Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

RED BRIGADES • 577ate and four-member “brigades” to conduct political organizingamong workers, students, and low-income neighborhoods. To handlespecialized problems, each column had “fronts,” such as a logisticalfront to find safe houses, procure fake identification cards, and carryout bank holdups; a counter-revolution front to spy on the police;and a prison front to maintain contacts with imprisoned comradesand help them escape. The organization had permanent militants,which included all who were wanted by the police and had gone undergroundas well as those militants who were not yet known to thepolice and who often continued to hold ordinary jobs. The occasionalmilitants were those who lived a normal life but served as a supportnetwork for the permanent militants.The BR operated by campaigns that consisted of concentrated andcoordinated actions to achieve goals set by the Strategic Directorate:columns and fronts would decide on appropriate targets and tacticsand, after conducting surveillance and careful planning, would carryout those attacks. Highly complex “central actions,” such as the kidnappingof former prime minister Aldo Moro, involved recruiting agroup of 10 highly experienced militants who ordinarily came fromthe more specialized fronts but some of whom came from the simplebrigades. While the central action was taking place, other columnswould distract the police with scores of other tactical actions, includingarsons, kneecappings, and even assassinations. While the BRdid not appear to have state sponsorship, it had contacts in the mid-1970s with Uruguayan Tupamaros, later collaborated with DirectAction and the Red Army Faction, and also cultivated links withPalestinian terrorist groups, in particular the Lebanese Armed RevolutionaryFactions. After the collapse of the BR in Italy, it appearedthat some fugitive BR members joined forces with the October FirstAntifascist Resistance Group.The BR viewed itself as the vanguard for a proletarian party thatwould spontaneously appear once the group had paved the way bydestroying the “SIM,” the Italian acronym for “imperialist state ofmultinationals,” and by raising the revolutionary consciousness ofthe working classes through acts of armed propaganda. Foundedin 1970, the BR struck at the Italian state through assassination andkneecappings of judges, prosecutors, and jurors and also throughattacks on the Christian Democratic Party. About 75 percent of theBR’s attacks, however, were directed at businesses, with threats of