Nice Brings To Mind Operation Gladio
Nice Brings To Mind Operation Gladio
Paul Craig Roberts
Commentators who have learned to distrust official explanations, such as Peter Koenig
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45106.htm ) and Stephen Lendman
(http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2016/07/hyping-terrorism-stoking-fear-following.html ) have raised questions about the Nice attack.
It does seem odd that a lone person driving a large truck can gain access to blocked off areas where French people have assembled to watch the fireworks of Bastille Day. It also seems odd that the event is branded a terrorist one when the alleged perpetrator’s family says that he was not at all religious and had no religious motivation.
We will never know. Once again the alleged perpetrator is dead and conveniently left behind his ID.
It looks like a permanent state of martial law in France will be one consequence. This shutdown of society will also dispose of the protests against capitalist puppet Hollande’s repeal of France’s labor protections. Those protesting the take-back of their hard-earned rights will be closed down under the martial law.
Amazing how convenient the attack was for global capitalism, the primary beneficiary of Hollande’s new “labor reform.”
Questions raised by Koenig and Lendman call to mind Operation Gladio. Gladio is the codename for a secret NATO operation set up by Washington after WWII as a result of fear that the Red Army would overrun Western Europe. Originally Gladio consisted of hidden arms caches and an organization to conduct guerrilla war against the Soviet occupying army.
Instead of a Soviet Invasion, the threat that emerged was the popularity of the Communist Party in France and especially Italy. Washington was fearful that communist parties would win enough votes to form a government and that Washington’s Western European Empire would be breached as these communist governments aligned with Moscow.
Consequently, Gladio was turned against the European communist parties. The Italian intelligence service together with the CIA began bombing public places in Italy, such as the Bologna train station in which 285 people were killed, maimed, and otherwise wounded.
Gladio operative Vincenzo Vinciguerra first revealed Gladio’s existence during his 1984 trial for the bombing of the Bologna train station in 1980. Questioned about the Bologna bombing, Vinciguerra said:
“There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity that is, to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army…A secret organization, a super-organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives, and men trained to use them…A super-organization which, lacking a Soviet military invasion which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO’s behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Vinciguerra
It was not until 6 years later, 1990, that the prime minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, officially acknowledged the existence of Gladio.
Italian General Gerardo Serravalie commanded Italy’s Gladio’s participation in the first half of the 1970s. Wikipedia reports that he testified that those responsible for planning and coordination “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.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
There were many bombings with many civilian casualties from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. Vinciguerra said:
“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people outside the political arena, for one simple reason–to force the Italian public to turn to the state, turn to the regime and ask for greater security. . . . This is the political logic behind all the bombings. They remain unpunished because the State cannot condemn itself.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaMUbCpaRyc
The bombings were blamed on communist terrorist groups, such as the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof gang, groups that might have been real or invented intelligence covers to aid the discrediting of European communist parties.
In 1984 Judge Felice Casson reopened a 12 year old case of a car bomb in Peteano, Italy. The judge found that the case had been falsified and blamed on the Red Brigades, but had actually been the work of the military secret service, Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID) in conjunction with Ordine Nuovo, a right-wing organization created or co-opted by Gladio. The police official who falsified the investigation was sentenced to prison. Judge Casson’s investigation concluded that the Peteano bombing was part of a series of bombings carried out by Gladio including the Milano Piazza Fontane bombing, which killed 16 and injured 80, and the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing, which killed 85 and injured 200.
Based on the Italian revelations, Belgium and Swiss governments undertook investigations of Gladio operations in those countries. The United States government has denied any participation in the bombings. However, Judge Casson’s search of the archives of the Italian military secret service turned up proof of the existence of the Gladio network, and links to NATO and the United States.https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Western peoples whose democracies have degenerated into plutocracies are inoculated against the belief that the government would kill its own citizens. Clearly they need to learn about operation Gladio.
Is Operation Gladio still alive and well? The terror events of today are blamed on Muslims instead of on communists. Is it possible that the terror attacks in France and Belgium are Gladio operations?
Addendum:
This large collection of photos from the UK Daily Mail of the Nice attack —http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3691019/Several-people-injured-truck-crashes-crowd-Bastille-Day-celebrations-Nice.html — does not seem to show any blood in the streets where the carnage is reported to have happened or any blood associated with what are reported to be bodies. The white truck that is reported to be the murder weapon does not seem to show any blood or damage. A colleague once hit a deer, and his car was totaled. How can there be 186 people hit and no damage to the truck? Also, among the photos is a video of police standing exposed a few feet from the truck cab firing into the cab. For the police to expose themselves to a lunatic reported to be armed implies that he wasn’t armed or that the truck cab was empty. Why didn’t the police just open the door and capture him, or if he was armed wait until his pistol ran out of ammunition? In all of these attacks, the alleged perpetrator is always killed. Note also that already there are names and photos of the victims and a history of the perpetrator. How can so many photos of so many different people be so quickly collected and so much information collected about the perpetrator? The media never ask public authorities such questions or ever provide answers. It seems the story is prepared and ready to go when the event occurs, and that story is all we ever get.
And what do we make of this: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-paris-bataclan-terror-attack-six-french-military-were-present-instructed-not-to-intervene-people-died/5534527 Why would armed French troops on the scene capable of stopping the Bataclan carnage be told to stand down?
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
Operation Gladio: CIA Network of “Stay Behind” Secret Armies
The “Sacrifice” of Aldo Moro
Through NATO, working with various Western European intelligence agencies, the CIA set up a network of stay behind “secret armies” which were responsible for dozens of terrorist atrocities across Western Europe over decades. This report will focus on the stay behind army in Italy, as it is the most documented. Its codename was Operation Gladio, the ‘Sword’.
An Overview
The Purpose of the ‘Stay Behind’ Armies
In the early 1950s, the United States began training networks of “stay behind” volunteers in Western Europe, so that in the event of a Soviet invasion, they would “gather intelligence, open escape routes and form resistance movements.” The CIA financed and advised these groups, later working in tandem with western European military intelligence units under the coordination of a NATO committee. In 1990, Italian and Belgian investigators started researching the links between these “stay behind armies” and the occurrence of terrorism in Western Europe for a period of 20 years.[1]
‘Secret Armies’ or Terrorist Groups?
These “stay behind” armies colluded with, funded and often even directed terrorist organizations throughout Europe in what was termed a “strategy of tension” with the aim of preventing a rise of the left in Western European politics. NATO’s “secret armies” engaged in subversive and criminal activities in several countries. In Turkey in 1960, the stay behind army, working with the army, staged a coup d’état and killed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in Algeria in 1961, the French stay-behind army staged a coup with the CIA against the French government of Algiers, which ultimately failed; in 1967, the Greek stay-behind army staged a coup and imposed a military dictatorship; in 1971 in Turkey, after a military coup, the stay-behind army engaged in “domestic terror” and killed hundreds; in 1977 in Spain, the stay behind army carried out a massacre in Madrid; in 1980 in Turkey, the head of the stay behind army staged a coup and took power; in 1985 in Belgium, the stay behind attacked and shot shoppers randomly in supermarkets, killing 28; in Switzerland in 1990, the former head of the Swiss stay behind wrote the US Defense Department he would reveal “the whole truth,” and was found the next day stabbed to death with his own bayonet; and in 1995, England revealed that the MI6 and SAS helped set up stay behind armies across Western Europe.[2]
The Birth of Operation Gladio
A ‘Strategy of Tension’
In 1990, the Italian Prime Minister had confirmed that Italy’s “stay behind” army, termed “Gladio” (Sword), existed since 1958, with the approval of the Italian government. In the early 1970s, Italy’s communist support was growing, so the government turned to a “Strategy of Tension” using the Gladio network. At a top secret 1972 Gladio meeting, one official referred to making a “pre-emptive attack” on the Communists. As the Guardian reported, links between Gladio in Italy, all three Italian secret services and Italy’s P2 Masonic Lodge were well documented, as the head of each intelligence unit was a member of the P2 Lodge.[3]
Setting up the Network
In 1949, the CIA helped set up the Italian secret armed forces intelligence unit, named SIFAR, staffed in part with former members of Mussolini’s secret police. It later changed its name to SID. At the end of World War 2, a former Nazi collaborator, Licio Gelli, was facing execution for his activities during the war, but managed to escape by joining the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, Gelli was recruited by SIFAR. Gelli was also head of the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, and in 1969, he developed close ties with General Alexander Haig, who was then Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Through this network, Gelli became chief intermediary between the CIA and General De Lorenzo, Chief of the SID.[4]
Gladio Creates ‘Tension’
Gladio was involved in a silent coup d’état in Italy, when General Giovanni de Lorenzo forced the Italian Socialist Ministers to leave the government.[5] On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank, which killed 17 people and wounded 88 others. That afternoon, three more bombs exploded in Rome and Milan. US intelligence was informed ahead of time of the bombing, but did not inform the Italian authorities.[6] In 2000, a former Italian Secret Service General stated that the CIA “gave its tacit approval to a series of bomb attacks in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.”[7] The bombing was linked to two neofascists and to an SID agent.[8]
Testifying in a court case trying four men accused of involvement in the 1969 bank bombing in Milan, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of military counter-intelligence from 1971 to 1975, stated that his unit discovered evidence that explosives were supplied to a right wing Italian terrorist group from Germany, and that US intelligence may have aided in the transfer of explosives. He was quoted as saying that the CIA, “following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism,” and that, “I believe this is what happened in other countries as well.”[9]
The Report
The Italian government released a 300-page report on Gladio operations in Italy in 2000, documenting connections with the United States. It declared that the US was responsible for inspiring a “strategy of tension.” In examining why those who committed the bombings in Italy were rarely caught, the report said, “those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”[10]
The Red Brigades
The Red Brigades were a leftist Italian terrorist organization that was formed in 1970. In 1974, Red Brigade founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested. Alberto Franceschini later accused a top member of the Red Brigades, Mario Moretti, of turning them in, and that both Moretti and another leading Red Brigade member, Giovanni Senzani, were spies for the Italian and US secret services.[11] Moretti rose up through the ranks of the Red Brigades as a result of the arrest of the two founders.
The Red Brigades and the CIA
The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, which was founded by Corrado Simioni, Duccio Berio and Mario Moretti. Corrado Simoni had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe, Duccio Berio had been supplying the Italian SID with information of leftist groups and Mario Moretti, apart from being accused by the Red Brigades founders as being an intelligence asset, also happened to be the mastermind and murderer of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. An Italian police report referred to the Hyperion Language School as “the most important CIA office in Europe.”[12]
The Murder of Aldo Moro
Moro Makes Powerful Enemies
Aldo Moro, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister from 1963 until 1968 and later, from 1973 until 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades in 1978, while still a prominent politician in the Christian Democrat Party. When he was kidnapped, Moro was on his way to Parliament to vote on inaugurating a new government, of which he negotiated, for the first time since 1947, to be backed by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Moro’s policy of working with and bringing the Communists into the government was denounced by both the USSR and the United States.
Kissinger’s Threat
Moro was held for 55 days before his eventual murder. The reasoning was for his plan to bring the Communist Party into the government. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States. While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.”[13]
Moro was “Sacrificed”
Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department hostage negotiator and international crisis manager, “claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro.” Pieczenik “said that Moro had been “sacrificed” for the “stability” of Italy.” He had been sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day of Moro’s kidnapping to be part of a crisis committee, of which he said was “jolted into action by the fear that Moro would reveal state secrets in an attempt to free himself.” The action the committee took was to leak a memo saying that Moro was dead, and to have the memo attributed to the Red Brigades. The purpose of this was to “prepare the Italian public for the worst and to let the Red Brigades know that the state would not negotiate for Moro, and considered him already dead.”[14] In a documentary on the subject, Pieczenik stated that, “The decision was made in the fourth week of the kidnapping, when Moro’s letters became desperate and he was about to reveal state secrets,” and that, “It was an extremely difficult decision, but the one who made it in the end was interior minister Francesco Cossiga, and, apparently, also prime minister Giulio Andreotti.”[15]
Moro’s Letters
Among Moro’s released letters, which he was writing while in captivity, he stated that he feared that a shadow organization, with “other secret services of the West … might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country.”[16] During his interrogation while in captivity, Moro even referred to “Nato’s anti-guerrilla activities.” However, the Red Brigades did not use this information,[17] perhaps because, according to the founders of the Red Brigades, the leader of the organization at the time of Moro’s kidnapping, Mario Moretti, was working for the Italian or US intelligence services.[18]
Maverick Journalist Killed by President?
Shortly after Moro’s death, Italian journalist, Mino Pecorelli, a man with “excellent secret service contacts,” voiced his suspicion in a 1978 article that Moro’s death was linked to Gladio, which was not officially acknowledged until 1990. A year after Moro’s death, Pecorelli was shot dead in Rome. He claimed that the kidnapping of Moro was committed by a “lucid superpower.” In 2002, former seven-term Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, was convicted of “ordering” Pecorelli’s murder.[19] Pecorelli was about to publish a book “containing damaging criticisms of [Prime Minister Giulio] Andreotti by murdered Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.”[20]
The Bologna Bombing
On the morning of August 2, 1980, Italy experienced its worst-ever terrorist attack at Bologna train station, which killed 85 people, and wounded more than 200 others. A long and complicated investigation was undertaken, and eventually, a trial began. In 1988, four right-wing terrorists were sentenced to life in prison. Two other defendants were convicted of slandering the investigation, “Francesco Pazienza, a former financier linked to several criminal cases in Italy, and Licio Gelli, the former grandmaster of the so-called P-2 Masonic lodge.”[21] This is the very same Licio Gelli who happened to be a CIA intermediary for the head of Italian intelligence for the Gladio network. Although later on, Gelli was acquitted of the charges.
Notes
[1] Bruce W. Nelan, Europe Nato’s Secret Armies. Time Magazine: November 26, 1990:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,971772,00.html
2] PHP, Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies. ISN:
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.ethz.ch/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DETH%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
[3] Ed Vulliamy, Secret agents, freemasons, fascists… and a top-level campaign of political ‘destabilisation’. The Guardian: December 5, 1990:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html
4] Arthur E. Rowse, GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY. Covert Action Quarterly: December 1994
[5] PHP, Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies. ISN:
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.ethz.ch/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DETH%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
[6] Philip Willan, US ‘supported anti-left terror in Italy’. The Guardian: June 24, 2000:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/us.terrorism_graun_24jun2000.html
[7] CBC, CIA knew, but didn’t stop bombings in Italy – report. CBC News: August 5, 2000:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2000/08/05/cia000805.html
[8] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press, 2007: page 181
[9] Philip Willan, Terrorists ‘helped by CIA’ to stop rise of left in Italy. The Guardian: March 26, 2001:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/mar/26/terrorism
[10] Philip Willan, US ‘supported anti-left terror in Italy’. The Guardian: June 24, 2000:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/us.terrorism_graun_24jun2000.html
[11] Philip Willan, Infiltrators blamed for murder of Italian PM. The Guardian: April 10, 1999:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3852325,00.html
[12 – 13] Arthur E. Rowse, GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY. Covert Action Quarterly: December 1994
[14] Malcolm Moore, US envoy admits role in Aldo Moro killing. The Telegraph: March 16, 2008:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581425/US-envoy-admits-role-in-Aldo-Moro-killing.html
[15] Saviona Mane, A murder still fresh. Haaretz: May 9, 2008:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/981929.html
[16] Ed Vulliamy, Secret agents, freemasons, fascists… and a top-level campaign of political ‘destabilisation’. The Guardian: December 5, 1990:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/vinciguerra.p2.etc_graun_5dec1990.html
[17] Philip Willan, Moro’s ghost haunts political life. The Guardian: May 9, 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4665179-105806,00.html
[18] Philip Willan, Infiltrators blamed for murder of Italian PM. The Guardian: April 10, 1999:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3852325,00.html
[19] Philip Willan, Moro’s ghost haunts political life. The Guardian: May 9, 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4665179-105806,00.html
[20] BBC News, Giulio Andreotti: Mr Italy. BBC: October 23, 1999:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/483295.stm
[21] AP, Four Get Life in Prison In Bombing in Bologna. The New York Times: July 12, 1988:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D61131F931A25754C0A96E948260
Andrew G. Marshall contributed to breaking the Climate Change consensus in a celebrated 2006 article entitled Global Warming A Convenient Lie, in which he challenged the findings underlying Al Gore’s documentary. According to Marshall, ‘as soon as people start to state that “the debate is over”, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over’. Andrew Marshall has also written on the militarization of Central Africa, national security issues and the process of integration of North America. He is also a contributor to GeopoliticalMonitor.com He is currently a researcher at theCentre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal and is studying political science and history at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.
