D'Amato was born in
Marseille, and during
World War II he worked for the
Office of Strategic Services. After the end of the conflict, he was at the head of the
North Atlantic Treaty Special Office, a link between
NATO and the
United States. D'Amato's later contact with the
CIA was
James Jesus Angleton. He entered the Office for Reserved Affairs of the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1957. D'Amato was a member of
Propaganda 2 (P2), a secret masonic lodge involved in numerous political and economic scandals in the 1970s. An expert of gastronomy, he held a column in the weekly ''
L'espresso'', under the pseudonym of Federico Godio. He appeared in a BBC documentary about
Operation Gladio in June 1992. ==See also==