1993

"On 12 March 1993, the city witnessed the gory face of terror for the first time. As many as 13 blasts shook the city on that fateful day. RDX was used in the explosive devices planted to inflict the maximum damage of life and property. It emerged that the underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim, had been behind these blasts. He had apparently shook hands with ISI with the purpose of avenging the Babri Masjid demolition. Dawood Ibrahim managed to leave the country before the serial blasts. There is ample evidence indicating that he runs his empire of crime from Pakistan and that the ISI plays the good host in return for his help in implementing its anti-India conspiracies."

"After the attack, CM Pawar announced that the blasts had occurred in 13 places, though in real, there had been 12 blasts in total that day. So, why did the chief minister lie? Pawar made a call to tell this lie after he found out that all of the 12 blasts had occurred in Hindu-dominated areas. In an attempt to keep communal violence at bay, Pawar had hurried to the Doordarshan studios and announced that blasts had occurred at 13 places in the city. The 13th place, he named, was Musjid Bunde, a Muslim-dominated locality. Later, when Pawar accepted his lie, he was praised by the Justice Srikrishna Commission."

"Perhaps the only surprise to come out of Pawar's deposition was that he reinforced, though inadvertently, the belief that politicians cannot always be trusted to tell the truth in times of crisis. Pawar told the commission that, following the serial bomb blasts which shattered the city's fragile peace in March 1993, he deliberately lied to the public. He said that in a bid to avert another round of Hindu-Muslim rioting, he had dubbed the blasts as the handiwork of the LTTE. The morality of the statement can be debated endlessly, but the fact remains that he misled the public."

"The blasts, which left 357 people dead and 717 others injured, actually occurred at only 11 places. However, then chief minister Sharad Pawar told the nation that the blasts had occurred at 12 places. This admission came on Sunday from Pawar himself. He said he deliberately lied that the blasts had occurred at 12 places. He was speaking during the 89th edition of the All India Marathi Literary Meet at Dnyanaba-Tukaram Nagari (Hindustan Antibiotics Ground), Pimpri, 15 km from Pune. Pawar said that he did so in the larger interest of the public, and, for that lie, he was even praised by the Justice Srikrishna Commission. He then described the sequence of events. On March 12, 1993, he came to learn from officials that all the 11 blasts had occurred in Hindu-dominated areas. Since it was Pakistan’s plan to foment communal violence, the then chief minister immediately rushed to the Doordarshan studios and announced that blasts had occurred at 12 places in what was then Bombay. The 12th place where Pawar ‘exploded’ the bomb was Masjid Bunder. After this announcement, Hindus and Muslims thought that the blasts were not targeted at any particular community and the government was able to restore normal life fast, Pawar said. In fact, after the serial blasts on Friday, Bombay returned to normalcy on Monday itself, he said. 77“When you are running a state or when you are part of the administration, you are required to lie at times for the larger public interest,” Pawar said. 77When the Justice Srikrishna Commission asked him about the Masjid Bandar blast, Pawar explained the circumstances.The commission even lauded him for the same, he said. That’s one bomb that saved so many lives."

"Israel is now waging a war against civilians, pure and simple, although you will never hear it put that way in the United States. This is a racist war and, in its strategy and tactics, a colonial one as well. People are being killed and made to suffer disproportionately because they are not Jews. What an irony! Yet CNN never refers to “occupied” territories (always rather to “violence in Israel,” as if the main battlefields were the concert halls and cafés of Tel Aviv and not in fact the ghettos and besieged refugee camps of Palestine that have already been surrounded by no less than 150 illegal Israeli settlements). For the past ten years, the great fraud of Oslo was foisted on the world by the United States, with hardly an awareness that only 18 percent of the West Bank was given up, and 60 percent of Gaza. No one knows geography, and it’s better not to know, since the reality on the ground is so astonishing, considering the verbal hoopla and self-congratulation. And that pseudo-pundit—the insufferably conceited Thomas Friedman—still has the gall to say that “Arab TV” shows one-sided pictures, as if “Arab TV” should be showing things from Israel’s point of view the way CNN does, with “Mideast violence” the catchall word for the ethnic cleansing that Israel is wreaking on the Palestinians in their ghettos and camps. Has Friedman (or CNN, for that matter) ever tried to point out the difference between an attacking army fighting a colonial war on the territory of the people it has occupied for thirty-five years, and the people defending against that butchery? Of course not, for indeed why should Friedman ever bother to say honestly that there is no Palestinian occupation, there are no Palestinian F-16s, no Apache helicopters, no gunboats, no Merkava tanks, in short, no Palestinian occupation of Israel. So much for Friedman’s credentials as an honest commentator and reporter, who has utterly failed in unadorned terms both to explain the U.S. view and to understand the Arab and Palestinian cause. Can he not see that he and his writings are part of the problem, that in their maundering selfjustifications and their dishonesty, showing no sign of the self-criticism he keeps hectoringly expecting of others, he actually aggravates the ignorance and the misperceptions rather than reducing them? Poor journalist and educator, he."

"Gli attentati contro i giudici Falcone e Borsellino nel 1992 rappresentano una svolta nelle strategie criminali di Cosa nostra. La loro lettura non appare difficile: la mafia, che avverte un crescente isolamento, una più intensa pressione investigativa, attacca duramente le due persone più esposte nella lotta contro la criminalità. Gli attentati del 1993 sono di più difficile lettura, perché apparentemente non hanno dei precisi obiettivi "militari", non perseguono l'eliminazione fisica di soggetti pericolosi per l'organizzazione mafiosa. Perché questi attentati durante il governo Ciampi? Forse che con esso ogni aggancio è impossibile, irrecuperabile? È forse per questo che, con una strategia stragistica, si vuole dimostrare l'incapacità di controllo dell’Esecutivo sul territorio nazionale, e per tale via delegittimarlo?"

"Il mio governo fu contrassegnato dalle bombe. Ricordo [...] quel 27 luglio, avevo appena terminato una giornata durissima che si era conclusa positivamente con lo sblocco della vertenza degli autotrasportatori. Ero tutto contento, e me ne andavo a Santa Severa per qualche ora di riposo. Arrivai a tarda sera, e a mezzanotte mi informarono della bomba a Milano. Chiamai subito Palazzo Chigi, per parlare con Andrea Manzella che era il mio segretario generale. Mentre parlavamo al telefono, udimmo un boato fortissimo, in diretta: era l'esplosione della bomba di San Giorgio al Velabro. Andrea mi disse "Carlo, non capisco cosa sta succedendo...", ma non fece in tempo a finire, perché cadde la linea. Io richiamai subito, ma non ci fu verso: le comunicazioni erano misteriosamente interrotte. [...] ebbi paura che fossimo a un passo da un colpo di Stato. [...] corsi come un pazzo in macchina, e mi precipitai a Roma. Arrivai a Palazzo Chigi all'una e un quarto di notte, convocai un Consiglio supremo di difesa alle 3, perché ero convinto che lo Stato dovesse dare subito una risposta forte, immediata, visibile. Alle 4 parlai con Scalfaro al Quirinale, e gli dissi "presidente, dobbiamo reagire". Alle 8 del mattino riunii il Consiglio dei ministri, e subito dopo partii per Milano. Il golpe non ci fu, grazie a dio. Ma certo, su quella notte, sui giorni che la precedettero e la seguirono, resta un velo di mistero."

"Nel '93, Cosa nostra ebbe in subappalto una vera e propria strategia della tensione che ebbe nelle bombe di Roma, Milano e Firenze soltanto il suo momento più drammatico. [...] L'attentato al patrimonio artistico e culturale dello Stato assumeva una duplice finalità: orientare la situazione in atto in Sicilia verso una prospettiva indipendentista, sempre balzata fuori nei momenti critici della storia siciliana, e organizzare azioni criminose eclatanti che, sconvolgendo, avrebbero dato la possibilità ad un'entità esterna di proporsi come soluzione per poter riprendere in pugno l'intera situazione economica, politica, sociale, che veniva dalle macerie di Tangentopoli. [...] Certamente Cosa nostra, attraverso queste azioni criminali ha inteso agevolare l'avvento di nuove realtà politiche che potessero poi esaudire le sue richieste'"

"Paradossalmente, il clamore sanguinario della stagione stragista del '92-'93 segnò la sconfitta storica di Cosa Nostra."

"C'è un atto assolutamente pubblico, la requisitoria del pubblico ministero Luca Tescaroli al processo di appello per la strage di Capaci [...]: voi ricorderete che in quei 50 giorni saltarono in aria i due giudici più famosi d'Italia, a Palermo, cioè Falcone e Borsellino: intere autostrade sventrate, cioè una cosa mai vista; forse in Colombia. E questo pubblico ministero nella requisitoria ha sostenuto, ha ricordato, le parole di alcuni collaboratori di giustizia i quali sostengono che Totò Riina, prima di mettere a punto queste stragi, aveva incontrato alcune persone importanti, come le chiamava lui, e questi pentiti riferiscono che erano Berlusconi e Dell'Utri. [...] e altre indagini ci sono sulle stragi del '93, perché voi ricorderete che nel '93 ci fu quella replica, quando la mafia stranamente cominciò ad occuparsi del patrimonio artistico: cioè, la mafia uscì dal territorio siciliano e cominciò a mettre bombe agli Uffizi, a via Palestro a Milano e [...] a Roma, a San Giovanni in Laterano, per non parlare dell'attentato a Maurizio Costanzo, che è un altro caso clamoroso: è molto interessante, soltanto a livello cronologico, leggere quello che racconta Cartotto, e cioè che Maurizio Costanzo era uno, all'interno della Fininvest, ferocemente contrario alla nascita del partito della Fininvest, cioè alla "scesa in campo" della Fininvest in politica. Insomma, è un bel quadretto."

"Falcone and Borsellino were killed, with and through the mafia, at least with the active collaboration of an external entity. [...] These were certainly not merely mafia massacres. Indeed, based on the investigations, we should no longer even refer to them in this way. They were massacres carried out by an anti-state entity, which was—or perhaps still is—nestled within and against the state."

"Is this entity that ordered the massacres of ’92 and ’93 the same one that has always stepped in during periods of transition? Is it the same one behind Piazza Fontana and Piazza della Loggia, the attack on the Milan Police Headquarters by the anarchist Bertoli, and the Moro kidnapping? If not, it is unclear what power could have brought together, in all these bloody episodes, things as seemingly distant as right-wing extremism and the Red Brigades, the secret services and P2, the Banda della Magliana, and perhaps even elements of left-wing terrorism. This tangle of interests that intervenes every time to steer history through coups, through the violence of massacres, intervened [...] in ’92 and ’93, at the dawn of the Second Republic."

"Interviewer: Can what happened in ’92–’93 be defined as a kind of coup? Veltroni: In short, let’s be clear. Do you believe that Totò Riina was really the head of the Mafia? A Mafia that moves 130 billion euros a year? Do you believe that Riina or Provenzano had ever heard of the Velabro or the Georgofili in their lives? Is it conceivable that the Mafia, with its centuries-old codes, adopted the terrorist language of massacres for the first time since Portella della Ginestra without a strong, political reason? [...] Those were the days of Tangentopoli, the end of the parties of the First Republic, and the devaluation of the lira. We were emerging from that earthquake with the Ciampi government. Ciampi took office in April 1993. On May 27, there was the attack in Florence; on July 27, those in Milan and Rome. Then there was the failed attack at the Olympic Stadium [...]. And then the massacres ended. Why? There are two questions, and the answer, I fear, is one. Why did the Mafia start carrying out the massacres? Why did the Mafia stop carrying out the massacres?"