(speaking in foreign language) (melodic music) (speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] Italy emerges from World War II a broken and divided nation.

This ally of Nazi Germany has been defeated by the allied forces.

(speaking in foreign language) (people cheering) - [Narrator] Mussolini, the fascist dictator, is executed by Italian communists.

But the end of the war doesn't end hostilities between fascists and communists.

Quite the opposite.

Fascists continue to hold positions in the highest circles of politics and the security services.

And the communist party has become one of the country's largest political parties for decades.

Extreme left and far right are at each other's throats.

The left seeks to block the re-emergence of fascist dictatorship and the right is determined to prevent Italy from being led by Moscow.

What follows is a relentless rain of bullets, the years of lead.

Left-wing and right-wing death squads wage war on each other.

Both carry out attacks on politicians, judges and journalists.

Terror is unleashed in the streets.

Terror that claims the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.

(gentle music) (speaking in foreign language) (bell ringing) (speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] At first, people think a gas boiler exploded at the station, until fragments of explosives are found.

An attack, but there is no one who claims it.

A major investigation is launched.

Clues lead to the NAR, a neo-fascist organization that planted a suitcase of explosives.

28 people, most of the members of the NAR, are arrested.

A year later, all are released.

Insufficient evidence.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] The following year, the crowd is there again, and the next year, and the next, and the year after that.

It isn't until seven years later, in 1987, that the trial begins in the courtroom.

(upbeat music) (speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro are arrested as the key figures behind the bombing in Bologna.

(speaking in foreign language) - There was a time that I was a criminal and they would have shot everybody with a uniform on.

The war was real.

It was the continuing of the Cold War somehow.

We've actually been sentenced for 33 different homicides.

And then, besides that, for a bombing in Bologna which caused 85 victims.

So we acknowledged the responsibility on the 33 single shooting homicides.

We did attack judges or policemen or whatever, or even journalists sometime for what they wrote about us.

But most victims actually were policemen.

They have to pay a price if they want to catch us.

And actually we did pay a price as well, because I was shot, my wife was shot.

We all fought till the last minute.

You know, that's fighting.

You don't surrender.

- [Narrator] Fioravanti and Mambro are teenagers when they join the fascist cause.

They rise to the highest ranks of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, which literally translates as the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei.

Their purpose, to annihilate the communists.

(speaking in foreign language) - I think that the feeling of friendship and solidarity was something very strong and very satisfactory, somehow.

It's quite a great feeling.

You feel that you belong to someone and that someone trusts you and believes in you and loves you and somebody's gonna help you anyway... And you're gonna help somebody anyway for anything that happens.

So this feeling was overwhelming and we didn't stop to actually think about what we were doing.

The feeling of how we were doing was so strong and so powerful and so positive.

Then the single things we have done probably were all wrong.

We thought that life was being quite unjust with us.

I think that is typical when you're very young.

(speaking in foreign language) - We had a bad trial, but then we had the solidarity and the intelligence of other judges who let us out anyway.

So I know that the state can make bad mistakes.

But then in my case, in the case of my wife, in the case of other friends, somebody also been nice to me.

One of the weird things of the Bologna trial is that they didn't find any kind of evidence.

And what they said was something a little bit weird.

We can't find the evidence because somebody has hidden the evidence.

Who could hide the evidence so well?

The secret service.

So the less evidence we find, the more it demonstrates that the secret service were their friends.

But that is, you know, it's a bad argument.

That point is that they didn't find any evidence.

And they keep saying they couldn't find it because we had good friends that hid the evidence.

That's possible, but maybe the other answer is that they didn't find the evidence because they looked in the wrong direction.

- [Narrator] In the late eighties, as the trial proceeds, it uncovers links suggesting there was more to the bombing than far right extremism.

There is proof that members of the security services falsified clues to mislead the investigators and judges.

Examining judge Felice Casson discovers a secret report proving that security services are collaborating with extreme right militants.

The motive, if innocent people die in terrorist acts, the public will feel unsafe and vote authoritarians parties into power.

(speaking in foreign language) - Paolo Signorelli led the secret service, SISMI, and Operation Gladio.

Gladio, founded by the CIA, was a covert NATO paramilitary organization.

At Gladio, anything was permitted to maintain the status quo and diffuse the threat of communism.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Reporter] It is a unique organization.

It is a tightly packed, well-trained men.

We might consider the threat of the communist empire.

- Senora Viliani, what do you think about the American forces stationed here in Italy?

- We realize that we are close to the communist countries, that we do hope that the NATO's strength will prevent any aggression from the communists.

- And what do the Italians in general think of the American soldiers?

- We prefer American people to other peoples in the world.

- Well thank you very much Senora Viliani for your answers.

They were both interesting and informed.

(speaking in foreign language) (laughing) - [Narrator] The two secret agents who wrecked a train carriage with explosives are convicted for misleading the course of justice.

Mambro and Fioravanti are found guilty of the Bologna bombing.

They receive 10 life sentences, plus 250 years.

However, after 20 years in prison, they are pardoned, like most of the terrorists in the years of lead.

But not Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who killed three policemen.

He refuses to ask for a pardon, believing he was betrayed by extreme right-wing militants.

(speaking in foreign language) - I know there's people that say that we have been helped by the secret services, but is also something very common to say.

They say, in every case, for everybody, for every group.

Maybe we have been helped.

If they want to believe it that way, I can't do nothing against that.

We have no responsibility at all for the bombing.

It was not our style.

It was not our choice.

It was not our point of view.

They needed to find somebody to blame for it.

And in a way, I would say that I understand the game.

There is a network that was set up by our secret services.

And these network still works.

We are the only European country that didn't have any major bombing from the Islamic terrorists.

Spain had it, Britain had it, Germany had it, France had it, Belgium even had it, we didn't have any attempt.

So I understand that the game our secret service played is still working, it's a good game.

It is a good game as long as my daughter, she takes trains, she takes buses, she takes airplanes, and nothing happens to her.

Maybe they needed to blame me because they had to help other people that was more useful to their plans.

Let's say that I do understand why they've done it, and I don't mind.

I don't mind as long as I live a decent life, and I do live a decent life.

Once in a time I even meet with old generals or old chief of the secret service.

You can tell from their eyes that they know what happened.

And it is the same thing that the former president of the republic told us.

You'll never have the truth, but you can live easily.

- [Narrator] Never finding the truth, to the relatives that's unacceptable.

They come together every year.

They are still taking legal action to discover the reasons why the station was bombed and whether the state bears responsibility.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] In 2018, 38 years after the attack, a new forensic investigation begins into the origin of the explosives.

(speaking in foreign language)