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PARTISAN REVIEW
because calamities abound. Certainly, this time the "something" did
not influence the outcome of the referendum, that is sympathy for
the Pope was dissociated from papal politics . And there is enough
evidence - from tourists' photos to false passport, from preassassi–
nation travel to unaccounted-for time, etc., to prove that Agca was
backed by an organization, though we don't know whether he still
served the PLO, Russian, Armenian, or Shiite interests, and
whether he was paid by Gheddafi or by the proceeds from heroin
traffic. For a few days, the Italian press speculated on all these possi–
bilities, and a week later, while the police continued their inquiries,
both Agca's motives and the Pope's health were relegated to page
eight or twelve.
Nevertheless, international terrorism remained a major con–
cern, as representatives of police forces from seventeen countries
began their yearly meetings in Milan, and as there seemed to be a
growing awareness of the fact that unemployed youth - in many
countries - have increasingly given up on Marx and, instead, band
together in Fascist activities, though fascism is illegal. Thus many
Italians were glad that Agca turned out to be a foreigner, because
very few of them would welcome another totalitarian regime such as
Mussolini's; they value their freedoms, particularly of press and
speech; many were shocked about reports that
Mein Kampf
was
getting "popular" enough to be banned in Germany; and uneasy
about their own right-wing youth.
One week after the attack on the Pope, the front page of every
newspaper covered the imprisonment of seven of the most important
Italian financiers - the first ones of that caliber to have been indicted
for exporting large sums of money (at least one deal of thirty-six mil–
lion dollars). Quite likely, the almost unexpected sophistication of
the electorate - and especially its endorsement of the previously en–
acted emergency "law and order" decree against suspected terror–
ists - also encouraged the move against these powerful magnates, on
the strength of information available for some time. Yet this turned
out to have been only the outer layer of this scandal, which soon
forced the resignation of the Forlani government. While looking into
the "disappearance" of Michele Sindona, the failed financier, proof
of the existence of a secret Masonic
lodge-Propaganda Due
(P2)–
became public as did the list of its nearly thousand members which,
as we now know, included the minister of defense, the secretary of
the treasury, heads of police and the military, as well as other parlia–
mentarians, bureaucrats, and functionaries of the state-run tele-
