Narrator:

This is the Sicilian hill town of Corleone. In the secret world of the Mafia, the role of this town was for years the greatest secret of all.

Through a ruthless campaign of killing and intimidation, the Corleone branch of the Cosa Nostra by the early 1980s came to dominate the Mafia in all of Sicily. The old men of Corleone have seen their village grow large and prosperous. The young have grown used to film crews attracted by the town's notorious reputation. The source of their prosperity, the Mafia's success over three decades in dominating the international drug traffic.

Speaker 2:

One statistic for example that I think is very eloquent is the fact that in 1974 there were only eight deaths by drug overdose in all of Italy, which is a quite extraordinary fact. Now more than a thousand people die every year of heroin overdose in Italy, and there are hundreds of thousands of addicts.

Narrator:

Corleone was the operational base of this man, Salvatore Totò Riina, whose bloody corporate takeover of the Sicilian Mafia made him the Capo dei Tutti Capi, the boss of bosses of the most powerful organised crime network in Italy.

Speaker 3:

What is now happening in Italy is something like a war, I mean an institutional war because the friends of Totò Riina, the friends of the Mafia are not in front of the state. They are against the state but they are inside the state.

Narrator:

In this building according to a Mafia pentito or supergrass Totò Riina met the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, and the two men changed a kiss of mutual respect. That allegation is at the centre of the case against Andreotti. But whatever the verdict, the head of Italy's Antimafia Commission says there can be no doubt that the Mafia succeeded in penetrating the inmost recesses of the Italian state.

Speaker 4:

[Italian 00:02:38].

Narrator:

The system starts at ground level. This is Agrigento on Sicily's southwest coast, a survival of the most elegant of ancient civilizations, the Greek Empire. But the classical purity of Greek times finds no echo in the unplanned chaos of modern Sicily. Today's Agrigento is a wilderness of concrete boxes crowded in upon each other. Here it's easy to understand how Italy comes to use more concrete per head of population than any other country in the world. And Agrigento's Valley of the Temples, once the unspoiled backdrop to this unparalleled collection of monuments, is dotted with buildings thrown up in flagrant breach of all the official planning regulations.

Corruption in Sicily isn't just an activity that happens on the fringes, not just a matter for the drug squad or the vice squad. It affects the whole of the way that society works from local roads and building right up to the neglect of international heritage sites like this. And the reason it does is that in Sicily organised crime and government have come together like this and now they're almost inseparable.

Threatened with death for his work, Luigi Li Gotti is lawyer for five of the informers who revealed the innermost secrets of the Mafia to investigators.

Luigi Li Gotti:

[Italian 00:04:35].

Narrator:

The Sicilian capital, Palermo, is dominated by the Mafia with disastrous results for the people and the structure of the city. Once a royal capital, home to Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton during the Napoleonic Wars, Palermo's historical riches are being allowed to rot. In any other European city these buildings would be tendered and restored. Here Mafia real estate speculators leave historic structures to crumble and the inhabitants to live in squalor.

Speaker 3:

The Mafia is not an organisation of marginality. The Mafia is not an organisation of poorless. The Mafia is an organisation of power that produces marginality. The Mafia is an organisation of richness producing and the development.

Narrator:

And it's not just a tourist resort that's going to waste. For ordinary people's daily life here takes place against a background of violence and intimidation. When magistrates got into the records of a single Mafia family controlling one small corner of Palermo, they found $400 million worth of assets. Their sources of income ranged from big-time drug dealing right down to extortion payments of a couple of hundred dollars a month from dozens of small shopkeepers.

Speaker 2:

Control of the territory, of being in command of not just large economic resources but the everyday lives of ordinary people is very important to the Mafia and Mafia type groups in Sicily. These are things that established very clearly with the population who is in control of the area and it also provides you with impunity, people are obviously, someone who is being extorted by the Mafia is not likely to act as a witness against them if they see something going wrong.

Narrator:

The hardest thing for a Sicilian to do is stand up against the oppressors. This is Capo d'Orlando halfway along Sicily's north coast. It was just a beach resort town until it became the centre of a modest revolt against the killers and extortionists. The business people of Capo d'Orlando formed an association against the Mafia.

We came here to Capo d'Orlando to talk to members of the association about their struggle against the Mafia. It's a half day's drive from Palermo and we wouldn't have come if the group hadn't assured us that members would be willing to talk. But now that we're here it's become clear that no local businessman is willing to appear. An indication it seems of the Mafia's continuing ability to intimidate.

It was only in the relative safety of Rome that we were able to track down the business association's founder. As a reward for his outspokenness, Tano Grasso, now the MP for Capo d'Orlando lives in constant fear of assassination.

Tano Grasso:

[Italian 00:08:15].

Narrator:

Over half a century Italians have got used to going to the movies to find out the facts about how their state fell into the clutches of organised crime.

Video:

Mr. Luciano just told the United States government to drop dead.

Narrator:

Francesco Rossi's film Lucky Luciano was the first to detail the way the liberating American Army let the Mafia get its hands on the reins of power.

Speaker 8:

[Italian 00:09:12].

Video:

Enough with this crap. I don't care who it is, Francis, Carlos, everyone, you're telling me.

Narrator:

And by using them to help with the invasion of the mainland, the Americans gave the Cosa Nostra a springboard to power not just in Sicily but in post-war Italy itself.

Speaker 3:

From that moment the Mafia bosses, I mean the Sicilian American Mafia bosses got an international political role and they used this role even after in the political life of Italy.

Narrator:

But Italians have again had to resort to the cinema to tell them the facts about the penetration of their political system by the criminal state within a state. It was the pool of Palermo magistrates led by Giovanni Falcone whose work prized open the Cosa Nostra's long-held secrets.

Speaker 9:

[Italian 00:10:45].

Narrator:

Giuseppe Ayala is the only judge in the Falcone pool to have survived the Mafia's bloody campaign of revenge assassinations. He's in no doubt about the worth of his old friend's work.

Giuseppe Ayala:

[Italian 00:11:31].

Narrator:

Falcone and his colleagues couldn't have broken the Mafia open without eyewitnesses. And in the nature of the organisation that meant they had to persuade top mafiosi to talk. The key was Tommaso Buscetta, himself a former Mafia boss displaced by Totò Riino's brutal gang warfare. It was evident from Buscetta and other pentiti, supergrass informers that led to the massive success of the so called Maxi Trial in which 344 mafiosi, bosses, and lower ranking gang members were found guilty. But the deeper significance of the supergrass evidence was political. This man, Salvo Lima, was branch head of the dominant Christian Democrat Party.

Speaker 2:

He was the biggest vote getter in all of Sicily and is believed to have controlled about 25% of the Christian Democrat vote in Sicily.

Narrator:

But Lima was also an associate of the Mafia and at the same time the political right-hand man to Giulio Andreotti, then serving his seventh term as Prime Minister of Italy.

Faced today with the 60,000 pages of court documents that have piled up in the trial against him, Giulio Andreotti still denies that Lima was linked to the Mafia.

Giulio Andreotti:

[Italian 00:13:38].

Speaker 2:

I don't think there's any doubt that Salvatore Lima was one of the politicians in Italy who was most heavily tied to the Mafia, and that's been confirmed in many different court cases.

Narrator:

What no one questions is that over 45 years in power, Andreotti was the ultimate political fixer. He began in 1947 and his constituency was the Italian capital itself.

They call Rome the Eternal City and Andreotti lasted so long in government that he gained the nickname of the Eternal Giulio. Of all cities this is the one that's experienced the most. In a city which has seen so much, there's a pervading belief that one way or another there's nothing that can't be fixed.

In this respect at least Giulio Andreotti is a true son of Rome, a man who could say with only a hint of a smile that power is a problem only for those who don't have it. His political philosophy was said to be see all, tolerate much, and correct one thing at a time. But one of the issues raised by the trial has to be, did he simply tolerate too much and did he fail to correct in time the most urgent and corrosive problem of all?

Giulio Andreotti:

[Italian 00:15:12].

Narrator:

But in the weeks leading up to the trial Andreotti has been suggesting that someone has been coordinating the supergrass evidence against him. He says it's an interesting coincidence. So many of the informers have the same lawyer.

Luigi Li Gotti:

[Italian 00:15:29].

Narrator:

As lawyer for five of the informers Luigi Li Gotti his scoffs at Andreotti's claim. There are plenty of examples he says which show that just couldn't have been a conspiracy.

Luigi Li Gotti:

[Italian 00:15:44].

Narrator:

So the man who over 45 years built himself a reputation as an international statesman, a man who's outlasted every American president since Harry Truman, finds himself in the dock on the most serious charges imaginable, organised crime and murder.

Video:

[Italian 00:16:38].

Narrator:

Andreotti denies flatly that he met or kissed Mafia boss Totò Riina. According to the polls the court of public opinion has already found him guilty. In Italy even movie makers agree. The reality ends up stranger than any thriller.

Speaker 9:

[Italian 00:17:00].

Narrator:

In truth as in the movies the story of Giovanni Falcone had no happy ending. They had to blow up a free way to do it but on the 23rd of May 1992 the Mafia succeeded in assassinating the most dangerous enemy they'd ever faced.

Giuseppe Ayala:

[Italian 00:18:59].

Narrator:

They'd already assassinated their closest political ally, Andreotti's friend, Salvo Lima. Andreotti now says it was revenge for Lima's anti-Mafia stand. Others say it was because Lima had broken his promise to protect them.

Speaker 12:

[Italian 00:18:32].

Narrator:

Sicily now is a province under military administration. This is a war, one that in the 1980s took 10,000 lives in southern Italy. Falcone's successes at the Palermo Courthouse live in permanent danger, and hardened by events few Italians believe that the Mafia's political power is finished.

Speaker 8:

[Italian 00:19:05].

Narrator:

In a security bunker here at Palermo's Ucciardone Prison, Giulio Andreotti, the most illustrious defendant in modern Italian history will finally face his accusers. On trial with him is the entire political establishment of post-war Italy.

Speaker 3:

Think how different would have been Italy, think how different would have been the quality of the life in our country, think how crimes we would have avoided if Andreotti would have been put under trial, in trial 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

Narrator:

Why do you say that then? What difference would it have made?

Speaker 3:

I say that because Andreotti in these years has not been only the protector of a system of criminal power, but he has been even the symbol of the state. He has been in the same time the friend of illegality and the symbol of legality.

Narrator:

Whatever the verdict of the court, many Italians are hoping that the Andreotti era is finally over.