ITALY: Test of Fire

For five months Italy’s Montesi case smoldered beneath the surface like a bog fire. Last week it burst into flame. The government was scorched, the Foreign Minister was forced to resign, and one whole stratum of Italian society was illuminated in garish light.

The Montesi case would not die, as pretty Wilma Montesi herself had died, obscurely on an Ostia beach 13 miles southwest of Rome (TIME, Feb. 15). At first her death was dismissed as accidental drowning, then came hints of murder. Suddenly sparked by a criminal libel suit, a vast scandal flared up, involving sex, narcotics, and playboys with high connections. The trial produced lurid accounts of the ringleader, one Ugo Montagna, whose claim to be a Sicilian marquis proved to be bogus but whose talent in another direction was undeniable: despite his luxurious way of life, he paid little income tax, and got away with it. Also involved was young (32) Jazz Pianist Piero Piccioni, son of the Foreign Minister. In a letter made public, one girl claimed that he was the “assassin” for Montagna’s ring.

Rome’s Police Chief Saverio Polito re signed just before the case first broke onto the front pages. A little later, the heat of the case forced the resignation of National Police Chief Tommaso Pavone. But still there were no arrests, and even less effort in the government to get to the bottom of the affair. People began to compare the Montesi case to France’s famed I’Affaire Dreyfus.

Suppressing the Facts. Superficially there was little resemblance to that ugly outbreak of anti-Semitism and politics in the French army in the 1890s. What the two cases did have in common was their threat to the whole fabric of government. Men of integrity in the Italian government tried to suppress the Montesi case, not because they were themselves enveloped in its murky mists but because a whole governing society regarded itself, and its competence to govern, involved in the revelations of privileges, corruption and injustice. The government dared not abandon investigation of the case, but was unwilling to pursue it, because of the vast aid and comfort it was giving to the Communists.

Premier Mario Scelba’s regime did keep Investigating Magistrate Raffaele Sepe at work on the case. Last week, after secretly questioning some 500 witnesses, Sepe turned over the last of 16,000 pages of evidence to the government prosecutor. Nothing happened. After three days’ waiting, Magistrate Sepe took an unusual step to prod higher authorities to action: he pointed his finger at four prominent figures by the simple expedient of canceling their passports. The four: Pianist Piero Piccioni, Ugo Montagna, ex-Police Chief Saverio Polito and, to the surprise of almost everyone, Prince Maurice of Hesse, 28-year-old grandson of Italy’s late King Victor Emmanuel. The magistrate’s action came at an awkward time, with the Scelba government already off balance by the French defeat of EDC and the delay in settling Trieste.

Submerged in Mud. At this point, Scelba finally accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Piccioni. “I feel that my place must be beside my son,” he said. As new Foreign Minister, Scelba upgraded his Education Minister, Gaetano Martino. No longer did it seem possible to stifle the Montesi case with a conspiracy of silence.

“This Montesi case,” said Turin’s La Stampa, a journal both respected and friendly to the Christian Democrats, “is growing into the big and decisive test of Italian democracy. Either we face without fear the test of truth and confound our accusers, or we shall be submerged in the mud which is now being thrown at us.”