[NYTr] Did the Vatican buy arms for the IRA?
by way of NY Transfer News <nyt@viola.tamara-b.org>
sent by Simon McGuinness
The Irish Times - Jun 21, 2007
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0621/1181771507688.html
Did the Vatican buy arms for the IRA?
IRA claim is latest twist in 'God's Banker' murder trail
by Paddy Agnew
Letter from Rome : Did the Holy See, wittingly or unwittingly, via its
collaboration with the ill-fated Banco Ambrosiano once buy arms for the
IRA?
This astonishing allegation is just one of the many unanswered questions
raised by a new book, The Last Supper , written by Rome-based journalist
Philip Willan, on the life and mysterious death of Roberto Calvi, oft
referred to as "God's Banker", who was found dead, hanging from
scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge, London on June 18th, 1982.
The Calvi death remains an unsolved mystery. As he struggled to save his
bankruptcy-threatened bank (it eventually collapsed in 1982 owing an
estimated $1.3 billion) was he threatening to spill the beans on some of
his most delicate banking "operations"? Did the Ambrosiano, at the
request of the Vatican, help fund the Polish trade union movement,
Solidarnosc? What exactly was the Vatican's relationship with Banco
Ambrosiano?
Had the network of offshore companies set up by Calvi been used by
organised crime to launder the proceeds of the heroin trade and were the
Mafiosi now looking for their money? Did the bank help fund the purchase
of arms for the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq? Did the bank supply funds
to most of the leading Italian political parties of the day?
Via his membership of Licio Gelli's outlawed masonic lodge, P2, had
Calvi put together a network of dangerous and ultimately fatal "working
relationships"?
Twenty-five years on, the Calvi murder is still occupying the courts.
Just two weeks ago, a court in Rome acquitted five people charged with
Calvi's murder. Those cleared were Mafia boss Giuseppe "Pippo" CalC2;
the businessmen Ernesto Diotallevi and Flavio Carboni; Calvi's driver
and bodyguard in his last days, Silvano Vittor; and Flavio Carboni's
Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig.
So, the Calvi death retains its rightful place in Italy's Fame Hall of
Unsolved Mystery. Who, if anyone, killed Calvi? Who decided to blow up
Bologna train station, killing 85, in August 1980? Who was behind Ali
Agca's attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in May 1981? Why, on the
evening of June 27th, 1980, did an Itavia DC 9 plane, on an internal
flight from Bologna to Palermo, drop like a stone from the sky, crashing
into the sea near the Sicilian island of Ustica, killing all 81 on
board?
The list goes on, there are plenty of other such mysteries but what they
all have in common is that no one has been found responsible for
horrendous crimes.
The Calvi investigation did not get off to a good start. Initially,
London police concluded that Calvi had committed suicide. In his book,
Willan points out that at the recent Rome trial, the most damaging
criticism of the original inquiry came from another police officer, Det
Supt Trevor Smith, who had been asked to carry out a fresh examination
of the case in July 2002.
Smith found a "catalogue of errors and omissions" - the knot in Calvi's
noose had not been preserved; fingerprints were not taken from either
the scaffolding or items found on his body; there was no investigation
of international travel by Italian citizens around the time of Calvi's
death; no bank accounts associated with Calvi were checked; his body was
not photographed before removal from the scaffolding; bricks found in
Calvi's pockets and down his fly (why would a person bent on suicide
want to stick a brick down his fly?) were removed; perhaps worst of all,
investigative activity was suspended for almost a month pending the
outcome of the first inquest (which reached a verdict of suicide on July
23rd, 1982).
Was this all just shoddy police work or proof of a masonic plot?
Officially, even if Italian public opinion had other ideas, Calvi's
death remained a "suicide" until 1988 when a Milan civil court ruled he
had been murdered and that, therefore, his life insurer was obliged to
pay the four billion lira (_2 million) owed on his life policy.
Willan's book contains myriad possible explanations for Calvi's death,
explanations largely based on the evidence of a "cast of extraordinary
crooks and charlatans" beside whom the protagonists in Dan Brown's Da
Vinci Code , he writes, "pale into banality".
And the IRA connection? Here, we need to reach for a generous pinch of
salt. Willan recalls a 1986 interview given to Italian news weekly,
L'Espresso by Francesco Pazienza, another of the "rogues' gallery", a
former secret services agent, former consultant and lobbyist for Calvi
and someone currently in prison for his role in the fraudulent collapse
of the Banco Ambrosiano. Pazienza recalls: "The company Erin SA,
controlled by the Vatican, owed the Ambrosiano more than $60 million in
1981. Well, in mid-1981, the German secret services and the CIA received
a report from the English security services asking them to investigate
the purchase of strategic material by a well-known German arms dealer,
material that was destined for the IRA. The report referred to a
"Panamanian company, considered close to Catholic circles and probably
the Vatican, named Erin SA".
Willan then asks if "the Vatican had been buying arms for a terrorist
organisation?" Yet another of the unanswered questions raised by this
fascinating book, one which takes the reader on a disturbing ride
through 25 years of plots, counter-plots and conspiracy theories linked
to the worlds of organised crime and high finance.
The Last Supper, by Philip Willan, is published by Robinson (London).
(c) 2007 The Irish Times
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