Page 146 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

786 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

The VII legislature was able to enact with a large political consensus, and only
one “reading” and discussion in the two branches of Parliament, the first reform in the
modern sense of the Information Services for Security, the Law no.801 of October 24,
1977, thirty years later followed by the Law no.124 of 2007, with new principles derived
from the experience of the previous one, and the more recent Law 133 of August 7,
2012, considered only as an ‘important maintenance work’.
Which were the main important changes in 1977? For the first time in the Italian
history of intelligence the entire responsibility of the sector was given to the President
of the Council of Ministers who had to outline the policy directives for intelligence;
the Ministers of Defense and Interior had to implement them on Prime Minister’s
instructions. A Ministers Committee was set up to help in the implementation, but
above all the novelty was a Parliament Committee (Chamber of Deputies and Senate),
composed by ten representatives of the governing political parties and the opposition
ones, for a strict control (mainly financial) of Intelligence Services: a new transparency
both financial always (…in theory) and operative when possible. In 2007 the most
important change is that the Prime Minister is given full responsibility of the sector,
direction and implementation, not dividing it with other Ministers, not even Defense
or Interior. Financial Ministers and Foreign Affairs one became permanent members of
the Ministers’ Committee which can have other not permanent members if interested
in the questions at stake. The Parliament Committee is given more power to control
the Services and the Prime Minister has to report to this Committee and to Parliament
what has been done and is to be, every six months. It must be said that since 2007
the Reports to the Parliament are very well organized and very interesting above all
concerning which has been the intelligence policy of the State and the way it has been
implemented. 10
Italian Armed Forces now have some intelligence sectors (as all the other NATO
Forces have) within the General Chief of Staff High Command and in the Army, Navy,
Aviation, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza, mainly concerned with operational
intelligence above all for peace-keeping missions abroad.
Intelligence is now ‘global’, not only military as it was considered in the past: it does
not concern only the military information or the obsolete though useful intelligence
about ‘opinions and morals of the people’ but also and above the effects of the economic
crisis and social unrest, the faults in banking and financial circuits, the financing of
terrorism, the cybernetic threats and of course it has to produce the analysis of the geo-
strategic regions nearer Italy, which means the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the
Near and Middle East, the current upheavals in that area.
Intelligence has had a deep conceptual, methodological and operational evolution
and its structure is absolutely necessary, with the due transparency, precisely in order to
safeguard the stability of the democratic institutions of the State, under the control of
Parliament, expression of the ‘citizens’ sovereign will.

10 See for example the interesting and explanatory last Report to the Parliament concerning the information
policy for Security 2012, in www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it.