Page 142 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

782 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Statistics), established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Turin, on March 28,
4
1836. In the Kingdom of Italy, after unity, the statesman treasured his experience.
In 1861 the Ministry of Interior of the Kingdom had an Office of High Political
Surveillance and a Directorate-General of Public Security, which became in 1879
Direction of the Public Security Services. In 1887 the Public Security Direction was
however reconstituted with a Prefect as its Chief.
In the last two decades of the Nineteenth Century, the Kingdom of Italy gained
solidity and institutional infrastructures: even so the intelligence Services began an
evolution that in the more modern sense, for the military ones will be effective only
in 1925, as well as for the civilian ones, especially inclined to maintaining the Fascist
regime security and stability.
The majority of published studies indicates the year 1900 as the one when Italian
military intelligence officially started but it is not so. The Information Office of the Army,
as formally established Office, already existed in 1897, when Colonel de Chaurand de
Saint Eustache was called to manage it, but you cannot say that the military intelligence
did not exist prior to that date: the Section or Information Office existed well before
1897, it received reports directly or in copy and after reading them, used to put its round
green inked stamp on the document testifying its actual existence. There is an historical
explanation to this anomaly in the organization charts: the Service Rules had to be
public and communicated to friendly states asking for them and then ‘fatally’ friends
and enemies knew the real duties of the various officers assigned to the Command of
the Royal Army: this particular detailed piece of information could have been harmful
for those going on a mission abroad…. responsible for informative missions or simply
to attend ceremonies or maneuvers to which the Royal Command had been invited. Not
mentioning their particular assignment, High Commands believed that these tasks could
escape to a tight control by foreign military organizations … This was the documented
reason of the disappearance from 1870 to 1906 of the Office ‘I’ instead existing, working
hard and slowly organizing itself. The Office finally came out from clandestinity with
the Agenda no. 37 of August 23, 1906, staffed only with a superior officer, a lieutenant
and a clerk. Few employees and limited financial resources.
As regards the metropolitan territory, it is interesting to remember that the
counterintelligence was not only played by the Royal Carabinieri but also by the Finance
Police, sending the collected information to the General Staff of the Army, and by the
Commissari (Police Inspectors) of Public Security, especially those on duty at the border
crossings or in the territories near by.
At that time it had not yet been established a directive body for military information,
because the Office was always considered a Section or even an Office but always as a
part of an upper structure and not a sector with its own orientation and management
autonomy.

4 The term ‘Commission of Statistics’ was later also used in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1851. Efficient
and ‘watchful’ Services, those of the Bourbons, but not of a great usefulness to the dynasty, because they were
interested ‘blindly’ in the safeguard of the Crown not understanding the political evolution of the kingdom
face to the new nationalistic spirit blowing all over the Italian Peninsula.