@@ Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies @@

[Arash]

Center for Security Studies at the ETH in Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute)
December 2004

Secret Warfare: GLADIO

Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO's Stay-Behind Armies

Dr. Daniele Ganser
http://www.css.ethz.ch/people/dganser/index

Introduction

After the Cold War had ended, then Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed
to the Italian Senate in August 1990 that Italy had had a secret stay-behind army,
codenamed Gladio – the sword. A document dated 1 June 1959 from the Italian military
secret service, SIFAR, revealed that SIFAR had been running the secret army with the
support of NATO and in close collaboration with the US secret service, the CIA.
Suggesting that the secret army might have linked up with right-wing organizations
such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale to engage in domestic terror, the
Italian Senate, amid public protests, decided in 1990 that Gladio was beyond
democratic control and therefore had to be closed down.

During the 1990s, research into stay-behind armies progressed only very slowly, due
to very limited access to primary documents. It was revealed, however, that
stay-behind armies covered all of Western Europe and operated under different code
names, such as Gladio in Italy, Absalon in Denmark, P26 in Switzerland, ROC in
Norway, I&O in the Netherlands, and SDRA8 in Belgium. The so-called Allied
Clandestine Committee (ACC) and the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), linked to
NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the stay-behind
networks on an international level. The last confirmed ACC meeting took place on 24
October 1990 in Brussels, chaired by the Belgian military secret service, the SGR.

According to the SIFAR document of 1959 the secret stay-behind armies served a dual
purpose during the Cold War: They were to prepare for a communist Soviet invasion and
occupation of Western Europe, and – also in the absence of an invasion – for an
“emergency situation”. The first purpose was clear: If there had been a Soviet
invasion, the secret anti-communist armies would have operated behind enemy lines,
strengthening and setting up local resistance movements in enemy held territory,
evacuating pilots who had been shot down, and sabotaging supply lines and production
centers of the occupation forces.

The second purpose, the preparation for an emergency situation, is more difficult to
understand and remains the subject of ongoing research. As this second purpose
clearly did not relate to a foreign invasion, the emergency situation referred to is
likely to have meant all domestic threats, most of which were of a civilian nature.
During the Cold War, the national military secret services in the countries of
Western Europe differed greatly in what they perceived to be an emergency situation.
But there was agreement between the military secret services of the United States and
of Western Europe that communist parties, and to some degree also socialist parties,
had a real potential to weaken NATO from within and therefore represented a threat to
the alliance. If they gained political strength and entered the executive, or, worse
still, gained control of defence ministries, an emergency situation would result. The
evidence now available suggests that in some countries the secret stay-behind armies
linked up with right-wing terrorists and carried out terror attacks that were later
wrongly blamed on the political left in order to discredit the communists and prevent
them from assuming top executive positions.

Evidence suggests that recruitment and operations methods differed greatly from
country to country. The research project into NATO’s secret armies that is being
undertaken by the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH), Zurich, and is headed by Daniele Ganser, has collected and
published the available country-specific evidence in the first English-language book
on the topic, entitled NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in
Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 2005). In a second step, the project is working
on gaining access to declassified primary documents, while encouraging discussion
among NATO officials, secret services and military officials, and the international
research community in order to clarify the strategy, training, and operations of the
stay-behind armies.

The NATO Response

The NATO response to the discovery of the secret stay-behind armies has been
defensive and at times inconsistent. When evidence of the NATO stay-behind army
Gladio in Italy emerged in August 1990, NATO headquarters in Brussels initially
refused to comment. About three months later, however, NATO bowed to media pressure
and made a statement. However, in that statement the military alliance categorically
rejected former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti's allegation about NATO's
involvement in operation Gladio and the secret armies. Specifically, Senior NATO
Spokesman Jean Marcotta on Monday, 5 November 1990 at SHAPE headquarters in Mons,
Belgium, said: "NATO has never contemplated guerrilla war or clandestine operations;
it has always concerned itself with military affairs and the defence of Allied
frontiers." [1]

Eventually, on Tuesday, 6 November, a NATO spokesman explained that NATO's statement
of the previous day had been false. On 6 November, the spokesman left journalists
with a short communiqué that said that NATO never commented on matters of military
secrecy and that Marcotta should not have said anything at all. [2] The international
press protested against NATO’s defensive public relations policy. For example,
British daily newspaper The Observer said: "As shock followed shock across the
Continent, a NATO spokesman issued a denial: nothing was known of Gladio or
stay-behind. Then a seven word communiqué announced the denial was 'incorrect' and
nothing more." [3]

In November 1990, NATO consisted of the following 16 nations: Belgium, Denmark,
Germany, France, Greece, the United Kingdom, Island, Italy, Canada, Luxemburg,
Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the United States; the last had a dominant
position within the alliance. Following the press reports, NATO ambassadors demanded
an explanation. While the administration of US president George Bush Senior refused
to comment on the topic in public, immediately after the public relations debacle, on
7 November 1990, then-NATO secretary-general Manfred Wörner invited NATO ambassadors
at the headquarters in Belgium to a closed meeting of the North Atlantic Council.

On 7 November 1990, Wörner, who was NATO’s highest-ranking civilian officer in Europe
confirmed to NATO ambassadors the existence of the secret stay-behind armies. His
information was based on the testimony of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) US
General John Galvin (NATO’s highest-ranking military officer in Europe). This was
leaked to the Spanish press who reported: “During this meeting behind closed doors,
the NATO Secretary General related that the questioned military gentlemen – precisely
General John Galvin, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe – had indicated
that SHAPE co-ordinated the Gladio operations. From then on the official position of
NATO was that they would not comment on official secrets." [4]

Subsequent investigations revealed that NATO had coordinated the secret stay-behind
armies through two clandestine centers: The Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) and
the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC). Italian General Paolo Inzerilli, who
commanded the Italian stay-behind Gladio from 1974 to 1986, testified that the
“omnipresent United States” had dominated the CPC, which, he said, was founded “by
order of the Supreme Commander of NATO Europe. It was the interface between NATO's
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) and the Secret Services of the
member states as far as the problems of non-orthodox warfare were concerned." [5] The
United States, together with their allied junior partner Britain and France,
dominated the CPC and within the committee formed a so-called executive group. "The
meetings were on the average once or twice a year in Brussels at CPC headquarters and
the various problems on the agenda were discussed with the 'Executive Group' and the
Military", Inzerilli explained. [6]

Italian General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian Gladio stay-behind from
1971 to 1974, said that the document "’Directive of SHAPE’ was the official
reference, if not even the proper Allied Stay-Behind doctrine". This document is not
yet available to researchers. According to the testimony of General Serravalle, the
members of the CPC were the officers responsible for the secret stay-behind
structures of the various European countries. "At the stay-behind meetings
representatives of the CIA were always present”, Serravalle explained, as well as
“members of the US Forces Europe Command”. [7]

Serravalle said the recordings of the CPC, which he had seen but which are not yet
publicly available, above all "relate to the training of Gladiators in Europe, how to
activate them from the secret headquarters in case of complete occupation of the
national territory and other technical questions such as, to quote the most important
one, the unification of the different communication systems between the stay-behind
bases.” [8]

Parallel to the CPC, the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) linked to SHAPE
coordinated the stay-behind armies. According to the Belgian Senate investigation
into the stay-behind armies, ACC tasks in peacetime “included elaborating the
directives for the network, developing its clandestine capability and organizing
bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind
operations in conjunction with SHAPE; organisers were to activate clandestine bases
and organise operations from there." [9]

According to General Inzerilli, the relations in the ACC were completely different
from those in the CPC, because the two centers were not on the same hierarchical
level: “The atmosphere was clearly more relaxed and friendly compared to the one in
the CPC". The ACC, founded by “a specific order from SACEUR to CPC” was a sub-branch
of the CPC. "The ACC was an essentially technical Committee, a forum where
information on the experiences made were exchanged, where one spoke of the means
available or the means studied, where one exchanged information on the networks
etc. … It was of reciprocal interest. Everybody knew that if for an operation he
lacked an expert in explosives or in telecommunications or in repression, he could
without problems address another country because the agents had been trained in the
same techniques and used the same materials." [10]

In summer 2000 I contacted NATO archives with the request for more information on
stay-behind and specifically on ACC and CPC transcripts. NATO replied: "We have
checked our Archives and cannot find any trace of the Committees you have mentioned."
When the author insisted, NATO’s archive section replied: "I wish to confirm once
more that the Committees you refer to have never existed within NATO. Furthermore the
organisation you refer to as 'Gladio' has never been part of the NATO military
structure." [11]

I subsequently contacted NATO’s Office of Security, which refused to comment,
whereupon I requested that NATO comment on the stay-behind questions that I handed in
via the embassy of my home country, Switzerland, which, as a Partnership for Peace
member has an office at NATO in Brussels. “What is the connection of NATO to the
Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) and to the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC)?
What is the role of the CPC and ACC? What is the connection of CPC and ACC with
NATO's Office of Security?" I had inquired in writing.

On 2 May 2001, I received a written reply from Lee McClenny, head of NATO press and
media service. McClenny claimed in his letter that "Neither the Allied Clandestine
Committee nor the Clandestine Planning Committee appear in any literature, classified
or unclassified, about NATO that I have seen.” He added: “I have been unable to find
anyone working here who has any knowledge of these two committees. I do not know
whether such a committee or committees may have once existed at NATO, but neither
exists at present." [12]

Once again I insisted and asked: “Why has NATO senior spokesman Jean Marcotta on
Monday November 5 1990 categorically denied any connections between NATO and Gladio,
whereupon on November 7 another NATO spokesman had to declare Marcotta's statement of
two days before had been false?" McClenny replied: "I am not aware of any link
between NATO and 'Operation Gladio'. Further, I can find no record that anyone named
Jean Marcotta was ever a spokesman for NATO." [13]

A senior NATO diplomat, who insisted that he remained anonymous, said potential links
of the stay-behind armies to terrorism were of a very sensitive nature and would thus
possibly never be commented: "Since this is a secret organisation, I wouldn't expect
too many questions to be answered, even though the Cold War is over. If there were
any links to terrorist organisations, that sort of information would be buried very
deep indeed. If not, then what is wrong with taking precautions to organise
resistance if you think the Soviets might attack?" [14]

Future research into stay-behind armies must be based on ACC and CPC transcripts, as
well as on the stay-behind directives of SHAPE.

The EU Response

The refusal of NATO to inform the public on the respective purpose and history of the
secret stay-behind armies in the countries of Western Europe lead to a heated debate
on the topic in the parliament of the European Union (EU) on 22 November 1990.
Italian MP Falqui, who opened the debate on that day, was strongly critical of the
secret armies: "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."

French MP Dury in his address to the EU parliament criticised the lack of
transparency: "What worried us in this Gladio affair was that these networks were
able to exist out of sight and beyond control of the democratic political
authorities. That, I think, is the fundamental issue which remains. For our part, we
believe that light has to be shed on this whole affair so that we can recognise all
its implications and stop the problem lingering on or occurring with other
organisations, or prevent other temptations from arising. It is true that secrecy is
necessary to enable certain information-gathering activities to take place and
everyone can understand that. But it is nevertheless legitimate for all this to be
done under the control of the democratic political authority, i.e. of a government
which is responsible to a parliament. The Gladio system called this into question
[...] As for the responsibility of NATO and SHAPE, I don't think one should talk
about a conspiracy [...] But I think we must keep up this spirit of inquiry and this
concern for everything to be brought out into the open. We know very well that some
people in Gladio also sit on NATO committees [...] I feel that it is part of our
democratic duty to be able to shed proper light on all these kinds of problems."

Greek MP Ephremidis, with an inexplicit reference to the 1967 military coup d’état in
Greece, criticized the stay-behind armies sharply and urged that the EU parliament
should set up a sub-committee of inquiry to investigate the secret armies: "Mr.
President, the Gladio system has operated for four decades under various names. It
has existed and possibly still does [...] It has operated clandestinely, and we are
entitled to attribute to it all the destabilization, all the provocation and all the
terrorism that have occurred in our countries over these four decades, and to say
that, actively or passively, it must have had an involvement. The fact that it was
set up by the CIA and NATO which, while purporting to defend democracy were actually
undermining it and using it for their own nefarious purposes, is evidence enough of
its involvement [...] we are going to discuss the democratic deficit [...] Because
the democracy we are supposed to have been enjoying has been, and still is, nothing
but a front [...] The fine details must be uncovered, and we ourselves must establish
a special sub committee of inquiry to hold hearings and to blow the whole thing wide
open so that all the necessary steps can be taken to rid our countries of such
clandestine organisations."

Dutch MP Vandemeulebroucke criticized the White House for having set up secret armies
in Western Europe that operated beyond the democratic control of European
parliaments: "This affair leaves a bad taste in the mouth, since it has been going on
for as long as the European Community has been in existence, and we claim to be
creating a new form of democracy. The budgets for these secret organisations were
also kept secret. They were not discussed in any parliament, and we wish to express
our concern at the fact that [...] it now emerges that there are centres for taking
decisions and carrying them out which are not subject to any form of democratic
control. So we obviously want to have total clarification [...] I should like to
protest most strongly against the fact that the American military, whether through
SHAPE, NATO or the CIA, think they can interfere in what is our democratic right."

Italian MP Cerretti praised NATO for having guaranteed the safety of the democracies
of Western Europe during the cold war. He predicted, wrongly as we know today, that
each EU member state would investigate and clarify all questions relating to the
secret armies: "With regard to the presumed illegal operations of these services
[...] they are already being investigated by the judiciary, and we are certain that
the democratic governments of the Member States of the European Community will not
hesitate to take all necessary measures to throw light on the situation [...] We
cannot ignore the part played in those years by the North Atlantic Alliance in
guaranteeing the freedom and safety of our democratic systems."

French MP De Donnea supported the analysis of MP Cerretti and in his speech in front
of the EU parliament stressed that it was legitimate to prepare for an invasion: "Mr.
President, it was perfectly legitimate at the end of the Second World War, for the
majority of our states to set up services whose purpose was to prepare underground
resistance networks that could be activated in the event of our countries being
occupied by the forces of the Warsaw Pact [...] We must therefore pay tribute to all
those who, while the cold war lasted, worked in these networks ... For these networks
to remain effective, it was obviously necessary for them to be kept secret [...]
Having said that, if there are serious indications or suspicions to the effect that
some or all of these networks have operated in an illegal or abnormal way in certain
countries, it is in everyone's interest for matters to be brought into the open and
for the guilty to be punished."

To Dutch MP Staes the secret NATO armies represented an unacceptable deviation of the
function of intelligence services. The evidence available today supports his
conclusion that the stay-behind armies in some countries were a two-edged sword which
fought both a domestic civilian, as well as a foreign military enemy: "Mr. President,
it is unacceptable that various subversive elements, with the active support of
democratically elected governments, have used the obsolete structures of Gladio to
campaign against and threaten a number of democratic movements in society today. It
is unacceptable that intelligence services from outside Europe have been able to
ensconce themselves without difficulty in anti-democratic structures which, with a
range of weapons at their disposal and unhindered by any form of legality or
democratic control, have been able to give free rein to their dictatorship of ideas.
In many ways, Gladio was a two-edged sword."

Greek MP Dessylas profited from the occasion to express his general suspicion of the
role of secret services in democratic societies. "Mr. President, paraphrasing Marx we
can say that the spectre of Gladio hangs over the whole of Europe [...] The extent to
which the governments, armed services, enforcement agencies and intelligence services
of the whole of Europe have been wretchedly in thrall to the United States, NATO and
the CIA is now being revealed to us. The national parliaments and the European
Parliament must set up committees of inquiry immediately to investigate the role
being played by Gladio [...] The revelations about Gladio [...] highlight the need,
in my view, for a radical updating of the role of enforcement agencies and secret
services in Europe, given the extent to which popular, social and political movements
are still suffering harassment even in the new situation created by the collapse of
the so-called threat from communism."

Following this debate the EU parliament passed the following resolution in which it
criticized NATO sharply for having used the stay-behind networks to manipulate the
democracies of Western Europe:

"A. Having regard to the revelation by several European governments of the
existence for 40 years of a clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations
organisation in several Member States of the Community,
B. whereas for over 40 years this organisation has escaped all democratic controls
and has been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with
NATO,

C. fearing the danger that such clandestine network may have interfered illegally
in the internal political affairs of Member States or may still do so,

D. whereas in certain Member States military secret services (or uncontrolled
branches thereof) were involved in serious cases of terrorism and crime as evidenced
by various judicial inquiries,

E. whereas these organisations operated and continue to operate completely outside
the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control and frequently those
holding the highest government and constitutional posts are kept in the dark as to
these matters,

F. whereas the various 'GLADIO' organisations have at their disposal independent
arsenals and military resources which give them an unknown strike potential, thereby
jeopardising the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating
or have been operating,

G. greatly concerned at the existence of decision-making and operational bodies
which are not subject to any form of democratic control and are of a completely
clandestine nature at time when greater Community co-operation in the field of
security is a constant subject of discussion"

"1. Condemns the clandestine creation of manipulative and operational networks and
calls for a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects
of these clandestine organisations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal
interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned, the
problem of terrorism in Europe and the possible collusion of the secret services of
Member States or third countries;

2. Protests vigorously at the assumption by certain US military personnel at SHAPE
and in NATO of the right to encourage the establishment in Europe of a clandestine
intelligence and operation network;

3. Calls on the governments of the Member States to dismantle all clandestine
military and paramilitary networks;

4. Calls on the judiciaries of the countries in which the presence of such military
organisations has been ascertained to elucidate fully their composition and modus
operandi and to clarify any action they may have taken to destabilize the democratic
structures of the Member States;

5. Requests all the Member States to take the necessary measures, if necessary by
establishing parliamentary committees of inquiry, to draw up a complete list of
organisations active in this field, and at the same time to monitor their links with
the respective state intelligence services and their links, if any, with terrorist
action groups and/or other illegal practices;

6. Calls on the Council of Ministers to provide full information on the activities
of these secret intelligence and operational services;

7. Calls on its competent committee to consider holding a hearing in order to
clarify the role and impact of the 'GLADIO' organisation and any similar bodies;

8. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the
Council, the Secretary-General of NATO, the governments of the Member States, and the
United States Government."

Most of the requests made by the EU parliament in its resolution on the stay-behind
armies remained mere words on paper and were never followed. Already during the
debate Dutch MP Vandemeulebroucke had correctly observed that the EU parliament had
no competence in the field of defense and security issues which remained in the
sovereign control of each EU member state. "I realize”, Vandemeulebroucke had
stressed, “that we in the European Parliament have no competence regarding peace and
security matters and hence the compromise resolution asks for parliamentary
committees of inquiry to be set up in each of the twelve Member States so that we do
get total clarification." This project failed, as only the EU members Italy and
Belgium, as well as the non-EU member Switzerland, in subsequent months and years set
up a parliamentary commission of inquiry and presented a public report on their
respective secret armies. All other countries, including the United States, dealt
with the issue behind closed doors. The Council of the twelve EU Defense Ministers
declined to reply to the resolution of the EU parliament. [15]

The Pentagon Response

The US Ministery of Defense, the Pentagon, did not take a stand on the subject of the
secret NATO stay-behind armies in 1990 because it was not questioned at all by the US
press. This lead US journalist Arthur Rowse to draw "The lessons of Gladio": "As long
as the US public remains ignorant of this dark chapter in US foreign relations, the
agencies responsible for it will face little pressure to correct their ways". Rowse
criticized that the end of the cold war had not enhanced the transparency of US
executive branches and that therefore the United States "still awaits a real national
debate on the means and ends and costs of our national security policies."[16]

Through NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), at all times a US General,
the Pentagon was during the entire cold war well informed on the stay-behind networks
and their clandestine operations. According to the US Senate the secret stay-behind
armies in Western Europe had been set up at the request of the Pentagon. In the
aftermath of the Watergate scandal a commission of the US Congress under Senator
Frank Church critically investigated the CIA and the Pentagon. In its final report,
published in 1976, the commission found that the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the
Pentagon had asked the CIA to use its covert action branch Office of Policy
Coordination (OPC) to carry out anti-communist operations in Western Europe. These
operations started with the successful manipulation of the Italian elections by the
CIA in 1948 in order to prevent the Italian Communist Party PCI from entering the
Italian government, and continued in various forms in several European countries
thereafter. On the explicit request of the Pentagon the CIA covert action branch OPC
also set up stay-behind armies, as the Church report noted: “Until 1950 OPC's
paramilitary activities (also referred to as preventive action) were limited to plans
and preparations for stay-behind nets in the event of future war. Requested by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, these projected OPC operations focused, once again, on Western
Europe and were designed to support NATO forces against Soviet attack."[17]

Next to preparing against a Soviet attack US operations in Western Europe during the
cold war also explicitly focused on what the Pentagon considered to be a civilian
domestic threat, namely the communist and to some degree the socialist parties. In a
Pentagon directive of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff dated 14 May 1952 the CIA together
with the military secret services were instructed to carry out “Operation
Demagnetize” in order to reduce the magnetic attraction of the communist parties in
Italy and in France. The task was to be fulfilled by using all means necessary
through "political, paramilitary and psychological operations". The Pentagon
directive stressed: "The limitation of the strength of the communists in Italy and
France is a top priority objective. This objective has to be reached by the
employment of all means. The Italian and French government may know nothing of the
plan 'Demagnetize,' for it is clear that the plan can interfere with their respective
national sovereignty."[18]

During the Suez Crisis of 1956 the Pentagon and NATO SACEUR General Lauris Norstad
complained to have received only very little and poor intelligence on what was going
on in Western Europe. Therefore, the Pentagon and SACEUR contemplated after the
crisis whether the stay-behind network could be used to gather intelligence in
Western Europe. Among the very few Pentagon documents presently available which speak
of the stay-behind armies and their NATO coordination centre Clandestine Planning
Committee (CPC) ranges an internal Pentagon document dated 3 January 1957, formerly
top-secret but declassified in 1978. In that memorandum for the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff written by US General Leon Johnson, US representative to the NATO military
committee, Johnson comments on the complaints of then acting SACEUR General Lauris
Norstad: “SACEUR has stated a belief that the intelligence received by SHAPE from
national authorities during the recent period of tension was inadequate. He states
that any re-examination of intelligence support to SHAPE should include the question
of increasing and expediting the flow of clandestine intelligence.”

Johnson relates in this document that Norstad was considering whether the CPC could
be used to enhance the flow of intelligence: “In addition, SACEUR notes in reference
a that there is no provision in reference b, the charter of the SHAPE Clandestine
Planning Committee (CPC), which forbids the examination of peacetime clandestine
activities. He specifically recommends that the SHAPE CPC be authorised to: a)
Examine SHAPE's urgent peacetime intelligence requirements. b) Investigate ways in
which the national clandestine services can contribute to an improvement of the flow
of clandestine intelligence to SHAPE.” The charter of the SHAPE CPC is unfortunately
not part of the declassified document. Johnson advised Norstad not to use the secret
armies to gather intelligence as they were not designed for this task: “While there
is nothing in reference b [the CPC charter] which clearly forbids the CPC examining
the various clandestine intelligence activities, I believe that this would be an
unwarranted extension of the CPC activities. It is my interpretation of reference b
[the CPC charter] that the CPC was set up solely for the purpose of planning in
peacetime the means by which SACEUR's wartime clandestine operational requirements
could be met. It would appear to me that any increase in the flow of intelligence to
SHAPE, from whatever source, should be dealt with by normal intelligence agencies […]
I recommend that you do not approve an extension of the scope of activity of the
SHAPE CPC [...] Leon Johnson." [19]

Field Manuals (FM) of the US Pentagon, designed to advise US military officers, do
not usually mention the stay-behind secret armies. Yet there is one exception: the
top secret FM 30-31B which describes “internal stabilisation operations” and is dated
18 March 1970, Headquarters of the US Army, Washington DC, and signed by General of
the US Army William C Westmoreland. FM 30-31B is maybe the most important Pentagon
document with regard to the stay-behind armies. It explicitly stresses that the
Pentagon and the CIA, in order to be able to carry out clandestine operations in
Western Europe, must depend heavily on the cooperation of Western European secret
services: "The success of internal stabilisation operations, which are promoted in
the context of strategies for internal defence by the US military secret service,
depends to a large extend on the understanding between the US personal and the
personal of the host country.“

The evidence now available to researchers confirms that the secret stay-behind armies
in Western Europe were in all countries run by the respective national military
secret service, many of which cooperated closely with the US: „However high the
mutual understanding between US personal and the personal of the host country might
be, the option to win over agents of the secret service of the host country for
actions is a much more reliable basis for the solution of the problems of the US
military secret service,” FM 30-31B notes. “The recruitment of senior members of the
secret service of the host country as long time agents is thus especially important."
In order to establish a solid working relationship the US officers in FM 30-31B were
instructed to cooperate with European military secret service officers with close
links to the US: "As for the recruitment of long time agents the members of the
following categories deserve particular attention: [...] b) Officers, that had the
opportunity to familiarize with US military training programs, especially those which
had been trained directly in the United States.”

The most sensitive part of the Pentagon Field Manual concerns the passage which
describes how the “internal stabilisation operations” were to be carried out in
practice, hence how the Pentagon advised the European military secret services to
fight what the Pentagon perceived as the “communist” or “socialist” thread. In what
seems to be a description of the operations which some stay-behind armies actually
carried out during the cold war, namely terrorist attacks in public places which were
thereafter wrongly blamed on the communists and socialists by planting false
evidence, is described by FM 30-31B like that: "There may be times when Host Country
Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and
according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with
sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the
revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an
advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be
secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations
which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the
insurgent danger."

Ongoing research now investigates whether the United States have according to this
directive promoted terrorism in Western Europe carried out through the network of the
secret NATO armies in order to convince European governments of the communist threat.
"These special operations must remain strictly secret", the US Field Manual FM 30-31B
concludes. "Only those persons who are acting against the revolutionary uprising
shall know of the involvement of the US Army in the internal affairs of an allied
country. The fact, that the involvement of forces of the US military goes deeper
shall not become known under any circumstances." [20]

Still today it remains very difficult to fully understand the crucial document FM
30-31B. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and NATO’s
secret armies asked former CIA director William Colby on the sinister FM 30-31B
directives, whereupon Colby denied that the United States had engaged in such
operations in Europe: "I never heard of such a thing. Frankly, I don't know the
origins of the statement - and you can find any statement in any country, I mean you
can find jack-ass statements anywhere." Journalist Francovich also interviewed Ray
Cline, CIA Deputy Director from 1962 to 1966, who replied: "Well, I suspect it is an
authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it’s the kind of special
forces military operations that are described. On the other hand you gotta recall,
that the defense department and the president don't initiate any of those orders,
until there is an appropriate occasion."[21]

The history of FM 30-31B itself is remarkable. The Pentagon document first surfaced
in Turkey in 1973 where the newspaper Baris in the midst of a whole range of
mysterious acts of violence and brutality which shocked the Turkish society announced
the publication of a secretive US document. Thereafter the Baris journalist who had
come into the possession of FM 30-31B disappeared and was never heard of again.
Despite the apparent danger Turkish Colonel Talat Turhan two years later published a
Turkish translation of the top-secret FM 30-31 and revealed that in Turkey NATO’s
secret stay-behind army was codenamed “Counter-Guerrilla” directed by the Special
Warfare Department. From Turkey the document found its way to Spain where in 1976 the
newspaper Triunfo, despite heavy pressures to prevent the publication, published
excerpts of FM 30-31B upon the fall of the Franco dictatorship. In Italy on 27
October 1978 excerpts of FM 30-31B were published by the political magazine
L'Europeo, whereupon the printed issues of the magazine were confiscated. The
breakthrough for the document came arguably not in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, when
in Italy the secret anticommunist P2 Freemason lodge of Licio Gelli was discovered.
Among the documents seized by the Italian police ranged also FM 30-31B. The Italian
parliamentary investigation into P2 decided to publish FM 30-31B in the appendix of
the final public parliamentary report on P2 in 1987.

New York journalist Lucy Komisar was probably the only one to ever question the
Pentagon on the topic when in 1997 she investigated the Turkish secret stay-behind
army Counterguerrilla directed by the Special Warfare Department, yet with no
success. "As for Washington's role, Pentagon would not tell me whether it was still
providing funds or other aid to the Special Warfare Department; in fact, it wouldn't
answer any questions about it. I was told by officials variously that they knew
nothing about it, that it happened too long ago for there to be any records
available, or that what I described was a CIA operation for which they could provide
no information. One Pentagon historian said, ‘Oh, you mean the 'stay-behind'
organisation. That's classified’."[22]

The Response of the British Ministry of Defense

Together with the US Pentagon the British Ministry of Defense (MOD) played a central
role in planning, setting up and running the stay-behind armies in Western Europe as
the entire network was modelled after a secret British army which had operated behind
enemy lines during World War II: The Special Operations Executive (SOE).

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II ordered that under the
label SOE a secret army was to be created "to set Europe ablaze”. The Prime
Minister's War Cabinet Memorandum of 19 July 1940 recorded that "The Prime Minister
has further decided, after consultation with the Ministers concerned, that a new
organisation shall be established forthwith to co-ordinate all action, by way of
subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas."[23]

SOE was placed under the command of the Labour Ministry of Economic Warfare under
Hugh Dalton who stressed: "We have to organise movements in enemy-occupied territory
comparable to the Sinn Fein movement in Ireland, to the Chinese Guerrillas now
operating against Japan, to the Spanish Irregulars who played a notable part in
Wellington's campaign or - one might as well admit it - to the organisations which
the Nazis themselves have developed so remarkably in almost every country in the
world. This 'democratic international' must use many different methods, including
industrial and military sabotage, labour agitation and strikes, continuous
propaganda, terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots”.
In total secrecy a resistance network had thus to be installed by dare-devils of the
British military and intelligence establishment: “What is needed is a new
organisation to co-ordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the
oppressed countries who must themselves be the direct participants. We need absolute
secrecy, a certain fanatical enthusiasm, willingness to work with people of different
nationalities, complete political reliability."[24]

Operational command of SOE was given to Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, a small,
slight, wiry Highlander. "The problem and the plan was to encourage and enable the
peoples of the occupied countries to harass the German war effort at every possible
point by sabotage, subversion, go-slow practices, coup de main raids etc.,” Gubbins
described the task of SOE, “and at the same time to build up secret forces therein,
organised, armed and trained to take their part only when the final assault began. In
its simplest terms, this plan involved the ultimate delivery to occupied territory of
large numbers of personnel and quantities of arms and explosives." [25]

After the end of World War II SOE was closed down, and the British Special Forces
Special Air Service (SAS) took over responsibility to assist the British foreign
secret service MI6 to set up the stay-behind network in Western Europe and train
military officers of the network. Among those trained by the British SAS ranged also
Decimo Garau, an instructor at the Italian Gladio base Centro Addestramento
Guastatori (CAG) on Capo Marargiu in Sardinia. "I was in England for a week at Poole,
invited by the Special Forces. I was there for a week and I did some training with
them,” Instructor Garau recalled after the exposure of Gladio in 1990. “I did a
parachute jump over the Channel. I did some training with them and I got on well with
them. Then I was at Hereford to plan and carry out an exercise with the SAS." [26]

Next to the Italians the British also trained Swedish members of the stay-behind
armies. Reinhold Geijer, a former Swedish military professional, who in 1957 had been
recruited into the Swedish stay-behind network and for decades had worked as a
regional commander, related in 1996 on Swedish television TV 4 how the British had
trained him in covert action operations in England: "In 1959 I went, via London, to a
farm outside Eaton. This was done under the strictest secrecy procedures, with for
instance a forged passport. I was not even allowed to call my wife” Geijer
remembered. “The aim of the training was to learn how to use dead letter box
techniques to receive and send secret messages, and other James Bond style exercises.
The British were very tough. I sometimes had the feeling that we were overdoing it."
[27]

Many within the stay-behind community regarded the British to be the best in the
field of secret warfare, more experienced than the military officers of the US.
Italian General Gerardo Serravalle, who had commanded the Italian Gladio secret army
from 1971 to 1974, was questioned by BBC journalist Peter Marshall on how exactly the
secret cooperation was carried out: "I invited them [the British] because we had
visited their bases in England - the stay-behind bases [of the UK] - and in exchange
for this visit I invited them." Journalist Marshall asked: "Where is the British
stay-behind base?" Upon which General Serravalle laughed and replied: "I'm sorry, I'm
not going to tell you where it is, because that enters the area of your country's
secrecy." Whereupon Marshall, in order to get a guaranteed reply, asked: "But you
were impressed with the British?" To which Serravalle replied: "Yes, I was. Because
it's [sic] very efficient, very well organised, and the staff was excellent." [28]

To this very day the British Ministry of Defence has declined to comment on the
stay-behind armies and terrorism in Western Europe. At the time of the discoveries of
the secret armies in 1990 spokespersons at the Defence Department declared day after
day to the inquisitive British press: "I'm afraid we wouldn't discuss security
matters", and "It is a security matter. We are not speaking about it", and "We cannot
be drawn into discussing security matters.[29]" As the press continued to raise the
Gladio topic British Defence Secretary Tom King, in the midst of preparations for the
war against Saddam Hussein, went on the record saying: "I am not sure what particular
hot potato you're chasing after. It sounds wonderfully exciting, but I'm afraid I'm
quite ignorant about it. I'm better informed about the Gulf." [30]

Unable to gain more information on the secret armies the British press left the
Gladio story and moved on to other stories such as the war in Iraq against Saddam
Hussein. This lead journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy to observe in 1992 that "The silence
in Whitehall and the almost total lack of curiosity among MPs about an affair in
which Britain was so centrally involved are remarkable." [31]

The CIA Response

The foreign secret service of the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) with headquarters in Langley, Virginia, has repeatedly refused to comment on
its stay-behind armies in Western Europe. At the same time retired CIA agents have
spoken on the subject in a number of different circumstances.

The first to speak about CIA’s stay-behind armies was William Colby, Director of the
CIA from 1973 to 1976. In his book Honorable Men, published in 1978, Colby 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.” Gerry Miller, chief of the CIA
Western Europe desk, was overseeing this CIA operation and in 1951 sent Colby, then a
young CIA officer, to plan and build such stay-behind nets in Scandinavia. The
clandestine operations of the United States in Western Europe were carried out "with
the utmost secrecy", as Colby stressed. "Therefore I was instructed to limit access
to information about what I was doing to the smallest possible coterie of the most
reliable people, in Washington, in NATO, and in Scandinavia." [32] (see document
section of this webpage below for the stay-behind chapter from Colby’s book
“Honorable Men”.)

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 numerous massacres in Italy the
journalists 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. [33]

Thomas Polgar, who had retired in 1981 after a 30 year long career in the CIA,
confirmed in 1991 that the CIA stay-behind armies were coordinated by "a sort of
unconventional warfare planning group linked to NATO". In the secret headquarters the
chiefs of the national secret armies “would meet every couple of months in different
capitals." Polgar insisted that “each national service did it with varying degrees of
intensity" while admitting that "in Italy in the 1970s some of the people went a
little bit beyond the charter that NATO had put down." [34]

Italian experts are investigating whether the CIA had sponsored terrorism in their
country. In March 2001 General Giandelio Maletti, former head of Italian
counter-intelligence, at a trial of right-wing extremists accused of killing sixteen
in the 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre testified in front of a Milan court 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 right-wing terrorism." Maletti added: "Don't forget
that Nixon was in charge, and Nixon was a strange man, a very intelligent politician,
but a man of rather unorthodox initiatives." [35]

Specializing in academic research on the secret Cold War the 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. Malcolm
Byrne, Deputy Director of Research at the National Security Archive, asked the CIA
for "all agency records related to […] The United State Government's original
decision(s), probably taken during the 1951-55 period, to sponsor, support, or
collaborate with, any covert armies, networks, or other units, established to resist
a possible invasion of Western Europe by communist-dominated countries, or to conduct
guerrilla activities in Western European countries should they become dominated by
communist, leftist, or Soviet-sponsored parties or regimes.” Furthermore Byrne
highlighted: “With reference to the above, please include in your search any records
relating to the activities known as 'Operation Gladio', particularly in France,
Germany, or Italy." [36]

The CIA refused to make any data available and on 18 June 1991 replied "The CIA can
neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to your
request." When Byrne appealed this refusal of the CIA to provide any Gladio
information the appeal was turned down. The CIA based its refusal to cooperate on two
catch-all exemptions to the FOIA law which protect documents either "properly
classified pursuant to an Executive order in the interest of national defence or
foreign policy" (exemption B1), or "the Director's statutory obligations to protect
from disclosure intelligence sources and methods, as well as the organisation,
functions, names, official titles, salaries or numbers of personnel employed by the
Agency, in accord with the National Security Act of 1947 and the CIA Act of 1949,
respectively." (Exemption B3).

European officials who asked the CIA for data on the stay-behind armies were also
turned down. In March 1995 the Italian Senate commission headed by Senator Giovanni
Pellegrino - after having investigated Gladio and the massacres in Italy for five
years - placed a FOIA request with the CIA. The Italian Senators asked the CIA for
all records relating to the Red Brigades and the Moro affair in order to find out
whether the CIA according to the Gladio domestic control task had infiltrated and
radicalised the Red Brigades before the latter killed former Italian Prime Minister
and leader of the Christian Democrat Party Aldo Moro in 1978. Refusing to cooperate
the CIA raised FOIA exemptions B1 and B3 and in May 1995 declined all data and
responded that it "can neither confirm nor deny the existence of CIA documentation
concerning your inquiry." The Italian press stressed how "embarrassing" this was and
headlined: "The CIA has rejected the request to collaborate with the Parliamentary
Commission on the mysteries of the kidnapping. Moro, a state secret for the USA".
[37]

Another stay-behind inquiry to the CIA by European government officials came from
Austria. In January 1996 top-secret CIA stay-behind arms caches had been discovered
in the mountain meadows and forests of the neutral Alpine state. US government
officials declared that the United States would cover the costs arising from the
digging up and recovery of the CIA networks. Oliver Rathkolb of Vienna University
thereafter placed a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) in order to gain access to
the relevant CIA documents. Yet in 1997 the CIA Chairman Agency Release Panel
declined also Rathkolb's information request under FOIA exemptions B1 and B3, leaving
the Austrians to lament that the CIA was unaccountable for its actions.

As FOIA requests are the only method available to get hold of any CIA stay-behind
documents I placed a FOIA request with the CIA on 14 December 2000. Two weeks later
the CIA declined my request stating that "The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the
existence or non-existence of records responsive to your request." By raising FOIA
exemptions B1 and B3 Kathryn I. Dyer, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, with
her letter declined all information on operation Gladio. [38]

I appealed this decision of the CIA and argued that "The documents that were withheld
must be disclosed under the FOIA, because the secrecy exemptions (b)(1) and (b)(3)
can only reasonably refer to CIA operations which are still secret today." With data
from my research I proved that this was no longer the case, and concluded: "If you,
Mrs. Dyer, raise FOIA secrecy exemptions (b)(1) and (b)(3) in this context, you
unwisely deprive the CIA from its voice and the possibility to take a stand in a
Gladio disclosure discourse, which will take place regardless whether the CIA decides
to participate or not." [39]

In February 2001 the CIA replied that "Your appeal has been accepted and arrangements
will be made for its consideration by the appropriate members of the Agency Release
Panel. You will be advised of the determinations made." At the same time the CIA
stressed that the Agency Release Panel deals with appeals "on a first-received,
first-out basis", and that at “the present time, our workload consists of
approximately 315 appeals." [40]. Four years later, my appeal has still not been
dealt with.

The MI6 Response

Together with the CIA also the British secret service MI6 was centrally involved with
setting up and training the stay-behind armies in Western Europe. MI6 did not take a
stand on the Gladio affair in 1990 because with a legendary obsession for secrecy the
very existence of MI6 itself was only officially confirmed in 1994 with the passing
of the Intelligence Services Act that specified that the task of MI6 was to collect
foreign intelligence and engage in covert action operations abroad.

While the MI6 refused all comment Nigel West, editor of the Intelligence Quarterly
Magazine and author of several books on Britain's security services, at the height of
the Gladio scandal in November 1990 confirmed to Associated Press in a telephone
interview: "We were heavily involved and still are [...] in these networks”. West
explained that the British “certainly helped finance and run, with the Americans”
several networks. “The people who inspired it were the British and American
intelligence agencies.” West said after 1949 the stay-behind armies were coordinated
by the Command and Control Structure For Special Forces of NATO within which also
Britain's SAS special forces played a strategic role. [41]

"Britain's role in setting up stay-behinds throughout Europe was absolutely
fundamental," BBC reported in its Newsnight edition with some delay on 4 April 1991.
Newsnight reader John Simpson criticised that MI6 and the British Defence Ministry
were withholding all information on the subject while "on the back of revelations
that Gladio existed it has emerged that other European countries had their own
stay-behind armies - Belgium, France, Holland, Spain, Greece, Turkey. Even in neutral
Sweden and Switzerland there has been public debate. And in some cases enquiries have
been set up. Yet in Britain, there is nothing. Save the customary comment of the
ministry of defence that they don't discuss matters of national security." [42]

Simpson related that ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall the British with
fascination and horror had learned of the conspiracies and terror operations of the
Stasi, the Securitate and other secret services in Eastern Europe. “Could our side
have ever done anything comparable? Surely not,” he noted with a wonderfully British
ironical intonation and then turned the spotlight on the Western security services:
“Yet now information has started to emerge of the alleged misdeeds of NATO's most
secret services. In Italy a parliamentary commission is investigating the activities
of a secret army set up by the state to resist a possible Soviet invasion. The
inquiry has led to the disclosure of similar secret forces across Europe. But the
Italian group, known as Gladio, is under suspicion of being involved in a series of
terrorist bombings." [43]

The official confirmation that MI6 had been involved in setting up the stay-behind
armies came several years later, and through a rather unusual channel: a museum. The
London based Imperial War Museum in July 1995 opened a new permanent exhibition
called "Secret Wars". "What you are about to see in the exhibition has for years been
part of the countries most closely guarded secrets", the visitors were greeted at the
entrance. "It has been made available to the public for the first time here. And most
important of all, it's the truth [...] Fact is more incredible and exciting than
fiction." An inconspicuous comment in one of the windows dedicated to MI6 confirmed
that "Among MI6's preparation for a Third World War were the creation of
'stay-behind' parties ready to operate behind enemy lines in the event of a Soviet
advance into Western Europe." In the same window a big box full of explosives carried
the commentary: "Explosives pack developed by MI6 to be hidden in potentially hostile
territory. It could remain buried for years without any deterioration of its
contents." And next to a booklet on sabotage techniques for "stay-behind" parties a
text read: “In the British Zone of occupation in Austria, junior Royal Marine
officers were detached from normal duties to prepare supply caches in the mountains
and liaise with locally recruited agents." [44]

Former MI6 officers rightly took the exhibition as a sign that they could now speak
out about the top-secret stay-behind operation. A few months after the exhibition had
opened, former Royal Marine officers Giles and Preston, the only MI6 agents to be
named in the Gladio exhibition next to a photo "in Austrian Alps 1953-1954",
confirmed to author Michael Smith, that throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s the
British and Americans had set up stay-behind units in Western Europe in preparation
for an expected Soviet invasion. Giles and Preston at the time were sent to Fort
Monckton near Portsmouth in England where the MI6 trained stay-behind officers
together with the British Special Forces, the Special Air Service (SAS). They were
given instruction in codes, the use of a pistol, and covert operations. "We were made
to do exercises, going out in the dead of night and pretending to blow up trains in
the railway stations without the stationmaster or the porters seeing you," Preston
recalled his own training. "We crept about and pretended to lay charges on the right
part of the railway engine with a view to blowing it up." Then they were flown to
Austria in order to recruit and train Austrian agents and to oversee the "underground
bunkers, filled with weapons, clothing and supplies" of the Austrian secret army
which they operated together with the CIA. [45]

Links to Terrorism and Crime

"Prudent Precaution or source of Terror?" the international press wondered when the
secret NATO armies were discovered in 1990. [46] The implication at the time was that
the stay-behind armies were either a prudent precaution or a source of terror. Now,
15 years later, we know that they were both.

The “prudent precaution” refers to the stay-behind function of the secret armies. In
case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret armies would have strengthened
the resistance and harassed the enemy. We know now that there was no Soviet invasion,
and that the secret armies were never confronted with the test of reality, yet during
the Cold War that danger was real. Some within the CIA and in the European
stay-behind nets had their doubts as to whether they could have survived for very
long within a context of total occupation. But even those who share these doubts
agree that from a general strategic perspective the stay-behind armies represented
one more defense strategy for Western Europe and were therefore a prudent precaution.

That some of the secret armies became a “source of terror” is only gradually being
understood and continues to cause great concerns across countries and continents.
Especially within the context of the ongoing so called “war on terrorism” in which
democracies must increasingly rely on their secret services to protect them from
terrorist attacks, it is most unsettling to discover that some secret services in
coordination with secret armies have themselves promoted terrorism and crime and
manipulated the evidence of terrorist attacks.

The links of the stay-behind armies to terrorism and crime represent beyond any doubt
the most sensitive and the most difficult aspect of all research into NATO’s
stay-behind armies. The data varies greatly from country to country. In some
countries the stay-behind armies were repeatedly linked to terrorism and crime, in
other countries the links are still unclear and mysterious, while in a third group of
countries the stay-behind armies were never linked to either terror nor crime. It is
therefore of utmost importance to look at each country specifically. The crimes and
terrorist attacks themselves are often very complex. What follows hereafter can at
the present stage of research therefore be no more than a short general country
specific overview of the problem. The countries are listed in alphabetical order.

Austria

The Tyrol valley which connects Austria and Italy suffered from terrorism during the
Cold War. The evidence now available suggests that also the secret armies were
involved in the tensions. After the defeat of Austria in World War One the southern
part of the Tyrol valley was given to Italy in 1919, and still today the area belongs
to Italy. The southern Tyrol, called Alto Adige by the Italians, is German speaking
and culturally closely connected to Austria. During the Cold War a series of bomb
attacks attempted to destabilize the region around the city Bozen. [47]

According to the testimony of Italian General Manlio Capriata to the Italian Senate
the Italian Gladio stay-behind intervened in the tensions in the Tyrol Valley.
Capriata, head of office R of the Italian military secret service SIFAR which
directed the Gladio stay-behind army, testified: "I confirm that the V section, thus
the organisation S/B [stay-behind] and thus the CAG [Gladio centre Centro
Addestramento Guastatori, Gladio headquaters in Sardinia] had an anti-subversive
function for the case that the forces of the left should come to power. During my
time in office the anti-Italian movement in Alto Adige was going on. In April 1962 I
was contacted by [SIFAR director] General De Lorenzo who told me that he had
activated the elements in Alto Adige, referring to paramilitary units trained at the
CAG and resident in the Alto Adige. He told me that the means available in the area
had been insufficient ... and that thus one had had to draw upon particular forces.
As far as I am concerned, and by this I mean as for my time in office [February to
June 1962], this was the only time when in Alto Adige the forces trained at the CAG
were activated ... The use of the anti-invasion force, and thus the men trained at
CAG, in Alto Adige was a deviation from the rule, for [SIFAR] office D and not
[SIFAR] office R dealt with the terrorism in the area." [48]

According to the testimony provided by General Capriata the Italian stay-behind
Gladio was involved in 1962 into still non-specified operations in the southern Tyrol
valley. Whether also the Austrian stay-behind was activated in this context remains
unclear as of now.

Belgium

Between 1983 and 1985 the geographic area around Brussels called Brabant suffered
from 14 terrorist attacks which left 28 dead and many more injured. Several Brabant
terrorist attacks targeted shoppers in supermarkets. In the terrorist attack on the
Delhaize supermarket in Aalst on November 9 1985 three armed men with hoods over
their heads entered the supermarket and opened fire at point blank range and killed
two shoppers instantly. Upon reaching the checkout counter the terrorists began to
fire randomly at anything that moved. In the ensuing massacre eight people, including
a whole family, died, and seven more were injured. A husband and wife and their
14-year-old daughter were killed at the supermarket checkout. Another father and his
nine-year-old daughter were killed in their car trying to flee. The takings from the
raid amounted to a meagre couple of thousand pounds, found later in a canal in an
unopened sack. The killers escaped without a trace and have not been identified, nor
arrested, nor tried ever since. [49]

When in 1990 the secret stay-behind army was discovered in Belgium suspicions rose
that it might have been involved in the still mysterious Brabant massacres. Belgian
Socialist Defence Minister Guy Coeme declared on television on the evening of 7
November 1990 that he wanted to know the entire history of the secret army in
Belgium: “Furthermore I want to know whether there exists a link between the
activities of this secret network, and the wave of crime and terror which our country
suffered from during the past years." [50]

The Belgian Senate who investigated the secret Belgian stay-behind found that the
secret army was code-named SDRA8 and that it was directly linked to NATO through the
ACC and CPC. The Senators were unable, however, to clarify whether the secret army
had anything to do with the Brabant terror as the Belgian military secret service
refused to cooperate. In a dramatic showdown the Senators demanded that Bernard
Legrand, chief of the Belgian military secret service, made available all names of
the members of the secret army so that these could be compared to suspects of the
Brabant terror. Yet despite the explicit order of Legrand’s superior, Defence
Minister Coeme, and the insistence of the legislative upon its authority to control
the executive, Legrand refused to cooperate: "Whatever the Minister says, there
remain very good reasons not to reveal the names of the clandestines. For different
reasons, of social and family contexts, the clandestines rely upon the promise given
to them.” [51]

Journalist Allan Francovich in his television documentary on the secret NATO armies
suggested that the Belgian secret army SDRA8 had linked up with the Belgian right
wing organization Westland New Post (WNP). WNP member Michel Libert recalled: “There
were projects.” According to his own testimony he had been told: “'You, Mr. Libert,
know nothing about why we're doing this. Nothing at all. All we ask is that your
group, with cover from the Gendarmerie, with cover from Security, carry out a job.
Target: The supermarkets. Where are they? What kind of locks are there? What sort of
protection do they have that could interfere with our operations? Does the store
manager lock up? Or do they use an outside security company? We carried out the
orders and sent in our reports: Hours of opening and closing. Everything you want to
know about a supermarket. What was this for? This was one amongst hundreds of
missions. Something that had to be done. But the use it was all put to, that is the
big question." [52]

Denmark
No links to terrorism or crime reported

Finland
No links to terrorism or crime reported

France

France was struck by a series of terrorist attacks in the process that lead to the
independence of the French colony Algeria in 1962. Following defeats in World War Two
and Vietnam sectors of the French military and intelligence opposed the plan of
French President Charles de Gaulle to grant Algeria independence, as in their eyes
this plan meant yet another defeat for the proud French army. When President de
Gaulle proceeded with his plan sections of the French military and intelligence took
up arms against the government in Paris.

Admiral Pierre Lacoste, director of the French military secret DGSE from 1982 to 1985
under President Francois Mitterand, confirmed after the discovery of the secret NATO
armies in 1990 that some "terrorist actions" against de Gaulle and his Algerian peace
plan were carried out by groups that included "a limited number of people" from the
French stay-behind network. Lacoste insisted that he believed that Soviet contingency
plans for invasion nevertheless justified the stay-behind program.[53]

To some Lacoste remains a discredited source as he had to resign following the
discovery of the terrorist "Operation Satanique" in which the DGSE on July 10 1985
carried out a bomb attack and sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior anchoring in
the harbor of New Zealand's capital Auckland killing one person on board. Greenpeace
had protested against French atomic testing in the Pacific.

Germany

Germany during the Cold War did not only suffer from the left wing terrorism of the
RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion), but also from right-wing terrorism. In the evening of 26
September 1980 a bomb exploded in the midst of the popular Munich October festival,
killing 13 and wounding 213, many gravely. The traces lead the police to the neo Nazi
group "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann". Gundolf Köhler, a 21-year-old right wing member of
the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann according to the police investigation had planted the
Munich bomb and died in the terrorist attack.

The members of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, according to their own testimony, had
been supplied with arms and explosives by right wing extremist Heinz Lembke. "Mister
Lembke showed us different sorts of explosives, detonators, slow matches, plastic
explosive and military explosive” Raymund Hörnle of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann
revealed to the police during the interrogation. “He said that he had many caches
full of such material buried in the wood, and that he could provide a lot of them ...
Mister Lembke told us, that he was instructing people in the use of explosive devices
and explosive." [54]

Subsequent events suggested that Lembke was a member of the German stay-behind army.
On 26 October 1981 forest workers by chance stumbled across a large arms cache in the
soil, filled with guns and other combat equipment, near the German village of Uelzen
in the Lüneburger Heide area. Following the sensational discovery forest ranger Heinz
Lembke was arrested and guided the police to a massive connected arsenal of 33
underground arms caches. The police concluded that Lembke was an arms collector who
had acted alone, the connection to the German stay-behind network was not
investigated.

" These discovered arms caches were immediately attributed to right wing extremist
Lembke” an anonymous but well-informed article on Gladio from the Austrian Defence
Ministry commented in 1991. “Yet this brilliant solution featured one flaw. The arms
caches contained next to automatic weapons, chemical combat equipment [Arsen and
Zyankali] and about 14'000 shots of munitions, also 50 anti tank guns, 156 kg of
explosives, as well as 230 explosive devices and 258 hand grenades. It is remarkable,
that a state with extensive security measures against terrorists should not have
noted a robbery or deviation of such a large amount of combat equipment." [55]

In order to be able to fight behind enemy lines all stay-behind armies were equipped
with secret underground arms caches. The material found in the Lembke arms cache
suggests that it was part of the supplies of the German stay-behind army. Lembke
himself never confirmed that this was the case. In prison he told his interrogator
that he might reveal the next day who was supposed to use the guns and explosives.
Yet on that next day, 1 November 1981, Lembke was found hanging on a rope from the
ceiling of his prison cell. [56]

Greece

According to former CIA agent Philipp Agee the Greek stay-behind army LOK (Lochos
Oreinon Katadromon) was a paramilitary unit used to influence domestic politics in
Greece: „In the eyes of senior CIA officials, the groups under the direction of the
paramilitary branch are seen as long term ‘insurance’ for the interests of the United
States in Greece, to be used to assist or to direct the possible overthrow of an
'unsympathetic' Greek government. 'Unsympathetic' of course to American
manipulation." [57]

The 1960s were a very agitated decade of Greece’s Cold War history in which crime and
terror preceded a coup d’état. Tensions in the country between the political left and
the political right intensified after the elections in November 1963 in which the
leftist Centre Union under George Papandreou secured 42 per cent of the popular vote
and 138 of the 300 seats in parliament. When Papandreou was elected Prime Minister in
February 1964 and guaranteed four years in government the right-wing establishment
believed that the country was well on the road to a communist take over.

In July 1965 in cooperation with CIA chief of station Jack Maury royalists and
right-wing officers of the Greek military and secret service manoeuvred George
Papandreou out of office by royal prerogative. [58] As several short lived
governments followed each other tensions rose and several bombs exploded in the
country. In arguably the best know terrorist attack during this period the
Gorgopotamos railway bridge was blown apart by a bomb in 1965 precisely at the moment
when the Greek political left and right united on the bridge to commemorate their
resistance to the Nazi occupation, and specifically their successful resistance to
the German blowing up of the bridge during the occupation period. The massacre left
five dead and almost 100 wounded, many gravely. "Well, we were officially trained
terrorists", an officer involved in the secret operations declared years later in a
Gladio interview, highlighting that they had enjoyed powerful support. [59]

Unshaken by the waves of terror George Papandreou planned to return to power in the
national elections of May 1967 for which opinion polls, including those of the CIA,
predicted an overwhelming victory of the left leaning Centre Union. The elections
were prevented by the military coup d’état that took place in the night of 20/21
April 1967 and involved also the Greek secret stay-behind army LOK. The coup was
based on the Prometheus plan, a NATO designed scheme to be put into action in the
event of a communist insurgency. Around midnight LOK units took over control over the
Greek Defense Ministry, the Pentagon, and met little to no resistance. Thereafter in
the dark of night tanks with flashlights rolled into the capital Athens and under the
command of Brigadier General Sylianos Pattakos rounded up parliament, the royal
palace, and the radio and television centers. 78-year-old George Papandreou was
arrested in his house just outside the capital Athens. Together with thousands he was
imprisoned.

Italy

Italy suffered from numerous terrorist attacks during the Cold War. The attacks
started in 1969 when on 12 December four bombs exploded in public places in Rome and
Milan. The terror, remembered as the “Piazza Fontana massacre”, killed 16 and maimed
and wounded 80 most of which were farmers who after a day on the market had deposited
their modest earnings in the Farmer's Bank on the Piazza Fontana in Milan. The terror
was wrongly blamed on the Communists and the extreme left, traces were covered up and
arrests followed immediately.

In the Peteano terrorist attack of 31 May 1972 a car bomb gravely wounded one and
killed three members of the Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary police force. On 28 May
1974 a bomb exploded in the Italian town Brescia in the midst of an anti-fascist
demonstration, killing eight and injuring and maiming 102. On 4 August 1974 another
bomb exploded on the Rome to Munich train “Italicus Express”, killing 12 and injuring
and maiming 48. The terror in Italy culminated on a sunny afternoon during the
Italian national holiday when on 2 August 1980 a massive explosion ripped through the
waiting room of the second class at the Bologna railway station, killing 85 people in
the blast and seriously injuring and maiming a further 200.

" The official figures say that alone in the period between January 1, 1969 and
December 31, 1987, there have been in Italy 14 591 acts of violence with a political
motivation”, Italian Senator Giovanni Pellegrino, president of Italy's parliamentary
commission investigating Gladio and the massacres, recalled the very violent period
of Italy’s Cold War history. “It is maybe worth remembering that these 'acts' have
left behind 491 dead and 1181 injured and maimed. Figures of a war, with no parallel
in any other European country." [60]

According to right-wing extremist Vincenzo Vinciguerra the Italian state together
with NATO had backed the terror secretly. In order to discredit the Italian
communists and socialists the secret Gladio stay-behind army had with the support of
the CIA linked up with right-wing organizations who carried out the terrorism. "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 recalled. 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." [61]

Vinciguerra was found guilty of the Peteano terror attack, confessed, and was
imprisoned. From behind prison bars he explained the strategy which he had followed
like that: "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent
people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite
simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the
State to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all
the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the State cannot
convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened." [62]

Luxemburg
No links to terrorism or crime reported

Netherlands
No links to terrorism or crime reported

Norway
No links to terrorism or crime reported

Portugal

Until the death of António de Oliveira Salazar in 1970 Portugal was a right wing
dictatorship. According to the Portuguese press the Portuguese stay-behind army
„Aginter Press“ cooperated closely with the Portuguese military secret service PIDE.
Allegedly it helped to support the dictatorship and was involved in assassination
operations in Portugal as well as in the Portuguese colonies in Africa. [63]

Aginter Press was lead by Captain Yves Guerin Serac, a French born catholic and
militant anti-communist. A specialist in secret warfare Serac had fought for the
French in the Vietnam war, for the United States in the Korean war, and as a member
of the Organisation Armee Secrete (OAS) against the French government during the
French war in Algeria. Following the defeat in Algeria Serac in June 1962 was hired
by Spanish dictator Franco and thereafter by dictator Salazar in Portugal. Throughout
his life his mission remained to fight communism by all means: "The others have laid
down their weapons, but not I”, Serac explained in 1974. “After the OAS I fled to
Portugal to carry on the fight and expand it to its proper dimensions - which is to
say, a planetary dimension." [64]

" Our number consists of two types of men: 1) Officers who have come to us from the
fighting in Indo-China and Algeria, and some who even enlisted with us after the
battle for Korea“, Serac described the Aginter Press stay-behind army. „2)
Intellectuals who, during this same period turned their attention to the study of the
techniques of Marxist subversion“. These intellectuals, as Guerain Serac observed,
had formed study groups and shared experiences „in an attempt to dissect the
techniques of Marxist subversion and to lay the foundations of a counter-technique.“
The battle, it was clear to Guerain Serac, had to be carried out in numerous
countries: „During this period we have systematically established close contacts with
like-minded groups emerging in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain or Portugal, for the
purpose of forming the kernel of a truly Western League of Struggle against Marxism."
[65]

According to Portuguese journalists Aginter Press carried out political
assassinations in Portugal and the Portuguese colonies which allegedly included
Humberto Delgado, Portuguese opposition leader, killed 14 February 1965, Amilcar
Cabral, leader of the national liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau and one of
Africa's foremost revolutionary figures, killed 20 January 20 1973, and Eduardo
Mondlane, leader and President of the Mocambique liberation party and movement
FRELIMO (Frente de Liberacao de Mocambique), killed in colonial Mocambique on 3
February 1969. [66]

Serac was convinced that the West had to use terror, assassinations and manipulation
to fight communism: "In the first phase of our political activity we must create
chaos in all structures of the regime. Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a
situation: The blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a
large number of victims), and the selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons).
This destruction of the state must be carried out as much as possible under the cover
of 'communist activities' ... After that, we must intervene at the heart of the
military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion,
suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal
apparatus ... Popular opinion must be polarised in such a way, that we are being
presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation. It is obvious that we
will need considerable financial resources to carry out such operations." [67]

Spain

Like Portugal also Spain was a right wing dictatorship until the death of Francisco
Franco on November 20 1975. According to Italian investigations Italian right-wing
terrorists who had cooperated with the Gladio stay-behind army were flown from Italy
to Spain after having carried out terrorist attacks in Italy. In Spain they were
protected from the Italian investigations and in return offered their services to
Franco.

Among the most notorious Italian born right-wing terrorists in Spain ranged Stefano
delle Chiaie who allegedly carried out well over a thousand bloodthirsty attacks,
including an estimated 50 murders in Spain. Members of Delle Chiaie's secret army,
including Italian right-winger Aldo Tisei, later confessed to Italian magistrates
that during their Spanish exile they had tracked down and killed anti-fascists on
behalf of the Spanish secret service. [68]

The investigations into the secret Gladio stay-behind army of NATO also revealed that
Italian right-wing terrorist Carlo Cicuttini took actively part in the Atocha
massacre on 24 January 1977 in Madrid. The terror attack had targeted a lawyer's
office closely linked to the Spanish communist party and killed five communist
lawyers. The attack caused panic, for it fell right into Spain's transition to
democracy. [69]

After Franco's death in 1975 Delle Chiaie decided that Spain was no longer a safe
place and left for Chile where he offered his services to dictator Pinochet and
participated in "Operation Condor" killing Chilean oppositional across the Americas.
Thereafter “Caccola” as he was nicknamed moved to Bolivia and set up death squads to
protect the right-wing government. In 1980 he came back to Italy and on 2 August was
allegedly involved in the terrorist attack on the Bologna railway station which
killed 85 and maimed 200. After the attack he returned to South America and was
arrested on 27 March 1987 in the capital of Venezuela by the local secret service.
The Italian secret service and the CIA arrived on the same day and questioned delle
Chiaie. According to the Italian Senate investigation into Gladio delle Chiaie was
unwilling to shoulder any blame but passed it on to the secret services: "The
massacres have taken place. That is a fact. The secret services have covered up the
traces. That is another fact." [70]

Sweden

Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party, was
assassinated in Stockholm on 28 February 1986. The investigation into the crime has
proven to be extremely complex, producing dozens of suspects and traces during the
years that have gone by. While substantial data to confirm this claim is lacking it
shall be noted that Swedish journalists have also suspected the secret stay-behind
armies of NATO of having been involved in the crime.

In 1992 the leading Swedish daily headlined: "A top-secret intelligence network
within NATO is behind the death of Olof Palme." In the article journalist Göran
Beckerus reported that "This has been leaked by several sources in Sweden and
Germany." One of his sources was alleged CIA agent Oswald Le Winter, discredited in
earlier years where he had deliberately mislead journalists. The other two sources,
"both with secret services background", wished to remain unnamed but confirmed that a
top-secret NATO office was behind the Palme murder. One of the sources was going as
far as to claim "that he had been able to see and photograph the document according
to which NATO was behind the assassination."

" The NATO organ allegedly linked to the assassination is SOPS, a part of ACC”
journalist Beckerus reported in his article.” ACC is an organization within which the
secret services of the NATO countries meet. ACC/SOPS, among other things, is the
coordination organ for the stay-behind organizations in Europe. Such a secret Swedish
resistance network under the command of Alvar Lindencrona has been discovered by
Dagens Nyheter in 1990. SOPS is the operative branch of ACC. Its tasks are to plan
and to hide secret operations. A third organ, called ITAC, is supporting SOPS with
information and intelligence means. The delegates of ACC and SOPS met regularly every
month in different European capitals. Headquarters allegedly are in Brussels, but the
meetings took also place in Mons (Belgium), as well as cities in Denmark and Norway.
Dagens Nyheter is in the possession of information, that also Sweden at times
regularly participated in ACC/SOPS meetings. The representative of the former Social
Democrat government has confirmed this information. Also a source within the Swedish
military secret service has confirmed the existence and the activities of the
ACC/SOPS.” International research into NATO’s stay-behind armies has confirmed both
the existence of the ACC as well as the existence of the Swedish stay-behind army
under Lindencrona. Yet journalist Beckerus is still the only named source who goes as
far as to claim that the network was involved in the Palme assassination: “During
several meetings of the ACC/SOPS allegedly an assassination plot was made ...
code-named 'Operation Tree'. Dagens Nyheter is in possession of an alleged SOPS
document which laconically states 'project management is local, technician
imported.'" [71]

Switzerland
No links to terrorism or crime reported

Turkey
In Turkey the secret NATO stay-behind army was called “Counter-Guerrilla” and
operated under the direction of the Special Warfare Department. According to Turkish
General Talat Turhan the secret army was involved in terror, torture and coup d’états.

After the coup of 1971 the Turkish military arrested Turhan and the Counter Guerrilla
tortured him whereupon he publicly declared: "This is the secret unit of the NATO
countries". [72] The torture took place in the notorious cellars of the Ziverbey
villa in Istanbul's Erenköy district. As of the 1950s the villa was used to
"interrogate" people from the former socialist countries, especially Yugoslavia and
Bulgaria, and in subsequent years the Counter-Guerrillas together with the Turkish
military secret service MIT allegedly murdered or caused permanent damage to hundreds
of people there. "In the torture villa in Erenköy in Istanbul the torture team of
retired officer Eyüp Ozalkus, chief of the MIT's interrogation team for the combat of
communism, blindfolded me and tied up my arms and feet“ [73] Turhan related. „Then
they told me that I was now 'in the hands of a Counter Guerrilla unit operating under
the high command of the Army outside the constitution and the laws.' They told me
that they 'considered me as their prisoner of war and that I was sentenced to
death.'" Turhan related: "In this villa I was with tied up arms and feet chained to a
bed for a month and tortured in a way which a human being has difficulty to imagine.
It was under these circumstances that I first was made familiar with the name
Counter-Guerrillas." [74]

General Turhan survived the torture and dedicated his life to the researching the
Counter-Guerrilla secret army and covert action in Turkey, publishing three books on
the topic. [75] "When it was discovered in 1990 that Italy had an underground
organization called Gladio, organized by NATO and controlled and financed by the CIA,
which was linked to acts of terrorism within the country, Turkish and foreign
journalists approached me and published my explanations as they knew that I have been
researching the field for 17 years … In Turkey the special forces in the style of
Gladio are called Counter-Guerrilla by the public“ Turhan explained to the press and
once again lamented that „despite all my efforts and initiatives of political
parties, democratic mass organizations and the media the Counter-Guerrilla has still
not been investigated." [76]

* * * * *
The data available so far on the links of the NATO stay-behind armies to terrorism
and crime remains fragmentary.

The overview shows that large differences exist from country to country. In some
countries the links are proven, while in others more research is needed in the
future. What did NATO know? What did the Pentagon, the CIA and MI6 know? Which
terrorist attacks were deviations, and what was planned? Within the context of the so
called "war on terrorism" the data on NATO's stay-behind armies opens up an entire
field of so far unexplored questions and raises fundamental questions for which the
answers are still lacking.

DANIELE GANSER is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

Contemporary Security Policy
"Nato's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0714685003/104-4849771-2683934?v=glance

Notes
[1] British daily The European, 9 November 1990.
[2] British daily The European, 9 November 1990. It seems that the NATO official who
issued the correction was Robert Stratford. Compare: Regine Igel, Andreotti. Politik
zwischen Geheimdienst und Mafia (Munich: Herbig Verlag, 1997), p. 343.
[3] British daily The Observer, 18 November 1990.
[4] No author specified: "Gladio: Un misterio de la guerra fria. La trama secreta
coordinada por mandos de la Alianza Atlantica comienza a salir a la luz tras cuatro
decadas de actividad," Spanish daily El Pais, 26 November 1990.
[5] Inzerilli, Paolo,Gladio. La verità negata (Bologna: Edizioni Analisi, 1995), p.
61.
[6] Inzerilli, Gladio, p. 62.
[7] Gerardo Serravalle, Gladio (Roma: Edizioni Associate, 1991), p. 79.
[8] Serravalle, Gladio, p. 78.
[9] Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into Gladio, as summarised in Belgium
periodical Statewatch, January/February 1992.
[10] Inzerilli, Gladio, p. 63 .
[11] Email from NATO Archives to the author, 18 August 2000.
[12] Letter from Lee McClenny, NATO head of press and media, to the author, dated 2
May 2001.
[13] Letter from Lee McClenny, NATO head of press and media, to the author, dated 2
May 2001.
[14] International news service Reuters, 15 November 1990.
[15] All quotes from: Debates of the European Parliament, 22 November 1990. Official
transcripts
[16] Arthur Rowse, "Gladio: The Secret US War to subvert Italian Democracy," Covert
Action Quarterly 49, (Summer 1994).
[17] United States Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with respect to Intelligence activities, Book IV: Supplementary detailed
staff reports on foreign and military intelligence, p. 36
[18] The document is quoted in Roberto Faenza, Il malaffare: Dall' America di Kennedy
all'Italia, a Cuba, al Vietnam (Milano: Editore Arnoldo Mondadori, 1978), p. 313.
Italian historian Roberto Faenza in the 1970s researched in the US archives and by
using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) got hold of the Demagnetize document
revealing for the first time "this heavy deviation of the Italian Secret Service".
[19] Memorandum by Lieutenant General Leon W. Johnson, US Representative to the NATO
Military Committee Standing Group to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on Clandestine
Intelligence, 3 January 1957. Formerly Top Secret. Declassified in 1978. Found by the
author through computer based Declassified Documents Reference System at LSE in
London.
[20] Regine Igel, Andreotti. Politik zwischen Geheimdienst und Mafia (1997), p. 346.
Igel offers in her German translation the full text of the top secret US FM 30-31B in
her book on Giulio Andreotti and the US subversion of Italy (Appendix, pp. 345-358).
The English quotes offered above are the author's translation of Igel's text. Igel's
source is the original English version of the FM 30-31B as contained in the collected
documents of the Italian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the US-linked P2
secret lodge which was discovered in 1981 (Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulla
loggia massonica P2. Allegati alla Relazione Doc. XXIII, n. 2-quater/7/1 Serie II,
Vol. VII, Tomo I, Roma 1987, pp. 287-298). The document FM 30-31B is dated 18 March
1970, Headquarters of the US Army, Washington DC, and signed by General of the US
Army William C Westmoreland.
[21] Allan Frankovich, Gladio: The Foot Soldiers. Third of total three Francovich
Gladio documentaries, broadcasted on BBC2 on 24 June 1992.
[22] Lucy Komisar, "Turkey's Terrorists: A CIA Legacy Lives On," The Progressive,
April 1997.
[23] David Stafford, Britain and European Resistance 1940-1945: A survey of the
Special Operations Executive (Oxford: St. Antony's College, 1980), p. 20.
[24] Letter by Minister Hugh Dalton to Foreign Minister Halifax on July 2, 1940.
Quoted in M. R. D. Foot, An outline history of the Special Operations Executive
1940-1946 (London: British Broadcasting Cooperation, 1984), p. 19.
[25] E. H. Cookridge, Inside SOE. The story of Special Operations in Western Europe
1940-45 (London: Arthur Barker Limited, 1966) p. 13.
[26] Allan Francovich, Gladio: The Ringmasters. First of total three Francovich
Gladio documentaries, broadcasted on BBC2 on 10 June 1992.
[27] Thomas Kanger and Oscar Hedin, "Erlanders hemliga gerilla: I ett ockuperat
Sverige skulle det nationella motstandet ledas fran Äppelbo skola i Dalarna," Swedish
daily Dagens Nyheter, 4 October 1998.
[28] British television. BBC Newsnight, 4 April 1991, 10:30 pm. Gladio report by
journalist Peter Marshall
[29] British daily The Guardian, 14 November 1990
[30] Richard Norton Taylor, "Secret Italian unit 'trained in Britain'," British daily
The Guardian, 17 November 1990.
[31] Hugh O' Shaughnessy, "Gladio: Europe's best kept secret - They were the agents
who were to 'stay behind' if the Red Army overran western Europe. But the network
that was set up with the best intentions degenerated in some countries into a front
for terrorism and far-right political agitation,"
British daily The Observer, 7 June 1992.
[32] William Colby, Honorable Men: My life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1978), pp. 81-83.
[33] British daily The Independent, 1 December 1990.
[34] Kwitny, Jonathan, "The CIA's Secret Armies in Europe," The Nation (6 April
1992), p. 445.
[35] Philip Willan, "Terrorists 'helped by CIA' to stop rise of left in Italy,"
British daily The Guardian, 26 March 2001.
[36] FOIA request: CIA's "Operation Gladio", handed in by Malcolm Byrne on 15 April
1991. FOIA request number 910113.
[37] Italian daily Corriere della Sera, 29 May 1995.
[38] Letter dated 28 December 2000 of the CIA to the author concerning Gladio FOIA
request number F-2000-02528.
[39] Letter dated 23 January 2001 of the author to Mrs. Dyer at the CIA.
[40] Letter dated 7 February 2001 from the CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator
Kathryn I. Dyer to the author.
[41] International news service Associated Press, 14 November 1990.
[42] British television. BBC Newsnight, 4 April 1991, 10:30 pm. Gladio report by
journalist Peter Marshall.
[43] British television. BBC Newsnight, 4 April 1991, 10:30 pm. Gladio report by
journalist Peter Marshall.
[44] Imperial War Museum, London. Secret Wars exhibition. Visited by the author on 20
May 1999.
[45] Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain's Spies Came in from the Cold
(London: Gollancz, 1996), p. 117. Based on interviews with Simon Preston on 11
October 1995, and with Michael Giles on 25 October 1995.
[46] International news service Reuters Western Europe, 15 November 1990.
[47] Compare: Hans Karl Peterlini, Bomben aus zweiter Hand: Zwischen Gladio und
Stasi - Suedtirols missbrauchter Terrorismus (Bozen: Edition Raetia, 1992). And:
Elisabeth Baumgartner, Hans Mayr, Gerhard Mumeleter, Feuernacht: Suedtiroler
Bombenjahre (Bozen: Edition Raetia, 1992).
[48] Senato della Repubblica. Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in
Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabiliy delle stragi:
Stragi e terrorismo in Italia dal dopoguerra al 1974. Relazione del Gruppo
Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo. Roma June 2000, p. 42.
[49] Allan Frankovich, Gladio: The Foot Soldiers. Third of total three Francovich
Gladio documentaries, broadcasted on BBC2 on 24 June 1992.
[50] Quoted in Jan de Willems, Gladio (Brussels: Editions EPO, 1991), p. 13.
[51] Enquête parlementaire sur l'existence en Belgique d'un réseau de renseignements
clandestin international, rapport fait au nom de la commission d'enquête par MM.
Erdman et Hasquin. Document Senat, session de 1990-1991. Brussels, p. 53
[52] Allan Frankovich, The Foot Soldiers. Third of total three Francovich Gladio
documentaries, broadcasted on BBC2 on 24 June 1992.
[53] Jonathan Kwitny, "The CIA's Secret Armies in Europe: An International Story,"
The Nation, 6 April 1992, pp. 446 and 447.
[54] Jens Mecklenburg (ed.), Gladio: Die geheime Terrororganisation der Nato(Berlin:
Elefanten Press, 1997), p. 82.
[55] Anonymous. Austrian periodical Oesterreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, Heft 2
(1991), p. 123.
[56] Klaus Harbart, "Gladio - ein Schwert in rechter Hand," Der Rechte Rand 10
(January 1991), p. 5.
[57] Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (Secaucus:
Lyle Stuart Inc.,1978), pp. 155f.
[58] William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA interventions since World War II
(Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995), p. 216
[59] "Spinne unterm Schafsfell: In Südeuropa war die Guerilla truppe besonders
aktiv - auch bei den Militärputschen in Griechenland und der Türkei?" German news
magazine Der Spiegel 48 (26 November 1990).
[60] Quoted in Giovanni Fasanella e Claudio Sestieri con Giovanni Pellegrino, Segreto
di Stato: La verità da Gladio al caso Moro (Torino: Einaudi Editore, 2000),
introduction.
[61] Ed Vulliamy, "Secret agents, freemasons, fascists ... and a top-level campaign
of political 'destabilisation': 'Strategy of tension' that brought carnage and
cover-up." British daily The Guardian 5 December 1990.
[62] British daily The Observer, 7 June 1992.
[63] Joao Paulo Guerra,"'Gladio' actuou em Portugal," Portugese daily O Jornal, 16
November 1990.
[64] French periodical Paris Match, November 1974. Quoted in: Stuart Christie,
Stefano delle Chiaie (London: Anarchy Publications, 1984), p. 27.
[65] Quoted in Stuart Christie, delle Chiaie, p. 29
[66] Joao Paulo Guerra, "Gladio' actuou em Portugal." And Christie, delle Chiaie, p.
30
[67] This document was allegedly found in the former office of Guerain-Serac after
the Portugese revolution of 1974. It was contained in 2000 in the digital online
dictionary on terrorism in Belgium by Manuel Abramowicz: Entry "Guerin Serac" In: Le
dictionnaire des années de plomb belges. On the Internet:
www.users.skynet.be/avancees/idees.htm. It is now no longer available online.
[68] Stuart Christie, Martin Lee and Kevin Coogan, "Protected by the West's secret
services, hired by South American's drug barons, the man they called "Shorty"
terrorised two continents." In: British periodical News on Sunday Extra, 31May 1987.
Christie is a leading expert on Delle Chiaie. Compare his book: Christie, delle
Chiaie.
[69] Angel Luis de la Calle, "Gladio: ligacoes obscuras em Espanha," Portugese daily
Expresso, 8 December 1990. And Miguel Gonzalez, "Un informe oficial italiano implica
en el crimen de Atocha al 'ultra' Cicuttini, relacionado con Gladio: El fascista fue
condenado en el proceso que ha sacado a la luz la estructura secreta de la OTAN,"
Spanish daily El Pais, 2 December 1990.
[70] Senato della Repubblica. Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in
Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabiliy delle stragi: Il
terrorismo, le stragi ed il contesto storico politico. Redatta dal presidente della
Commissione, Senatore Giovanni Pellegrino. Roma 1995, p. 203
[71] Göran Beckerus, "Ett topphemligt underrättelseorgan inom den västliga
försvarsalliansen Nato lag bakom mordet pa Olof Palme [A top secret intelligence
network within NATO is behind the death of Olof Palme], Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter,
28 April 1992.
[72] Leo Müller, Gladio: Das Erbe des Kalten Krieges: Der NATO Geheimbund und sein
deutscher Vorläufer (1991), p. 57; also Olaf Goebel in Jens Mecklenburg, op, cit., p.
128.
[73] Quoted in Selahattin Celik, Türkische Konterguerilla: Die Todesmaschinerie(Köln:
Mesopotamien Verlag, 1999), p. 151.
[74] Essay of Talat Turhan, "Die Konterguerilla Republik," in: Aslan and Bozay, Graue
Wölfe, pp. 102f.
[75] All three books are in Turkish and no translations seem available as of now. 1)
Talat Turhan, Doruk Operasyonu (Istanbul: Cagloglu, 1989). In this book Turhan deals
on 170 pages with the Turkish secret service MIT. 2) Talat Turhan, Ozel Savas: Teror
ve Kontrgerilla (Istanbul: Kadkoy, 1992). In this book Turhan deals specifically with
the Counter-Guerrilla, the Special Warfare Departement (Ozel Harp Dairesi), the CIA,
the MIT and terrorism. 3) Talat Turhan, Kontrgerilla cumhuriyeti: acklamalar,
belgeler, gercekler (Istanbul: Tumzamanlaryaynclk, 1993). In this book Turhan deals
again with the Counter-Guerrilla. Another valuable book in Turkish on the
Counter-Gerilla is the one published by journalist Semih Hicyilmaz, Susurluk ve
Kontrgerilla gercegi (Istanbul: Evrensel Basim Yayin, 1997).
[76] Fikret Aslan and Kemal Bozay, Graue Wölfe heulen wieder: Türkische Faschisten
und ihre Vernetzung in der BRD (Münster: Unrast Verlag, 1997), p. 106.
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