Secret Agents Set to Tackle Italian Mafia

ROME — The Italian government named its top anti-Mafia official as head of civilian intelligence Friday as it prepared to throw secret agents into the battle against organized crime.

Prime Minister Giuliano Amato called for the agents to be brought in after two leading Sicilian judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, were murdered in Palermo, the island’s capital.

He said Tuesday the agents were no longer needed to combat the former Soviet KGB and should be used to infiltrate Italian organized crime instead.

Sicilian-born Angelo Finocchiaro, Italy’s anti-Mafia high commissioner since August, 1991, was appointed head of civilian intelligence, an official statement said.

Finocchiaro, 62, was civil governor in Palermo when the Italian state dealt its most powerful blow against the Mafia, a mass trial of about 350 gangsters in 1987.

Italy has a separate military intelligence branch.

Intelligence agencies had been widely blamed for failing to prevent Borsellino’s killing despite warnings from a Mafia informer and the judge himself that his life was in danger.

Paramilitary police intelligence said in a secret report days before the killing that a large consignment of explosives had arrived in Sicily and was destined for the judge.