I’m continuing to publish some questions and answers from the book "Intervista su Tangentopoli" published by Laterza and edited by Giovanni Valentini.

GV: Then it’s possible to say that Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) was carried out using ICT.
ADP: The Clean Hands investigation didn’t just use ICT: it is the ICT investigation! The investigation was completely computerised to such a point that it allowed me to adopt another expedient that was fundamental to the success of the enquiries and for which in the end I finished up on trial: the interrogation in context.

GV: Is that the interrogation of a number of people in different locations all at the same time?
ADP: No, no. In fact I didn’t have more than one base. I didn’t have great resources and thus I had to get organised on my own. In a single room, we set up about a dozen personal computers to interrogate witnesses or the people under investigation. In front of each computer there was an officer of the Carabiniere or the Police or the Finance Police.

GV: That way, during the interrogation, each person couldn’t hear what the others said?
ADP: No, at least, not very well. Of course it was what we got by with. Certainly, it would have been better to have had all that in different rooms, perhaps using fibre optics, but we are talking of that time…

GV: And in this room with a dozen work positions, could you control everything through a single computer?
ADP: At the most advanced stage of the investigation, yes I could, but only partly. At the beginning we allowed those being interrogated to think so: my collaborators managed to ask the same questions to everyone because I had trained them in advance. Many believed that I could read all the responses at the same time on the video.