During the meeting held in May last in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, a proposal was launched by the Italian Minister of the Interior, Mr Pisanu, to his European collegues to arrange an inter-religious conference to be held in October 2003 in Rome, within the framework of the initiatives to be taken during the Italian semester Presidency in the EU. The strong belief lying behind such a proposal, which was much welcomed by EU partners, is that a similar inter-religious dialogue may well provide a solution to terrorism inspired by religious fundamentalism in a medium or long term. During the October’s conference, both religious and political aspects will be dealt with in such a way that the latter are meant to pay particular attention to the need for people and cultural traditions to live together in the same territorial area, within the context of tolerance, respect and security. This topic is one which raises much interest among observers also in view of the national security protection. It is not a chance that issues connected with Islamic radicalism and with Israeli-Palestinian conflict have over the last two years been largely covered in our Review, both at international and domestic level, due to the terrorist threat posed against our country. Along these lines, therefore, we will follow up the developments of the above initiative, the objectives of which will become clearer to our Readers by reading the opening interview with Franco CARDINI. As well as being an historian and well-known scholar, Cardini is a professor of Medieval History at the University of Florence and an expert in religions.
The events occurring over the last few months have witnessed the emergence of the threat posed by Red Brigades-related terrorism. In particular, the tragic events occurring last month in Arezzo along with the various inquiry procedures involving inter alia a dangerous member of Red Brigades being arrested, have all made it necessary to establish proper coordinated actions for the fight against terrorism. While also being reflected in a variety of draft bills submitted to Parliament, the need for such actions is one which not only affects the debated question of judicial coordinated actions among Public Prosecutors’ Offices, but also a layered variety of areas in which intelligence, investigation, technical-political as well as international activities are involved. Given the relevance of such issues, we thought it might be interesting for our Readers to be introduced to a Forum, in which participants in different institutional roles and from different professional backgrounds can exchange their opinions in order to provide a global view of the different problem areas.
The section including essays and articles is designed to draw the attention of a wide range of Readers. In fact, as it is possible to understand glancing through the playbills of the cult movies we have selected, the intelligence world in the cinema (famous spy stories over decades) is one of the key-issues of the editorial project of the present issue (no 26). Antonio CARCIONE, film reviewer and expert, wrote a well-documented essay on intelligence and cinema for our Review, often providing the Reader with a number of information on this matter. Further, in the Part devoted to Historical Curios, we present short but significant pieces of the famous script-movie Notorious by Alfred HITCHCOCK, recalling the admirers of this genre and/or of the English film maker mythical images and situations of the history of the cinema.
Going back to current issues, among the book reviews we highlight the interesting volume Rapporto di minoranza ed altri racconti by Philip DICK, from which the recent Minority Report by Steven SPIELBERG has been taken. On the other hand, the relationship between the intelligence world and the artistic and literary creativeness is a very complex one, and we will not fail to develop it further in the future. If it is well known that espionage is a classic source of inspiration, with its adventurous characters being highly instrumental to the narrated action, it cannot be neglected the role which is often played indirectly in the cultural industry by the Government Establishment in specific historical contexts, sometimes for influencing operations, sometimes to raise ones voice and send messages and emotions with which collective groups have so far found their own identity. The Second World War is full of examples of this kind.
In Part II, we present other essays on significant and outstanding issues from authoritative authors such as PEDDE, relating to the ongoing reforming process withinof the Islamic Republic of Iran, of great topical interest; SBRESCIA, on the European Constitution, where great attention will be focused in this lapse of time, until its final approval; SOLAZZO, dealing with on transnational risk of infiltration by organised crime into contracts; and finally CORONA, who suggests new methods of intelligence, especially developed for the Internet environment.
In part III, we also thought it interesting for our Readers to read about an abstract from a paper spread on the last February by the “Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura” on the “new age”, a complex phenomenon also involving serious social implications such as criminal and satanic groups. Also for the attention raised recently on Mass Destruction Weapons (MDW), it is interesting the Final Report of the Conference on bacteriological weapons held in Geneva at the end of 2002.
Part IV deals again with terrorism. The Swedish legislation has been recently amended by way of rather stringent provisions to come into effect from July this year. In contrast to such innovative provisional framework, the usual list of Italian proposals for reform in the field of intelligence has been substantially left unmodified. However, mention should be made of the latest developments in the Italian Senate adopting the draft bill 1513 last May which has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies in a newly amended document (AC 3951). It should not be forgotten that the publication of this issue of the Review comes at a time when the above newly amended text examination is not started. Thus, after the above draft legislation has become Law, it will be our intention to devote specific sections including comments and observations regarding the various innovative aspects which are seen to be involved in the above reformed legislation. As is customary for the Review to include relevant legislation and jurispr udence (courts’ judgments), other documents of interest are also published, such as the opinion by the Columbia District Court of the USA, which provides food for thought about intelligence activity. While being dated 1980, this opinion is crucial from an historical point of view given that the debate is one which revolves around rules and regulation affecting records held by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, having regard in particular to records disposal and rules governing records destruction programme for types of documentation which are considered to be useless or worth disposing of.
The intelligence system in the newly born Czech Republic, which will be part as a full member within the EU only in the following months, is indeed the subject of a summary description in Part V.
The section devoted to recommended bibliography is opened by an interview with Maurizio CALVI, who has for some time gained appointment as Senator of the Republic. In addition, he is the founder of Centro alti studi per la lotta al terrorismo e alla violenza politica, the institution which has over the last few years been actively involved in organising interesting international conferences on terrorism and newly emerging conflicts. These conferences have been held in a spectacular area hosting the ancient castle San Martino in Priverno. Together with his own collaborators, CALVI is also the author of a book appearing on the market very recently, and titled Le date del terrore. While being the first of a series of book titles, this book represents a careful and invaluable chronological analysis of terrorist events affecting the Italian society of the day since the end of the World War II. This book comes complete with essays of interest. We have also selected other volumes of interest from our bookshelf, these volumes being however worthy of a reading. In particular, we recommend contributions which closely relate to the intelligence issue. Among these, mention should be made of JOFFRIN’s (La spia che non poteva uccidere), MACLEAN’s (Passaggi a Oriente) and TOMPKINS’s (Una spia a Roma). Other recommended works include the lengthy, substantial publication by MORRIS and BLACK (Rizzoli publisher) on MOSSAD history, the Israeli intelligence service acclaimed for its efficiency worldwide.
As already mentioned, issue no 26 of Per Aspera ad Veritatem Review ends with the script movie passage from the renowned Notorious movie, this being particularly famous for the longest kiss in the history of cinema although featuring a contested record as will emerge in CARCIONE’s article. Despite that, Notorious effectively and carefully describes operations conducted by intelligence service by relying on extraordinarily talented film director and main characters Ingrid BERGMAN and Cary GRANT.