in paperback:
The Battle for Rome - Italian edition; The Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule

The changing landscape of the Aldo Moro tragedy: new revelations mark 30th anniversary of the kidnapping and assassination of Italy's preeminent statesman.

ARK obtains Washington's long-secret files on Aldo Moro. The CIA, FBI, and Department of State collections from 1962-1982; thousands of documents, released (reluctantly) to the Archives of Robert Katz under the Freedom of Information Act, now being catalogued, go on public view in Pergine Valdarno.

Among the early findings was myth-busting evidence of the U.S.'s pivotal role in backing the Rome government's shaky hard-line stance. From only minutes after the Moro kidnapping on March 16, 1978, Washington was pounded by an unprecedented outpouring of diplomatic telegrams, directly from          its Ambassador, Richard Gardner. His skewed reports and comments arriving daily — and sometimes virtually minute by minute — disclose a hidden agenda to quash any initiative to gain Moro's release and keep the Andreotti government in lockstep with an untried no-negotiations policy of leaving all stones unturned.

These telelgrams, wrote the Corriere della Sera in an advance review of the material, "[provide] a photograph of a Nation crushed by terrorism and trampled on by the political tension of the gravest crisis in its history as a republic, as seen by a Washington preoccupied by the possible consequences for its Italian ally." (click image for readable text)

Thus Gardner stressed, and often stretched, the "good news." In one telegram, for example, he reassured Washington that "From a source with ties to the [Moro] family, we understand that the family itself is opposed to the idea of an exchange [of prisoners]... they do not believe that Moro, himself, would want to be exchanged under circumstances which would be humiliating to him and to the state." Queried by the Corriere, a family spokesman replied unequivocally, "Any thought that the Moro family was contrary to an exchange of the president with whoever simply never existed." As for Gardner, his response to the Corriere was "I don't remember." Neither that telelgram nor any of the others, he said.

About the archives

An American writer's long, hard look at the Italy of his times, the content of Robert Katz's "ark," settles in under a Tuscan sky
Recently donated by the author to the small hilltop township where he resides, the archive has already received the state's highest designation: "archive of notable interest"

ERGINE VALDARNO (from combined dispatches) — Robert Katz, the American historian who became famous in Italy with the publication of his book Death in Rome, the fundamental reconstruction of the Ardeatine Caves massacre, has decided to donate his archives to the town of Pergine Valdarno. An official report to the Tuscan regional government's directorate of cultural affairs, concluded that Katz's choice represents an "unquestionable enrichment of the documentary holdings both for Tuscany and nationally." The report went on to describe the contents of the archive, noting that it included a library of about 1,000 rare books. According to this assessment of the archive, another feature setting it apart from standard items – in this case nearly 100,000 pages of correspondence, diaries, and written and audio-visual documents – consists of a vast array of material collected by the author during his ten-year court battle in Rome with the Vatican. "It contains a wealth of information about many well-known personalities," the report states. They range from several historical figures to international titans of the film world – an extension of the author's unique documentation of the Americans in Rome throughout the 1970s.

Now on DVD    The Unholy Battle for Rome
The History Channel's Primetime Special is based on Robert Katz's international best seller The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies the Partisans and the Pope, September 1945-June 1944.

"In September 1943, the German army marched into Rome, beginning a 9-month battle for control of the "Eternal City". It was the Allied aim to preserve the Holy City's sacred institutions and treasures. So the staggering human cost before the city's military conquest is nearly incomprehensible.... We hear from ordinary Roman citizens, informants, opportunists, spies, double agents, and Germans who risked death in efforts to save Jews. We see Rome as the hotbed of assassination, intrigue, treason, and bravery that it was as we look unflinchingly at unresolved controversies." - The History Channel online