Word: dallas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...killers struck earlier this fall, in an episode that had all the makings of a chase seen out of The Godfather, Friday, September 3rd, 9 p.m.--General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, prefect of Palermo, emerges from his office after another full day of work. Waiting outside, at the usual time, is his wife Emmanuel, seated behind the wheel of their Autobianchi. The couple heads back to home at Villa Paino: several vehicles (police don't know how many) follow close on. At the appointed intersection, automatic weapons spray 40 rounds of ammunition at the car from point blank range...
...Dalla Chiesa's death robbed Italy of its most charismatic para-military leader in years. The 62-year-old general had just come off a brilliantly successful campaign against the Red Brigades terrorist network in Rome when he was named prefect of Palermo last April. No better choice could have been made for this mission impossible--to fight the Sicilian Mafia on its own turf--than the selection of Dalla Chiesa. Having vanquished the kidnappers of U.S. Gen. James Dozier and the killers of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Dalla Chiesa stood for everything efficient, uncorrupted and powerful in Italian...
...cold-blooded murder of Dalla Chiesa, who was widely known and respected for his part in the fight against Italy's Red Brigades terrorists, stunned Italians. Mourners at Palermo's ornate Basilica of San Domenico pelted Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini and members of his Cabinet with coins and jeered them for their failure to act more effectively against criminal bloodshed...
...public outcry, the government moved with uncharacteristic swiftness. Two days after the memorial service, President Sandro Pertini signed a decree that invested sweeping investigative powers in the newly created post of high commissioner against organized crime. By midweek the Parliament had passed a set of anti-Mafia laws that Dalla Chiesa had pleaded for, without success, prior to his death...
Before his death, Dalla Chiesa expressed his goal: "I don't speak of beating [the Mafia], only of containing them." In addition to its new authority, the government will have a powerful implement that it has until now lacked: the overwhelming public support that has come only in the aftermath of Dalla Chiesa's death...