Federico Umberto D'Amato (4 June 1919 – 1 August 1996)Carlo Lucarelli, ''Piazza Fontana'', Turin, Einaudi, 2007. p. 100 was an Italian secret agent, who led the Office for Reserved Affairs of the

Ministry of Interior (Italy) The Ministry of the Interior ( it, Ministero dell'Interno) is a government agency of Italy, headquartered in Rome. It is cabinet-level ministry of the Italian Republic. As of September 2019, Luciana Lamorgese, former Prefect of Milan and Member ...

from the 1950s till the 1970s, when the activity of the intelligence service was undercover and not publicly known.

Biography

D'Amato was born in

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fran ...

, and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

he worked for the US

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all bran ...

. After the end of the conflict he was at the head of the

North Atlantic Treaty The North Atlantic Treaty, also referred to as the Washington Treaty, is the treaty that forms the legal basis of, and is implemented by, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 194 ...

Special Office, a link between

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. At the end of World War II US intelligence recruited large numbers of officials from the

Republic of Salò The Italian Social Republic ( it, Repubblica Sociale Italiana, ; RSI), known as the National Republican State of Italy ( it, Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia, SNRI) prior to December 1943 but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò ...

and from the Italian Special Forces, Decima MAS, with the help of D'Amato to operate in the newly founded Italian state. This recruitment program included prominent figures such as Prince Valerio Borghese,

Pino Rauti Giuseppe Umberto "Pino" Rauti (19 November 1926 – 2 November 2012) was an Italian fascist and politician who was a leading figure on the radical right (Europe), radical right for many years, although Rauti was describing himself as a "left-wing ...

and

Licio Gelli Licio Gelli (; April 21, 1919 – December 15, 2015) was an Italian financier. A Fascist volunteer in his youth, he is chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the cl ...

, who are believed to have played a major role in the terrorist attacks in Cold War Italy. D'Amato's later contact with the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

was

James Jesus Angleton James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1974. His official position within the organization was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for ...

. He entered the Office for Reserved Affairs of the Italian of the Minister of Interior in 1957. In 1974, two days after the

Piazza della Loggia bombing The Piazza della Loggia bombing was a bombing that took place on the morning of 28 May 1974, in Brescia, Italy during an anti-fascist protest. The terrorist attack killed eight people and wounded 102. The bomb was placed inside a rubbish bin at t ...

, he was removed from the position and assigned to the boundary police, although he kept a strong influence on the office until the 1980s. For his activity as the office's director (1969-1974) he has been accused of sidetracking numerous investigations about the massacres occurred in that period. D'Amato was a member of

Propaganda 2 Propaganda Due (; P2) was a Masonic lodge under the Grand Orient of Italy, founded in 1877. Its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976, and it transformed into a criminal, clandestine, anti-communist, anti-Soviet, anti-leftist, pseudo-Masonic, ...

(P2), a secret masonic lodge involved in numerous political and economical scandals in the 1970s. An expert of gastronomy, he held a column in the weekly ''

L'espresso ''L'Espresso'' () is an Italian weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is ''Panorama''. Since 2022 it has been published by BFC Media. History and profile One of Italy's foremost newsmagazines, ''l ...

'', under the pseudonym of Federico Godio. He appeared in a BBC documentary about

Operation Gladio Operation Gladio is the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (alliance), Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European Int ...

in 1992.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:D'Amato, Federico Umberto 1919 births 1996 deaths People from Marseille

Biography

See also

References