Hidden History: How Mossad Infiltrated Italy

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s April 13th announcement Rome will suspend a longstanding defence agreement with Israel sent shockwaves throughout Europe. Historically, Italian governments - even when led by figures who abhor Zionism - have enjoyed constructive, close ties with Tel Aviv. The pair’s security, intelligence and military apparatuses also have a long-running clandestine relationship. In fact, Mossad’s putrid overseas spying, assassination and sabotage nexus was effectively born in Italy, and has wreaked havoc in the country ever since.

Details of how Zionist spies secured a firm foothold in Italy are provided in a fascinating paper by academic Massimiliano Fiore. Drawing on archival sources, he “traces the evolution of Israeli clandestine activity” in Rome, exposing how Zionist intelligence connivances were waged in and against the country even before the entity’s May 1948 founding, and throughout Tel Aviv’s subsequent war of erasure against Palestine. Several case studies map Mossad’s evolving and ever-bolder criminality in Italy, which informed how the agency operates globally ever after. Fiore’s research is in turn heavily indebted to the groundbreaking work Mossad Base Italy, by veteran reporter Eric Salerno.

The story begins in the wake of the United Nations General Assembly’s November 1947 Partition Plan, which offered Zionist colonisers 55% of Palestine’s territory. Arab leaders immediately began preparing to resist the entity’s construction, training soldiers in Palestine and neighbouring states for the purpose. In response, Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion issued a directive to Zionist paramilitary and intelligence factions to secure weapons for the impending genocidal war over Palestinian territory - which resulted in the Nakba - while denying arms to Arab forces.

Fiore records how the chief of Mossad le-Aliyah Bet and Rekhesh - respectively, the spying and arms procurement wings of notorious Zionist paramilitary Haganah - immediately “established a sabotage unit in Rome that quickly became an operational hub of Israeli covert activity in Italy and across Europe.” Thereafter, Zionist operatives “exploited Italy’s political ambiguity and physical infrastructure to conduct a sustained campaign of sabotage and interception.” The academic dubs this covert contest on Italian soil “a secret front” in the 1948 war.

Rome’s ports and air and sea transport corridors “played a critical role in sustaining Israeli supply” of weapons for the 1948 war, while disrupting the flow of arms to Arab militaries. Moreover, Zionists “sought to shape the Mediterranean balance of power” for malign geopolitical purposes. Their covert actions - “conducted under conditions of political tolerance and diplomatic constraint” - forged strong bonds with the Italian state, while threatening Rome’s status “as a strategic bridge between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East” in Israel’s favour.

Zionist militants prepare to attack the Egyptian army, December 1948

The incipient Mossad’s cloak-and-dagger conniving in Italy had a devastating impact. A June 1948 CIA memo observed how the “European headquarters” of Zionist intelligence “operated under cover in Rome,” through which “clandestine transport of munitions by air” to Palestine was conducted with “the knowledge and collusion” of Italian authorities. Without European citizens, Arab governments or the ‘international community’ noticing, Rome had been secretly transformed into an international nucleus of “illegal traffic in arms for the Jewish underground.”

‘Riskier Measures’

Rewind to March 1948, and Czechoslovakia’s government approved the delivery of 8,000 rifles, 200 machine guns and six million rounds of ammunition to Syria. Set to sail next month on the Lino, a 450-ton Italian freighter, Zionist operatives were determined the shipment would not reach West Asia. First, its passage was impeded by Haganah warning authorities in Rome a ship laden with weapons was headed to Italy. Given the “charged political atmosphere” preceding the country’s election, officials quickly moved to impound the Lino.

On the night of April 10th, a Zionist sabotage squad descended on the vessel and attached explosive charges, before slipping away undetected. The ship sank without casualties, or attribution. Per Fiore, the Italian media suggested weapons aboard might have been headed to local Communists, which “[deflected] suspicion away from Zionist involvement.” While a small operation, the Lino’s sinking was seismic. The effort “demonstrated how limited resources, local networks, and deniable maritime sabotage could produce disproportionate effects, disrupting adversary supply while avoiding interstate escalation.”

The Lino operation’s success prompted the formal establishment in May 1948 of a “Unit for the Sabotage of Enemy Supply in Europe”, headquartered in Rome. It rapidly became a “central hub for intelligence, logistics, and coordination” across Italy and Europe, for Zionist spies. “Jewish operatives and instructors already active on the continent” joined its ranks, receiving training in all manner of skullduggery, assisted by Italian military and intelligence veterans. Among them were battle-hardened fascists, whose World War II experiences informed future Israeli operational practices.

The sunken Lino

Meanwhile, a Syrian initiative to recover the sunken Lino’s consignment was ongoing. The weapons and ammunition were successfully salvaged and repaired, then redirected to their original destination on a vessel called the Argiro. But Zionist spies were watching, and intended to seize the shipment. Via bribery and elaborate deception, operatives infiltrated the ship’s crew, clearing the way for Zionists posing as a security escort to board the vessel while en route to West Asia. On August 21st, the Argiro was captured, and directed to Palestine.

Five days later, Zionist naval forces commandeered the Argiro, seizing the materiel before sinking the ship outright. The lethal cargo reached Haifa four days later, and was sent to Zionist militants fighting in Jerusalem. The Italian crew was temporarily detained rather than killed or disappeared, although the captain died from tuberculosis in captivity before being returned home, raising the spectre of an international incident erupting between the expanding settler colony and Rome.

Fiore notes the Argiro effort was an early example of “strategic appropriation” by Zionist spies, foreshadowing future operations in which “intelligence, deception, and procurement functioned as mutually reinforcing instruments.” This journalist has documented how a similar approach was applied in the early 1960s, during the entity’s criminal quest to clandestinely acquire nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the Argiro’s takeover amply illustrated how Zionist agents in Italy were willing to undertake “progressively riskier measures”, which could inflame public, political tensions with Rome. But the burgeoning Mossad had little to fear.

‘Diplomatic Buffer’

In early 1949, Zionist militants attempted to blow up motor torpedo boats in an Italian shipyard that had been purchased by Egypt. Fiore records how the operation prioritised concealment and “strict deniability” to avoid “diplomatic repercussions”, and benefitted from an insider providing access to the site. However, the plot’s executors, led by an explosives specialist centrally involved in the Lino’s sinking, were caught in flagrante by local police. In June that year, the group’s leader was sentenced to three years in prison for possessing explosives.

This prompted “sustained diplomatic intervention” from the fledgling Zionist entity’s highest levels, resulting in the convicted agent being freed under a presidential pardon. A “calculated act of executive leniency,” the move set a precedent that endured for decades ever after, and may do so today. The same month the Zionist spies were busted, Italian premier Alcide De Gasperi granted local Mossad chief Ada Sereni informal carte blanche to conduct clandestine operations in the country.

Accordingly, Mossad activities not merely in Italy, but the world over, subsequently emphasised “deception, improvisation, and operational daring.” As long as the activities of Zionist spies “remained beneath the threshold of public escalation,” authorities in Rome would “close one eye - preferably two.” It was the beginning of a policy of strategic ambiguity, whereby Italy sought to maintain amicable relations with the Arab and Muslim world and Tel Aviv simultaneously. It was hoped Rome could avoid being dragged into the Palestinian conflict, therefore preserving “political equilibrium”.

Under the auspices of this clandestine concord, the Zionist entity benefitted enormously from “selective enforcement” of local laws, political pardons if its operatives and/or schemes were exposed, and other indulgences. Mossad could thus exploit Rome “as a transit corridor, logistical base, and diplomatic buffer.” However, Tel Aviv routinely flouted the terms of this dispensation, gravely compromising the country’s “political equilibrium”. Israel couldn’t tolerate Palestinian resistance fighters and groups smuggling weapons or travelling without hindrance through Italy, or enjoying political protection locally.

This blind eye to Palestinian resistance became known as the “Lodo Moro” agreement, so-called because it was instituted by veteran Italian statesman and repeat prime minister Aldo Moro. Mossad sought to harshly penalise Rome for such leniency towards the Palestinian cause. Questions abound over Zionist involvement in numerous high-profile acts of terror perpetrated in Italy subsequently, such as the August 1980 bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200, and political assassinations - including Moro’s own.

Aldo Moro’s corpse discovered by Italian authorities in Rome, May 1978

An ardent anti-Zionist, Moro was ostensibly kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a left-wing guerrilla movement, in March 1978. He was killed after 55 days in captivity. Numerous knowledgeable sources have testified to successive parliamentary inquiries and official investigations over the decades since how Mossad infiltrated and assisted the Red Brigades, seeking to influence the group’s activities from inception. Moreover, there was likewise a little-known but hugely impactful Zionist hand in the notorious CIA and MI6-run Operation Gladio from the very beginning.

Chaos unleashed by Gladio greatly furthered Mossad’s quest to destabilise Italy, in service of boosting Israel’s financial, military and political support from the US. There is little chance of Tel Aviv’s geopolitical position being challenged by Rome today. Yet, incidents such as the mysterious late March attack on an Italian oil pipeline raise obvious questions about whether the local Zionist wrecking network constructed decades ago remains in place, and still sends incendiary warnings to the country’s government not to step too far out of line.