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By a weird coincidence, the Capitol Hill pantomime happened more or less exactly 50 years and one month to the anniversary of the "Borghese coup"- one of the most mysterious opening acts of the Italian Years of Lead. /1
Junio Valerio Borghese (1906-1974) was a Roman aristocrat who, during WWII, had become famous for planning and leading several daring submarine attacks against Allied navies /2
The most famous of those was the "Alexandria Raid", where, using manned torpedoes, Borghese managed to severely damage two British battleships in the Alexandria of Egypt harbor /3, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Alexandria_(1941)
Borghese also meticulously planned a similar to the New York harbor. Unlike similar German plans, it was designed as a low cost / high payoff act of sabotage whose aim was to impact the US morale /4
The attack would have been carried out by the "Leonardo Da Vinci" (Italy's best submarine and probably WWII best non-German sub) plus a tiny "mini-sub" to enter the harbor and deploy the mines /5
Borghese approached Doenitz for support but the German navy was not interested (for political reasons) so the plan was designed as an all-Italian raid. It was not a "suicide mission" though - the attack "frogmen" team was supposed to reach the US mainland then disperse /6
Extensive testing and rehearsals were done with success, but when the attack was going to be launched, the "Da Vinci" was lost during a convoy attack, and so the raid was canceled /7
In 1943 Borghese adhered to the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, a puppet state established by the Germans, commanding the "X° MAS," an elite "marine" unit. In this role, he directed several military actions both on sea and land between late 1943 and early '45 /8
Borghese's popularity with the rank and file made the "X° MAS" one of the few RSI units that never had recruitment issues. But Borghese's relationships with the Fascist authorities was, at very least, ambiguous /9
Borghese and Mussolini disliked each other immensely, and Borghese insisted on having always a direct line with the Germans, who gave him enormous independence. So the unit became Borghese's de facto "private army" /10
In this role, Borghese played shrewdly on different fronts. While the "land units" of the X° MAS acted as a ferocious anti-partisan unit, Borghese secretly established links with both his former enemies, the US and British intelligence /11
Borghese used well the anti-communist card, even proposing to the Allies joint anti-Tito actions on the Dalmatian coast. None came out of this, this was one of the roots of the future "Gladio" network and made sure Borghese became an Allied "asset" /12
So in 1945, the OSS saved him, under Angleton's direct orders. Many X° MAS volunteers were not so lucky. In Turin, 70 X° MAS (including at least 10 women auxiliaries) who had attempted an absurd last-ditch resistance when the partisans stormed the city were all massacred. /13
Borghese was tried and condemned for collaboration with Germany's war crimes, but the sentence was overturned and he pardoned. He became the president of the MSI, the (de facto) successor to the fascist party, but he left it quickly alleging dislike to political rules /14
For several years until 1968 Borghese stayed away from the limelight, networking with both the radical far-right, some of Italy's banking and industrial elite, and his old political contacts in London or Washington /15
An aside. London OR Washington, non necessarily AND. Borghese's game was often to use the obvious rivalries between intelligence agencies to his advantage. This dichotomy may be at the base of some of the 1970 coup "mysteries" /16
And so, the night between 7 and 8 December 1970, between 1000 to 2000 men, mostly members of the Armed Forces but also right-wing militants, deployed in key points of Rome and stormed the Ministry of the Interior, taking hold of the Ministry's (large) weapon cache /17
Borghese's plan was to occupy the Presidential Palace (the "Quirinale), all key Ministries, and the HQ of RAI, Italy's national broadcast. From there Borghese himself would have announced the coup. /18
The insurgent would have kidnapped the President (Giuseppe Saragat) and murdered the Chief of Police (Angelo Vicari). Similar actions were planned in Milan. Once in power, Borghese would have organized new elections, excluding completely all left-wing forces. /19
The coup was well underway when at 2am Borghese received a phone call and abruptly cancelled the coup. No reason for the u-turn was given, but some of the conspirators noticed unusual movements of troops around Milan. /20
For three months nothing about this "coup" was known by the general public, until in March "Paese Sera" (a newspaper close to the PCI) revealed that a coup attempt had been made "by the fascists" on December /21
Custody orders were given for Borghese (immediately named as the coup leader) but the old general escaped to Spain, where he died in 1974. An inquiry revealed the "insurgents" had been helped by large sections of Italy's security agencies, who were in part dismantled. /22
A full description of the long and inconclusive investigation process that surrounded the "Immacolata Conception coup" is beyond the scope of this already overlong Twitter thread, but there's some further discussion point I will make in a new thread.
