Cops and Robbers in Palermo

"Vengeance direst vengeance, is all I live for now Heaven's thunderbolt shall strike through me." Rigeieno

POPE JOHN PAUL II, renowned world traveler, took a stroll in his own Italian backyard this weekend. The occasion: a papal mission to the bullet-riddled Sicilian city of Palermo. His visit came in the aftermath of one of the most outrageous acts of cold-blooded civic slaughter in recent memory. In a speech at the Piazza Palitearna, the Pope cautiously sympathized with Palermo's anguished citizens. "Facts of barbarous violence, which for too long a time have bloodied the strengths of this splendid city, offend human dignity."

The killers struck earlier this fall, in an episode that had all the makings of a chase seen out of The Godfather, Friday, September 3rd, 9 p.m.--General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, prefect of Palermo, emerges from his office after another full day of work. Waiting outside, at the usual time, is his wife Emmanuel, seated behind the wheel of their Autobianchi. The couple heads back to home at Villa Paino: several vehicles (police don't know how many) follow close on. At the appointed intersection, automatic weapons spray 40 rounds of ammunition at the car from point blank range. The murderers disappear into the night, leaving behind a smoking wreck of shattered glass, blood and the dead bodies of Dulla Chiesa and his wife. She is hit despite the General's pathetic efforts to shield her from the path of the on coming bullets. The ferocity of the attack surprises even the Italian tabloids the next day; usually the Mafia, following a perverse ancient code of honor, spares the spouse. This time, necessity overrules tradition.

Dalla Chiesa's death robbed Italy of its most charismatic para-military leader in years. The 62-year-old general had just come off a brilliantly successful campaign against the Red Brigades terrorist network in Rome when he was named prefect of Palermo last April. No better choice could have been made for this mission impossible--to fight the Sicilian Mafia on its own turf--than the selection of Dalla Chiesa. Having vanquished the kidnappers of U.S. Gen. James Dozier and the killers of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Dalla Chiesa stood for everything efficient, uncorrupted and powerful in Italian government.

Eager to assert the authority as duce of law enforcement, the prefect needlessly put his own life on the line. During the Red Brigade campaign. Dalla Chiesa kept on the move all the time, never sleeping in the same place for more than one night: But in Palermo, the routines changed drastically; in order to be among the townspeople, to inspire confidence and a sense of civic security, Dalla Chiesa led a highly visible and regular lifestyle. He could be seen many an afternoon, cheat out, in lightly colored tailored suit and shades boldly swaggering down the streets of Palermo--the Gary Cooper of Sicily. He felt sure no one would dare strike such a popular figure, and thus made no attempt to hide his whereabouts.

BUT THE MOB WANTED Dalla Chiesa dead, and for good reason. Sicily has become the operational headquarters for the booming international drug traffic racket, from the poppy fields of West Asia to the streets of New York. There's more than just profits in the Mafia business, however, at times the gangsters have been known to dominate local justices in peasant areas. Many believe the Mafia may even control the votes of up to 30 parliamentary deputies. With that much at stake, it is hardly surprising that since 1981,222 people have been identified as victims of organized crime executions in Palermo alone.

Dalla Chiesa came in the name of peace and order, with a formidable reputation for getting his way. The General had plans to strike hard and reach high--straight to the top, the untouchable dons of the Families. Other Italian officials had tried this sort of thing before: Cesare Terranova, a local magistrate, killed in 1970, Pio La Torre, Secretary of the Communist Party, dispatched in 1980, and the Procurator of the Republic, Gaetano Costa, slain in the same year. Dalla Chiesa stood next in the line of fire, as the only symbolic figure with the guts and skills to take on the Mafia. On September 2, he received the dossiers of several well--placed targets on his list of mobsters. The next day, he was dead.

The Italian people have reacted with a fury never before seen in such cases. At the funeral in the Basilica of San Domenico in Palermo, Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolon and his cabinet were heckled and abused by an angry crowd impartent with the government's seemingly ineffectual stand against violence. The long-over-due response came from Rome almost immediately. The President of the Republic promulgated a law granting broad powers of investigation to a newly created office of high commissioner against organized crime. The acts allows for a variety of lactics, including phone taps, extensive examination of personal bank records, and beefed-up protection for secret witnesses under interrogation.

ENTER THE MEN of the cloth, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, into the bloody strife of Palermo. For years, Church and Mafia have made the strangest of political bedfellows. The prelates refrained from outright condemnation because the Sicilian organization was viewed as a strong conservative, anti-communist force, a supporting pillar of peasant society. The mob glady played along.

Last month the on holy alliance began to crumble. Breaking their vow of silence, the Sicilian Bishops' Conference issued a declaration of excommunication on those who cooperate in the Mafia's criminal activities. Cardinal Pappalardo, one of the most vocal Sicilian church leaders, called for the end of the "hatred, vendettas, abductions and homicides," the work of "some individuals or criminal groups," as he called them.

The Pope was a little more direct in his remarks, blasting the Mafioso by name as "operators of aberrant manifestations of criminality." Hardly an all-out frontal assault, but then this pontiff has never been one for drastic action, Rather, he concluded with a hopeful vision of the future. "Delightful Palermo open haven, secure haven, live in serenity and peace."

That goal remains distant. The breash carabinieri general himself, shortly after accepting his post as prefect, admitted: "I don't speak of beating [the Mafia], only of containing them." After Dalla Chiesa's assassination, and the flouting of the state's authority that came with it, even containment seems impossible. Last weekend, for example, four new names, including that of a 15-year old boy, were added to the endless list of victims in Palermo's age-old battle for survival against those gangsters who, in John Paul's words, "have spilled so much blood, [and] caused so many dead on your streets."