Readers teach us that the differences between the two eras, the scenarios and the technologies available between Ustica 1980 and Tehran 2020 are so great as to make the comparison at least imprudent. They are right, but so they ... discovered hot water! We have compared the result, not the actors and the events: nobody cares after Italy lost at home yesterday with Germany if today it won by measure with San Marino. Then, the history of flight 870 of Itavia fits very well in the middle of those of flight 902 and flight 007 of Korean Air Lines, shot down by the Soviets respectively in 1978 and 1983 and never hidden.
Do we really think it was so difficult at the time for the two superpowers to admit they hit the wrong target? What about the attack on the offices of the Libyan flag carrier, not even fifteen days after the shooting down of the Italian DC9? Even a series of unfortunate incidents has favored the work of concealment. For example, who remembers that in the eight years preceding the only major air accidents that occurred on Italian territory, Alitalia's 112 and 4128 flights in 1972 and 1978, concerned aircraft directed or departing from Palermo?
Finally, that summer of 1980 would have remained forever marked by the massacre at the Bologna station on August 2. Two unsolved mysteries and two massacres in less than five weeks are something that a civilized country should never tolerate ... Wouldn't it be time to open all drawers, even at the cost of killing someone who has known too many things for forty years without honor?
The reader Michele Carrera, who does not want anonymity, writes to remind us of the silences but also the "externalizations" of the authorities of the time ...
Locking up the story "Ustica" in 350 words is an enterprise to the limit of the impossible ....
I believe that what happened 40 years ago is now clear to everyone, whispers, half-truths and plausible hypotheses are under the eyes of anyone who wants to see them. But this made the formalization of the truth in a certain sense "useless". In short, you know what really happened that damned day and this, you can think, has appeased the minds and "rendered useless" some official form of truth, how to say: be satisfied, better than this you can never have ...
At that time I believe that the raison d'état forced to cover up and hide, a cynical choice but that would have safeguarded the many compromising Italian situations. How would Italy have been forced to react against that state whose plane appears to have launched the air-to-air missile? How can we justify relations, at least eccentric, with Libya?
It was a cowardly choice, albeit necessary and perhaps a hero would have been needed and perhaps there were; but heroes in Italy have the bad habit of being alone ...
It is curious that just a man of the system like Francesco Cossiga broke the silence with his declarations on the French origins of the massacre, but I believe that old fox revealed his truth to give way to reopen that story that too many still have interest in today keep tightly closed, if only to preserve one's good repute. In short, he did what he did not because he could not go as far as to lead by example and make others speak.
His intention, I believe, was to be a bit like the first crack of a dam that gradually widens to make everything give way and overwhelm even a rubber wall with an unstoppable wall of water. But, I'm afraid, we didn't give him the gritted teeth smile he dreamed of for his latest "mischief".
The MC reader reminds us of too many unexplained deaths that have corollary to the story of Ustica ...
Ustica Vs Teheran ... Two very different historical contexts should be highlighted, the mass media of the time and today are also very different. For example, mobile phones, which if on the one hand are a concrete risk to the imagination and socialization capacity of young people, on the other hand they can become a thorn in the side of those who want to hide the truth. The mentality of the powers involved is also different. During the Cold War the mantra was "all in secret", no matter under what conditions. Just think of the trail of "curious" deaths that followed the Ustica case for the following years (last on the list the Frecce tricolori pilots). Today, on the other hand, even at an institutional level, the race to media "sputtanamento" predominates.
We also add the geographical factor. The plane that had left Tehran, as soon as it took off, was inevitably under the gaze of cameras and possible indiscreet mobile phones. Evidently the Ayatollahs are not as good as the Chinese in censorship. Itavia, on the other hand, was shot down (can you say it now? !!?) On the sea where at the most right some fishermen could attend the scene. Who knows maybe the fisherman has been there, but he too, despite himself, has returned to anonymous mortuary statistics, like some soldier found "suicidal" in the bathroom hanged with a towel 1 m above the floor ... probable quantum physics ...
The bitterness of one of the many Italian events covered with infamy and sidetracking remains (the list would be long) where the victims do not find earthly justice. Surely there is a different political approach, in Tehran they will identify a responsible person, they will give him an imbecile in public, however blaming the USA for the tension created, and they will condemn him to the gallows. With us too Machiavellian the thing.
We certainly cannot hope for the current executive, and I will stop here. The only hope remains a regurgitation of conscience of someone who, electrocuted on the road to Damascus, before presenting himself to the Creator decides to open the room of secrets with names and surnames.
FD talks about too many veils placed on the story of flight 870 ...
The differences between the two cases are so evident that the stories cannot be compared in the case of the felling above Tehran there are two videos. Without those, Iran would never have admitted blame. I think. On Ustica there are only many hypotheses ...
Maybe, and I say maybe, "Ustica" was tried on Ustica. For ideological reasons (and perhaps for precise input from Italian politics), structural failures were first investigated and then US responsibilities investigated. Many assumed that the responsibilities were American.
The Libyan and French front has never been investigated. The history of the Libyan MiG 23 that fell on Sila has never been clarified.
Politics and the investigating judiciary have never wanted (or could?) To investigate 360 degrees
SB accurately describes Iran's initially very repentant behavior ...
I understand that sometimes you have to be provocative to stimulate a response but to say that IRAN-ITALY 1-0 implicitly means affirming that the Tehran regime has behaved more transparently than the many Italian governments that have followed one another since the time of the "disaster" of Ustica.
The conditions are objectively different: now even the man on the street has a recording device always available, there are surveillance cameras practically everywhere, from sensitive sites to ... nursery schools!
In any case, if the media reported the event correctly, initially someone from Tehran spoke of an "engine explosion" and attempted to attribute the disaster to the unfortunate 737MAX 800 project (for the DC-9 of Ustica "structural failure" was hypothesized as the primary cause of the disaster, if I remember correctly).
The spread of video footage of the launch of the Iranian anti-aircraft missiles has dispelled any doubts regarding the mechanics of the event - responsibilities remain to be ascertained.
As for "USTICA" obviously, there was no evidence of eyewitnesses nor, much less, photo / video footage that could provide irrefutable proof (it was 1980, even if the disaster had not happened on the high seas, and at night , who would have had a decent camera handy? Let alone a movie camera!)
I do not intend to make the history of journalistic investigations of trials, appraisals, sentences, etc. the specific case of USTICA; I just say that it is now much easier to find objective evidence of any event that can then be used in the investigation or as evidence of a crime.
AB wonders why governments from 1980 to today have refrained from asking for information ...
The excellent investigative work of the Prior Judge has led to a plausible reconstruction of the facts, although, unfortunately, without culprits or principals and it seems incredible to me that there are still those who favor the "accidental causes (read" bomb on board ") when the air war scenario that happened that night is clear.
From what I understand, there is still information covered by "military secret" at NATO level, which Prior has not been able to access: it is inexplicable that all our Governments have given up putting pressure to obtain it. Why, after 40 years?
The LB reader wonders what national interest can be so strategic and above all so lasting as to keep the story in the shadows still today ...
Forty years after the event in question, given what it is happened in Libya, if it could also have been falsely put on the blame Gaddafi, it would have already been done. Since it was not so e that the only certainty is that the demolition of Ustica was done of a missile, it could only have been a western missile. Whose it is difficult to say but recent history tells us that Gaddafi had many enemies and a friend (Italy) who was not totally free of to be and who, notoriously, has held and holds his feet in two shoes. Pit is probable that the death of the leader was planned, if not erro, he was going to Warsaw by plane in secret and that was it warned by us: for some reason the civilian plane Itavia was swapped for what he was traveling or should have traveled, Gaddafi and was pulled down. From who? Usa, France, UK? I think it matters little but I believe that, unfortunately, Italy also participated in the concealment evidence for the known issue of two feet in two shoes and this enough and advances to condemn ourselves for the lack of truth.
Of course at the time of the events of Ustica, those two feet protected national interest and, the lack of truth of the time responded to balances that could not be altered: unjustifiable conduct but understandable.
Today, unfortunately, we don't even try to protect the national interest and an uncomfortable truth, of which we are surely a knowledge, as well as a gesture of loyalty to the victims, it could make us remove some pebbles from the shoes towards who, not us, wanted the end of the Libyan regime: us, a serious mistake strategic, we queued to those who decided that end and, unfortunately, we come to today's reality in which we risk being or maybe we are already out of the game in that country to the detriment of everyone our interests not only in libya but throughout the mediterranean Oriental.
To conclude, if the concealment of the truth at the time protected our national strategic interest, what is it for today?
The conclusion is entrusted to the ancient reader Sergio Pession.
Ustica and Tehran. Why two weights and two measures? I think it's simple. There is no honesty, sense of justice or truth, but only 40 years of technology and interests of difference.
Was Iran honest to admit responsibility? No, at first he denied everything firmly, but half the world is against him, the technologies (videos, satellites etc.) are such that you can't even stop behind a bush when he runs away without being seen, let alone hit an airliner with a missile in a controlled sky like the Iraqi one. So in the end, Iran preferred the dignified path of "spontaneous" admission in order to save face and go honest.
Who is responsible for the Ustica massacre (or who is informed of the facts) is dishonest in keeping silent? Yes, but he is aware that he has powerful and hitherto untouchable nations on his side, technologies from 40 years ago that are anything but evidentiary and as many years of complicit silence.
Was a NATO missile striking the plane in Ustica? Prove it! Who is going against NATO even if it were?
So there are no honest and dishonest. There are only innocent victims, those always; then there are those responsible who in one case are too strong and paraculated to be caught; and finally those who are too observed and highly prepared enemies who prevent them from escaping. And let's not forget that those who are now 80 years old, come from a generation of sixty-eight deployed (on one side or the other) and those who are 60 are worthy of it. So at the time of Ustica, apart from propaganda, the law of silence and reason of state was in force among these people.
Those involved today, apart from propaganda, use information, transparency and semantics as a weapon for information warfare and public consensus.
