Prologue
"What would I like written on my tombstone? Date of birth, date of death. Period. All inscriptions are the same, anyways. If you believe them, everyone sounds like a saint. But then where are the bad guys buried?" -- Giulio Andreotti
“Giulio Andreotti lived the American dream. He was born into a world he didn’t make — where he didn’t speak the language, he didn’t have the ‘right’ religion, he didn’t have the ‘right’ name. It was a world that created him but was not created *for* him. That was 94 years ago. We bury him today in a different world. A world that has been forever transformed by his vision, his wit, and his actions. We here, all of us, are the sons and daughters of Joe Andreotti. We are products of Andreotti’s America.”
— eulogy by former Senator Mario Cuomo, 2013, at the funeral of Giulio Andreotti
“For most Americans, Joe Andreotti is a figure who embodies a lot of contradictions. For Italian-Americans, he’s something more. He’s a familiar contradiction. When all the allegations about him came out, most Italian-Americans were furious. Some because they believed they couldn’t possibly be true. Others because they knew they had to be.”
— journalist/author Maria Laurino
“The Director has no comment at this time on the passing of the former president.”
— spokesman for FBI Director Robert Mueller
More to come