Carmine Pecorelli

Carmine Pecorelli (September 14, 1928 – March 20, 1979), known as Mino, was an Italian journalist, shot dead in Rome a year after former prime minister Aldo Moro's 1978 kidnapping and subsequent killing. He was described as a "maverick journalist with excellent secret service contacts." According to Pecorelli, Aldo Moro's kidnapping had been organized by a "lucid superpower" and was inspired by the "logic of Yalta". Pecorelli's name was on Licio Gelli's list of Propaganda Due masonic members, discovered in 1980 by the Italian police. In 2002, former prime minister Giulio Andreotti was sentenced, along with Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, to 24 years' imprisonment for Pecorelli's murder. The sentence was thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court in 2003.

Pecorelli was born in Sessano del Molise, a small municipality in the province of Isernia. During the German occupation of Italy in World War II he briefly enrolled in Junio Valerio Borghese's private fascist militia Decima Flottiglia MAS, forging contacts which would later come in handy during his career as journalist. After graduating in law, he began practicing as a bankruptcy lawyer. Later he became Minister Fiorentino Sullo's head of press service, thereby starting his career as a journalist. He founded a press agency, called Osservatore Politico (OP), which quickly became a weekly magazine, specializing in political scandals and publishing many first-hand stories that Pecorelli was able to obtain through his numerous contacts in the government, including in secret services. Pecorelli publicly acknowledged that his best pieces were the ones which had not been published on OP, due to agreements with the parts involved, which preferred to pay him hefty sums of money to ensure his silence. Pecorelli was able to describe with ease complex situations, often protecting facts and characters behind pseudonyms. For example, he referred to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa as "general Amen," explaining that it was he who, during the weeks of Aldo Moro's detention in the hands of his kidnappers, had informed Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga of the location of the hideout where Moro was being detained. In 1978, Pecorelli wrote that Dalla Chiesa was in danger and would be assassinated. Dalla Chiesa was murdered four years later, in September 1982.

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