Many state agencies were affected by a permanence of the Fascist ideology and several para‐state agencies associated with the régime did not fade away with the fall of the duce. This ‘ideological permanence’ flourished in the 1950s and 1960s through the emergence of what has been labelled ‘a double state’, typified by informative and illegal police‐type bodies.

For instance, it is revealing that the first Italian military secret service (Sifar, Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate) was created in 1949 without a proper political debate. The Sifar was identical to the Sim (Servizio Informazioni Militari; Military Information Service) created under Mussolini’s régime.

When the aforementioned Gesualdo Barletta left the management of the new Division of General and Reserved Affairs in 1958, the approach to state security did not change. The new director, Domenico De Nozza, moved from Trieste to Rome with more than 40 collaborators who, with the help of the Ministry of Interior Tambroni, engaged in illegal information gathering on communists, specifically on the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

This illegal activity was carried out independently from the legal secret service Sifar and thus epitomized the emergence of a state within a state also supported by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After De Nozza, Ulderico Caputo, who was an ex‐Fascist police officer, continued along the same lines.

(Emphasis added.)