Secret services, the Government chooses the prefect Vittorio Rizzi as head of the Dis. That’s who he is
To understand the character, just one thing is enough: he was the first – they say – to talk about quantum computers in the State Police, when artificial intelligence was still a matter for a few. The prefect Vittorio Rizzi, born in Bologna in 1959, he has this undeniable gift: he is very cultured – he has two degrees, one in law from Federico II in Naples and one in public administration sciences in Catania – and he is an advocate of collaborations with universities, to the point of hold the chair of criminology at the Department of Psychology of Sapienza University and of sociology of crime at the faculty of political science of the University of International Studies of Rome.
From the Police to the AISI, up to the leadership of the Dis
After a long career in the Police, where he joined as commissioner in 1988 and left as deputy chief last September, appointed deputy director of Bruno Valensise at the Aisi, the internal security agency, just a step away from retirement, he is now the chosen by the Government to replace Elisabetta Belloni at the head of the Information Department for the security of the Presidency of the Council, established with law 4/2007 to ensure the coordination of information research and to ensure unity in programming of the operational activities of Aise and Aisi (which Mantovano himself dreams of unifying, but that’s another story). A role that is more political than operational, for which various characteristics are required: the absolute trust of the Executive, and in particular of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and of the authority delegated to services, Alfredo Mantovano; the capacity for coordination between Palazzo Chigi and the heads of the agencies; authority and network of relationships. The head of the DIS, in short, is the main node of the information exchange necessary to guarantee national security: he must know how to move between the armed and police forces, state administrations and research bodies, both public and private.
The most famous investigations, from the Biagi murder to the arrest of Stazzi
For the Executive, which preferred him to the other figures in the running – all highly esteemed by Meloni and Mantovano, from Valensise himself to the number one of the Aise, Giovanni Caravelli, from general Francesco Paolo Figliuolo to the deputy commander of the Army Mario Cinque, from head of the Police Vittorio Pisani to the director of the Cybersecurity Agency Bruno Frattasi, up to the current deputy directors of the Dis Giuseppe Del Deo and Alessandra Guidi – Rizzi is the right person in the right place. He knows the new criminal threats inside out, he has experimented with advanced investigation techniques (he was the leader of the pool to find Marco Biagi’s murderers – «We used methods that had never been used» – and also at the head of the investigations that led to the arrest of the nurse Angelo Stazzi, responsible for the death of some elderly people in a retirement home in the capital), directed the mobile teams of Venice, Milan and Rome (establishing the “cold case” work team here), the Polstrada and the Criminalpol. And he knows how to move around buildings: he was also director of the Public Security Inspectorate of Palazzo Chigi, i.e. the person responsible for the security of the institutional offices of the government.
Commitment to human rights and against violence against women
Finally, an aspect that never hurts, the prefect stood out in promoting human rights and active citizenship. It was he, in November 2023, who came forward in defense of the Police after the protest comments that arrived following the publication of a post to remind women that they are not alone and to ask to be united in fighting violence. «Giulia Cecchettin – she stated in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore – currently represents all the women who have died at the hands of a man. She is our neighbor, our classmate, our best friend. It is also true for those who, like all of us in the State Police, from the specialized sections of the Flying Squad to the top, have worked every day for more than ten years, from morning to night, to save every Giulia.”
