20. Operation Gladio:
Gladio is a code name denoting the clandestine NATO
“stay-behind” operation in Italy after World War II, intended to continue
anti-communist resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western
Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO
stay-behind organizations, “Operation Gladio” is used as an informal name for
all stay-behind organizations, sometimes called “Super NATO”.
The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in
sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and
its relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during
the Years of Lead and other similar clandestine operations is the subject of
ongoing debate and investigation. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had
parliamentary inquiries into the matter.
What can we prove about that role? Thousands of documents,
depositions and testimony as well as recorded conversations and admission by
the highest levels of government in Italy. That’s about as credible as it gets,
regardless of the CIA’s adamant denial it ever happened. What took place? The
shooting of innocent civilians, terrorism and assassinations all blamed on
leftist communists were actually apart of well coordinated, “black operations.”
Black operations are typically involving activities that are highly clandestine
and, often, outside of standard military protocol.
“The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
Black ops missions often fit into the deniable category, a situation in which
there is no claim of responsibility for the action, and/or a false flag
operation is used to give the appearance that another actor was responsible, or
– most often – black operations involve extensive arrangements so as to be able
to hide the fact that the black operation ever occurred.
Black military operations, or paramilitary operations, can
be used by various secret services to achieve or attempt to achieve an
unusually sensitive goal. The methods used in black operations are also used in
unconventional warfare. Depending on the precise situation in a given case, and
the level of authoritarianism of the national government or other responsible
party, some tasks will be conducted as black operations, while there are
usually other activities that can be admitted openly. Black operations may
include such things as assassination, sabotage, extortion, spying on allied countries
or one’s own citizens, kidnapping, supporting resistance movements, torture,
use of fraud to obtain funds, use of child soldiers, human experimentation,
trafficking in contraband items, etc.
Since 9/11, many black operations and long time unethical
standings have been approved for legality in the war on terror. In other words,
since September 11th, 2001, it is no a longer conspiracy for any of this to
occur, a simple decision by a top level military or CIA official is enough,
without oversight or even one thread of admission by the Government or Private
conspirators. Much of the Black operations today are performed by private
contract companies like Blackwater (now Xe).
-----------------
Operation Gladio - ( [1] )
(Italian: Operazione Gladio) is the codename for a
clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation
in Europe during the Cold War. Its purpose was to
continue anti-communist actions in the event of a Soviet invasion and
conquest. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO
stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal
name for all stay-behind organizations, sometimes called "Super
NATO".
The name Gladio is the Italian form
of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword. Operating in many NATO and even
some neutral countries, Gladio was part of a series of national operations
first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western
Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the
CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC),
founded in 1951 and overseen by SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied
Powers, Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official withdrawal from
NATO's Military Committee in 1966 – which was not followed by the dissolution
of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements.The role of
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the
extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and its
relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in
Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960s to early 1980s) and
other similar clandestine operations is the subject of ongoing debate and
investigation but never proved. Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary
inquiries into the matter.
Origins
The origin of Gladio can be traced to the so-called "secret
anti-Communist NATO protocols", which were allegedly protocols committing
the secret services of NATO member states to work to
prevent communist parties from coming to power in Western
Europe. According to the Italian researcher Mario Coglitore, the protocols
required member states to guarantee alignment with the Western block "by
any means". According to US journalist Arthur Rowse, a secret
clause exists in the North Atlantic Treaty requiring candidate
countries, before joining NATO, to establish clandestine citizen cadres
standing ready to eliminate communist cells during any national
emergency. These clandestine cadres were to be controlled by the
country's respective security services.
General stay-behind structure
After World War II, the UK and the US decided to create
"stay-behind" paramilitary organizations, with the official
aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion
through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines.
Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited:
i.e., mainly hardline anticommunists, including many ex-Nazis or former
fascists, whether in Italy or in other European countries.
In Germany, for example, Gladio had as a central focus
the Gehlen Org – also involved in ODESSA "ratlines"
– named after Reinhard Gehlen who would become West Germany's first head
of intelligence. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind (hence
the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance
movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations.
However, Italian Gladio was more far reaching. A
briefing minute of June 1, 1959, reveals that Gladio, 'in case of Soviet
military invasion' of the country, considered a concrete possibility at the
time, had to organize resistance by 'internal subversion' rather than by trying
to make plans for open warfare. It was to play 'a determining role... not only
on the general policy level of warfare, but also in the politics of emergency'.
In the 1970s, Italy experienced a period of communist
revolutionary activity with the country continuously blocked by political
motivated strike, violent mass demonstrations aimed at subverting the
democratically elected Institutions, with communist Red Brigades terrorism and
murders and most effectively through mainstream media strategic infiltration by
dedicated extreme left wing activists. The electoral support for the Italian
Communist Party and other leftists was growing to more than 1/3 of the italian
popular vote so that the establishment of a communist regime in Italy seeemed
possible even without a Soviet invasion, as it had been the case in Eastern
Europe. The revolutionary elites and avantguards feared only a right-wing
reaction, which never really materialized. Fearing such supposed menace, the
institutionalized revolutionary forces of the Italian Communist Party turned to
demonize any possible reaction: they started referencing to all terrorist
deeds, even those clearly originated by the extreme left wing, as part of the 'Strategy
of Tension' ... with Gladio eager to be involved."
CIA director Allen Dulles was one of the key
people in instituting Operation Gladio, and most of Gladio’s operations were
financed by the CIA.The anti-communist networks, which were present in all of
Europe, including in neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland, were partly
funded by the CIA. Some went as far as claiming that Christian
Democrat (Democrazia Cristiana) leader Aldo Moro, a had been the
"founder of (Italian) Gladio", a completely unsupported allegation.
His murder by the Red Brigades in 1978 put an end to the “historic compromise”
(sharing of power) making a formal alliance between the Italian Communist
Party (PCI) and the Christian Democrats (DC) politically non
feasible.
Thus the propaganda tactic of describing all the extreme
left-wing terrorist activity as a rogue strategy of tension meant at
preventing the parliamentary access to power by the Italian Communist Party was
not needed any longer.
Operating in all of NATO and even in some neutral countries
such as Spain before its 1982 admission to NATO, Gladio was first
coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded
in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the
"Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen
by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred
to Belgium after France’s official retreat from NATO – which was not
followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements.
Daniele Ganser alleges that:
Next to the CPC, a second secret army command center,
labeled Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), was set up in 1957 on the orders of
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). This military
structure provided for significant US leverage over the secret stay-behind
networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO's history, has
traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and
is based in NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons,
Belgium. The ACC's duties included elaborating on the directives of the
network, developing its clandestine capability, and organizing bases in Britain
and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in
conjunction with SHAPE. According to former CIA director William Colby, it
was 'a major program'.
Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), {the secret armies} were run by the European military secret
services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS,
also MI6). Trained together with US Green Berets and
British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers,
armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet
invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of
communist parties. The clandestine international network covered the European
NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy,
Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the
neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.
The Central Intelligence Agency's response to the series of
accusations made by Mr. Ganser in his book regarding the CIA's involvement in
Operation Gladio, deals with the fact that neither Ganser nor anyone else have
solid evidence supporting their accusations. At one point in his book, Mr.
Ganser even talks about the CIA's covert action policies as being "terrorist
in nature" and then accuses the CIA of using their "networks for
political terrorism". After being attacked by Ganser, the CIA has
responded to these unfounded attacks by demonstrating that Daniele Ganser's
sourcing is "largely secondary" and that Ganser himself has
complained about "not being able to find any official sources to support
his charges of the CIA’s or any Western European government’s involvement with
Gladio".
The existence of these clandestine NATO armies remained a
closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first
branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. It was
code-named Gladio, the Italian word for a short double-edged sword [gladius].
While the press said that the NATO secret armies were 'the best-kept, and
most damaging, political-military secret since World War II', the Italian
government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret
army. Italy insisted identical clandestine armies had also existed in all other
countries of Western Europe. This allegation proved correct and subsequent
research found that in Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8,
in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BJD, in Greece LOK, in
Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC,
in Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Ozel Harp
Dairesi, In Sweden AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning), and in
Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the secret armies in
France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.
Upon learning of the discovery, the parliament of
the European Union (EU) drafted a resolution sharply criticizing the
fact (...) Yet only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland carried out parliamentary
investigations, while the administration of President George H. W.
Bushrefused to comment, being in the midst of preparations for war
against Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf, and fearing potential
damages to the military alliance.
If Gladio was effectively "the best-kept, and most
damaging, political-military secret since World War II", it must be
underlined, however, that on several occasions, arms caches were discovered and
stay-behind paramilitary organizations officially dissolved – only to be created
again. But it was not until the 1990s that the full international scope of the
program was disclosed to public knowledge. Giulio Andreotti, the main character
of Italy’s post-World War II political life, was described by Aldo Moro to his
captors as "too close to NATO", Moro thus advising them to be wary.
Indeed, before Andreotti’s 1990 acknowledgement of Gladio’s existence, he had
"unequivocally" denied it in 1974, and then in 1978 to judges
investigating the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing. And even in 1990,
"Testimonies collected by the two men (judges Felice Casson and
Carlo Mastelloni investigating the 1972 Peteano fascist car bomb) and by the
Commission on Terrorism on Rome, and inquiries by The Guardian, indicate
that Gladio was involved in activities which do not square with Andreotti's
account. Links between Gladio, Italian secret services bosses and the
notorious P2 Masonic lodge are manifold (...) In the year that Andreotti
denied Gladio’s existence, the P2 treasurer, General Siro Rosetti, gave a
generous account of 'a secret security structure made up of civilians, parallel
to the armed forces' There are also overlaps between senior Gladio personnel
and the committee of military men, Rosa dei Venti (Wind Rose), which
tried to stage a coup in 1970.”
European Parliament resolution concerning Gladio
European Parliament resolution on Gladio
On November 22, 1990, the European
Parliament passed a resolution condemning Gladio, requesting full
investigations – which have yet to be done – and total dismantlement of these
paramilitary structures. In 2005, the first academic examination of Gladio was
published by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser. Mr. Ganser, as of 2010, is a
Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute
of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. His book, NATO's Secret Armies:
Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, is a documented study of how
Gladio operated.
British journalist Philip Willan, who, by 2010, was writing
for the UK Guardian and Observer newspapers, described in
the book,Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, how the US
intelligence services used their relationship with the P2 Masonic lodge to prop
up Christian Democrat governments, undermining the growing political influence
of the Italian Communist Party.
The 1990 European resolution condemned "the existence
for 40 years of a clandestine parallel intelligence" as well as "armed
operations organization in several Member States of the Community", which
"escaped all democratic controls and has been run by the secret
services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO." Denouncing
the "danger that such clandestine network may have interfered illegally in
the internal political affairs of Member States or may still do so,"
especially before the fact that "in certain Member States military secret
services (or uncontrolled branches thereof) were involved in serious cases
of terrorism and crime," the Parliament demanded a "a full
investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these
clandestine organizations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal
interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the
problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret
services of Member States or third countries." Furthermore, the resolution
protested "vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel
at SHAPE and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a
clandestine intelligence and operation network," asking "the Member
States to dismantle all clandestine military and paramilitary networks"
and to "draw up a complete list of organizations active in this field, and
at the same time to monitor their links with the respective state intelligence
services and their links, if any, with terrorist action groups and/or other
illegal practices." Finally, the Parliament called "on its competent
committee to consider holding a hearing in order to clarify the role and impact
of the 'Gladio' organization and any similar bodies," and instructed
"its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council,
the Secretary-General of NATO, the governments of the Member States and the
United States Government."
Allegations
The first academic examination of Gladio was published in
2005 by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser. Mr. Ganser is currently a Senior
Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. His book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation
Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Gladio has been accused of trying to
influence policies through the means of "false flag" operations: a
2000 Italian Parliamentary Commission report from the Olive Tree left-wing
coalition concluded that thestrategy of tension used by Gladio had been
supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Italian Communist Party),
and to a certain degree also the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), from
reaching executive power in the country".
Propaganda Due (also known as P2), a
quasi-freemasonic organization, whose existence was discovered in 1981, was
said closely linked to Gladio.
P2 was outlawed and disbanded in 1981, in the wake of the Banco
Ambrosiano scandal, which was linked to the Mafia and to the Vatican
Bank. Its Grand Master, Licio Gelli, was involved in most of Italy’s scandals
in the last three decades of the 20th century: Banco Ambrosiano’s crash; Tangentopoli, which
gave rise to the Mani pulite ("Clean hands") anticorruption
operation in the 1990s; the kidnapping and the murder of Aldo Moro in 1978
– the head of the secret services at the time, accused of negligence, was
a piduista (P2 member).
Licio Gelli has often said he was a friend of Argentine
President Juan Perón. In any case, some important figures of his circle
were discovered to be piduista, such as José López Rega, founder of
the infamous anticommunist organization Triple A and provisional
president Raúl Alberto Lastiri. Some members of later Jorge Videla’s
dictatorship were part of the P2 as well, such as Admiral Emilio
Massera and General Guillermo Suárez Mason. The Vatican Bank was
also accused of funneling covert US funds for the Solidarnosc trade union
movement in Poland and the Contras in Nicaragua.
Furthermore, Gladio has been linked to other events, such
as Operation Condor and the 1969 killing of
anticolonialist/independentist Mozambican leader Eduardo Mondlane by Aginter
Press, the Portuguese "stay-behind" secret army, headed by Yves
Guérin-Sérac – the allegation on Mondlane's death is disputed, with
several sources stating that FRELIMO guerrilla leader Eduardo
Mondlane was killed in a struggle for power within FRELIMO.
In 1995, Attorney General Giovanni Salvi accused the Italian
secret services of having manipulated proofs of the Chilean secret police’s
(DINA) involvement in the 1975 terrorist attack on former Chilean
Vice-President Bernardo Leighton in Rome. A similar mode of operation
can also be recognized in various Cold War events, for example between the
June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the
1976 Montejurra massacre in Spain and the 1977 Taksim Square
massacre in Istanbul (Turkey).
After Giulio Andreotti's revelations and the
disestablishment of Gladio, the last meeting of the "Allied Clandestine
Committee" (ACC), was held according to the Italian Prime minister on
October 23 and 24, 1990. Despite this, various events have raised concerns
about "stay-behind" armies still being in place.
In 1996, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir revealed
the existence of a racist plan operated by the military intelligence agencies.
In 1999, Switzerland was suspected of again creating a
clandestine paramilitary structure, allegedly to replace the former P26
and P27 (the Swiss branches of Gladio).
Furthermore, in 2005, the Italian press revealed the
existence of the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic
Studies (DSSA), accused of being "another Gladio".
Gladio's strategy of tension and internal subversion
operations
NATO's "stay-behind" organizations were never
called upon to resist a Soviet invasion, but their structures continued to
exist after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Internal subversion and "false
flag" operations were explicitly considered by the CIA and stay-behind
paramilitaries.
According to a November 13,
1990 Reuters cable,"André Moyen – a former member of the Belgian
military security service and of the [stay-behind] network – said Gladio was
not just anti-Communist but was for fighting subversion in general. He added
that his predecessor had given Gladio 142 million francs ($4.6 millions) to buy
new radio equipment." Ganser alleges that on various occasions,
stay-behind movements became linked to right-wing terrorism, crime and
attempted coups d'état:
"Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?" the
international press pointedly asked when the secret stay-behind armies of NATO
were discovered across Western Europe in late 1990. After more than ten years
of research, the answer is now clear: both. The overview aboves shows that
based on the experiences of World War II, all countries of Western Europe, with
the support of NATO, the CIA, and MI6, had set up stay-behind armies as
precaution against a potential Soviet invasion. While the safety networks and
the integrity of the majority of the secret soldiers should not be criticized
in hindsight after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very disturbing questions
do arise with respect to reported links to terrorism.
There exist large differences among the European countries,
and each case must be analyzed individually in further detail. As of now, the
evidence suggests the secret armies in the seven countries, Denmark, Finland,
Norway, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, focused
exclusively on their stay-behind function and were not linked to terrorism.
However, links to terrorism have been either confirmed or claimed in the nine
countries, Italy, Ireland,Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
and Sweden, demanding further investigation.
According to Daniele Ganser, only Italy, Belgium and
Switzerland carried on parliamentary investigations, while the prosecution of
various "black terrorists" (terrorismo nero, neofascist terrorism) in
Italy was difficult.
A 1990 article from The Guardian featured the
following quote from judge Libero Mancuso:
On the eve of the 1980 Bologna
bombing anniversary, Liberato [sic] Mancuso, the Bologna judge who had led
the investigation and secured the initial convictions [of the Bologna bombers]
broke six months of silence: "It is now understood among those engaged in
the matter of democratic rights that we are isolated, and the objects of a
campaign of aggression. This is what has happened to the commission into
the P2, and to the magistrates. The personal risks to us are small in
comparison to this offensive of denigration, which attempts to discredit the
quest for truth. In Italy there has functioned for some years now a sort of
conditioning, a control of our national sovereignty by the P2 – which
was literally the master of the secret services, the army and our most delicate
organs of state."
Examples of such alleged terrorist acts include the strategy
of tension in Italy, or the Oktober fest bomb blast of 1980 in
Munich. A Gladio official said that "depending on the cases, we would
block or encourage far-left or far-right terrorism".
Gladio operations in NATO countries
First discovered in Italy
Main article: Gladio in Italy
Belgium
Main article: Belgian stay-behind network
France
In 1947, Interior Minister Edouard
Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France
codenamed "Plan Bleu".
Denmark
The Danish stay-behind army was code-named Absalon,
after a Danish archbishop, and led by E.J. Harder.
Germany
Reinhard Gehlen, German military intelligence officer on the
East front during the war, turned towards the US after the war, and set up the
"Gehlen Organisation", which used many former Nazi party
members for intelligence purposes during the Cold War.
The 1980 Oktober fest terror attack
Revelations of a witness in the investigation of
the Oktoberfest bomb blast of 1980 in Munich lead to the conclusion
that the explosives might have come from the German Neo-Nazi Heinz Lembke.
In 1981, German police by chance found an arms cache in the
Lüneburg Heath, which led to the arrest of Lembke and the discovery of other
arms caches in Lower Saxony. A few days later Lembke hanged himself in his
prison cell. Lembke had been questioned in Oktoberfest investigation, but the
public prosecutors found no evidence that he supplied the explosives for the
bombing.
Lembke's arms caches were supposed to be connected to Gladio
by a number of researchers and journalists.
CIA's documents released in June 2006
One network included Staff Sergent Heinrich Hoffman and
Lieutenant Colonel Hans Rues, and another one, codenamed Kibitz-15, was
run by Lieutenant Colonel Walter Kopp, a
former Wehrmacht officer, described by his own North American
handlers as an "unreconstructed Nazi."
In an April 1953 CIA memo released in June 2006, the CIA
headquarters wrote: "The present furore in Western Germany over the
resurgence of the Nazi or neo-Nazi groups is a fair example – in
miniature – of what we would be faced with." Therefore some of
these networks were dismantled. These documents stated that the ex-Nazis were a
complete failure in intelligence terms.
According to Timothy Naftali, a US historian from
the University of Virginia who reviewed the CIA documents then
released, "The files show time and again that these people were more
trouble than they were worth. The unreconstructed Nazis were always out for
themselves, and they were using the West's lack of information about the Soviet
Union to exploit it."
The US NARA Archives themselves stated in a 2002
communique, concerning Reinhard Gehlen's recruiting of former Nazis, that
"Besides the troubling moral issues involved, these recruitments opened
the West German government, and by extension the United States, to penetration
by the Soviet intelligence services."
Hans Globke, who had worked for Adolf Eichmann in
the Jewish Affairs department and helped draft the 1935 Nuremberg laws,
became Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's national security advisor in the
1960s, and "was the main liaison with the CIA and NATO" according toThe
Guardian.
A March 1958 memo from the German BND agency to
the CIA wrote that Adolf Eichmann is "reported to have lived in
Argentina under the alias CLEMENS since 1952." However, the CIA did not
pass the information on to the Israeli MOSSAD, as it feared
revelations concerning its use of former Nazis for intelligence purposes –
Eichmann, who was in charge of the Jewish Affairs department, was abducted by
the MOSSAD two years later. Among these information that might have been
revealed by Eichmann were the ones concerning Hans Globke, CIA's liaison in
West Germany. At the request of Bonn, the CIA persuaded Life
magazine to delete any reference to Globke from Eichmann's memoirs, which
it had bought from his family.
Norbert Juretzko's 2004 revelations
In 2004 the German spymaster Norbert Juretzko published
a book about his work at the BND. He went into details about recruiting
partisans for the German stay-behind network. He was sacked from BND following
a secret trial against him, because the BND could not find out the
real name of his Russian source "Rübezahl" whom he had recruited. A
man with the name he put on file was arrested by the KGB following treason in
the BND, but was obviously innocent, his name having been chosen at random from
the public phone book by Juretzko.
According to Juretzko, the BND built up its branch of
Gladio, but discovered after the fall of the German Democratic
Republic that it was 100% known to the Stasi early on. When the
network was dismantled, further odd details emerged. One fellow "spymaster"
had kept the radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the
engineering test call every 4 months, on the grounds that the equipment was too
"valuable" to remain in civilian hands. Juretzko found out because
this spymaster had dismantled his section of the network so quickly, there had
been no time for measures such as recovering all caches of supplies.Civilians
recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with a clandestine shortwave
radio with a fixed frequency. It had a keyboard with digital encryption, making
use of traditional Morse code obsolete. They had a cache of further equipment
for signalling helicopters or submarines to drop special agents who were to
stay in the partisan's homes while mounting sabotage operations against the
communists.
In a German documentary about the Munich
massacre happening at the 1972 Summer Olympics Juretzko further
claims that BND stay-behind forces were activated and on alert shortly after
the hostage taking. The German police had no specially trained
counter-terrorist units at hands at that time. The BND agents however,
according to Juretzko, were uniquely skilled and equipped for covert operations,
which included sharpshooting and helicopter insertion. Due to fears of
revealing the German stay-behind operation to the public, these vital forces
were ultimately not used to free the Israeli hostages, resulting in the
catastrophic outcome of the crisis and subsequent formation of the GSG
9 counter-terrorism and special operations unit.
Greece
"Red Sheepskin"
Netherlands
A large arms cache was discovered in 1983 near the village
Velp. In 1990 the government by means of then-prime-minister Ruud
Lubbers was forced to confirm that the arms were related to planning for
unorthodox warfare. He insisted that the Dutch organisation was, contrary to
the operations in other European countries, totally independent from NATO
command, and during wartime occupation would be commanded by the Dutch
government in exile. The operating bureaus of the organisation would also move
to safety in England or the USA at the first sign of trouble.
In his television show of 22 April 2007 Dutch crime
journalist Peter R. De Vries revealed that weapons had been illegally
supplied to Gladio well after the network was supposed to have been
disbanded.
A Dutch investigative television program revealed on
September 9, 2007, that an arms cache that belonged to Gladio was ransacked in
the 1980s. The cache was located in a park near Scheveningen. Some of
stolen weapons later turned up, including hand grenades and machine guns, when
police officials arrested criminals Sam Klepper and John
Mieremet in 1991. The Dutch military intelligence agency, MIVD, feared at
that time that the disclosure of the Gladio history of these weapons was politically
explosive.
Norway
In 1957, the director of the secret
service NIS, Vilhelm Evang, protested strongly against the pro-active
intelligence activities at AFNORTH, as described by the chairman of CPC:
"[NIS] was extremely worried about activities carried out by officers at Kolsås.
This concerned SB, Psywar and Counter Intelligence." These activities
supposedly included the blacklisting of Norwegians. SHAPE denied
these allegations. Eventually, the matter was resolved in 1958, after Norway
was assured about how stay-behind networks were to be operated.
In 1978, the police discovered an arms cache and radio
equipment at a mountain cabin and arrested Hans Otto Meyer, a businessman
accused of being involved in selling illegal alcohol. Meyer claimed that the
weapons were supplied by Norwegian intelligence. Rolf Hansen, defense
minister at that time, stated the network was not in any way answerable to NATO
and had no CIA connection.
Portugal
Further information: Aginter Press
Turkey
Main article: Counter-Guerrilla
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1940
to assist resistance movements and carry out subversive operations in
enemy-held territory across occupied Europe. Guardian reporter David
Pallister wrote in December 1990 that a guerrilla network with arms caches
had been put in place following the fall of France. It
included Brigadier "Mad Mike" Calvert, and was drawn from a
special-forces ski battalion of the Scots Guards which was originally
intended to fight in Nazi-occupied Finland. Known as Auxiliary Units, they
were headed by Major Colin Gubbins, an expert in guerrilla warfare who
would later lead the SOE. The Auxiliary Units were attached to GHQ Home
Forces, and concealed within the Home Guard. The units were created in
preparation of a possible invasion of the British Isles by the Third
Reich. These units were allegedly stood down only in 1944. Several of their
members subsequently joined the Special Air Service and saw action in
France in late 1944. The units' existence did not generally become known by the
public until the 1990s despite a book on the subject being published in 1968,
although in recent years, much more research has been undertaken on the
Auxiliary Units, such as the books by John Warwicker ("Churchill's
Underground Army" and "With Britain In Mortal Danger") and
the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team (CART), which publishes its work
online. In fiction, Owen Sheers' Resistance (2008), set in Wales,
takes as one of its central characters a member of the Auxiliary Units called
to resist a successful German invasion.
After the end of World War II, the stay-behind armies
were created with the experience and involvement of former SOE officers.
Following Giulio Andreotti's October 1990 revelations, General Sir John
Hackett (1910–1997), former commander-in-chief of the British Army on
the Rhine, declared on November 16, 1990 that a contingency plan involving
"stay behind and resistance in depth" was drawn up after the war. The
same week, Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley (1924–2006), former
commander-in-chief of NATO's Forces in Northern Europe from 1979 to 1982,
declared to The Guardian that a secret arms network was established
in Britain after the war. General John Hackett had written in 1978 a
novel, The Third World War: August 1985, which was a fictionalized
scenario of a Soviet Army invasion of West Germany in 1985. The novel was
followed in 1982 by The Third World War: The Untold Story, which
elaborated on the original. Farrar-Hockley had aroused controversy in 1983 when
he became involved in trying to organise a campaign for a new Home Guard
against eventual Soviet invasion.
Gladio membership included mostly ex-servicemen but also
followers of Oswald Mosley's pre-war fascist movement.
General Serravalle's revelations
General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian
Gladio from 1971 to 1974, related that "in the 1970s the members of the
CPC [Coordination and Planning Committee] were the officers responsible for the
secret structures of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, the
Netherlands and Italy. These representatives of the secret structures met every
year in one of the capitals... At the stay-behind meetings representatives of
the CIA were always present. They had no voting rights and were from the CIA
headquarters of the capital in which the meeting took place... members of the
US Forces Europe Command were present, also without voting rights. ".Next
to the CPC a second secret command post was created in 1957, the Allied
Clandestine Committee (ACC). According to the Belgian Parliamentary Committee
on Gladio, the ACC was "responsible for coordinating the 'Stay-behind'
networks in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland,
Norway, United Kingdom and the United States". During peacetime, the
activities of the ACC "included elaborating the directives for the
network, developing its clandestine capability and organising bases in Britain
and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in
conjunction with SHAPE; organisers were to activate clandestine bases and
organise operations from there". General Serravale declared to the Commissione
Stragi headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino that the Italian
Gladio members trained at a military base in Britain. Documents shown to the
committee also revealed that British and French officials members of Gladio had
visited in the 1970s a training base in Germany built with US money.
Column 88
Column 88 was
a neo-nazi paramilitary organization based in the United
Kingdom. It was formed in the early 1970s, and disbanded in the early 1980s.
The members of Column 88 undertook military training under the supervision of a
former Royal Marine Commando, and also held regular gatherings
attended by neo-nazis from all over Europe. The name is code: the eighth letter
of the alphabet 'HH' represents the Nazi greeting 'Heil Hitler'.
References
Ganser, Daniele: NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and
Terrorism in Western Europe. (London: Frank Cass, 2005). ISBN
0-7146-8500-3.
The Guardian's November 1990 revelations concerning plans
under Margaret Thatcher
The Guardian reported on November 5, 1990, that there
had been a "secret attempt to revive elements of a parallel post-war plan
relating to overseas operations" in the "early days of Mrs
Thatcher's Conservative leadership". According to the British newspaper,
"a group of former intelligence officers, inspired by the wartime Special
Operations Executive, attempted to set up a secret unit as a kind of armed MI6
cell. Those behind the scheme included Airey Neave, Mrs Thatcher's close
adviser who was killed in a terrorist attack in 1979, and George Kennedy Young,
a former deputy chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6." The
newspaper stated that Thatcher had been "initially enthusiastic but
dropped the idea after the scandal surrounding the attack by the French secret
service on the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand in
1985." The Swiss branch, P-26, as well as Italian Gladio, had trained
in the UK in the early 1970s.
Parallel stay-behind operations in non-NATO countries
Austria
Franz Olah set up a new secret army codenamed Österreichischer
Wander-, Sport- und Geselligkeitsverein (OWSGV, literally "Austrian
hiking, sports and society club"), with the cooperation of MI6 and the
CIA.
Cyprus
The Turkish branch of
Gladio Counter-Guerrilla formed the TMT Turkish Resistance
Organisation in Cyprus in 1958 and manned it with turkish officers. The
1960 constitution of the republic of Cyprus only had provision for a very small
professional army of a few hundred men from both Cypriot communities. Following
the 1963–64 clashes that led to the collapse of the power sharing between Greek
and Turkish Cypriots, the National Guard was created as a
conscription Greek cypriot army. The officers for the National Guard where
almost exclusively Greek nationals, officers of the Greek Army. LOK units were
created in Cyprus modelled on the Greek LOK units, though Cyprus never joined
NATO and was at the time a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Reporter
Makarios Drousiotis has written about Greek officer Dimitris Papapostolou,
commander of LOK in Cyprus at the time, conspiring with ex-interior
minister Polykarpos Yorkatzis to kill elected
president Makarios by attacking his helicopter, and after the failure
of that attempt, being involved in the assassination of Yorkatzis. The 15 July
1974 coup d'etat against Makarios was executed by National Guard units, with
the attack on the presidential palace perpetrated by 31 and 32 Moira Katadromon
LOK units with the help of 21 Epilarhia Anagnoriseos tanks reconnaissance unit.
Finland
In 1944, the Swedes worked with Finnish Intelligence to set
up a stay-behind network of agents within Finland to keep track of post-war
activities in that country. While this network was allegedly never put in
place, Finnish codes, SIGINT equipment and documents were brought to
Sweden and apparently exploited until the 1980s.
In 1945, Interior Minister Yrjö Leino exposed a
secret stay-behind army which was closed down (so called Weapons Cache
Case).
Spain
Several events prior to Spain's 1982 membership in NATO have
also been tied to Gladio: In May 1976, a year after Franco's death, two
left-wing Carlist members were shot down by far-right terrorists,
among whom were Gladio operative Stefano Delle Chiaie and members of
the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), demonstrating
connections between Gladio and the South American "Dirty War". This
incident became known as the Montejurra incident.
André Moyen, former Belgian secret agent, also declared that
Gladio had operated in Spain. He said that Gladio had bases in Madrid,
Barcelona, San Sebastián and the Canarias islands.
Sweden
In 1951, CIA agent William Colby, based at the CIA
station in Stockholm, supported the training of stay-behind armies in neutralSweden and Finland and
in the NATO members Norway and Denmark. In 1953, the police
arrested right winger Otto Hallberg and discovered the preparations for the
Swedish stay-behind army. Hallberg was set free and charges against him were
dropped.
Switzerland
Main article: Projekt-26
FOIA requests and US State Department's 2006 communiqué
Three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests
have been filed to the CIA, which has rejected them with the Glomar
response: "The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or
non-existence of records responsive to your request." One request was
filed by theNational Security Archive in 1991; another by the Italian
Senate commission headed by Senator Giovanni Pellegrino in 1995
concerning Gladio and Aldo Moro's murder; the last one in 1996, by Oliver
Rathkolb, of Vienna university, for the Austrian government, concerning the
secret stay-behind armies after a discovery of an arms-cache.
Furthermore, the US State Department published a
communiqué in January 2006 which, while confirming the existence of stay-behind
armies, in general, and the presence of the "Gladio" stay-behind unit
in Italy, in particular, with the purpose of aiding resistance in the event of
Soviet aggression directed Westward, from the Warsaw Pact, dismissed claims of
any United States ordered, supported, or authorized skullduggery by stay-behind
units. In fact, it claims that, on the contrary, the accusations of
US-sponsored "false flag" operations are rehashed former
Soviet disinformation based on documents that the Soviets themselves
forged; specifically the researchers are alleged to have been influenced by
the Westmoreland Field Manual, whose forged nature was confirmed by former
KGB operatives, following the end of the Cold War. However since then counter
sources from within gladio and the CIA have admitted its authenticity. The
alleged Soviet-authored forgery, disseminated in the 1970s, explicitly
formulated the need for a "strategy of tension" involving violent
attacks blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied
governments of the need for counter-action. It also rejected a Communist Greek
journalist's allegations made in December 2005 (See above).
Politicians on Gladio
Whilst the existence of a "stay-behind"
organization such as Gladio was disputed, prior to its confirmation
by Giulio Andreotti, with some skeptics describing it as
a conspiracy theory, several high-ranking politicians in NATO countries
have made statements appearing to confirm the existence of something like it:
Former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti ("Gladio
had been necessary during the days of the Cold War but, that in view of the
collapse of the East Bloc, Italy would suggest to NATO that the organisation
was no longer necessary.")
Former French minister of defense Jean-Pierre
Chevènement ("a structure did exist, set up at the beginning of the
1950s, to enable communications with a government that might have fled abroad
in the event of the country being occupied.").
Former Greek defence minister, Ioannis
Varvitsiotis (Greek: Ιωάννης Βαρβιτσιώτης) ("local commandos and
the CIA set up a branch of the network in 1955 to organise guerrilla resistance
to any communist invader")
As noted above, the US has now acknowledged the existence of
Operation Gladio.
See also
Stay-behind
Fifth column
Counter-guerilla
Italian Communist Party (PCI) (1921–1991)
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