Next to the CPC, a second secret army command center, labeled Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), was set up in 1957 on the orders of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). This military structure provided for significant US leverage over the secret stay-behind networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO’s history, has traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and is based in NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. The ACC’s duties included elaborating on the directives of 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. According to former CIA director William Colby, it was ‘a major program’.
Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), [the secret armies] were run by the European military secret services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also MI6). Trained together with US Green Berets and British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers, armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of communist parties. The clandestine international network covered the European NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. Daniele Ganser, Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Stay Behind Armies
‘Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?’ the international press pointedly asked when the secret stay-behind armies of NATO were discovered across Western Europe in late 1990. After more than ten years of research, the answer is now clear: both. The overview above shows that based on the experiences of World War II, all countries of Western Europe, with the support of NATO, the CIA, and MI6, had set up stay-behind armies as precaution against a potential Soviet invasion. While the safety networks and the integrity of the majority of the secret soldiers should not be criticized in hindsight after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very disturbing questions do arise with respect to reported links to terrorism.
There exist large differences among the European countries, and each case must be analyzed individually in further detail. As of now, the evidence suggests the secret armies in the seven countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, focused exclusively on their stay-behind function and were not linked to any acts of terrorism. However, links to terrorism have been either confirmed or claimed in the eight countries, Italy, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Sweden, demanding further investigation. ibid.
Go back to 1969 ... Suddenly a lot of bombs go off. And they kill people all over the place. And everybody’s scared. And you have this effect of terror; the first effect of terror is fear ... In 2001/2 you have the trial in Italy and you find out it was not the communists, it was right-wing people, it was people from the Catholic’s camp – it was a false flag operation. ibid.
This changed when in July 1940 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the creation of a secret army under the label SOE to ‘set Europe ablaze by assisting resistance movements and carrying out subversive operations in enemy held territory. SOE was placed under the command of the Labour Ministry of Economic Warfare under Hugh Dalton … SOE was a carbon copy of operation Gladio born in the midst of the Second World War. Daniele Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies
Gladio was set up in 1948, and operational by the end of the year. It was formed with a very careful choice of personnel. Many were in the Spanish Civil War. Many came from the ranks of the fascist Repubblica di Salo. People who could handle arms. They were in squads of nine people with two leaders. Licio Gelli, former head of P2 Lodge
During the Cold War NATO along with intelligence agencies armed and funded stay-behind armies to act as resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. Inquires carried out by the Belgium and Italian parliaments established that Operation Gladio was behind several atrocities across Western Europe in the 1970s and ’80s. Gladio teams carried out terrorist operations as part of a strategy of tension. The resulting fear was used to manipulate public perception, while the blame was put on political dissidents. Adrian Connock and David Shayler, 9/11 and the BBC
The name at the top of the list was that of Lichio Gelli. Gelli was a militant fascist, a fierce supporter of Mussolini, who had shed blood in the fascist ranks during the Spanish Civil War. He was now Grand Master of the P2 Lodge. The Investigators revealed that the Lodge played a major role in the running of the state, was involved in a large part of the corruption in Italy, and even that it was the most powerful arm of the Italian Mafia. P2 was the main player in a number of bombings and assassinations, and enjoyed close relations with the famous Gladio organisation. The Knights Templar and Freemasonry
Rome May 9th 1978: in the city centre police discover a Renault 4. Inside is the body of Aldo Moro, the president of Italy’s Christian Democrat Party. An infamous crime had been committed against a high profile politician. A man who wanted to overcome a barrier in Italian society and share power with the Communist Party. The murder of Aldo Moro bore the signature of the extreme Left, the Red Brigades. But many wondered if the extreme right had not guided the murder weapon so as to block a political initiative which had begun inauspiciously six weeks earlier. Political Assassinations: Death in Rome: The Case of Aldo Moro
The head of the Lodge [P2] Licio Gelli was a militant anti-communist with long-standing links to the CIA. He was also one of Aldo Moro’s bitterest enemies. Moro wanted to fight this terror campaign by means of a broad alliance which would also bring the communists into the fold ... The shots were fired ... Gelli, head of the P2 lodge and working for the secret service, is reported to have said just afterwards, The hardest part has been done. ibid.
The next morning at 8:30 a radio station broadcast the news that Aldo Moro had been kidnapped half an hour before it actually happened. And the secret services also knew something. ibid.
Moro knew there would be strong opposition to his policy. But he could see no alternative to closer relations with the communists. The Communist Party had become the second most powerful political force in the country. It was demanding indispensable social reforms, and to do so was looking for closer links with the Christian Democrats under Aldo Moro. But those opposed to this strategy did not remain inactive. ibid.
They didn’t even respect the murdered man’s last wishes. In a pompous state ceremony they displayed their grief for the man they did not wish to save. ibid.
In July 1990, President Cossiga of Italy called for an investigation of charges aired over state television that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to foment terrorist activities in Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gelli was Grandmaster of the secret Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge and had long been suspected of a leading role in terrorism and other criminal activities. In those years, according to a 1984 report of the Italian Parliament, P2 and other neo-fascist groups, working closely with elements of the Italian military and secret services, were preparing a virtual coup to impose an ultra-right regime and to block the rising forces of the left. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
Gladio B: projecting US power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for US and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking. Sibel Edmonds, ceasefire magazine
For the past eleven years I have been emphasizing that my State Secret Gag Orders had to do with the FBI files (covering period 1996-2000 February) on covert-terrorist operations in Caucasus and Central Asia backed, managed and armed by US actors. These US/NATO-directed operations in the region involved Bin Laden and mainly Zawahiri … The FBI documents contained damning evidence (audio and written) collected between 1996-2000 tying these terror operations directly to the US persons in the State Department/CIA and Pentagon. Also, how the State Department got Congress to grant huge amounts of funds to ‘front’ NGOs and businesses (mainly Turkish companies in US-listed members of ATC) to funnel money to terrorist cells in this region. Sibel Edmonds
Operation Gladio – a Nato secret stay-behind army officially set up to perform guerrilla and resistance activities should Italy be successfully invaded by the Soviet block. The Corbett Report, 49 Paperclipped Nazis and Stay Behind Gladios, James Corbett online 2008
Operation Gladio – a false flag terror operation that is commonly understood to be a Nato stay-behind operation that was formed in the wake of World War II as a bulwark against the possibility of a Soviet invasion. The Corbett Report: Gladio Revisited, James Corbett online 2013
For example the Bologna bombing and the murder of Aldo Moro and the Piazza Fontana bombing. ibid.
‘The CIA/NATO connection is pretty much shrouded in secrecy.’ ibid. Tom Secker
‘Turkey always was the most centre/country in all this Gladio operations before the fall of the Soviet Union.’ ibid. Sibel Edmonds
Groningen, Netherlands, 19th November 2014 lecture: The Secret War: Gladio and the Battle for Eurasia: Azerbaijan: Dick Cheney, James Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski: what is it that these people, some of the most influential people in the field of geo-politics over the last fifty years, know about this region that the general public doesn’t? … location, location, location … The region’s vast largely untapped resources. The Corbett Report: Gladio B and the Battle for Eurasia, James Corbett online
‘For America the chief political prize is Eurasia … and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained’. ibid. Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard
‘An enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold’. ibid. Brzezinski
Operation Gladio was a Nato plan to use stay-behind paramilitary armies to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Europe. ibid.
Specifically its most famous incarnation in Italy. ibid.
Everything from drug running and money laundering to terror attacks and political assassinations. ibid.