Getting Away With Murder

By JOHN MOODY PALERMO

A bomb goes off, six people die, their loved ones weep. For the second time in two months, furious Italians beat the air with their fists. This, they shout, is too much; the time has come to face down the Mafia, the romanticized clan of criminals they love to hate but refuse to confront. THIS IS ALL-OUT WAR! the headlines scream. What was rarely said last week, as a shocked and shamed Italy tensed for the next blow, was that the Mafia has evolved into the world's foremost crime organization because in its war with the state, only one side is using real weapons.

When a 176-lb. remote-controlled bomb obliterated anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino and five police bodyguards last week, no one could miss the message: the Mob would kill anyone, anywhere, in its campaign of intimidation. The brave efforts of a handful of Sicilian judges and prosecutors like Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, assassinated in a similar blast in May, had won only feeble support from Rome. Nonetheless, the courts managed to put more than 400 suspected mobsters on trial and convict the vast majority of them. But now the Mafia has challenged the prosecutors to back off, and its bloody taunt has thrust the country into a crisis of confidence, adding fear of civil disorder to serious economic troubles. Commented the Corriere della Sera: "We have chosen leaders who are very capable of shedding tears but perfectly incapable of assuming grave duties." The month-old government of Prime Minister Giuliano Amato found its attention painfully distracted from the job of repairing the budget deficit, public debt and unemployment that threaten its status in the European Community.

Italians wondered how many deaths would be enough to prod the national government into effective action against the criminals it has long tolerated. A week before his death, Borsellino told friends, "The tnt for me has already arrived in Palermo." With estimated annual profits of $20 billion at stake, the Mob had decided that he knew too much about its inner workings to live.

This crime, like those before it, was ringingly denounced by politicians, law-enforcement officials, trade unions and the media. But few doubted the Mafia would strike again at will, without fear of retaliation. The criminals' arrogance is fed by the feckless response that greets each new barbarism. Protesting Borsellino's death, unions staged a nationwide 10-min. work stoppage. Jailed Mafia bosses were clapped into a remote island prison, denied visitors and the use of phones from which they run their businesses. At the Mass for Borsellino's bodyguards, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and Prime Minister Amato had to be hustled out of the packed cathedral by uniformed police to protect them from the jeering crowd. "Get the Mafia out!" the throng cried, referring to a system that has allowed hardened criminals to humiliate and terrorize the country for decades.

Thanks to effective federal and state laws, the U.S. has made strides against organized crime, convicting 24 Mafia bosses and dozens of lesser mobsters since 1981. The FBI has made extensive use of methods normally barred by Italy's Napoleonic legal code: electronic surveillance, undercover agents, use of informants, reduced sentences for cooperative witnesses. Nor did Italy have the all-important Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws, under which many American mobsters have been jailed, or a witness- protection program to encourage insider testimony.

Only now is Italy beginning to acquire some of these tools. The strong-arm tactics of the Fascists, who disregarded constitutional rights and democratic principles to jail suspected mobsters, succeeded in quashing the Mob for a time. But memories of that dictatorship left Italy with a postwar constitution designed to prevent strong government. After Falcone's death in May, Rome issued decrees to punish Mob suspects who refuse to cooperate and gave police expanded powers to make arrests. Last week the Senate converted some of those into law. Borsellino's murder has stirred calls for martial law and a return to the death penalty. While such notions are gaining support, they have no chance of succeeding.

Most of the country's means to confront organized mobsters remain ineffectual. Strikes, speeches and taking phones away from prisoners mock the dedication of Falcone, Borsellino and their colleagues. A sweeping crime law modeled on the RICO acts would be a useful start. But until the state applies the same determination and courage that enabled it to stamp out the political terrorism of the 1970s, the battle against the Mafia will be one-sided, and the odds against the good guys will grow longer.