Democrats, Moro was the architect of the carefully devised political formula that had finally brought the Communists into the parliamentary majority. A law professor, he was noted as a conciliator and master of the anomalous solution that enabled disparate political forces to find common ground. He was, in fact, the leading candidate to succeed Giovanni Leone as Italian President at the end of the year.

One common fear among politicians was that without Moro and his gift for compromise, the faction-ridden Christian Democrats could lose their grip at a particularly sensitive moment--"a big body without the brain," as one deputy put it. But the danger threatened not only the Christian Democrats. Said Communist Chief Enrico Berlinguer: "The calculated, determined attack aimed against one of the most eminent figures of our political life marks a moment of extreme national gravity and a danger for the republic." Added Christian Democratic Deputy Luigi Granelli: "The kidnapers have a political goal--that of destabilizing the country." To cope with what he called "war against the state," Ugo La Malfa, leader of the centrist Republican Party, urged swift enactment of special repressive antiterrorist legislation.

The immediate response in parliament was to close ranks behind Andreotti's new government so as to impose a sense of stability over the troubled country. Requesting a "total commitment to assure that Italy does not fall into a spiral of insecurity and ungovernability," Andreotti asked parliament for a speedy vote of confidence. Within hours, he received by far the biggest majority ever accorded a postwar government in Italy.

If the terrorist action was aimed at rupturing the growing accommodation between the governing Christian Democrats and the Communists, as many leftists were prone to suspect, the effect, for the moment at least, was exactly the reverse. A gigantic labor rally in Rome, called to express outrage at the kidnaping, produced the unusual sight of white banners, with the crossed shield of the Christian Democrats, flying silk-to-silk with the red flags and the hammer and sickle of the Italian Communists.

Premier Andreotti, meanwhile, appeared on television late last week to plead that families "in this not yet irreparable moment" speak to their children in an effort to convince them of the futility of violence. He cautioned that Italians should "not be misled by false conceptions that the democratic state is weak. In the long run," he declared confidently, "the democratic state is never weak."

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