CIC reports to Washington gave detailed descriptions of Pavelic's stay in Rome under church protection "disguised as a priest within Vatican City" and predicted his escape to Argentina, then ruled by the dictator Juan Peron, a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor and Devotion of the Knights of Malta.

They also reported Pavelic's contacts with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the Vatican's undersecretary of state and the future Pope Paul VI.

Montini, a close friend of SMOM and the OSS' principal contact in the Vatican during the war, supervised the Vatican bureau that issued refugee travel documents.

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The relationship of the Vatican, SMOM and the OSS/CIA was also important in the crucial 1948 Italian elections. Baron Parrilli again served as a go-between, this time with the CIA, in planning Vatican strategy to prevent a Communist victory by backing the Christian Democrats. A key figure in the plan was Luigi Gedda, a Turin doctor, Knight of Malta and Catholic integralist who wanted to restore Europe to an age before Protestantism and the French Revolution.

Gedda was head of Italy's Catholic Action, a militant lay movement of young people who served as papal shock troops-C.L. Sulzberger, of the New York Times, reported from Rome that Catholic Action "is armed, active and tough." Gedda organized a network of 18,000 "civic committees" to get out the vote. James Angleton, then CIA's Vatican connection, strongly recommended CIA funding for Gedda's political machine. The CIA pumped $65 million into Italian centrist and right-wing movements between 1946 and 1972, according to hearings by the House of Representatives.

Other important players were Montini and Spellman, the latter funneling huge amounts of New York money into clandestine church activities in Italy. Spellman encouraged a letter-writing campaign whereby Italian Americans urged their relatives to vote against the Italian Communists, and he joined such famous Americans as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper in a radio blitz of Italy at election time.

Meanwhile, Catholic Action's papal troops prepared for battle with U.S. jeeps, guns and other supplies. The Christian Democrats won the election, and Washington, under pressure from Spellman, agreed to repay the Vatican's election expenditures through Italy's black currency market.

High-ranking Knights of Malta were involved in Italian politics during the following decades, and on two occasions, in 1964 and 1970, they attempted unsuccessful right-wing coups. The second attempt was led by Angleton's Prince Borghese and the prince's neo-Nazi protege, Stefano Delle Chiaie, one of the period's most dangerous terrorists. Borghese and Delle Chiaie were connected to the notorious P-2 Masonic Lodge, an organization with ties to the Mafia and the Vatican that schemed to take over the Italian state and was responsible for a string of terrorist acts.