"Moro is the man who emerges from his letters, those letters he wrote whilst a prisoner of the Red Brigades, which are the most painful and humiliating words ever to have come from a prison. The "distinguished statesman" who, when push comes to shove, renounces all the principles of the rule of law, seems to regard the State and its institutions as his own private property, and invites his party colleagues and the Republic’s leading representatives to do the same. The man who asks for mercy for himself but, in ninety letters, has not a single word for the men of his security police, killed for him; indeed, the only mention he makes of them is coldly bureaucratic, describing them as "administratively unfit". The politician who confirms the tradition of the Italian ruling class, ready to demand everything—even life itself—from the humble, yet never willing, on the rare occasions it happens, to pay the price personally (think of Mussolini fleeing under a German overcoat, or the way the king and Badoglio abandoned Rome). To say these things about a man who died as Moro did may seem—indeed, is—cruel. But it is the truth. And since I wrote these things whilst Moro was still alive ("Distinguished statesman or poor man?". Il Lavoro, 4 April 1978),"