Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies. Edited by Daniele Ganser and Christian Nuenlist, 29 Nov 2004. Parallel History Project, ETH Zürich. ( Internet Archive mirror) The stated goal of the network was to protect Italian territory and citizens if they “came to know occupation and subversion”. A ‘long-armed’ mechanism with great reach was envisaged to encourage the liberation of territory and to “reestablish legal control and legitimate institutions.”

s Secret Armies, Operation Gladio, and JFK NATO’s Secret Armies, Operation Gladio, and JFK

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, whether in Italy or in other European countries. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind in enemy-controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations. Defense minister Poncelet replied in the Belgian Senate that the plan was only an internal draft proposal, which was never approved by the military command or the defense minister himself. [26]

In the Quiet of a Small Town

Regine Igel, Andreotti. Politik zwischen Geheimdienst und Mafia, 1997, Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich ( ISBN 3-7766-1951-1). (in German) Misinformation about 'Gladio/Stay Behind' Networks Resurfaces". USINFO. U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs. 20 January 2006. Archived from the original on 28 March 2008 . Retrieved 17 August 2023. During the Cold War, West European countries set up clandestine 'stay behind' networks, which were designed to form the nucleus of resistance movements if the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Western Europe. ... A thirty year-old Soviet forgery has been cited as one of the central pieces of 'evidence' for the false notion that West European 'stay-behind' networks engaged in terrorism, allegedly at U.S. instigation. This is not true ... .

Operation Gladio - Wikispooks Operation Gladio - Wikispooks

Aside from ‘Gladio/1’, another 111 documents belonging to official Gladio documentation were found. Amongst these we note the minutes of the Gladio Committee meetings , the Italo-American structure created to plan the development of the Italian branch of the stay-behind network. Note interne de la BSR". resistances.be (in French). Archived from the original on Dec 15, 2018. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link) General Kenan Evren, who became President of Turkey following a successful coup d'état in 1980, served as the head of the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of Operation Gladio. Historians and outside investigators have speculated that Counter-Guerrilla and several subordinate Intelligence, Special Forces, and Gendarmerie units were possibly involved in numerous acts of state-sponsored terrorism and engineering the military coups of 1971 and 1980. Many of the high ranking plotters of the 1971 and 1980 coup, such as Generals Evren, Memduh Tağmaç, Faik Türün, Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, Kemal Yamak and Air Force Commander Tahsin Şahinkaya served at various times under the command of Counter-Guerrilla or the subordinate Tactical Mobilisation Group and Special Warfare Department. The two major obstacles facing the commission of inquiry were firstly the secret nature of the case and the related unwillingness of witnesses in disclosing information and secondly time constraints.In 1957, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Benelux countries, all of which ran SBOs in Western Europe, established the 'Six Powers Lines Committee' which became the Allied Clandestine Committee in 1958 and, after 1976, the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC). The ACC has been described as a technical committee to bring national SBOs together. It took its guidance from the CPC and organized multinational exercises. The authority of SACEUR when it came to clandestine operations was discussed in the early 1950s as one can gather from the document 'SHAPE Problems Outstanding with the Standing Group', which, under sub-heading 'IV. Special Plans' calls for the 'Delineation of Responsibilities of the Clandestine Services and of SACEUR on Clandestine Matters Including Pertinent Definitions and Organizations' and 'Principles for Unorthodox Warfare Planning'. While all this concerned the highest level of NATO command, coordination in time of crisis had to be arranged. Thus, to coordinate these activities at different command levels in wartime, SACEUR created the Allied Clandestine Coordinating Groups (ACCG) staffed with personnel from NATO nations at SHAPE and the subordinate commands. In case of war, SACEUR was meant to exercise operational control of national clandestine services' assets, according to each nation's existing policies, through the ACCG. By 1961 though, 'both SHAPE and CPC [now] accepted that such SB activity [guerrilla warfare and resistance under Soviet occupation] was a purely national responsibility'. [16] Researcher Francesco Cacciatore, in an article based on recently de-classified documents, writes that a "note from March 1972 specified that the possibility of using 'Gladio' in the event of internal subversions, not provided for by the organization's statute and not supported by NATO directives or plans, was outside the scope of the original stay-behind and, therefore, 'never to be considered among the purposes of the operation'. The pressure put forward by the Americans during the 1960s to use 'Gladio' for purposes other than those of a stay-behind network would appear to have failed in the long term." [24] Both military intelligence and Staatsveiligheid maintained dossiers on Gladio training activities, of which incomplete versions were made available to the parliamentary committee. Events from the list of operations by the military branch was provided by Coëme and is denoted by A, while events from the list from the archives of the Staatsveiligheid (titled " Overzicht oefeningen in het kader ACC – periode 1980-1990") is denoted by B: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world'. Gezer, Şenol (17 April 2006). "Oral Çelik: 'Ülkücüleri Naziler eğitti' ". Bugün. Archived from the original on 17 April 2006. {{ cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link)

Interview 1843 - Daniele Ganser Exposes The Ruthless Empire

Despite the protestations of the ‘connected’ services, as illustrated by their frequent appeals to use Gladio structures primarily for joint planning, SIFAR defended the necessity of integrating pre-existing guerrillas into the clandestine network by reminding the Americans that the tasks entrusted to them were entirely in line with the stay-behind program, given that they were for the “control and neutralisation of communist activities” (‘Gladio/41’, 3 December 1958). a b Ganser, Daniele (2005). "Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Secret Stay-Behind Armies" (PDF). Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. 6 (1). With the current international situation in mind, [the representative of American intelligence] proposes that the joint Gladio project, though reaffirming its preservation and the efficiency of the organisation reached to this point, reorient its activities towards a program that could bear fruit from peacetime and that may offer immediate results, and which could be inspired by the doctrine of ‘insurgency and counter-insurgency’.”The Danish stay-behind army was code-named Absalon, after a Danish archbishop, and led by E. J. Harder. It was hidden in the military secret service Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE). In 1978, William Colby, former director of the CIA, released his memoirs in which he described the setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia: [39] Italy moved from the centre to the centre-left, 2 From 1948 to 1962, Italy was ruled by Christian Democracy (DC), which formed coalitions with other right-wing or centrist parties until its – temporary – 1963 alliance with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) . from there to a historical compromise, 3 The ‘Historical Compromise’ was a political accommodation between the DC and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) proposed in 1973 by PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer. The PCI eventually entered into government in 1978, though without being granted any cabinet ministers. and finally to the unravelling of consensus. 4 Berlinguer announced the end of the historical compromise in 1980, unsatisfied by the low level of decision-making power given to the PCI by the DC. The largest communist party in the West has met the same end as the ideology that guided it. 5 The PCI formally disbanded in 1991. It had been the West’s largest communist party, obtaining 34% of the vote in the 1976 national elections as well as regularly electing senators and mayors of Italy’s largest cities. In the European elections of 1984, it briefly overtook the DC (33,33% to 32.97%). In these forty years, Italy has seen a succession of forty governments, and there have been twenty different prime ministers. In 1990, then-Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers told the Dutch Parliament that his office was running a secret organisation that had been set up inside the Dutch defence ministry in the 1950s, but denied it was supervised directly by NATO or other foreign bodies. He went on to inform that successive prime ministers and defence chiefs had always preferred not to inform other Cabinet members or Parliament about the secret organization. It was modelled on the nation's World War II experiences of having to evacuate the royal family and transfer government to a government-in-exile, [52] originally aiming to provide an underground intelligence network to a government-in-exile in the event of a foreign invasion, although it included elements of guerilla warfare. Former Dutch Defence Minister Henk Vredeling confirmed the group had set up arms caches around the Netherlands for sabotage purposes. [52] 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.

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

Legitimate powers include intelligence services, which are not structures outside of government control, only ones that operate with a high degree of anonymity and confidentiality. They should always remain under the eye of the State. Richard Norton-Taylor, " The Gladio File: did fear of communism throw West into the arms of terrorists?", in The Guardian, December 5, 1990 Various arrangements emerged, “some at the NATO level, some at the national level.” At the national level, a network began to be created following a double structure: Planchar, Roland (8 September 2006). "De nouvelles découvertes". La Libre Belgique (in French). Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. Jean-François Brozzu-Gentile, L'Affaire Gladio. Les réseaux secrets américains au cœur du terrorisme en Europe, 1994, Éditions Albin Michel, Paris ( ISBN 2-226-06919-4). (in French)

Lamfalussy, Christophe (8 September 2006). "Un arrière-goût d'années de plomb". La Libre Belgique (in French). Archived from the original on May 18, 2020. 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 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.