Producing contemporary history : the Parliamentary enquiry into the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro

This paper examines the scrutiny of the Moro tragedy by the various Parliamentary Committees of Enquiry between 1979 and 2001. At the centre of attention are their procedures, personnel and political contexts which, I argue, help to explain the initial creation of a broadly consensual account of the responsibilities for both the kidnapping and the murder, followed from the mid-1990s onwards by a large increase in the range and intensity of interpretive disagreements. An analysis of the work and outcomes of the Parliamentary investigations thus offers an Italian case-study of the ways in which a political drama can be converted into history or preserved as a mystery.