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

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La 'red Gladio' continúa operando, según el ex agente Alberto Volo, El País, August 19, 1991 (in Spanish) Akbas, Tutkun (15 January 2008). "Türkeş'i CIA kurtardı". Sabah (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 22 May 2011 . Retrieved 29 December 2008. ) See also Video on YouTube Based on the fear of a potential invasion after the Second World War highly placed officials in the national European governments, in the European military secret services, in NATO as well as in the CIA and the MI6 therefore decided that a secret resistance network had to be set up already during peacetime. On a lower level in the hierarchy citizens and military officers in numerous countries of Western Europe shared this assessment, joined the conspiracy and secretly trained for the emergency. These preparations were not limited to the 16 NATO member countries, but included also the four neutral countries in Western Europe, namely Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, on which the author is preparing a second publication. In retrospect it has become obvious that the fear was without reason and the training had been futile for the invasion of the Red Army never came. Yet such a certainty was not available at the time. And it is telling that the cover of the network, despite repeated exposures in many countries during the entire Cold War, was only blown completely at exactly the same moment when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. The Italian NATO stay-behind organization, dubbed "Gladio", was set up under Minister of Defense (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani's ( DC) supervision. [20] Gladio's existence came to public knowledge when Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed it to the Chamber of Deputies on 24 October 1990, although far-right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra had already revealed its existence during his 1984 trial. According to media analyst Edward S. Herman, "both the President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, had been involved in the Gladio organization and coverup..." [21] [22] [23] [ verification needed]

a b c "Misinformation about 'Gladio/Stay Behind' Networks Resurfaces". United States Department of State. Archived from the original on 28 March 2008. Calvo Sotelo asegura que España no fue informada, cuando entró en la OTAN, de la existencia de Gladio, El País, November 21, 1990 (in Spanish) In 1947, Interior Minister Édouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". The next year, the "Western Union Clandestine Committee" (WUCC) was created to coordinate secret unorthodox warfare. In 1949, the WUCC was integrated into NATO, whose headquarters were established in France, under the name "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC). In 1958, NATO founded the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare. [40] Misinformation about "Gladio/Stay Behind" Networks Resurfaces - US Department of State". Archived from the original on 10 July 2008 . Retrieved 18 July 2016. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown ( link)Beginning in 1986, a bunker in the Ucciardone prison in Palermo hosted the largest trial in world history, where an attempt to dismantle the entire power structure of the Sicilian Mafia ( Cosa Nostra) began with the indictment of 475 mafiosi. The trial lasted six years, until the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of 338 people after they had exhausted the appeals process. 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]

Willan, Phillip (2002). Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. iUniverse. pp.149–150. ISBN 978-1-4697-1084-6.A potential exit strategy from the spiral of fear, manipulation and violence might have to focus on the individual human being itself and a change of consciousness. In Turkey the commander of the stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla, General Kenan Evren, stages a military coup and seizes power.

In the Netherlands, Gladio was exposed, although as a limited hangout, by journalist Peter R. de Vries. Dutch program Brandpunt also ran a piece, interviewing former agents and revealing the division to still exist in the early 2000s. De Vries his revelations mentioned the Belgian investigator who was stonewalled in his research there. That officer linked the Belgian and Dutch Gladio agents to the Brabant Massacres and even the Olaf Palme assassination. The fact that the University of Amsterdam revealed the division was headed by early key Dutch Deep State leader Prince Bernhard was not mentioned in de Vries or Brandpunt their investigations. Bernhard wes a influential European Deep State player until the 1980s as well, raising even more questions. What sets the Italian case apart is the depth of inquiry that was conducted by the Commissione Stragi and the wealth of high-level testimonies available. However, this has also been a hindrance to its diffusion locally as well as internationally: isolating crucial and revelatory information has almost exclusively been the remit of historians, with even fewer reporters having the opportunity to approach the documentation and translate texts into English. But Gladio was not an exclusively Italian phenomenon. Nor should one reduce the operation to an expression of an institutionally weak and corrupt state, something that would not have occurred in other, more ‘stable’, more legally and structurally ‘civilised’ countries. The clandestine operation was present all over Europe and, if anything, the powers granted to the Commission and the degree of transparency and procedural rectitude shown by the Italian Parliament should be commended. ready to start the coup. Then, on June 14, 1964, De Lorenzo gave the go-ahead and with his troops entered Rome with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, jeeps and 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. pp.8-10In Italy former Prime Minister and leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Aldo Moro, is taken hostage in Rome by an armed secret unit and killed 55 days later because he wanted to include the Italian Communists in the government. The revelations began to mount and a picture emerged of a NATO Clandestine Planning Committee, responsible for the Gladio armies; of protocols which actively protected right-wing extremists from pursuit since they would be useful in anti-Communist activities. The CPC was run by the US with the UK and France as junior partners, with CIA members present at their meetings. Despite numerous revelations from those who took part, the official NATO position was (and is) one of denial. Official CIA response to information requests has been to neither confirm nor deny. In the UK, MI6 was even more cagey, prompting John Simpson on BBC 2’s Newsnight programme in April 1991 to say observable ever since the invention of dynamite in the nineteenth century. Arguably more technology and more violence will therefore not solve the challenges ahead.

A " lone nut", Christer Pettersson, was blamed but his conviction was overturned. After a document surfaced implicating the Apartheid South Africa in the assassination, in 2020 the Swedish police blamed the assassination on a different, already deceased, "lone nut". Union and became convinced that a stay-behind army could be of strategic value when it came to the liberation of the occupied territory. Behind enemy lines the Most sensitively the Belgian parliamentarians discovered that the secret NATO army was still active. They found that a secret meeting of Generals directing the secret stay-behind armies in the numerous countries in Western Europe had been held in the secret NATO-linked Gladio headquarters ACC as recently as October 23 and 24, 1990. The meeting of the ACC had taken place in Brussels under the chairmanship of General Raymond Van Calster, chief of the Belgian military secret service SGR ( Service General de Renseignement). [6]secret army could have strengthened the resistance spirit of the population, helped in the running of an organised and armed national resistance, sabotaged As one of the nations that prompted the Truman Doctrine, Turkey is one of the first countries to participate in Operation Gladio and, some [ who?] say, the only country where it has not been purged. [59] The counter-guerrillas' existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit. [60]