The Truth About Maria Falcone. Thank you

Maria Falcone, Giovanni Falcone’s sister, deserves an award for having confronted the ayatollahs of the media circus with a dramatic yet necessary truth that had long been excluded from public debate.

Maria Falcone, as you know, responded two days ago to Marco Travaglio, who – drawing on an article in Il Foglio in which Pietro Grasso, Giuseppe Ayala and Luciano Violante claimed that Giovanni Falcone would never have gone to dinner with Lavitola – brought to light a series of vicious political attacks levelled at her brother, the magistrate, prior to his death. Falcone, Travaglio wrote, did worse than simply go to dinner with Lavitola: he worked in Andreotti’s government. As if to say: if you’re going to take the moral high ground with Ranucci – who, rather modestly, compared himself a few days ago to Aldo Moro and Giovanni Falcone – then you’ll have to take the moral high ground with Falcone as well.

Maria Falcone deserves recognition not only for reminding Marco Travaglio’s newspaper of the distinction between speculation and the truth: “My brother did not work for Giulio Andreotti’s government but worked for the Italian state” (regarding the rebuke Maria Falcone delivered to Marco Travaglio – a not insignificant fact – yesterday in Travaglio’s newspaper, which, until proven otherwise, is called Il Fatto: no news, no reference, no comment, but we are sure Travaglio will make up for it today). Maria Falcone deserves an award, first and foremost, for another reason: for having reminded us that the party of the pillory, which today feeds on insinuations, moralising and falsehoods, is the very same one that years ago helped to discredit Giovanni Falcone, before his death, through that ‘bad journalism which, then as now, preferred suspicion to the truth of the facts – and, painfully enough, also a section of the judiciary itself and several of his colleagues’. Maria Falcone refers to some specific facts. She is probably recalling when, in 1988, the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM) chose Antonino Meli over Falcone to head the Palermo Preliminary Investigations Office. She probably recalls when Falcone’s anti-Mafia task force was gradually dismantled and when certain investigations were taken away from Falcone. She recalls when, between 1989 and 1991, the accusations from the ‘raven’ and those from Leoluca Orlando emerged regarding Falcone’s alleged ‘drawers’ containing evidence against politicians with Mafia links. He remembers when Falcone was accused of covering up investigations, of being too cautious, and then when, whilst visiting the Ministry with Martelli, he was accused of cozying up to those in power. He remembers when, in 1991, Falcone had to defend himself against these accusations before the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM). Remember when, in 1992, a section of the CSM also opposed his appointment as National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor. Remember when some of his colleagues reproached him for failing to give due weight to the statements made by certain justice collaborators (Pellegriti and Calderone) who, according to Falcone’s critics, could have helped to combat Cosa Nostra more effectively. Falcone responded point by point to those defamatory accusations – built on conjecture, false truths and suspicions turned into condemnations – on 15 October 1991, just a few months before he was murdered in Capaci. The documents from that hearing were declassified in May 2017 and reveal an aspect of Giovanni Falcone’s thinking that was systematically suppressed by all those who, years later, would recall his story, celebrating it whilst overlooking his ideas. It was in that context that Falcone recalled what Travaglio and Ranucci could never accept: the duty of magistrates, Falcone said, is to remember that ‘the culture of suspicion is not the antechamber of truth; it is the antechamber of Khomeinism’.

It was on that occasion that Falcone, a few months before he was murdered, demonstrated his vision of justice by dismantling everything on which today’s culture of public shaming and suspicion is founded, and by attacking the politicisation of judicial proceedings (“I am convinced not that the judicial route is a convenient shortcut to resolving political problems, but that the presence of the State is fundamental in a region to combat certain phenomena which, rather than being economic or social in nature, are purely criminal in nature…”), reminding us that magistrates must not concern themselves with gossip but have a duty to pay close attention to the statements of state witnesses (“It strikes me as deeply immoral that charges can be brought and allegations made in the face of the absolute uncertainty of the judicial outcome. One cannot reason: ‘I’ll allege the offence for now and we’ll see what happens. Because these charges then give rise to incalculable consequences’), denouncing the obscenity of those who, even at the time, were more focused on trials played out in the media than on those held in courtrooms (“The notice of investigation,” Falcone recalled in that hearing, “is not a stab wound that can be inflicted just like that; it is something that must be used in the interests of the suspect”). The Giovanni Falcone who stood against the culture of suspicion – regarded as the antechamber to Khomeinism – is a Falcone whose memory has, at best, been erased (Sigfrido Ranucci), at worst has been defiled (Marco Travaglio) and, in the most grotesque of cases, manipulated (as Nicola Gratteri did in the famous episode of ‘DiMartedì’ when he fabricated a quote from Falcone against the separation of careers – a quote he never actually uttered). It is the Falcone who denounced the mechanism of public shaming, whereby first a suspicion is formulated, then the suspicion becomes a media verdict, then the media verdict becomes the truth, then the media truth exerts pressure on the magistrate, and finally the people’s court transforms any deviation from the media truth into evidence of collusion with the suspect of the moment. Falcone said, again in the same hearing, that by persistently legitimising moral lynchings, by persistently legitimising trials built on no evidence, by persistently fostering a culture of suspicion, ‘Italy, the so-called cradle of the law, risks becoming its grave’. The Falcone whom we have repressed – and whom Maria Falcone has so wonderfully reminded us of in recent days – is the anti-Mafia magistrate who detested the ‘republic of suspicion’ and who preferred the anti-Mafia of action to that of mere talk. It is understandable that the party of the ‘mozzorecchi’ today, faced with those lessons, is at best forced to misrepresent him, at worst to defame him, and in the most surreal cases to manipulate him. The antechamber of Khomeinism, when it comes to justice, is ultimately built in this way too: by erasing, smearing, defaming and manipulating. Long live Maria Falcone.