page_title: Francesco Cossiga
section_title: Kidnapping of Aldo Moro
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco Cossiga / Minister of the Interior / Kidnapping of Aldo Moro
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Giulio Andreotti e Francesco Cossiga
context_page_description: Francesco Cossiga OMRI was an Italian politician. A member of the Christian Democratic Party of Italy, he was Prime Minister of Italy from 1979 to 1980 and the eighth President of Italy from 1985 to 1992. Cossiga is widely considered one of the most prominent and influential politicians of the First Republic.
  Cossiga also served as minister on several occasions, most notably as Italian Minister of the Interior. In that position he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. Due to his repressive approach to public protests, he has been described as a strongman and labeled "iron minister". He was in office at the time of the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by Red Brigades, and resigned as Minister of the Interior when Moro was found dead in 1978. Cossiga was Prime Minister during the Bologna station bombing in 1980.
  Before his political career, Cossiga was a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari.
context_section_description: Cossiga was in office at the time of the kidnapping and murder of the Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro by the Marxist-Leninist extreme-left terrorist group Red Brigades. On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day on which the new cabinet led by Giulio Andreotti was supposed to have undergone a confidence vote in the Italian Parliament, the car of Moro, former prime minister and then president of DC, was assaulted by a group of Red Brigades terrorists in Via Fani in Rome. Firing automatic weapons, the terrorists killed Moro's bodyguards, (two Carabinieri in Moro's car and three policemen in the following car) and kidnapped him.
  Cossiga formed immediately two "crisis committees". The first one was a technical-operational-political committee, chaired by Cossiga himself and, in his absence, by undersecretary Nicola Lettieri. Other members included the supreme commanders of the Italian Police Forces, of the Carabinieri, the Guardia di Finanza, the recently named directors of SISMI and SISDE   (respectively, Italy's military and civil intelligence services), the national secretary of CESIS (a secret information agency), the director of UCIGOS and the police prefect of Rome. The second one was an information committee, including members of CESIS, SISDE, SISMI and SIOS, another military intelligence office.
  A third unofficial committee was created which never met officially, called the comitato di esperti ("committee of experts"). Its existence was not disclosed until 1981, by Cossiga himself, in his interrogation by the Italian Parliament's Commission about the Moro affair. He omitted to reveal the decisions and the activities of the committee however. This committee included: Steve Pieczenik, a psychologist  of the anti-terrorism section of the US State Department, and notable Italian criminologists. Pieczenik later declared that there were numerous leaks about the discussions made at the committee, and accused Cossiga.
  However, on 9 May 1978 Moro's body was found in the trunk of a Renault 4 in Via Caetani after 55 days of imprisonment, during which Moro was submitted to a political trial by the so-called "people's court" set up by the Brigate Rosse and the Italian government was asked for an exchange of prisoners. Despite the common interpretation, the car location in Via Caetani was not halfway between the locations of the national offices of DC and of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Rome. After two days, Cossiga resigned as Minister of the Interior. According to Italian journalist Enrico Deaglio, Cossiga, to justify his lack of action, "accused the leaders of CGIL and of the Communist Party of knowing where Moro was detained". Cossiga was also accused by Moro himself, in his letters who wrote during his detention, saying that "his blood will fall over him".
caption: Francesco Cossiga with Giulio Andreotti in 1978.
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