Solo Plan

   In July 1964, during lengthy negotiations over the formation of a new government, the then president, Antonio Segni, invited the head of the Carabinieri, General Giovanni De Lorenzo, to the presidential palace for formal talks. This seemingly innocuous event would later take on great significance.

   In 1967, the news magazine Europeo published extracts from secret files that De Lorenzo had accumulated, in his former role as head of army intelligence, on the private lives of prominent politicians, including Segni’s successor as president, Giuseppe Saragat. On 10 May 1967, another magazine, Espresso, broke the news of the socalled Piano Solo (Solo Plan), drawn up by De Lorenzo at the beginning of 1964. The Solo Plan foresaw the arrest and imprisonment of lists of persons who were regarded as subversive; the occupation of prefectures, television studios, telephone exchanges, and party headquarters; and unilateral action by the Carabinierirather than joint action with other, less trustworthy branches of the armed forces. On 26 June 1964, the day that the center-left coalition led by Aldo Moro collapsed, De Lorenzo apparently gave orders for detailed local contingency plans to be drawn up, although his orders were greeted with some perplexity, and little enthusiasm, by the policemen who would have had to carry them out. The press outcry led to a parliamentary investigation that found that De Lorenzo, who in the meantime had become head of the armed services, was merely engaging in defensive emergency planning for the eventuality of an institutional breakdown. Not surprisingly, this conclusion was not shared by the putative targets of the Solo Plan. How much Segni knew of De Lorenzo’s schemes has never been clarified, and Francesco Cossiga, who acted as liaison between De Lorenzo and Segni, has never been trusted by Italian progressive opinion since. The military coups in Greece in 1967 and Chile in 1973 suggested that the left’s fears were not entirely misplaced. De Lorenzo was elected to Parliamentas a monarchist in 1968, and he later joined the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano/Italian Social Movement (MSI). He died in Rome in 1973.

   See also Gladio; Police.