THE RED BRIGADES HAVE STRANGE PARTNERS IN CRIME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130047-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: August 18, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130047-8
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
18 August 1982
STAT
The Red Brigades Have Strange Partners in Crime.-
clalize in armed robbery. Its most spectac-
ular joint raid with the 'Ndrangbeta, on a
Club Mediterranee beach camp in Cala-
bria, netted more than S2 million in cash
and jewels. A UOC member of that raiding
team, Raftaele Reggio, was arrested last.
January for trafficking in drugs.
Just two weeks ago, Milan police
rounded up 20 members of another special-
ized terrorist ring called the Revolutionary
C
i
C
C
ommun
st
ommittees (
o.Co.Ri.l. Also
Europe ...formed ire 1976.it itad as its dual purpose to
? finance ' and arm; other terrorist bands of
By Claire Sterling, whatever persuasion-black or red. right
or left. In six years it pulled off 60 major
vented a Dew quality of struggle',- against . holdups. parceling the money out with an
Rome
To prove they were still alive and well.
Italy's Red Brigades recently murdered
the police chief in Naples. They claimed to
have marked him for execution because of
his implacable war on the Camorra, a Nea-
politan version of the Mafia whose current
gangster bones could have taught Al Ca-
pone a thing or two. The Camorra "has in-
the metal
of the shady conner-.14srs formed by the caZik themselves communist revolutionaries than their
Red Brigades over the years: with organ'
ized crime. the "black" neu-fascist right, ? . entarWling alliance with fascists, the Mafia dope-smug-
the International drug traffic and the KGB.
The evidence on 211 these counts, provided glens and the Soviet-bloc secret services?
by past and present Red 3rigaders in com-
muniques, confessions and testimony In
court, has been coo-: to light piece by even band It had also procured massive tence of a huge international gun.nrnntag
pig. supplies of weapons, largely of Soviet-bloc ring that provided Soviet bloc weapons.
The links among all of Italy's left-wing origin; sold at cheap "political" prices by shipped through'. the Middle East and
terrorist groups and the whole of Italian radical Palestinian groups in Lebanon and Libya, to Ital 's right- and left-wing terror-
gangland-the Neapolitan Camorra, Cala? paid for partly with the proceeds of heroin Y
bria's 'Ndrangbeta. Sicily's Mafia-were sales. The weapons too were distributedists - An intersecting ring smuggled heroin
first revealed by t.`re "repentant" Cario evenhandedly to black and red terrorists. into Italy through Bulgaria from Turkey.
Fioroni in 1979. Corroborated later by doz- G Cc CoIM s fugitive founder been and sales er. Heroin ~ ever the cost of the
ens other mat agreement, a)Drug- era) of his repentant comrades as C~ Qad- ans. Syrians, anti-Sadwas operated by at 1's tiaras andce cer
standing Informal g:eement. with the
criminal underarorid middnap for raasam4 hafts man. kept generously : in weapons fain wmatrted Palestinian groups In Leba-
stick up Wks, steal million-dollar Renau? . and funds by Ubya's leader in the hope of ? non. and backed by the secret services of
sance paintings auc even champion race- spreading revolutionary disaffection: Scat- IJbya. Syria and Russia
horses. and split the take fifty-fairy. The zone appears himself to have,disappoved of ? Maurizio Folitd, acting for Italy's
first snatch staged jointly by the Red Bra- other foreign eonnectionc made by Italys Co.CO.RL., bad been the ring's chief courier
gales and the Mafia was In January 19T7 left wing underground and once spoke of to and from Lebanon. In 1578 he attended a
and brought in a million ransom paid the Red Brigades as an emanation of the summit meeting of the ring's leaders In j
to redeem a millionaire shipbuilder. The Soviet KGE." Nevertheless. the fellow be Damascus; upon driving back through Bul-
m Brigades used their share of ? the
chose to supervise weapons procurement garla with a load of weapons, be had an en-
der of Christian Democratic statesman and delivery.Maurizlo Folini. has -ben In- counter with the Bulgarian secret police-
Aldo Moro a year later. dicted as a KGB agent. . described in court by Polinf's 'traveling
One terrorist unit. United Communist ' FOWti was first fingered in the spring of 'companion an that trip-that established
Combat (UCC), was set up in 1976 to spe? 1981 by a repentant left-wing terrorist. in- him unmistakably as a KGB agent. At
vestigators were then led to at least two
sensational discoveries. One-revealed this'
month with the indictment of 62 black and
red terrorists-was the el istence of a joint
service network catering' to both sides.
Through a 1979 mutual-aid agreement the
service offered medical care. for the
wounded. false passports for those on the
run, emergency' financing (through holdups
and the drug trade): and high-quality So-
viet-bloc -weapons. c4=
Tracing : that " weapons route, police.
made a still more stunning find. A formal :
indictment in January revealed the exls?
Thu pronouncement confirms just one ? What could be more damning, for terrorists killers
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130047-8