November 17, 2007 (LPAC)--Francesco Cossiga, former President of Italy and Police Minister during the kidnapping and the assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978, effectively admitted for the first time in an interview this week, that the order to kill Moro came from British intelligence. Aldo Moro, the leading Italian politician of the 1970s, was kidnapped on March 16 and killed by the terrorist Red Brigades May 9, 1978. This occurred in the context of Moro's direction of the alliance between Moro's party, the Christian Democracy, and the Italian Communist Party, for a government of "national unity." Because of his policy, Moro had been threatened personally by Henry Kissinger in 1976.

Cossiga reveals that the order to kill Moro came from people associated with British intelligence circles, a circumstance first exposed by the LaRouche organization in 1978, and eventually, partially explored by a Parliament Investigating Committee under Sen. Giovanni Pellegrino.

"Igor Markevic, the musician, probably hosted in his Florence house, the meeting in which Moro's death was decided," Cossiga said in an interview with Corriere della Sera published on Nov. 14.

Markevic was a leading member of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and was closely associated with British intelligence officer Hubert Howard. Markevic and Howard married two Caetani princesses and lived in Palazzo Caetani in Rome. "His [Caetani] wife's house in via Caetani, represented only a reference point for the Red Brigades, a known place where the red Renault [with Moro's corpse] should be parked," added Cossiga. Moro's corpse was discovered in a Renault parked in Via Caetani.

Markevic, the Caetani family, and Hubert Howard, all played a central role in organizing the "cultural industry" in postwar Italy. Howard, now deceased, was the son of the British ambassador to the Versailles Conference, and member of a family belonging to the inner circles of the British aristocracy.

Investigators for the Parliamentary Committee under Sen. Pellegrino, believed that the Markevic faction was willing to save Moro's life, since the Red Brigades' political aim had been achieved, but at one point received a higher order: kill Moro.