At this point, four armed terrorists jumped out from the bushes at the sides of the street, firing machine pistols; the judiciary investigations identified them as Valerio Morucci, Raffaele Fiore [it], Prospero Gallinari, and Franco Bonisoli [it].

[12] Before the kidnapping, the PCI were supposed to enter the government in a direct role but the emergency changed the situation, resulting in another cabinet under the firm control of the DC.

The PCI secretary Enrico Berlinguer spoke of "an attempt to stop a positive political process", while Lucio Magri, representative of the Proletarian Unity Party, was concerned about the hypocrisy of passing laws limiting personal freedom as a reaction to the massacre, saying that "it would play into the hands of the strategy of subversion".

He recalled that students present at the event spent the money of Cassa del circolo giovanile to buy champagne and toast with workers of the canteen.

[28] The success of the kidnapping would thus have halted the PCI's rise to Italian state institutions, reaffirming the BR as a key point in a future revolutionary war against capitalism.

Those like Lotta Continua shared the need for armed self-defense against police and fascist violence but were critical of terrorist actions, which they saw as elitist and counterproductive, and condemned the BR as a catalyst rather than an answer to repression.

The original reconstruction in the trials stated that it was an apartment in via Camillo Montalcini 8 in Rome,[30] which had been owned by a BR member for a few years, and that Moro was killed there in an underground parking garage.

"[37] Writer Leonardo Sciascia suggested that in his letters Moro was including clues about his position, as when he wrote to his wife "I am here in full health" on 27 March to indicate that he was in Rome.

[38] In the letter of 8 April, Moro launched a vibrant attack at Benigno Zaccagnini, national secretary of the DC, at Francesco Cossiga, then interior minister, as well as on the whole of his party.

The Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (then coordinator of the fight against terrorism in Italy, later killed by the Sicilian Mafia) found copies of some previously unknown letters in an apartment used by the terrorists in via Monte Nevoso.

... Moro is also acquainted that he is not the only one, that he is, indeed, the higher exponent of the regime; he thus summons the other hierarchs to share with him the responsibilities, and addresses them an appeal which sounds like an explicit call of "co-culpability".

[46] Cossiga was notably involved in numerous scandal of Italian history, in many of which like the Piazza Fontana bombing, he had an active role in sidetracking the investigations.

This was in spite of the day chosen for the kidnapping being that in which PCI, for the first time since the early years of the history of the Italian Republic, was going to obtain an active government role in Italy.

Unlike other people kidnapped by the BR and subjected to same procedure, such as judge Giovanni D'Urso [it], and in spite of the unprecedented repetition of the point, in the case of Moro, this never happened.

Much of the material collected by the terrorists, including Moro's letter and personal notes written during his imprisonment, became public only after the discovery of the base in via Monte Nevoso.

Of the tittle-tattle and suspicions that have been embroidered around, and who occasionally crop up still, was never brought a shred of evidence, and are only the result of the complainer momism of a people cowardly, unable even to conceive that a state can react with hardness, against those who offend the law.

In the words of Massimo Fini [it], "[t]he day after, the Red Brigades would have kidnapped any Andrea Bianchi and the state would have found itself faced with the alternative: accept the blackmail again or refuse it.

"[55] Journalist Ezio Mauro argued that negotiations would have been an error, saying: "The only possible solution would have been — had the state apparatus been more efficient and less polluted — to find his prison and free him.

9 stated: "For what concerns our proposal of an exchange of political prisoners in order to suspend the condemnation and to release Aldo Moro, we can only record the clear refusal from the DC.

[18] Adriana Faranda, a member of the BR, mentioned a night meeting held in Milan a few days before the murder of Moro where she and other terrorists, including Morucci and Bonisoli, dissented; the final decision was taken after voting.

[11] This led to the rise and popularization of a number of other alternative theories about the events,[76][77][78] and the judicial truth, which attributes responsibility for the operation exclusively to the Red Brigades, has failed to take root in the collective memory of Italians.

[80] Conspiracy theorists hold that Moro, a progressive who wanted the PCI to be part of government, was ultimately sacrificed due to Cold War politics, that both sides welcomed his kidnapping, and that, by refusing to negotiate, they led to his death.

Negri was charged with a number of offences including leadership of the Red Brigades, masterminding the kidnapping and murder of Moro and plotting to overthrow the government.

Rome's public prosecutor office had opened an investigation file relating to the statements of two bomb squad members, Vitantonio Raso and Giovanni Circhetta, who were never questioned and said that they arrived at the location two hours before the call from the Red Brigades.

[91] In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of Moro has in public discourse.

[92] Paolo Persichetti [it], a writer and former Red Brigades member who signed the document, commented: "The trigger [for signing the document] was yet another fake that brought together the events related to the Bologna massacre of August 1980, which according to the sentences of the judiciary have a right-wing matrix, in any case opposite in motive, objectives, and operational practices to the making of groups of the armed revolutionary left and of the Red Brigades, genetically anti-stragista [e.g. they did not engage in massacres like that of 1980].

This committee included Steve Pieczenik (a psychologist of the anti-terrorism section of the U.S. State Department), criminologist Franco Ferracuti [it], Stefano Silvestri [it], Vincenzo Cappelletti (director of the Italian Encyclopedia Institute), and Giulia Conte Micheli [it].

According to Montanelli, this was because the country had spread an atmosphere of resignation, if not indulgence, to left-wing terrorism,[23] as in the trials defendants get extenuating circumstances,[23] Prima Linea was considered a simple subversive association (instead of an armed gang),[23] and a part of the judiciary harbored hostility towards the state and was sympathetic to the revolutionary myths.

When he asked his colleagues' opinions about the matter, they replied to him that, if it materialized, the presence of the PCI in the executive would cause the loss of international support, including financial ones, for Italy.

In an interview with Eugenio Scalfari, which was published posthumously in October 1978, Moro said: "It is not at all a good thing that my party is the essential pillar of support for Italian democracy.