![]() ![]() Chat in the land of political inference, especially when appraising the US role, focuses on how considerably different the meddling tends to be. Hair splitting in these sorts of things is the order of the day. After De Gasperi’s victory, covert US aid to Italy’s centrist parties continued into the 1960s. Contingency plans were laid for the prospect of US military intervention in the event of civil strife. ![]() US intelligence officials got to work ensuring that the Italian Communist Party (PCI), allied with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) were kept out of office in favour of Alcide De Gasperi. ![]() As Walter Dowling, Italian desk officer at the US State Department urged in a memorandum in November 1946, the US had to become increasingly involved with Italian affairs, making itself “so pro-damned Italian that even the dumbest wop would sense the drift.” Being so damnably pro-Italian naturally meant being anti-communist. It was the Central Intelligence Agency’s first covert operation, and it was ignominiously undemocratic. In 1948, the United States, still flushed with victory, made a punchy bid to interfere with the outcome of the Italian elections. The issue of electoral interference would certainly be at the fore it would also be fitting that a state so indifferent to the electoral sovereignty of others would now find itself constantly fearing large return servings. Were the US body politic capable of being examined on the clinician’s couch, historical fears, psychic disturbances, and a range of unsettling syndromes would be identified. It is all part of the delicious mess that any observer of US politics has come to expect. ![]()
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