Operation Gladio

http://web.archive.org/web/20051130003012/http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/doc...

Synopsis of the Book

Chapter One:

A terrorist attack in Italy This chapter describes the discovery of the secret stay-behind army "Gladio" in Italy. The chapter takes the reader back to the Peteano terrorist attack of 31 May 1972. In that year an anonymous phone call after the attack suggested that the left-wing terrorist organization "Red Brigades" had carried out the atrocity, and for many years Italy believed that the crime had been carried out by the political left. Yet in 1984 Italian judge Felice Casson reopened the Peteano case after having discovered large-scale manipulations. The chapter describes how Casson during his investigations discovered the Italian secret stay-behind army "Gladio" hidden within the military secret service and how it had linked up with right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra who confessed to having carried out the Peteano terrorist attack. The chapter focuses on the agitated Italian public debate that followed when Vinciguerra exposed the so called "strategy of tension" through which members of the secret stay-behind armies and the military secret services had manipulated the public through terrorism. The secret armies supplied right wing terrorists with explosives to carry out terrorist attacks on the Italian population who were thereafter blamed on the communist party and the political left in general in order to discredit the political opponent. "The terrorist line was followed by camouflaged people, people belonging to the security apparatus, or those linked to the state apparatus through rapport or collaboration", Vincenzo Vinciguerra testified. Right-wing organisations across Western Europe "were being mobilised into the battle as part of an anti-communist strategy originating not with organisations deviant from the institutions of power, but from the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the Atlantic Alliance."

Chapter Two:

A scandal shocks Western Europe This chapter describes how the democracies in Western Europe in 1990 dealt with the discovery of the secret stay-behind armies in their respective countries. The chapter shows that only three countries, namely Italy, Belgium and Switzerland, carried out a parliamentary investigation into their secret armies and thereafter presented a public report, and details how all other countries dealt with the issue behind closed doors. The chapter describes how the press reacted, with for instance the British daily the Observer speaking of "the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II". Furthermore this chapter relates how the parliament of the European Union (EU) on 22 November 1990 dealt with the issue and how for instance Italian MP Falqui had insisted: "Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, there is one fundamental moral and political necessity, in regard to the new Europe that we are progressively building. This Europe will have no future if it is not founded on truth, on the full transparency of its institutions in regard to the dark plots against democracy that have turned upside down the history, even in recent times, of many European states. There will be no future, ladies and gentlemen, if we do not remove the idea of having lived in a kind of double state - one open and democratic, the other clandestine and reactionary. That is why we want to know what and how many "Gladio" networks there have been in recent years in the Member States of the European Community."

Chapter Three:

The silence of NATO, CIA and MI6 This chapter describes the reactions of NATO, the CIA and MI6 to the discovery of the secret stay-behind armies. The chapter details how NATO reacted defensive and at times inconsistent and tells the story of how NATO Spokesman Jean Marcotta on Monday 5 November 1990 at SHAPE headquarters in Mons, Belgium, first denied that NATO had ever been involved in secret warfare, whereupon the next day another NATO spokesman explained that NATO's statement of the previous day had been false, adding that NATO never commented on matters of military secrecy. Thereafter NATO ambassadors on 7 November 1990 were informed behind closed doors by NATO secretary-general Manfred Wörner and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) US General John Galvin. The chapter describes how written requests by the author for further information on the stay-behind networks and NATO's stay-behind command centres "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC) and "Allied Clandestine Committee" (ACC) were declined in subsequent years. The chapter reports how during the same years specific data on CPC and ACC surfaced in Italy. General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian Gladio secret army from 1971 to 1974, and General Paolo Inzerilli, who commanded the Italian stay-behind Gladio from 1974 to 1986, both confirmed in their books on the topic that the ACC and the CPC had been founded at the explicit order of NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). The chapter also records how the foreign secret service of the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has somewhat inconsistently both commented and refused to comment on its stay-behind armies in Western Europe. William Colby, Director of the CIA from 1973 to 1976, in his book Honorable Men related that the covert action branch of the CIA, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), had after World War Two "undertaken a major program of building, throughout those Western European countries that seemed likely targets for Soviet attack, what in the parlance of the intelligence trade were known as 'stay-behind nets', clandestine infrastructures of leaders and equipment trained and ready to be called into action as sabotage and espionage forces when the time came." Several years later Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA from 1977 to 1981, strictly refused to answer any questions about Gladio in a television interview in Italy in December 1990. When with respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks the journalist insisted and repeated the question the former CIA director angrily ripped off his microphone and shouted: "I said, no questions about Gladio!" whereupon the interview was over. The chapter also relates how academics at the distinguished National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request with the CIA on 15 April 1991 which was declined. It also notes how a FOIA request which the author handed in on 14 December 2000 was first declined, whereupon the author appealed to which the CIA replied that it will provide an answer in the future which is still lacking. The chapter also details that the British foreign secret service MI6 with its legendary obsession for secrecy did not take a position on stay-behind questions at all but confirmed its involvement through a somewhat unusual channel in the "secret wars" exhibition in the London based Imperial War Museum in 1995. ......