ARMS AND THE MAN--AND THE RED BRIGADES.

• Author: Bridges, Peter
• Position: Viewpoint essay - Personal account

Title: ARMS AND THE MAN--AND THE RED BRIGADES

Author: Peter Bridges

Text:

In 1981 I was assigned to our Rome embassy as the deputy to the ambassador, Maxwell Rabb. The Red Brigade terrorists had been active in Italy for some years. They had been responsible for perhaps thousands of violent actions and had killed many people, most notably former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.

One day before I left Washington, my colleague Gary Matthews said "You are going to carry a weapon in Rome, I assume."

"Why, no. I don't have one and I don't plan to buy one."

"Go down to the Department armory and they'll fix you up."

I had no idea the State Department had an armory. I went there and asked if they could issue me a small derringer that would fit in a jacket pocket. They offered me a bulky .38 caliber pistol and holster which, when I tried them on, made a bulge in my suit jacket. I imagined walking across the lobby of the foreign ministry in Rome, and the pistol falling and clattering across the marble floor... or walking through the Villa Borghese park and shooting an obvious terrorist who came at me, and who turned out to be an innocent father of four. No, thank you.

After I got to Rome, in October 1981, there was a time or two when I wondered if I'd made the wrong decision. The so-called Red Brigades, born out of the student rebellion of the late 1960s, were continuing their nefarious activities, although they had utterly failed to gain the popular support they had hoped for.

So far there had been no attacks on Americans in Italy, but my counterpart in Paris, Christian Chapman, walked out of his house one morning and was fired on by a young terrorist. Fortunately, he was a poor shot and missed him.

On a Thursday evening in December my wife and I were sitting in bed reading, glad to be free for once from a diplomatic dinner. The bedside phone rang. It was the diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini.

"Peter," he said, "An American general has been kidnapped in Verona. We've set up a command center here in Palazzo Chigi and I suggest you send an officer to join us."

I called our political counselor, Robert Frowick, and he sped off to the command center.

Ambassador Rabb was in Genoa, having driven there to give a speech. He had an armored Cadillac and traveled with an escort of two police cars--but Aldo Moro had been kidnapped while traveling with a police escort, five members of whom were killed. I reached the ambassador by phone in...