Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia

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Cogan, Charles (2007). " 'Stay-Behind' in France: Much ado about nothing?". Journal of Strategic Studies. 30 (6): 937–954. doi: 10.1080/01402390701676493. S2CID 154529125. The improvement of our information on the subject of Cominform and potential enemy activities in so far as they concern our two countries. During the 1960s, official meetings between Italian and American representatives became more rare and mostly dealt with updates on operations. The project appears to have progressed along pre-established lines: the selection, recruitment, and training of external personnel (also using a training centre in Cerveteri, which was enhanced in those same years in view of using it as a supplementary base), the creation of peripheral structures (cells and rapid response units), participation in international military exercises, and the preparation and concealment of arms and materiel caches in combat zones. Clarion: Nato network in France, Guardian 14 Nov 1990". Cambridge Clarion Group. 14 November 1990 . Retrieved 19 February 2015.

CIA ORGANIZED SECRET ARMY IN WESTERN EUROPE

Following Giulio Andreotti's revelations in 1990, the Greek defence minister confirmed that a branch of the network, known as Operation Sheepskin, operated in his country until 1988. [48] Philip HJ Davies, "Review of NATO's Secret Armies," The Journal of Strategic Studies, December 2005, 1064–1068. The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called " Gladio" (meaning "sword"), was a secret mixed civilian and military unit, trained to form a resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion and part of a network of similar organizations in North Atlantic Treaty Organization states. It functioned from at least 1951 until 1990, when the Belgian branch was promptly and officially dissolved after its existence became publicly known following revelations concerning the Italian branch of the stay-behind network.Interior Minister Franz Olah set up a new secret army codenamed Österreichischer Wander-, Sport- und Geselligkeitsverein (OeWSGV, literally " Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society"), with the cooperation of MI6 and the CIA. He later explained that "we bought cars under this name. We installed communication centres in several regions of Austria", confirming that "special units were trained in the use of weapons and plastic explosives". He stated that "there must have been a couple of thousand people working for us... Only very, very highly positioned politicians and some members of the union knew about it". [65] secret war. Rocca first used his secret Gladio army to bomb the offices of the DCI and the offices of a few daily newspapers and thereafter blamed the terror on the The Fox at IMDb, a 2017 English drama with Gladio as a main plot point, produced in the Netherlands by Alex ter Beek and Klaas van Eikeren.

Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican

Code-named 'Piano Solo' the coup was directed by General Giovanni De Lorenzo whom Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti of the DCI had transferred The judge Guido Salvini, who worked in the Italian Massacres Commission, found out that several far-right terrorist organizations were the trench troops of a secret army who were linked to the CIA. [31] Salvini said: "The role of the Americans was ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities". [32] When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the country's special forces, LOK ( Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn, i.e., "mountain raiding companies"), were integrated into the European stay-behind network. The CIA and LOK reconfirmed on March 25, 1955, their mutual cooperation in a secret document signed by US General Truscott for the CIA, and Konstantinos Dovas, chief of staff of the Greek military. In addition to preparing for a Soviet invasion, the CIA instructed LOK to prevent a leftist coup. Former CIA agent Philip Agee, who was sharply criticized in the US for having revealed sensitive information, insisted that "paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in the sixties throughout Europe [and he stressed that] perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion." [46] and deport them to the island of Sardinia where the secret Gladio centre was to serve as a prison. The document on 'The Special Forces of SIFAR and Operation Nevertheless, at the precise moment that the structure began to operate with some regularity, the American side began to feel the need to reconsider Gladio’s goals and direction. The turning point was made explicit during a meeting on January 26th, 1966. At the end of the meeting, the redacted minutes record the following:

In the Quiet of a Small Town

There were at least four mutations within Gladio over the years, and the problem of identifying and understanding these changes not only relates to historical analysis. The ‘contextualisation’ of Gladio’s evolution is relevant to establish its legitimacy, and this must be assessed at each moment of its history, not simply at its origin.

Operation Gladio: How NATO Conducted a Secret War Against Operation Gladio: How NATO Conducted a Secret War Against

US intelligence also assisted in the set up of a West German stay-behind network. CIA documents released in June 2006 under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, show that the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of West German agents between 1949 and 1953. According to The Washington Post, "One network included at least two former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues—and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp, a former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi". "The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press." [45] a b c "Misinformation about 'Gladio/Stay Behind' Networks Resurfaces". United States Department of State. Archived from the original on 28 March 2008.In the 2012 Archer episode "Lo Scandalo", the character Malory Archer mentions having been involved in Operation Gladio when younger. It is described by Lana Kane as "a weird crypto- fascist CIA shitshow, starring Allen Dulles and a bunch of former Nazis." According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them, such as Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. [5] [6] [7] [8] The United States Department of State rejected the view that they supported terrorists and maintains that the operation served only to resist a potential invasion of Western European countries by the Soviet Union. [9] History and general stay-behind structure [ edit ] British experience during World War II [ edit ] Gladio Network", which had been erected by the secret services in various countries of NATO, through a committee created in 1952. Sinai, Tamir (8 December 2020). "Eyes on target: 'Stay-behind' forces during the Cold War". War in History. 28 (3): 681–700. doi: 10.1177/0968344520914345. p.9 The name ‘Operation Gladio’ first emerged in a meeting on 19 October 1956 between representatives of SIFAR (Colonel Giuliu Fettarappa Sandri, Major Mario Accasto) and representatives of the CIA (Bob Porter, John Edwards). From the very first meeting, particular procedures were adopted relating to the drafting and transmission of documentation regarding Gladio. Each official document (records of agreements, minutes of meetings, memoranda) was to be drafted both in English and Italian, with a maximum of four hard copies produced. The documents were filed under the ‘Gladio’ moniker, followed by progressive numbers.