 | Operation Gladio: Encyclopedia II - Operation Gladio - Gladio operations in NATO Countries
Operation Gladio - Gladio operations in NATO Countries
Operation Gladio - First discovered in Italy
Main article: Gladio in Italy
In 2000, a Parliament Commission report from the "Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo" concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country". A 2000 Senate report, stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." According to Daniele Ganser, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of Italian counterintelligence, confirmed in March 2001 that the CIA might have promoted terrorism in Italy [5]. Aldo Moro’s 1978 murder, by the Red Brigades (BR), effectively put an end to the PCI’s possible participation to the government. According to The Guardian, the first reason of Gladio's discovery was indeed "a group of judges examining letters uncovered in Milan during October in which the murdered Christian Democrat leader, Aldo Moro, said he feared a shadow organisation, alongside "other secret services of the West ... might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country" [3].
Gladio's existence came to public knowledge when Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed it to the Chamber of Deputies on October 24, 1990, although far-right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra had already revealed its existence during his 1984 trial. Thirty years after the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, which started the strategia della tensione, General Giandelio Maletti indicated that the massacre had been carried out by the Italian stay-behind army and right wing terrorists on orders of the CIA in order to discredit the PCI.
*1964 Operation Solo.
In 1964, Gladio was involved in a silent coup d'état when General Giovanni de Lorenzo in Operation Solo forces the Italian Socialists Ministers to leave the government [8].
*1969 Piazza Fontana bombing.
According to Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra: "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the politic and military authorities to declare a state of emergency" [9]
*1970, Golpe Borghese.
In 1970, the failed coup attempt Golpe Borghese gathered, around fascist Junio Valerio Borghese, international terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and P2 headmaster Licio Gelli.
*1972 Gladio meeting.
According to The Guardian, "General Geraldo Serraville, a former head of "Office R", told the terrorism commission that at a crucial Gladio meeting in 1972, at least half of the upper echelons "had the idea of attacking the communists before an invasion. They were preparing for civil war." Later, he put it more bluntly: "They were saying this: "Why wait for the invaders when we can make a preemptive attack now on the communists who would support the invader? The idea is now emerging of a Gladio web made up of semi-autonomous cadres which – although answerable to their secret service masters and ultimately to the NATO-CIA command – could initiate what they regarded as anti-communist operations by themselves, needing only sanction and funds from the existing 'official' Gladio column (...) General Nino Lugarese, head of SISMI from 1981-84 testified on the existence of a 'Super Gladio' of 800 men responsible for 'internal intervention' against domestic political targets." [3]
*May 31, 1972, Peteano massacre.
Vincenzo Vinciguerra confessed in 1984 to judge Felice Casson of having carried out the Peteano terrorist attack, in which three policemen died, and for which the Red Brigades (BR) had been blamed before. Vinciguerra explained during his trial how he had been helped by Italian secret services to escape the police and to fly away to Francoist Spain. However, he was abandonned by NATO as soon as he started talking about Gladio, declaring for example during his 1984 trial:
"with the massacre of Peteano and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages. [This structure] lies within the states itself. 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 organise a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army... 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 politcial balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces..." He then said to The Guardian, in 1990: "I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organised matrix... Avanguardia Nazionale, like Ordine Nuovo (the main right-wing terrorist group active during the 1970s), 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 within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the Atlantic Alliance." [3][5]
*November 23, 1973. Bombing of the plane Argo 16.
According to a December 1, 1990 article by The Independent, quoted by Statewatch, "General Geraldo Serraville, head of Gladio from 1971 to 1974, told a television programme that he now thought the explosion aboard the plane Argo 16 on 23 November 1973 was probably the work of gladiatori who were refusing to hand over their clandestine arms. Until then it was widely believed the sabotage was carried out by Mossad, the Israeli foreign service, in retaliation for the pro-Libyan Italian government’s decision to expel, rather than try, five Arabs who had tried to blow up an Israeli airliner. The Arabs had been spirited out of the country on board the Argo 16.” [1]
*1974 Brescia massacre, Italicus Expressen massacre, and arrest of Vito Miceli, chief of the Army intelligence service and member of P2, on charges of "conspiration against the state".
In 1974, a massacre committed by Ordine Nuovo, during an anti-fascist demonstration in Brescia, kills eight and injures 102. The same year, a bomb in the Rome to Munich train "Italicus Express" kills 12 and injures 48. Also in 1974, Vito Miceli, P2 member, chief of the SIOS (Servizio Informazioni), Army Intelligence's Service from 1969 and SID's head from 1970 to 1974, got arrested on charges of "conspiration against the state" concerning investigations about Rosa dei venti, a state-infiltrated group involved in terrorist acts. During his trial, he revealed the existence of the NATO stay-behind secret army.
*1977. Reorganization of Italian secret services following Vito Micelli's arrest.
In 1977, the secret services were thus reorganized in a democratic attempt. With law#801 of 24/10/1977, SID was divided into SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare), SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica) and CESIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e Sicurezza). The CESIS was given a coordination role, led by the President of Council.
*1978's murder of Aldo Moro.
Prime minister Aldo Moro was murdered in May 1978 by the Second Red Brigades (BR) in obscure circumstances. The head of the Italian secret services, accused of negligence, was a P2 member. The so-called "historic compromise" between the Christian-Democracy and the PCI was abandoned:
"As the conspiracy theorists would have it, Mr. Moro was allowed to be killed either with the acquiescence of people high in Italy’s political establishment, or at their instigation, because of the historic compromise he had made with the Communist Party" (The Independent, November 16, 1990, quoted by Statewatch [1])
"During his captivity, Aldo Moro wrote several letters to various political figures, including Giulio Andreotti. In October 1990, "a cache of previously unknown letters written by the former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, just prior to his execution by Red Brigade terrorists in 1978... was discovered in a Milan apartment which had once been used as a Red Brigade hideout. One of those letters made reference to the involvment of both NATO and the CIA in an Italian-based secret service, 'parralel' army", wrote The Irish Times on November 15, 1990 (quoted by Statewatch, [1]). "This safe house had been thoroughly searched at the time by Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the head of counter-terrorism. How is it that the papers had not been revealed before?" asked The Independent on November 16, 1990 [1]. Carlo A. Dalla Chiesa was murdered in 1982 (see below).
*1980 Bologna massacre.
"The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according to a parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the Bologna massacre is potentially the most serious of all the accusations levelled against Gladio, and comes just two days after the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, cleared Gladio’s name in a speech to parliament, saying that the secret army did not drift from its formal Nato military brief", wrote The Guardian on January 16, 1991 (quoted by Statewatch [1]). In November 1995, Neo-Fascists terrorists Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro were convicted to life imprisonment as executors of the 1980 Bologna massacre, for which Gladio's direct influence was proven during the investigation; Licio Gelli, P2's headmaster, received a sentence for investigation diversion, as well as Francesco Pazienza and SISMI officers Pietro Musumeci and Giuseppe Belmonte. Avanguardia Nazionale founder Stefano Delle Chiaie, who was involved in the Golpe Borghese in 1970, was also accused of involvement in the Bologna massacre [10] [6]
*1982 murder of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, head of counter-terrorism.
General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa's 1982 murder, in Palermo, by Pino Greco, one of the Mafia Godfather Salvatore Riina's (aka Toto Riina) favorite hitmen, is allegedly part of the strategy of tension. Alberto Dalla Chiesa had arrested Red Brigades founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini in September, 1974, and was later charged of investigation concerning Aldo Moro. He had also found Aldo Moro's letters concerning Gladio.
*October 24, 1990. Giulio Andreotti’s acknowledgment of Operazione Gladio.
After the discovery by judge Felice Casson of documents on Gladio in the archives of the Italian military secret service in Rome, Giulio Andreotti, head of Italian government, revealed to the Chamber of deputies the existence of "Operazione Gladio" on October 24, 1990, insisting that Italy has not been the only country with secret "stay-behind" armies. He made clear that "each chief of government had been informed of the existence of Gladio". Former Socialist Primer Minister Bettino Craxi claimed that he had not been informed until he was confronted with a document on Gladio signed by himself while he was Prime Minister. Former Primer Minister Giovanni Spadolini (Republican Party), at the time President of the Senate, and former Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani, at the time secretary of the ruling Christian Democratic Party clamied they remembered nothing. Spadolini stressed that there was a difference between what he knew as former Defence Secretary and what he knew as former Prime Minister. Only former Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga (DC) confirmed Andreotti's revelations, explaining that he was even "proud and happy" for his part in setting up Gladio as junior Defence Minister of the Christian Democratic Party. This lit up a political storm, requests were made for Cossiga's (Italian President since 1985) resignation or impeachment for high treason. He refused testifying to the investigating Senate committee. Cossiga narrowly escaped his impeachment by stepping down on April 1992, three months before his term expired[11].
1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, which started Italy's anni di piombo, and the 1974 "Italicus Expressen" train bombing were also attributed to Gladio operatives. In 1975, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Pinochet during Franco's funeral in Madrid, and would participate afterward in operation Condor, preparing for example the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton, a Chilean Christian Democrat, or participating in the 1980 'Cocaine Coup' of Luis García Meza Tejada in Bolivia. In 1989, he was arrested in Caracas, Venezuela and extradited to Italy to stand trial for his role in the Piazza Fontana bombing. Despite his reputation, Delle Chiaie was acquitted by the Assize Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow accused Massimiliano Fachini (as yet no convictions have been made for the attack). According to Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra: "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the politic and military authorities to declare a state of emergency" [9]
In July 2005, the Italian press revealed the existence of the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA), a "parallel police" created by Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca, two leaders of the National Union of the Police Forces (Unpf), a trade-union present in all the state security forces. Both claimed they were former members of Gladio. According to the DSSA website - closed after these revelations -, Fabrizio Quattrochi, murdered in Irak after being taken hostage, was there "for the DSSA". According to the Italian investigators, the DSSA was trying to obtain international and national recognition by intelligence agencies, in order to obtain financement for its parallel activities [12].
Operation Gladio - Austria
In Austria, the first secret stay-behind army was exposed in 1947. It had been set up by far-right Soucek and Rössner, who both insisted during their trial that "they were carrying out the secret operation with the full knowledge and support of the US and British occupying powers." Sentenced to death, they were then pardonned under mysterious circumstances by Chancellor Körner (1951-1957).
Franz Olah set up a new secret army codenamed Österreichischer Wander-Sport-und Geselligkeitsverein (OWSGV), with the cooperation of MI6 and 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 precised that "there must have been a couple of thousand people working for us... Only very, very highly positioned politicians and some mebers of the union knew about it".
In 1965, the police forces discovered a stay-behind arms cache in an old mine close to Windisch-Bleiberg and forced the British authorities to hand over a list with the location of 33 other caches in Austria [8].
In 1990, when secret "stay-behind" armies were discovered all around Europe, the Austrian government claimed that no secret army had existed in the country. However, six years later, the Boston Globe revealed the existence of a secret CIA arms caches in Austria. Austrian President Thomas Klestil and Chancellor Franz Vranitzky insisted that they had know nothing of the existence of the secret army and demanded that the US launch a full-scale investigation into the violation of Austria's neutrality, which was denied by President Bill Clinton. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns - appointed in August 2001 by President George Bush as the US Permanent Representative to the Atlantic treaty organization, where, as ambassador to NATO, he headed the combined State-Defense Department United States Mission to NATO and coordinated the NATO response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - insisted:
"The aim was noble, the aim was correct, to try to help Austria if it was under occupation. What went wrong is that successive Washington administrations simply decided not to talk to the Austrian government about it." [5]
Operation Gladio - Belgium
After the retreat of France from NATO, the SHAPE headquarter was displaced to Mons in Belgium. In 1990, following France's denial of any "stay-behind" French army, Giulio Andreotti publicly pointed out that the last Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) meeting, to which the French branch of Gladio was present, had been on October 23 and 24, 1990, under the presidency of Belgian General Van Calster, director of the Belgian military secret service SGR. In November, Guy Coëme, Minister of the Defense, acknowledged the existence of a Belgium "stay-behind" army, lifting concerns about a similar implication in terrorist acts as in Italy. The same year, the European Parliament sharply condemned NATO and the United States in a resolution for having manipulated European politics with the stay-behind armies [8].
Therefore, in Belgium, new legislation governing intelligence agencies' missions and methods was passed in 1998, following two government enquiries and the creation of a permanent parliamentary committee in 1991, which was to bring them under the authority of Belgium's federal agencies [13].
Several events in Belgium's history may have been related to the Belgian stay-behind SDRA8, as it was known. In 1950, the assassination of Julien Lahaut, chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB) had doubtlessly both a national and international signification, in which Gladio anti-communist's influence has been suspected [14].
In 1985, the Massacres of Brabant were linked by the press to a conspiracy among the Belgian stay-behind SDRA8, the Belgian Gendarmerie SDRA6, the Belgian far-right group Westland New Post, and the Pentagon secret service Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). However, after a parliamentary inquiry, no hard proof substaining these claims were found, and investigations continue to this day. Although the mystery into which those cold-blood massacres were committed did convince the Belgian Parliament to create a Permanent Committee of Surveillance of Intelligence Agencies' activities...
According to Amnistia.net, Luc Jouret, founder of the Order of the Solar Temple with Joseph di Mambro, had helped far-right activist Jean Thiriart organize a split in the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB) in the 1970s, creating the "Parti Communautaire Européen, a "Nazi-Maoist" party. According to Bruno Fouchereau, author of La mafia des sectes and collaborator of Le Monde Diplomatique, quoted by Amnistia, this Belgium "Nazi-Maoist group" was in fact controlled by the SDRA-8, Belgium's branch of Gladio. SDRA-8 other's creation was the "Westland-New-Post" terrorist group.[15]
In 1996, Le Soir caused a public uproar by revealing the existence of a classified document, dated August 1995, and titled "Plan de base de la défense militaire du territoire" ("Base plan of the military defense of the territory"). The newspaper quoted some passages: "Many communities of immigrants have settled themselves in large agglomerations... We consider that there exist no open threat in Belgium... But there is a clandestine threat with a permanent character" (sic) ("Nombre de communautés immigrées se sont fixées dans les grandes agglomérations. Si ces groupes de population devaient entrer clairement en désaccord avec la politique belge, ils pourraient déclencher des actions visant à contrarier cette politique ou visant à faire connaître leur mécontentements (...) Nous considérons qu'il n'existe aucune menace ouverte en Belgique (...) Mais il existe bien une menace clandestine avec un caractère permanent" - sic).
The dissolved SDRA-8 had been replaced by the "Commandement territorial interforces" (CTI), a military intelligence agency organized by provinces and essentially composed of approximatively a thousand reserve officers. Its goal was to infiltrate civil society and find informants, with the mission to be especially concerned by the "immigrant communities which represented a permanent clandestine threat" (sic). According to Le Soir, if the CTI is not closely linked to the military agency Service Général du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (SGRS), then it is "nothing else than a new structure of military intelligence... particularly suspicious of anything that is strange ("étranger": "strange" or "foreign" - play of words...: particulièrement méfiante à l'égard de ce qui lui est étranger) to it".
Questionned by the newspaper, a spokesman of the Ministry of the Defense justified this racist plan declaring "that it was a project of a plan that was to be finished at the end of the year and that the threat it evoques is a war-time threat". To which Le Soir replied: "The whole of the plan (detailling the behavior of an enemy during peace-times, during a crisis, and then during conflict times) and the surveillance measures it anticipate (which are enforced during peace-times) demonstrate that this second argument is, to the least, surprising". Concerning the first argument, the Soir noted that from November 28, 2005 to December 1, 2005, the "Régiment territorial des Guides", primarily composed of reserve officers, participated in the "Meise 95" exercise, according to a discreet January 1996 article by Vox. The scenario stated: "Since last August, a terror movement is affirmating itself in most of the big European cities. Aerian and railway traffic are disturbed in many countries. Emigrants communities principally originating from the Republic of Moldova (sic!) display their anti-European and anti-American ideas..."
Finally, the activities of the Belgian military intelligence agencies prompted the Parliamentary Committee of Surveillance (Comité R) to investigate concerning various abusive wiretappings. "The central documentation of the SGR is composed of 450 000 files", stated Le Soir.
These various revelations caused an uproar, and the Defense Minister akwardly put an official end to the racist plan concerning this alleged "permanent clandestine threat". [16]
Operation Gladio - France
In 1947, Interior Minister Edouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". The next year, the "Western Union Clandestine Committee" (WUCC) is created to coordinate secret unorthodox warfare. In 1949, the WUCC is integrated into NATO, whose headquarter is established in France, under the name "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC). In 1958, NATO founds the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare. When NATO establishes new European headquarters in Brussels the ACC, under the code name SDRA 11, is hidden within the Belgian military secret service SGR who has its headquarter next to NATO .
The illegal Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS) is created with members of the French stay-behind and officers from the French War in Vietnam. In 1961, the OAS staged a failed coup in Algiers, with CIA support, against De Gaulle's government[8].
La Rose des Vents and Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow") network were part of Gladio. François de Grossouvre was Gladio's leader for the region around Lyon in France until his alleged suicide on April 7th, 1994. Captain Paul Barril, among others, claimed that Grossouvre was murdered[17]. In any cases, Grossouvre would have asked to Constantin Melnik, leader of the French secret services during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), to come back in activity. He was living in comfortable exile in the US, where he maintained links with the Rand Corporation. Constantin Melnik is alleged to have been involved in the creation in 1952 of the Ordre Souverain du Temple Solaire, an ancestor of the Order of the Solar Temple, to which the SDECE (French former military intelligence agency) was interested into [15].
Operation Gladio - Germany
In 1952, former SS officer Hans Otto reveals to the the criminal police in Frankfurt the existence of the fascist German stay-behind army BDJ-TD. The arrested right-wing extremists are found non guilty under mysterious circumstances. In 1976, the secret service BND secretary Heidrun Hofer is arrested after having revealed the secrets of the German stay-behind army to her husband, who was a spy of the KGB.[8].
In 2004 the German spymaster Norbert Juretzko published a book about his work at the BND. He went into details about recruiting partisans for the German stay-behind network. He was sacked from BND following a secret trial against him, because the BND could not find out the real name of his Russian source "Rubezahl" whom he had recruited. A man with the name he put on file was arrested by the KGB following treason in the BND, but was obviously innocent, his name having been chosen at random from the phone book by Juretzko.
According to Juretzko, the BND built up its branch of Gladio, but discovered after the fall of the GDR that it was 100% known to the Stasi early on. When the network was dismantled, further odd details emerged. One "spymaster" had kept the radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the engineering test call every 4 months, on the grounds that the equipment was too "valuable" to remain in civilian hands. Juretzkos found out because this spymaster had dismantled his section of the network so quickly there had been no time for measures such as recovering all caches of supplies.
Civilians recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with a clandestine shortwave radio with a fixed frequency. It had a keyboard with encryption, making use of Morse code unnecessary. They had a cache of further equipment for signalling helicopters or submarines to drop special agents who were to have stayed in their homes while mounting sabotage operations against the communists.
According to the perpetrator of the Oktoberfest bomb blast of 1980 in Munich, the explosives came from a Gladio cache near the village of Uelzen in the Lüneburger Heide.
Operation Gladio - Greece
To prevent a communist-led Greek resistance from taking power after the end of World War II, British Prime minister Winston Churchill ordered the creation of a secret army in late 1944, known as the Greek Mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or Lochos Oreinon Katadromon (LOK). LOK commander, Field Marshall Alexander Papagos excluded "almost all men with views ranging from moderately conservative to left wing". When Greece joined NATO in 1952, LOK was 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 Trascott 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."
The LOK was involved in the Greek military coup d'Etat on April 20, 1967, which took place one month before the scheduled national elections for which opinion polls predicted an overwhelming victory of the left-leaning Center Union of George and Andreas Papandreou. Under the command of paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides, the LOK took control of the Greek Defence Ministry while Brigadier General Sylianos Pattakos gained control over communication centers, the parliament, the royal palace, and according to detailed lists, arrested over 10 000 people. Phillips Talbot, the US ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the military coup which instaured the "Regime of the Colonels" (1969-1974), complaining that it represented "a rape of democracy" - to which JAck Maury, the CIA chief of station in Athen, answered: "How can you rape a whore?" [8].
Arrested and then exiled in Canada and Sweden, Andreas Papandreou later returned to Greece, where he won the 1981 election for Prime minister, forming the first socialist government of Greek's post-war history. According to his own testimony, he discovered the existence of the secret NATO army, then codenamed "Red Sheepskin", as acting prime minister in 1984 and had given orders to dissolve it. In 1990, the socialist opposition called for a parliamentary investigation into the secret army and its alleged link to terrorism and the 1967 coup d'état. Public order minister Yannis Vassiliadis declared that there was no need to investigate such "fantasies" as "Sheepskin was one of 50 NATO plans which foresaw that when a country was occupied by an enemy there should be an organised resistance. It foresaw arms caches and officers who would form the nucleus of a guerilla war. In other words, it was a nationally justifiable act."
Operation Gladio - The Netherlands
A large arms cache is discovered in 1983 near the village Velp. The government is forced to confirm that the arms were related to NATO planning for unorthodox warfare [8].
Operation Gladio - Norway
In 1957, the director of the secret service NIS, Vilhelm Evang, protests strongly against the domestic subversion of his country through the United States and NATO and temporarily withdraws the Norwegian stay-behind army from the CPC meetings. In 1978, the police discovers a stay-behind arms cache and arrests Hans Otto Meyer who reveals the Norwegian secret army. [8].
Operation Gladio - Portugal
In 1966, the CIA sets up Aginter Press which, under the direction of Captain Yves Guerin Serac runs a secret stay-behind army and train its members in covert actions techniques, including hands on bomb terrorism, silent assassination, subversion techniques, clandestine communication and infiltration and colonial warfare. In Mocambique, Aginter Press assassinates Eduardo Mondlane, leader of the liberation movement FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique), in 1969[8].
Operation Gladio - Turkey
Supported by secret armies, the Turkish military staged a coup d'état and killed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in 1960. In 1971, after another military coup d'état, the stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla engaged in domestic terror and killed hundreds.
Former Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit recalled he had learned of the existence of Turkish "stay-behind" armies for the first time in 1974. At the time, the commander of the Turkish army, General Semih Sancar, had allegedly informed him the US had financed the unit since the immediate post-war years. Ecevit declared he suspected Counter-Guerrila's involvment in the 1977 Taksim Square massacre in Istanbul, during which snipers opened fire on a protest rally of 500 000 citizens, organized by trade unions on May 1, killing 38 and injuring hundred. According to Ecevit, the shooting lasted for twenty minutes, yet several thousand policemen on the scene did not intervene. This mode of operation recalls the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre in Buenos Aires, when the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (aka Triple A), founded by José Lopez Rega (a P2 member), opened up fire on the left-wing peronists... According to Talat Turhan, a former Turkish general, the Counter-Guerrilla had also engaged in torture.
In 1980, Counter-Guerrilla's commander, General Kenan Evren staged a military coup and seized power. In 1984, Counter-Guerrilla fought against the Kurds, killed and tortures thousands in the following years. [8].
The ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves have allegedly worked with Gladio. According to Le Monde diplomatique, Abdullah Çatlı "is reckoned to have been one of the main perpetrators of underground operations carried out by the Turkish branch of the Gladio (4) organisation and had played a key role in the bloody events of the period 1976-80 which paved the way for the military coup d’état of September 1980. As the young head of the far-right Grey Wolves militia, he had been accused, among other things, of the murder of seven left-wing students." He was seen in the company of Avanguardia Nazionale founder Stefano Delle Chiaie, while touring Latin America and on a visit to Miami in September 1982 [18].
Operation Gladio - The United Kingdom
In England, Prime Minister Winston Churchill creates the secret stay-behind army Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1940 to assist resistance movements and carry out subversive operations in enemy held territory. After the end of World War II, the stay-behind armies are created with the experience and involvement of former SOE officers [7]. Gladio membership included mostly ex-servicemen but also followers of Oswald Mosley's pre-war fascist movement. They were given a list of prominent suspected communist sympathizers, including politicians, journalists, trade union leaders, clergy and so on. The mission was, at the first sign of insurrection or invasion, to execute as many as these people as possible.
At least one name of that list went on to become a Labour Prime Minister. Gladio functioned until well into the sixties. In January 1991, Searchlight magazine alleged that Column 88, a neo-nazi paramilitary organization formed in the early 1970s was part of Gladio.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Gladio operations in NATO Countries", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
