The CIA, the Mafia, and the Italian Election of 1948
After the overthrow of Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party in Italy, the Italian government was dominated by a coalition of political entities that included the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party. As Europe began to rebuild after the Second World War the influence of the Soviet Union was felt throughout the continent. In the winter of 1948, a Soviet-backed Communist coup occurred in Czechoslovakia, moving the country strongly to the Soviet sphere. American foreign policy professionals were deeply concerned over the influence of the Soviets in Italian politics.
If Italy were to be positioned under the influence of the Soviets it would provide the Communist bloc with a location in the center of the Mediterranean, isolating the Middle East from British and American shipping. In the 1948 Italian elections, the Soviets had an opportunity to consolidate influence and power in the Italian peninsula. America’s newly formed CIA, derived from the wartime Office of Strategic Services – the OSS – moved to prevent a communist takeover of the Italian government.
CIA operatives and agents worked with contacts which they had made and nurtured during the war years within the American and Italian mafias. These contacts provided links to local politicians in Italy and provided financial support through the direct distribution of funds provided by the US government through the CIA.
The CIA also provided funds to Mafia connected labor leaders to ensure that the communists would not be able to obtain control of the labor unions, and thus their important support in the general elections. In the United States, more than 200 labor leaders of Italian-American descent met in conferences and generated letters to newspapers in Italy endorsing resistance to communist influence in the unions. The United States also announced that Italians who endorsed the communist party in Italy would be forever denied entry into the United States.
As they had during the war, Italian and American Mafia leaders worked in tandem with US intelligence agents to identify persons of influence and to provide them with the funds necessary for them to control the vote in their areas. The Communist Party in Italy suffered a crushing defeat in the 1948 elections, but US funding of Italian political parties, labor unions, and organized crime members continued in Italy well into the 1960s.