Godfather III: The Story of Propaganda Due and Italy's Deep State Shadow Government Freemasons
Have you ever watched the movie Godfather III? Do you know what the Deep State looks like?
About two-thirds through the movie there is a scene where Michael Corleone, aka the Godfather, and Vincent Mancini are talking about the forces aligned against them and the family. This is probably the most important scene in the entire movie. If you weren't paying close attention, you will miss what was being said here.
<The door opens and Vincent enters>
MICHAEL: (rises and walks over to Vincent) You look pale. Bad news. Tell me right away
VINCENT: It's not just a bad banking deal. These guys are butchers.
MICHAEL: What guys?
VINCENT: Lucchesi. He controls all of them — Altobello, the Archbishop, other people higher up, P2 maybe, secret unknown. They're running things.
MICHAEL: I'm in their way?
VINCENT: He's hired a professional assassin to kill you. He's Sicilian. I don't know his name. They say he never fails.
MICHAEL: Then no one is safe. Even the Pope is in danger.
VINCENT: No. We still have time. We can prevent this.
MICHAEL: I tried Vincent. I tried, to keep everything from coming to this. But it's not possible. Not in this, world.
VINCENT: Give me the order.
MICHAEL: You won't be able to go back. You'll be like me.
VINCENT: Good.
MICHAEL: All my life I wanted out. I wanted the family, out.
VINCENT: Well I don't want out. I want the power to preserve the family. (then) I'm asking for the order.
<Michael doesn’t say anything, but it’s apparent he’s given the order. The door opens and Connie enters.>
VINCENT: (to Connie) It's done.
MICHAEL: Because I can't do it anymore.
CONNIE: It doesn't matter. Vincent knows what to do. Come on outside. Take a rest and — and don't think about it.
MICHAEL: All I do is think about it.
VINCENT: I am your son. Command me on all things.
MICHAEL: Give up my daughter. That's the price you pay, for the life you choose.
<Vincent nods. Michael goes to the door and motions for Calo, Al Neri and Armand to come in.>
MICHAEL: (to Vincent) Nephew, from this moment on, call yourself Vincent Corleone.
<Vincent kisses Michael's hand. Michael motions for him to sit down as Calo, Al Neri and Armand acknowledge their new Don.>
CALO: (kissing Vincent's hand) Vincenzo.
VINCENT: Grazie, Calo.
AL NERI: (kissing Vincent's hand) Don Corleone.
ARMAND: (kissing Vincent's hand) Don Vincenzo Corleone.
<Michael, watching, turns away and leaves with Connie, the door closes.>
Did you catch this line? I almost missed it myself.
VINCENT: It's not just a bad banking deal. These guys are butchers.
MICHAEL: What guys?
VINCENT: Lucchesi. He controls all of them — Altobello, the Archbishop, other people higher up, P2 maybe, secret unknown. They're running things.
Banks. Men who were ruthless. A person who controls it all. A puppet master. A puppet master who even controls the Vatican. Who has more power than a godfather of the mafia who has politicians on the payroll. They. A group of them. Secret. Unknown. P2.
Have you ever heard of P2 or Propaganda Due? (This translates to Propaganda Two in English. In FBI files it is often referred to as P-2.)
This story involves Italy, Freemasonry, the Vatican, and the CIA and how they took over an entire country. This is the story that became the foundation for the movie Godfather III. It is expansive. The 40,000 foot view covers so much more than what I am going to show you here. So keep in mind that this is just the highlights of these events.
The movie itself is about someone who was part of these networks, who wanted out, who kept being dragged in, and because he kept getting dragged in was trying to take down the elements that were destroying his life and his family. It ultimately took his life. The forces he was against moved against him and killed the people he held dear. The reality versus the fiction is that in acting against itself, the real life Deep State ended up exposing itself. In the end, this brought about its own downfall.
This is a story about the factions of the Deep State fighting amongst itself.
Stay Behind Networks
During the Cold War, the CIA was setting up a string of networks to fight against communism called Stay Behind Networks. These were supposed anti-Nazi resistance movements which stockpiled cashes of weapons and recruited volunteers who would form resistance movements.
Labeling it as misinformation, this is what the US State Department said under their Identifying Misinformation Resource Tools of their website at one time:
During World War II, anti-Nazi resistance movements had sprung up throughout Europe, but supplying them by airdrops and other risky measures had been difficult and uncertain. The “stay behind” networks sought to avoid such problems by stockpiling weapons in secret caches ahead of time, and recruiting volunteers who would form the core of resistance movements, if needed. The program remained one of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets until it was revealed in late 1990, first in Italy and then in other West European countries.
Soon after the “stay behind” networks were revealed, some media accounts accused them of misdeeds, including domestic acts of terrorism.
The State Department even went so far as to call is Soviet propaganda.
... Prominent “stay behind” researchers appear to have been influenced by a bogus text that first surfaced in 1976, a Soviet forgery purporting to be Supplement B to the U.S. Army’s Field Manual 30-31.
The U.S. Army did have a Field Manual (FM) 30-31 in the 1970s, and a “Supplement A” to it existed, but not a “Supplement B.” The purported “Supplement B” was a forgery apparently concocted by the Soviet disinformation service.
Field Manual 30-31B, also known as the “Westmoreland Manual” because it was purportedly signed by General William Westmoreland, was exposed as a “total fabrication” in February 1980 hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The forgery was written so that it appeared to offer “proof” that the United States was the secret sponsor of terrorist acts in foreign countries, stating, in a section on “Agents in Special Operations:”
There may be times when HC [Host Country] governments show passivity or indecision in the face of Communist or Communist-inspired subversion, and react with inadequate vigor to intelligence estimates transmitted by U.S. agencies. Such situations are particularly likely to arise when the insurgency seeks to achieve tactical advantage by temporarily refraining from violence, thus lulling HC authorities into a state of false security. In such cases, U.S. Army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince the HC governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger and of the necessity of counteraction.
To this end, U.S. Army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the more radical elements of the insurgency. When the kind of situation envisaged above arises, these groups, acting under U.S. Army intelligence control, should be used to launch violent or nonviolent actions according to the nature of the case. Such actions could include those described in FM 30-31 as characterizing Phase II and III of insurgency.
In cases where the infiltration of such agents into the insurgent leadership has not been effectively implemented, it may help towards the achievement of the above ends to utilize ultra-leftist organizations. [Source: Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive), p. 184.]
Internet Archive: US State Department: Misinformation about "Gladio/Stay Behind" Networks Resurfaces
Of course, the US State Department disavowing Stay Behind Networks didn't stop CIA director William Colby from writing about one such network in Scandinavia in his 1978 memoir Honarable Men.
One of the main fields of the OPC's [Office of Policy Coordination, the unit in the CIA responsible for paramilitary activities] work then [in 1951] was planning for the not unlikely possibility of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. And, in the event the Russians succeeded in taking over any or all of the countries of the Continent ... the OPC wanted to be in a position to activate well-armed and well-organized partisan uprisings against the occupiers. But this time, unlike ... similar OSS paramilitary teams that went in to help the French maquis and other resistance movements during World War II, the OPC didn't want to have to arm and organize those partisans after the occupation, using such dangerous and fallible operations as night flights, supply drops, and parachute infiltrations behind enemy lines. No, this time ... we intended to have that resistance capability in place before the occupation, indeed even before an invasion; we were determined to organize and supply it now, while we still had the time in which to do it right and at the minimum of risk. Thus, the OPC had undertaken a major program of building, throughout those Western European countries that seemed likely targets for Soviet attack, what in the parlance of the intelligence trade were known as “stay-behind nets,” clandestine infrastructures of leaders and equipment trained and ready to be called into action as sabotage and espionage forces when the time came. (pp. 81-82)
Internet Archive: US State Department: Misinformation about "Gladio/Stay Behind" Networks Resurfaces
He even went so far as to state full partnerships with NATO allies were used in order to carry this out.
… the governments themselves would build their own stay-behind nets, counting on activating them from exile to carry on the struggle. These nets had to be coordinated with NATO’s plans, their radios had to be hooked to a future exile location, and the specialized equipment had to be secured from CIA and secretly cached in snowy hideouts for later use. (p. 82)
Internet Archive: US State Department: Misinformation about "Gladio/Stay Behind" Networks Resurfaces
Then later we discover that these CIA backed operations all fell under the codename Operation Gladio.
Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti exposed Gladio on October 24, 1990. He was the first leader to formally reveal the European-wide network of Stay Behind groups. The Italian network was established in November 1956 as an army capable of guerrilla warfare and espionage, in a program codenamed Gladio, preparing for a Soviet invasion. The invasion never came. The elements involved in Gladio, mainly composed of former fascists and neo-fascists from the far-right, engaged in covert operations and what came to be known as the “Strategy of Tension” (1969–80), which aimed to manipulate and control public opinion using covert and psychological operations, including false-flag terrorism. Gladio seems to have functioned as a parallel structure to the Interior Ministry, trained to fight against the communist and radical leftist elements sometimes referred to as “Red Gladio.”
Springer Link: Operation Gladio: The Two Italies and the Years of Lead
NOTE: For more information on Operation Gladio, Colonel Towner-Watkins has been researching this topic and writing about it extensively on X.
Propaganda Due
In 1877, a masonic lodge was founded called Propaganda Massonica. At the time, it was under the authority of the Grand Orient of Italy.
Then in 1917, a man by the name of Benito Mussolini entered into politics with the financial help and assistance of British secret service MI5.
As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.
"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.
The Guardian: Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini
Mussolini was popular. Very popular. Then between October 27 and 28, 1922, he launched his out coup on the current Italian Prime Minister with the help of King Victor Emmanuel III, who help the power over the military at the time. 30,000 Fascist Blackshirts, which consisted of squads of veterans, gathered in Rome in what became known as the March on Rome. This led to the resignation of the current liberal Prime Minister Luigi Facta and the installation of Fascist Benito Mussolini.
Up until this time, Freemasonry was popular in Italy and rivaled the Catholic Church in power. This didn't sit well with the Catholic Church. In a bid to try and appease the Catholics in Italy, Mussolini outlawed Freemasonry in 1925. As a result, Propaganda Massonica, along with all the other Masonic lodges in Italy, was dissolved.
However, with the end of World War II and Benito Mussolini's fall from power, the lodge ended up reforming under a new name, Propaganda Due. At this time, it was under the direct control of the Grand Master of the Grand Orient. Propaganda Due was a select Freemason organization. Its secret membership were of international importance. At its height, the lodge was home to most of Italy's elite class. It had active lodges in Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina and would have connections to lodges worldwide.
But it was something more than that. It was also an international, illegal, clandestine organization and secret society. It was also rumored to be one such Stay Behind Network created by the CIA during Operation Gladio. Propaganda Due had such a tight grip on the country that it was referred to by many as a parallel government or a shadow government, which it definitely was. They had a hand in pretty much every significant event that happened in Italy in the 70s and 80s and outside of Italy too.
In the decades that followed, Propaganda Due would be implicated in a string of scandals that haunted Italian history. It would become known as a shadow government, a parallel government, or a state within a state. The person who would become known as the puppet master behind Propaganda Due was a very unassuming man named Licio Gelli.
Background: Licio Gelli
Before he became a puppet master of Italy's shadow government, Licio Gelli was a volunteer in Mussolini's Blackshirts expeditionary forces. These were the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party who supported Francisco Franco's rebellion in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. When Italy renounced its alliance with Nazi Germany in 1943, Licio Gelli joined Mussolini and other fascists in the creation of the Republic of Salo, a German puppet state in northern Italy during World War II.
When the Axis Powers were defeated at the end of the war, Licio Gelli fled to Argentina to escape being charged with war crimes. During this time while he was in exile, he became friends with Argentina's dictator Juan Perón and his wife Eva Perón. In fact they became such good friends that Licio Gelli would later induct Juan Perón into the Freemasons.
It's has been speculated that it was around this time Licio Gelli started working with the CIA.
After a few years in Argentina, Licio Gelli decided to head back to Italy. This is where he started a successful mattress company. He would officially become a member of the Freemasons in 1962, where he quickly rose through the ranks. Specifically, he was a member of Propaganda Due.
Licio Gelli had a vision. So he set out to make Propaganda Due a force to be reckoned with. Now in the late 60s to the late 80s, tensions were high in the world. This was during the time period we call the Cold War, where everyone was under a constant threat of nuclear war between Russia and the US.
In Italy? Things were especially bad. This time period became known as the Years of Lead. This was due to the massive amounts of violence and political turmoil. Over the course of about 20 years, Italy had a total of 8 terrorist attacks, 2 failed coups, 41 collapses of their government, and about 400 assassinations and/or assassination attempts. Coincidentally, this also just so happened to be during the same time period that Licio Gelli had influence over the political elite and later became the leader of Propaganda Due. This time period was also backed by the US, CIA, and NATO forces through Operation Gladio, all of which was to keep the country in a state of upheaval so that Communism could not take hold in Italy.
The Piazza Fontana Bombing
On December 12, 1969, a bomb goes off at a Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (the National Agricultural Bank) in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy. Later on that afternoon, another bomb went off at a bank in Rome. A third bomb was found unexploded at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The terrorist attack killed 17 people and wounded another 88. The attack was initially blamed on Italian anarchists.
During the investigation, Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist railway worker and one out of the 80 suspects being interrogated, fell from a fourth-floor window and died. The cause of death was ultimately ruled as being caused by fainting and losing his balance due to him being tired after three days of intense questioning. Even though the police commissioner was not with Giuseppe at the time of his death, Commissioner Luigi Calabresi was assassinated in revenge in 1972 by a militant organization called Lotta Continua.
A bunch of people actually were convicted, appealed their convictions, and were released for this bombing. This was due in part to General Gianadelio Maletti, who was the head of Italy's counterintelligence group Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID) and who was also a member of Propaganda Due. He was found responsible for obstructing several investigations, withholding information, and destroying evidence concerning a group called Ordine Nuovo, or New Order, which was inexplicably tied to a bunch of Freemasons who belonged to a Masonic lodge called Propaganda Due. Ordine Nuovo (New Order) would go on to carry out many more acts of terror at the behest of Propaganda Due.
Of Maletti, you can't say. His action, his directives to pollute the investigations on the blacks of Piazza Fontana, and then of the massacre of Piazza della Loggia and the other acts of blood that fatality Seventy, are in the acts. As is not appropriate, to a spy: the traces recovered by the judiciary were copious, also unveiled the palace maneuver with which Maletti framed his superior Vito Miceli for the Borghese coup, in deference to a stainless scheme in the First Republic of scandals: Maletti man of reference by Andreotti, Miceli di Moro. For the bomb of December 12 and the clandestine expatrius of the suspect Marco Pozzan, Maletti ended up on trial in Catanzaro, when from the SID he had already been detonated: the surreal photos of the time return him ggling, before the sentence, together with the right-hand man Tonino Labruna. He took 4 years in the first degree, 2 on appeal, indelible stain.
Other investigations into other mysteries (Pecorelli, Loggia P2) brought to the surface other maneuvers, both with Licio Gelli — he said that he went to the Giole di Arezzo, the Venerable factory, to stock up on cheap shirts — which to attribute to the left every massacre fact, in deference to the straubism with which the institutions of the post-war period looked at the subversion.
Then, in 1998, a US Navy officer by the name of David Carrett was convicted of espionage in his participation in the Piazza Fontana bombing. Simultaneously, a case was opened up against Carlo Digilio, also known as Uncle Otto, who was the CIA coordinator in Northeastern Italy in the 60s and 70s, and against Sergio Minetto, an Italian official of the US-NATO intelligence network. It is probably important to note that Carlo Difilio was a member of Ordine Nuovo (New Order).
It was considered the crazier fantasy of the afterpologists. There were those who laughed on it, in the '70s: it seemed impossible that the secret service of an allied country, could be behind the massacres. From some iorno that hypothesis is contained in a judicial act: David Carret, officer of the U.S. Navy, a CIA man in Italy, is under investigation in Milan for military political espionage, in the massacre of Piazza Fontana (Milan, December 1969) and in other attacks that took place in those years.
In these ten years, Judge Salvini has rewritten some of the darkest parts of our postwar history. Not only in a guilty key: from the investigations (and their organization yesterday pointed out) emerge elements in favor of the thesis of the "legitimate" of the Gladio network. Unfortunately, the prescription of many crimes does not do justice to the work done by the magistrate. Only the most serious crimes, and political-military espionage, have resisted the wear of time, has endured the wear of time. Salvini has thus indicted the Italian head of the NATO-US information network, Sergio Minetto, and the repentant agent Carlo Digilio.
From the work of Judge Salvini, from the cross-reliefs to each statement of the repentants, it emerges that the subversive organizations of those years — La Fenice, Avant-garde, New Order — were only the trench troops of an occult army, guided by exponents of the apparatuses of the State and linked to the CIA.
Republica Italy: Slight of Piazza Fontana — A U.S. Agent Ticks
Failed Coup: Golpe Borghese
Golpe Borghese was a member of a prominent noble family. During World War II, Golpe Borghese joined the Republic of Salo and fought for the Nazis, just like Licio Gelli. After World War II, he was charged with collaborating with Germany and served 4 years in prison. He then went on into politics and gained the nickname The Black Prince.
Unsatisfied with liberal and leftist policies, Golpe Borghese decided to stage a coup and install himself as president of Italy. He solicited the help of Ordine Nuovo (New Order), the Sicilian mafia, Propaganda Due, the United States, and NATO.
Already familiar with coups, Licio Gelli took part in the Golpe Borghese coup d'état on December 7 or 8, 1970. The coup itself was code-named Operation Tora Tora and involved the use of US and NATO warships, which were on alert in the Mediterranean Sea at the time. As a side note, the CIA stated that President Nixon was personally informed and in support of the operation. However, leaked documents of a April 2, 1971 memo from the US Ambassador to Rome, Graham Martin, which were sent to Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, contradicted this assertion.
Martin, who is a Republican hawk but not an exalted one, notes that “the present public attitude is one of amused disbelief that an infantile operation represented a threat to the state.” Martin, however, confirms the coup (“the plan does exist”) and gives it a 70% chance of success, if tried again with the support of the carabinieri and the army, which failed in the figure of the chief of staff Enzo Marchesi, a veteran of the Spanish civil war but faithful to democracy.
To strengthen the centrist instances, Martin warns that he will meet the premier Emilio Colombo and the secretary of the DC Arnaldo Forlani separately. “The last thing we need right now”, he concludes, “is a half-cooked coup d’état … We wouldn’t support it.”
Internet Archive: Tekdeeps: Golpe Borghese, All The CIA Papers
As a result, Mauro De Mauro, the investigative journalist who discovered it, disappeared on September 16, 1970. Junio Valerio Borghese, who took part in the planning of the coup, ultimately fled to Spain and later died allegedly from poison on August 26, 1974.
For three months nobody knew anything, and many of the cospirators preferred to flee abroad, before investigations begun, including Borghese himself who fled to Franco’s Spain. He died on August 26th of 1974, in unclear circumstances: rumour has it, he was poisoned.
The scandal broke out on March 17th of 1971, when the Government made known the attempt to overturn the Republic. The first newspaper to break the news was Paese Sera, writing: “Neofascist plot”. The event had a great media coverage, and on March 18th the Judiciary begun the investigations and ordered many people to be arrested with the accusation of usurpation of the State powers and conspiracy. At first there was also the accusation of armed insurrection, then archived. Borghese and the other fugitives were declared absconding. The prosecutors led by Vitalone asked SID, the then Italian secret service, for information. The head of SID, Vito Miceli, was always reticent, and in an incomplete dossier delivered to the judges, belittled the relevance of the coup. The investigation was soon archived, for lack of evidences, and in the following years the coup was described as a mere revival of old nostalgic men.
Licio Gelli: Maestro Venerabile
Then in 1975, Licio Gelli was appointed to the position of a Master Freemason, bearing the title “Maestro venerabile.” He was given control of Propaganda Due. With that position, he stepped in as the puppet master behind a massive shadow government. Under his leadership, the lodge flourished.
He was able to gather together in secret at least a thousand prominent individuals, mainly politicians and State administrators, and the publication of his subversive program of socio-political and institutional structure caused one of the worst political scandals in the history of the Italian Republic.
Banco Ambrosiano
Banco Ambrosiano was a Italian bank established in 1896 by Guideppe Tovini, who wanted to create a bank who goals were "serving moral organizations, pious works, and religious bodies set up for charitable aims." Its main shareholder was the Vatican-based Institute of the Works of Religion, also known as the Vatican Bank.
In the 1960's the bank began expanding its operations under the direction of Carlo Canesi, whose deputy was Roberto Calvi. In 1963, it opened a holding company in Luxemburg which became known as Banco Ambrosiano Holding.
In 1971, Roberto Calvi, who later became known as God's Banker, was promoted to general manager and then in 1975 he was appointed chairman. He started expanding the banks interests even more by creating off-shore companies in the Bahamas and in South America. These expansions included American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, also known as The Gorilla, who had served as a personal bodyguard to Pope Paul VI.
These expansions also included a man named Michelle Sedona. But the Vatican wasn't Michelle Sedona's only clients. Sedona also worked for the Gambino Crime Family and was also known as The Shark.
At some point, it was decided that Banco Ambrosiano would start providing funds to political parties in Italy, the Somoza dictatorship and its opposition the Sandinistas in Nicaragua during the CIA-ran Iran Contra Affair, and to buy 52 Exocet AM39 missiles for Peru to give to Argentina. If you missed that, they were funneling both sides of the political war in Italy which has repeatedly ended in bloodshed over the past 20 years. In addition to that, they were funneling money to a war in Nicaragua and the CIA operation that was trafficking in drugs and cocaine. As if that weren't enough, they decided to help arm another country with missiles to help further another war and more bloodshed. The missiles were actually signed for by an Argentinean naval officer and Propaganda Due member by the name of Carlos Alberto Corti.
In the course of this, the Bank of Italy discovered that there was some money missing from Banco Ambrosiano in 1978. So an investigation was launched. Shortly after it was launched, Alessandrini, the investigating Milanese magistrate, was murdered and his boss, Mario Sarcinelli, was imprisoned on charges that were later dismissed. 1978 just happened to be the year of three Popes.
1978: The Year of 3 Popes
The first Pope in 1978 was Pope Paul VI. To set the stage, Pope Paul VI was already under attack by the time 1978 rolled around. Accusations were made that Pope Paul VI was in a homosexual relationship in order to discredit him. In an address to a crowd of about 20,000 in St. Peter's Square, he is quoted as saying this:
We know that our cardinal vicar and the Italian bishops' conference have urged you to pray for out humble person, who has been made the target of scorn and horrible and slanderous insinuations by a certain press lacking dutiful regard for honesty and truth. We thank you for these demonstrations of faithful piety and moral sensibility.
Then in March 16, 1978, the Year of the Three Popes, Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by a group called Christian Democracy, which was just another group with ties to Propaganda Due. Pope Paul VI was a long time friend of Aldo Moro and tried in vain to pay the ransom for his release but ultimate failed. On May 9, 1978 Aldo Moro's bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car in Rome.
In July 1978, Pope Paul VI had fallen ill. He had a high temperature and issues breathing. After receiving mass for his bed, he suffered a massive heart attack. He was able to hang on for several hours but ultimately his body gave up the fight. On August 6, 1978, Paul VI died.
The second Pope in 1978 was Pope John Paul I. On September 29, 1978, he was found dead in his bed. It was assumed that he had a heart attack the night before while reading. He was head of the Catholic Church for 33 days total.
In 2019, Italian mobster Anthony Raimondi, the nephew of legendary godfather Lucky Luciano , confessed to the murder of Pope John Paul I.
He helped kill the pope — so his pals could stay out of hell.
That’s the shocking claim from longtime Colombo gangster Anthony Raimondi, who says that, in 1978, he went to Italy with a team of hit men who whacked John Paul I. They allegedly poisoned him with cyanide just 33 days into the pontiff’s reign.
Raimondi, the nephew of legendary godfather Lucky Luciano, claims he was recruited for the murder at the age of 28 by his cardinal cousin, Paul Marcinkus, who ran the Vatican bank. Raimondi’s job was to learn the pope’s habits and be on hand to observe as Marcinkus knocked out John Paul by spiking his nightly cup of tea with Valium.
“I stood in the hallway outside the pope’s quarters when the tea was served,” he writes, adding that the drug did its job so well that their victim wouldn’t have stirred “even if there had been an earthquake,” he recounts. “I’d done a lot of things in my time, but I didn’t want to be there in the room when they killed the pope. I knew that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell.”
Instead, he stood outside the room as his cousin readied a dose of cyanide, he claims. “He measured it in the dropper, put the dropper in the pope’s mouth and squeezed,” Raimondi writes. “When it was done, he closed the door behind him and walked away.”
They targeted the pope because he had threatened to expose a massive stock fraud run by Vatican insiders.
New York Post: Meet The Mobster Who Claims He Helped Whack Pope John Paul I Over Stock Fraud
The third Pope in 1978 was John Paul II. He would go on to be Pope until April 2, 2005. He was also be linked to the scandals surrounding Banco Ambrosiano.
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was the top official at the Vatican's bank before a massive banking scandal ended his tenure there in 1989, has died, a spokeswoman for the local Catholic diocese said Tuesday.
Marcinkus, who was 6 feet, 4 inches, or 1.94 meters, tall had acted as a bodyguard to Pope John Paul II during his early foreign travels.
He also headed the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, for 20 years. But in a sweeping restructuring of the scandal-tainted bank in 1989, the Vatican eliminated Marcinkus's post. He remained on in the deputy governor's post before retiring in 1990.
Warrants for the arrest of Marcinkus and two lay Vatican bank officials were issued in 1987 after Italian prosecutors charged them with being accessories to the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank, which collapsed in 1982 with the disappearance of $1.3 billion.
The arrests were never carried out, and Marcinkus insisted he had done nothing wrong.
Italy's Constitutional Court ruled that a Vatican-Italian treaty precluded any interference by Italian authorities in the affairs of the Vatican, an independent city-state. The missing money was in loans made to 10 dummy companies in Latin America controlled by the Vatican bank.
New York Times: Marcinkus, of Vatican Scandal, Dies, February 21, 2006
The Vatican, Scandal, and Murder: Banco Ambrosiano
After nearly 3 years of investigating, the police discovered the connection between Banco Ambrosiano and Propaganda Due. They raided Propaganda Due's leader Licio Gelli's office. During that raid, more evidence against Roberto Calvi was uncovered and he was ultimately sentenced to 4 years of prison. Somehow, Roberto Calvi was released pending an appeal.
Roberto Calvi was replaced by Carlo de Benedetti. Benedetti would leave the position within 2 months after receiving death threats from the mafia. Roberto Rosone would be the next to fill Roberto Calvi's position. He was wounded in a mafia shooting.
Then, in 1982, it was discovered just how much money was missing from the Vatican Bank — $1.3 billion. It was at this point that Roberto Calvi would flee the country on a fake passport.
Roberto Calvi's personal secretary, Graziella Corrocher, would write a scathing letter about Calvi's activities. After denouncing Calvi, she leaped to her death from the 5th story window of the bank in an apparent and absolutely obvious suicide... if you can believe that.
In 1983, Gerard Soisson, the manager of the transaction clearing company which was involved in these transactions called Clearstream, would be found dead. It was upon his death that the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, and subsequently Propaganda Due's involvement became known. Ultimately, 33 people would be convicted of fraud in 1992 with another 3, including Licio Gelli, in 1994.
The Secrets of Propaganda Due Discovered
When police raided Licio Gelli's office, they found a members list in his safe as well other incriminating evidence, including an alleged naked picture of a pope. The list contained a total of 962 names. It is assumed that a considerable number of members remained undisclosed, because the lodge could number over 1600 members.
When Italian authorities published the names o May 21, 1981, the result was impactful.
Only five days later, the entire government was compelled to resign. The list contained the names of high government officials, including three ministers, all heads of secret services, and about two hundred military officers. In addition, the list included the names of Italy’s business leaders, like the bankers involved in the scandal of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.
History dot Info: 1981: P2 Masonic Lodge Scandal Collapses Italian Government
Also found inside the house was a document titled "Plan for Democratic Rebirth." This document called for a coup d'état, the consolidation of the media, the suppression of Italian labor union, and the rewriting of the Italian constitution. Does this sound familiar at all?
On October 31, 1981, months after the discovery of the list of Propaganda Due members and other affiliates, the Freemason central court of the Grand Orient of Italy expelled Licio Gelli to avoid further scandals. Public declarations were made that the Propaganda Due lodge was technically suspended since 1976. But that wasn't true. They were fine with Propaganda Due's activities as long as those activities remained hidden and secret. The Grand Orient of Italy was merely scrambling to cover its tracks.
Now, secret societies were outlawed in Italy. However, Freemasons at this time were not considered a secret society as they were registered with the Italian government. But with Propaganda Due's charter pulled by the Grand Orient of Italy, Propaganda Due fell outside that loophole and protection. It became a secret society, which was most definitely illegal under Italian law.
This didn't stop Licio Gelli or Propaganda Due.
Epsteined: Roberto Calvi Didn't Kill Himself
On June 10, 1982, Roberto Calvi disappeared from Italy. Using a fake passport under the name Gian Roberto Calvini, he made his way to London. It wasn't until June 18, 1982 that he would be discovered hanging dead from London's Blackfriars Bridge along the River Thames. In his pockets were approximately $14,000 in cash in 3 different currencies and bricks. Bricks were also in his underwear.
The apparent suicide last month of an Italian financier known as ''God's banker,'' who was found hanged beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge, has added to the mystery of a major Italian financial scandal in which the Vatican appears heavily involved.
As usual in such scandals in Italy, there are also unverifiable reports that organized-crime figures and a recently discovered, anti-Government secret Masonic lodge are somehow involved.
Some speculated that it was the mafia that killed him since the mafia was also one of the customers who lost money in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. However, two of the men Roberto Calvi met with in London was Sergio Vaccari, a local drug dealer, and Flavio Carboni, a businessman from Sardinia. Both Vaccari and Carboni had ties to the mafia.
The local drug dealer, Sergio Vaccari, would be found dead 3 months later due to stabbing. He too would also have bricks in his pockets.
Also, Roberto Calvi was a member of Propaganda Due according to the member list.
Members of the group refer to themselves as frati neri, which translates into ‘black friars’. Thus, it seems an odd coincidence that the killers used Blackfriars Bridge from which to hang Calvi.
Historic Mysteries: Murder of Banker Roberto Calvi: Vatican, Mafia, or Secret Society?
Reagan's Swedish Tree Falling
On January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan was first inaugurated. Invited to this event was none other than Propaganda Due's Grandmaster Licio Gelli.
''The last time I saw Mr. Gelli was at the inauguration of President Reagan,'' La Stampa quoted Mr. Guarino as having said. ''He asked me to introduce him to some members of the entourage, which I did. I made his hotel reservation, and we had occasional friendly meetings.''
New York Times: Italy Is Exploring Sindona Link In Masonic Scandal
This wouldn't be the only connection to Reagan's administration that Licio Gelli would have. Among the contents of Gelli's safe was a copy of a letter sent to President Reagan.
Licio Gelli, the central figure in Italy's growing Masonic lodge espionage scandal, once sent an 'affectionate' letter to President Reagan annoucing that he was sending the president a priceless gift, Italian newspapers reported Friday.
The newspapers quoted investigators as saying they found a copy of the letter among the documents they seized from Gelli's home in Tuscany.
The date of the letter was not revealed and it was not known if the letter was sent before or after Reagan became president.
'The letter to Reagan was an affectionate missive announcing a gift: an illuminated and precious Bible,' said the Il Messaggero newspaper of Rome. Similar reports were carried by Rome's Il Tempo and Paese Sera newspapers and by La Stampa of Turin.
There was no indication in the letter why Gelli, who has since fled to South America to avoid arrest on spy charges, would have wanted to send Reagan a gift.
UPI: Licio Gelli, The Central Figure In Italy's Growing Masonic...
And then in 1986, something else that was strange would be uncovered by a Swedish journalist. A telegram was sent to one of Reagan's past colleagues with the words, "Tell your friend that the Swedish tree will fall."
Stockholm:
The hypothesis of the involvement of Licio Gelli in the homicide of Olof Palme, the Swedish Premier assassinated in Stockholm some years ago, was advanced yesterday by the daily, ’Dagens Nygeter,' in an article by Olle Alsen, a well-known Swedish journalist. He (Alsen) reports the existence of a telegram that would appear to compromise the chief of P-2.
Alsen refers furthermore to an FBI investigation and attributes this information to an ex-colleague of Ronald Reagan, Barbara Honegger. In his article, Alsen reports that Honegger has written in a book entitled, ’October Surprise,' of finding out that on February 28, 1986, three days before the assassination, Gelli had sent a telegram to a supporter of the American Administration in which he stated, 'Tell your friend that the Swedish tree will fall.' A spokesman for the Commission of Inquiry commented that 'the Italian trail is of extreme relevance.'
Three days after the Telegram was sent, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated. He was walking home with his wife from the cinema when he was brutally gunned down. Many conspiracy theories regarding the reason behind the assassination were speculated on — everything from Olof's stance against Apartheid in Africa to PKK anarchists being behind the hit. The sheer size and scope of the investigation was enormous.
Hans Melander, head of the investigation, outlined the scale of the inquiry.
“It is by far Sweden’s largest criminal investigation and is sometimes compared with the murder of JFK and [the] Lockerbie bombing. It has been ongoing since 1986 and contains 22,430 different points of interest,” he said.
“Ninety-thousand people are included in the preliminary investigation, of which 40,000 are named. More than 10,000 people have been interviewed, many of them several times. More than 4,000 vehicles were investigated. And 134 people have confessed to committing the murder, including 29 directly to the police.”
Analysis of the two bullets found at the scene — one of which killed the Prime Minister, while the other injured his wife — was carried out by laboratories in Sweden and Germany as well as by the FBI in the United States, he said.
But few traces were left on the .357 Magnum caliber metal-piercing bullets and it would be impossible now, given the passage of time, to match them to a specific weapon, Melander said.
CNN: Sweden Closes 30-Year Murder Mystery Over Killing Of PM Olof Palme
It was eventually pinned on one Stig Engström, known as "the Skandia man." But even the media agrees that the evidence is far from conclusive.
D'Onofrio: Destabilizing Countries, Arms Deals, Gold, and Nuclear Detonators
Then in 1995, Italian police would arrest Roger D'Onofrio, an ex-CIA agent who held dual citizenship in the US and Italy. The charges? Everything from trafficking in gold, currency, counterfeit currency, money laundering, destabilizing entire countries' economies, and nuclear detonators.
Italian police Saturday arrested a former CIA agent on money laundering charges stemming from an investigation into international arms trafficking. Roger D'Onofrio, 73, who has joint Italian and U.S. citizenship, was arrested early Saturday at his home in the town of Solopaca near Naples. Investigators believe he played a leading role in an international crime network, dubbed by the Italian press 'Specter' after James Bond's arch-enemy. Magistrates from the southwest Italian port of Torre Annunziata arrested 10 people in mid October on charges of illegal trafficking in gold, currency, treasury certificates and arms worth some $2.5 billion. Among the illegal deals allegedly uncovered by police was an attempt to sell osmium, a substance used in the manufacture of nuclear detonators, to arms traffickers in Slovenia and the sale of $17 million worth of Kuwaiti dinars printed during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
He was long under investigation before this. But like other investigations into people who were suspected of being tied to Propaganda Due and its activities, the people investigating died.
Investigators said one of the Specter conspirators, Francesco Elmo, was an informant of the Italian military intelligence service SISMI and had been asked by his SISMI controller to keep a special eye on D'Onofrio. Elmo recently identified his controller as Mario Ferrari, a colonel in SISMI, who was found dead in his Rome apartment in July. Ferrari was found hanged, with the belt of his bath-robe around his neck and attached to a towel rail in his bathroom. An initial investigation concluded he had committed suicide, but doubts have been expressed over whether the rail and belt could really have supported his weight if he had indeed hanged himself in a sitting position.
It has long been suspected that D'Onofrio was connected to Propaganda Due as its CIA's paymaster.
Reportedly implicated with D'Onofrio were a ring that included the former Vatican Bank Chief Paul Marcinkus, the Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain, and the First National Bank of Cicero. Earlier, D'Onofrio had been described by a witness as the CIA's paymaster with the task of making secret payments to CIA assets and business partners.
Daily Catholic: The Pope's Banks in America, the Giannini Family, and the American CIA
Since the Banco Ambrosiano Scandal was already tied to the Iran Contra Affair, then it should be no surprise that the charges against D'Onofrio and Marcinkus would also implicate Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as George Herbert Walker Bush, and the once head of NATO Alexander Haig.
About 1983, a federal agency parked 58.4 million dollars in federal funds with Household Bank and Household International [described by some as CIA proprietary operations]. About 1988, 50 million dollars of that disappeared, and was secretly transferred to Little Rock, Arkansas, to try to cover up a 47 million dollar S & L embezzlement for which Bill and Hillary Clinton are subject to federal criminal prosecution and eventual federal prison if they are ever convicted.
P-2 has members in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., including judges, legislators, journalists, executive department and cabinet members, espionage officials, and civil and military brass. Reported members include former American secret political police chief George Herbert Walker Bush and retired war industry chieftain Alexander Haig, once head of NATO.
Daily Catholic: The Pope's Banks in America, the Giannini Family, and the American CIA
Human Rights Abuses
In 1997, a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry was launched in the European Court of Human Rights against the Grand Orient of Italy and consequently the actions of Propaganda Due.
In the Grande Oriente d'Italia case of Palazzo Giustiniani v. Italy, The European Court of Human Rights (fourth section), sitting in a Chamber composed of:
G. RESS president,
A. PASTOR RIDRUEJO,
B. CONFORTI,
L. CAFLISCH,
J. MAKARCZYK,
V BUTKEVYCH,
M. PELLOMPAA, judges
and by V. BERGER, Registrar of the Section, after having deliberated in chambers on 10 July 2001, pronounces the following sentence, adopted on the same date:PROCEDURE
I. The present case originates from an appeal (n. 35972/97) directed against the Italian Republic with which an association governed by Italian law. the Grande Oriente d'Italia of Palazzo Giustiniani ("the appellant"), had appealed to the European Commission of Human Rights ("the Commission"') on 31 January 1997 pursuant to the repealed art. 25 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms ("the Convention").
Through what seemed to be a lengthy court case and multiple appeals, there was on fact the Italian Freemasons could not escape. Political candidates could have no affiliation with Freemasonry by law.
The art. 5 of the law establishes the methods and conditions for submitting applications for nominations and designations. It provides, among other things, that candidates must not belong to Freemasonry.
What Happened To Licio Gelli And Propaganda Due?
When Propaganda Due was exposed, the entire Italian government ended up being dissolved due to its involvement. With the list exposed and the banking scandal becoming public knowledge, Licio Gelli was forced to go on the run. He was forced to leave Italy in 1982. A worldwide manhunt was launched.
He was later found and arrested in Switzerland on September 13, 1982.
Before he could be extradited back to Italy, Licio Gelli escaped capture and fled to South America, presumably Argentina or Chile.
Finally, he surrendered in 1987. He was charged for multiple crimes in Switzerland and Italy. The court cases were a mess. He spent time both in prison and under house arrest.
Both Sindona and his friend Calvi laundered drug money for the Mafia. Gelli was imprisoned in 1998 for corruption and fraud. It is likely that his son Raffelo will lead P-2. According to C.I.A. agent Dick Brennke, quoted in the Times of London, Propaganda Due now uses the name P-7, and was not wound up after the imprisonment of the senior Gelli. His arrest might suggest the organization’s power has finally diminished.
Propaganda Due has clearly acted as a front for the Italian Mafia and has done the work of the C.I.A. in Italy and elsewhere. It active in Uruguay, Argentina’s “Dirty War, and Brazil. In each case it was doing the C.I.A.’s dirty work. In Bolivia, it helped the C.I.A. finance the so-called “Cocaine Coup.”
P-2’s self-identification as an intelligence organization is accurate, as they have functioned as part of NATO and the C.I.A.’s Operation Gladio.
The criminal cases against Licio Gelli didn't stop him from being nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.
On December 15, 2015, Licio Gelli died.
In the wake of the scandals surrounding Propaganda Due, the FBI started investigating multiple lodges in the United States. Unfortunately, it seems these Grandmasters learned from Licio Gelli's mistakes. They didn't keep meticulous records like he did.
Wow, Amazing reporting. Thank you for boldly going where few ever will. The only way forward is through fearless reporting like yours that is based on truth, honesty, and transparency. Bravo 👏🏻
Elizabeth, thank you for all you do! The demons have Always told/shown us in what they are/have done to us, in their books and movies....