Fabrizio Cicchitto

"Ho pensato di iscrivermi a quella loggia come ci si iscrive al Rotary, ai Lions. Così quando è scoppiato lo scandalo P2 non mi restava che il suicidio..."

"Ho capito, ad esempio, che Bettino Craxi e Claudio Martelli c'erano dentro fino al collo con Gelli e Ortolani. Ad esempio, la storia dei 30 milioni di dollari, del conto Protezione, mica è uno scherzo. C'è da credere davvero che in quegli anni, con tutti quei soldi, si siano comprati il PSI."

"Se io, Signorile e De Michelis fossimo rimasti insieme, saremmo riusciti a contrastare Craxi. Insieme funzionavamo, purtroppo andò in maniera diversa e per me alla rottura contribuì anche un problema finanziario."

"We do not believe that turning a self-deprecating joke into a gruesome and vulgar challenge to the public is the height of proper reporting. Unfortunately, that is what Enzo Biagi is doing today in the Corriere della Sera. All this is topped off with a grossly sexist remark directed at the provincial coordinator of Forza Italia in Bolzano. If there were a festival of bad taste and misinformation today, this time Biagi would have won first prize."

"You will get nowhere by setting up small firing squads that, in the name of the single party, beat up Berlusconi."

"The hand of the man who attacked Berlusconi was fuelled by a ruthless hate campaign, [waged] by the Repubblica-L’Espresso publishing group, by that morning paper of the public prosecutors known as “'Il Fatto”', by a programme hosted by Santoro and by a media terrorist named Travaglio, as well as by certain public prosecutors, who are handling some of the most sensitive trials concerning the relationship between the Mafia and politics and who appear on television to demonise Berlusconi. And by a party such as Idv, with its leader Di Pietro, who in recent days has been inciting violence."

"The monsters are the secret services, an increasingly substantial and dynamic structure that intervenes continuously, massively and oppressively in political and social reality [...] In 1968–69, the protest movement shook the established order, which, in turn, sought to recover in various ways, one of which was the systematic, provocative and violent terrorist activity of specific sectors of the separate bodies of the State [...] The monsters fabricate opposing extremisms: the regime’s darling, Rai TV, is responsible for amplifying the distortion, presenting it as objective; Sid and Rai TV, two very different entities and yet so close when it comes to supporting, in critical decisions, the DC regime. [...] True to form, the Red Brigades reappear on the eve of every election. (1975, introduction to Marco Sassano’s book “Sid and the American Party. The role of the CIA, the secret services and the separate corps in the strategy of subversion", published by Marsilio. Quoted from “”Micromega“”, 16 December 2009)"

"Craxi preferred to say no rather than yes. You leave Berlusconi’s office with a smile; even if his generosity sometimes leads him to say a few too many yeses."

"Craxi’s mortal sin was not the bribes; it was his choice of autonomy. That, indeed, was not forgiven him."

"Bettino is blamed for never having broken with the Christian Democrats; but, when he showed himself ready to do so, Berlinguer was on the verge of reaching an agreement with De Mita and Spadolini for a "different government", with technocrats, just to marginalise the Socialists."

"(About Bettino Craxi) A giant, a part of the country’s history. To criminalise him is a vulgar act. How many crimes did Togliatti commit or cover up in the 1930s and 1940s? Yet he is considered part of our history. Craxi’s true ‘crime’ was to restore ideological autonomy to the Socialists, dismantling the myth of Lenin and indeed that of Gramsci as well."

"Being notoriously a troglodyte, Francesco Speroni is incapable of speaking about the First, Second or even Third Republic. Fortunately, the Lega in the Chamber, the Senate and local authorities has a political class of a different calibre."

"It is regrettable that some Fini supporters have aped Travaglio, plundering his books and writings to the full."

"(About the incident involving the Italian fishing boat fired upon by a Libyan patrol boat) We are dealing with a counterpart who is addafi, a man with unique characteristics but one with whom we must reckon. He could dump thousands and thousands of immigrants on our shores. The whole fishing boat incident must be condemned; it is deplorable, but a break with Gaddafi and with Libya would have disastrous consequences for our country."

"In the coming hours we will see the true scale of the Wikileaks operation and will therefore be able to give a considered assessment. In any case, it is now clear that the very concept of terrorism has come to have a much broader meaning than the traditional one. It is evident that there is a form of media terrorism which, in certain respects, can be far more effective than traditional terrorism. In Italy, this modern and sophisticated form of terrorism has been underway for some time and has become increasingly aggressive in recent months."

"The proposal to lower the age of majority is one of the issues on the table but it is not the most urgent one."

"The former AN members are in a state of perpetual congress; every now and then the mechanism kicks in."

"It is clear that the current electronic voting system is unable to effectively safeguard the secrecy of MPs’ votes and, consequently, it would be appropriate to use another system for this purpose, for example, one involving black and white balls to be placed in the ballot box, perhaps inside mobile booths."

"In the face of death, it is clear that political differences fade away. For this reason, we express our deepest condolences on the death of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who was always – in all the political and institutional roles he held – a consistent and fierce political opponent of ours."

"(Referring to the onti Government) This Government had three objectives, or at least three slogans: austerity, growth, fairness. As far as austerity is concerned, there has been an extraordinary and exceptional degree of it. We acknowledge that the Government has gone beyond even what was required by the economic and financial logic of Italy and the international context. Zero growth, zero fairness: this is our assessment of this government, and we also note that we have been faced with a unilateral policy in terms of a formal 45 per cent and a substantial 55 per cent increase in the tax burden, accompanied by such deep cuts to the spending of local authorities, regions and municipalities that the repercussions will be felt, be felt by ordinary citizens, and further exacerbated by that utterly sadistic measure that was the IMU."

"I recall when Paolo Guzzanti was chairman of the Mitrokhin parliamentary commission, which was tasked with investigating the illegal activities of the Soviet secret services in Italy up until 1984. Guzzanti wanted to ascertain whether Romano Prodi had been a Russian agent. This was absolutely untrue, even though he had very close ties with Moscow through the Prometeia association. In his hunt for this evidence, Guzzanti found himself caught up in a clash between Russian spies who were in the habit of using polonium to eliminate troublesome figures. So much so that his car was kept well away from Berlusconi’s residence. And the men in my security detail kept their distance from Guzzanti’s security detail, for fear of being contaminated by any radiation. This was, and is, Putin."

"I have said before that there was a bond of psychological homosexuality between Berlusconi and Putin: they admired one another and theirs was a relationship of absolute equality. Putin regarded this Italian entrepreneur, who controlled the television networks and had managed to make a name for himself in politics, as a genius. In turn, Berlusconi regarded him as a pragmatist, capable of running a country like Russia and with whom one could do many things together: from business to women."

"Putin wanted to get back into the big game. And he used Berlusconi and his connections with the Americans to return to the inner circle from which Russia had been excluded after the end of the Soviet Union."

"Berlusconi completely failed to grasp Putin’s cultural background, which was shaped by figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin. Each of these figures possessed a profoundly authoritarian streak, serving not to restore the Soviet Union but to perpetuate the myth of a Great Russia."

"Putin was the first to realise that the internet could be used to conduct politics and penetrate the system of liberal democracies—which he despises—in order to manipulate it. Through the internet, he backed Brexit, the Catalan independence referendum, Donald Trump’s election campaign and, most recently, the anti-vaxxers. He has always aimed to destabilise the West. But Berlusconi glossed over certain issues."

"A significant section of the West maintained that Putin was the head of the KGB with whom one could also do business. And whilst this was happening, Putin was invading Europe through his oligarchs, buying up football clubs, newspapers and political parties. No one wanted to see the dark side of the moon. Berlusconi didn’t, and neither did Prodi, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel... Shall I go on?"

"I cannot forget that he was the leader of the Socialists. In the Lega Nord, there is no one who belonged to the First Republic, and even many former members of the An cannot stomach this fact. Cicchitto was their opponent and now he is their group leader. It may suit him fine, but it annoys me that Berlusconi keeps inviting all the remnants of the First Republic."