ALİ İHSAN AYDIN - 12 November 2008

“Towards the end of the investigation, I received a letter. It said: ‘You have come to the door of power. If you try to enter through that door, we do not know what may happen.’

I pushed that door ajar and saw what was inside,” Felice Casson says. Thus the famous Italian prosecutor first uncovered the illegal armed network, Gladio.

He stresses that a prosecutor or a judge cannot enter and go it alone. Having served as an example for many prosecutors in other European countries with his historic investigation in Italy, Casson asserts that powerful political support is a must for the success of any fight against illegal networks such as Gladio or Ergenekon. “A parliamentary commission equipped with special powers should be set up. Prosecutors can go up to a point. But this commission can go wherever it wishes if the government is determined,” he says.

The prosecutor is now a member of the Italian Senate, but without the support of then-Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, he could not have overcome all the difficulties he faced during the Gladio investigation, including vociferous opposition from the president. In his office in the Senate in Rome, the Italian politician spoke to Today’s Zaman about his experiences and the difficulties in his quest to fight Gladio.

For the prosecutor, networks such as Gladio and Ergenekon are only pawns. There are many other illegal networks apart from Gladio in Italy. There is a “power” above that manages all of them, and nobody knows much about this power. Depending on circumstances that change with time, some organizations may be used and wound up, but the “power at the top” continues to assert itself using different means. The prosecutor was even able to jail some generals at the end of the investigation, but wasn’t able to touch the whole of the network.

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CHICAGO (WLS) — Archbishop Paul Marcinkus ran the Vatican bank.

When the Cicero native died, he left behind a mysterious financial scandal. But he also left a will that the I-Team has obtained.

Paul Marcinkus was the highest ranking American churchman ever in Rome.

For nearly two decades, Marcinkus was the pope’s C.F.O. with control of the Vatican’s vast wealth.

But that was also Marcinkus’ undoing. He provoked a billion-dollar scandal that he never explained, which sent the I-Team looking for answers in the last will and testament of God’s banker.

Full story

FLORENCE, Italy, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The former head of an outlawed masonic lodge linked to some of Italy’s biggest scandals has sparked an outcry by announcing that he will take part in a television talk show to give his version of events.

Licio Gelli, the 89-year old former grandmaster of the shadowy Propaganda 2 (P2) group, will be the main guest in “Venerabile Italia” (Venerable Italy), a programme on Italy’s history from fascism to the 1980s.

The P2 was founded in 1969 and used to be the country’s most powerful secret organisation with prominent politicians, business leaders and military officers as members.

Full story

NB: Some of the following material is verbatim from a few posts I did at ATS. Since I own the copyright, it is my prerogative to reproduce in anyway I see fit.

Diploma of Giosue Carducci from Propaganda Massonica, Rome on April 21, 1886 (the original P2 Lodge)

Back in June there was a story (in English) about the Italian authorities having concluded an investigation  “into attempts to slow down legal proceedings against members of the mafia with the help of members of the Freemasonry”:

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