Extract over Ciolini from the book "Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy - 2002 Philip Willan"
Another not entirely reliable account has been offered by Elio Ciolini, a collaborator of the French secret services who had been in contact with Stefano Delle Chiaie in South America. Ciolini was in prison in Switzerland for fraud when he contacted the Italian authorities, offering them information about the Bologna bombing if they paid his bail for him. He initially convinced magistrates that the decision to commission the bombing was taken at a meeting of a secret masonic lodge in Monte Carlo attended by an assortment of Italy's business and political leaders and that its purpose was to distract attention from the privatization of Montedison, a major state-owned petrochemical company. The takeover was to be financed partly with American funds and the bombing would distract the attention of political forces likely to oppose such a move. Ciolini named several right-wingers from France and Germany whom he accused of having participated in the organization of the bombing.
He subsequently went on to embroider his acount until he succeeded in totally discredting it and himself. He could not, though, have embarked on the projct without a fund of first-hand knowledge about Stefano Delle Chiaie, who remains one of the suspected partipants in the conspiracy behind he bombing. According to one account, the antics of this bizarre "supergrass" delayed the Bologna enquiry by as much as two years. Ciolini's role followed the pattern of other superwitnesses employed by the secret services to undermine terrorism investigations: they start by telling a story that is true or at least plausible and then go on to add more and more falsehoods until truth and falsehood become indistringuishable ad the reliable leads they may have touched on are definitely discredited.
Though Ciolini's word is definitely unreliable, he did offer an interesting portrait of himself with L'Europeo magazine (30 May 1987). "I have always considered myself to be a suitable instrument for blocking the rise of communism, both in Italy and abroad," he said. "I have worked to this end without ever following my own initative, but always carrying out orders." This is a curious autobiography for someone who has been actively involved in blocking the invetsigation into the Bologna bombing. Ciolini's comment about Delle Chiaie is also revealing: "He was doing the same work as me, under the mask of a right-wing terrorist. But he's a good man, an idealist." In 1984 and 1985, Ciolini appears to have found refuge in the United States, where he allegedly enjoyed the protection of an FBI agent named Steve Vitale.
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