In April 2014, Italian premier Renzi raised a big fuss and great expectations announcing a "total disclosure" on the (mostly unpunished) terrorist bomb attacks that occurred in Italy between 1969 and 1984, with the declassification of all the related public records, including intelligence papers. This essay reconstructs the origins of the initiative (with a special eye for the role played by victims' relatives and survivors), analyses its structural limits and drafts a provisional balance of the results.