Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the International Terrorist of the Year Awards. Spitting Image s1e1, ITV 1984
The imagery of terrorism replaced that of savagery and communism as the main explanatory catch-all to describe the real, illusory or manufactured enemies of the American way of life. Anthony J Hall, American Empire and the Fourth Worl
The countries that are regarded as the Axis of Evil all have one thing in common: they are all free of debt from the World Bank. Ian R Crane, lecture History Cannot Be Permanently Falsified
To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists. John Ashcroft
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. Martin Luther King, cited King in the Wilderness, Sky Atlantic 2018
A specter haunts the world – the specter of religious fanaticism. Against a backdrop of economic and social woes, theocratic ideologies have declared a cold war on the democracies. Fanatical Christian, Jewish and Muslim cults are proliferating along with related associations and criminal organizations. Those endowed with faith have a common goal: to end the separation of church and state, politics and religion, belief and citizenship. They have a horror of the republican exception. Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror p13
Gladio: It was also a construct of real-life covert operations – It is absolutely crucial to understand through to the late 1980s a high secretive sub-section of different Intelligence services – Britain, American and Western European – participated in a very sophisticated Nato-led operation to engineer terrorist attacks inside Western Europe, which could then be blamed on the Soviet Union ... Winston Churchill gave the original order … The idea was to galvanise public opinion against left-wing policies and parties when it was considered they were getting too popular. Nafeez Ahmed
I looked at the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, and I also looked at the 1998 US Embassy bombings. And again I found disturbing reasons to believe that this kind of connection [with terrorists] had a direct impact in undermining our ability or willingness to deal with these terrorists. Nafeez Ahmed
Gladio: It has now been documented beyond a doubt in the historical records that the CIA/MI6 teamed up with very very secretive parallel elements of European intelligence services and orchestrated terrorist attacks to mobilise the public against the Left, against the communists and so forth, and this would be really shocking to people if they knew that this is what happened. This is what happened. The best book about on it is Daniel Ganser’s book NATO’s Secret Armies. This is serious academic stuff. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Institute for Policy Research & Development, interview Oil, Smoke & Mirrors, ‘The War on Freedom: Causes & Consequences of 9/11’
They [US/GB] landed in Bosnia in various places and they used them to try and manipulate the Bosnia conflict in a certain direction ... We connected ourselves with people connected to terrorism ... Bosnia has been described as a safe haven for terrorists in Europe. Nafeez Ahmed
A lot of this violence was again orchestrated quite consciously by the United States and Britain ... This is mainstream sources. Nafeez Ahmed
Many reports now confirm that in 1993 [Mujahideen] it switched its operation to Bosnia ... A lot of this violence was orchestrated quite consciously by the United States and Britain ... 1996 was when British SAS and American Delta Force instructors had begun training the KLA. The CIA were supplying military assistance up to and during the 99 bombing campaign – military training manuals, field advice ... That was in Kosovo. Nafeez Ahmed
Gladio as it is defined nowadays forms part of what I have always referred to as ‘parallel structures’. This is an invisible army that is not poised for battle against a hypothetical invader, but rather one meant to be used internally against what the military has always called the Fifth Column of the USSR: the Communist Party and the extreme left. Vincenzo Vinciguerra, former member of neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo, televised interview
These parallel structures used the extreme Right for the simple reason that they fought the communists. In 1945 the Second World War ended and the Third World War started. ibid.
You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people outside the political arena. For one simple reason: to force the Italian public to turn to the State, turn to the regime and ask for greater security. That was precisely the role of the Right in Italy. It placed itself at the service of the State which created a strategy aptly called the Strategy of Tension. In so far as they had to get people to accept that at any moment over a period of thirty years, from 1960 to the mid-1980s, a State of Emergency could be declared. ibid.
They remain unpunished because a State cannot condemn itself. ibid.
The massacre at Bologna came at a time of maximum concern on the part of the Italian, American and Allied Secret Services because of the electoral success of the Italian Communist Party. The massacre at Bologna responds, as do all the other massacres, to the logic of a State who no longer knowing how to confront a political enemy resorts to extreme measures of violence, attributable to extremists on the Left. ibid.
Ordine Nuovo never had its own ideology. They called themselves National Socialists. ibid.
A series of trials ensued in Italy. It wasn’t until 1995, 15 years after the bombing, that a conclusive verdict was reached. 2 members of a neo-fascist group were convicted of the [Bologna] bombing. Also convicted for diverting the investigation were 2 Italian intelligence agents who were members of the P2 Masonic lodge. The grandmaster of that lodge, Licio Gelli, was also convicted for conspiring to divert the investigation. It became clear that P2 was not just a Masonic Order but a CIA-funded parallel government. The list of members of the Lodge was found in a raid on Licio Gelli’s house in 1981. Among the 962 names were those of the heads of all 3 Intelligence Services, 48 MPs, industrialists, bankers, media moguls, journalists, civil servants, judges, military officials, and Silvio Berlusconi. ibid.
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.
For more than five decades, throughout the third world, the United States has deliberately targeted civilians or engaged in violence so indiscriminate that there is no other way to understand it except as terrorism. And it has supported similar acts of terrorism by client states. Robert Jensen, Houston Chronicle
Certain countries have been targets of the United States ... Yet the biggest country involved in terrorism is Saudi Arabia. They finance it. And we have treated them with kid gloves. We have treated them as if they are not involved in terrorism at all. Is that because of groups like Carlyle that have significant investment with Saudi Arabia interests? Is that because George W Bush’s father is in fact part of the Carlyle Group and is close to the bin Laden family? Lawrence Klayman
The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence
We must be fierce and relentless and exterminate terrorism. Arnold Schwarzenegger
We will make no distinction between the terrorist who committed these acts and those who harbor them. George W Bush
One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice. George W Bush