Was Charlie Manson sheep-dipped?

[Jan Klimkowski]

With regard to Gladio in general, there is a very interesting PhD manuscript by Daniele Ganser available at the link below. NB it's a near 3Mb pdf file:

http://www.325collective.com/gladio-ganser.pdf

On the Greek coup d'etat, Ganser writes:

As Papandreou challenged the KYP, Norbert Anshutz, US Deputy Chief of
Mission of the US embassy, came to see him and advised him to rescind his
orders to the KYP. Andreas Papandreou refused and ordered the US official to
leave his office, whereupon Anshutz angrily warned that 'there would be consequences'.
27 The military coup d'etat came on the night of April 20/21, 1967, one
month before the scheduled elections for which opinion polls, including those of
the CIA, predicted an overwhelming victory of the left-leaning Centre Union of
George and Andreas Papandreou. The secret army Hellenic Raiding Force started
the coup which was based on the Prometheus plan, a NATO-designed scheme to be
put into action in the event of a Communist insurgency. In the event of opposition,
Prometheus was unequivocal: 'Smash, without hesitation, any probable enemy
resistance.'28 Around midnight the Hellenic Raiding force took control over the
Greek Defence Ministry which in admiration for the United States had been
baptised Pentagon. They met little to no resistance and under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides, a trained paratrooper, the building was
secured. After the coup leaders controlled the Pentagon, phase two of the plan
started and in the dark of night tanks with flashlights rolled into the capital and
under the command of Brigadier General Sylianos Pattakos rounded up the
parliament, the royal palace, the radio and the communication centres. Pattakos
directed his column along the same route into the city taken by the Germans
when they had conquered Athens in April 1941. Occasionally the tanks stopped,
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the officers looked around for signs of opposition. But there was none Athens
was asleep.
Also 78-year-old George Papandreou was asleep that night in his modest,
whitewashed villa in Kastri, just outside the capital. The procedure, as in every
military coup, was frightfully simple. Armed men knocked at his door, Papandreou
was arrested and driven away in one of two military vehicles that had surrounded
the house. At the same time eight men burst into the house of Andreas Papandreou,
seven with fixed bayonets, one with a machine gun. A commotion followed, and
Andreas escaped to the roof, but a soldier found his 14-year-old son, and, holding
a gun to the boy's head, forced the younger Papandreou to give up. In the space
of some five hours, over 10,000 people were arrested by military squads according
to detailed files and planning, and were taken to 'reception centres'.
Colonel Yannis Ladas, the 47-year-old Director of the Greek military police,
a year later in an interview took pride in the precision and speed with which the
NATO plan had been implemented. 'Within twenty minutes every politician,
every man and anarchist who was listed could be rounded up... it was a very
simple, diabolic plan.'29 The Greek population waking up in the morning found
first of all that their phones were not working and soon thereafter that the military
had taken over control. At 6 a.m. Colonel George Papadopoulos declared through
the media that he had taken over power in order to secure democracy, freedom
and happiness. Eleven articles of the constitution were suspended. People could
now be arrested on the spot and without warrant, to be brought before military
courts. Demonstrations and strikes were outlawed and bank deposits were frozen.
The new ruler George Papadopoulos had operated as KYP's liaison officer with
the CIA ever since 1952 and within the KYP was known to be the trusted man of
CIA chief of station Maury. Yet not all officials of the United States agreed with the
brutal procedure of the CIA. US Senator Lee Metcalf, days after the coup, criticised
the administration of President Johnson sharply when on Capitol Hill he
denounced the Greek junta as 'a military regime of collaborators and Nazi
sympathisers... [who are] receiving American aid' .30 And the US ambassador in
Athens, Phillips Talbot, complained to Maury one week after the brutal change of
power that the US coup represented 'a rape of democracy'. Maury answered:
'How can you rape a whore?'31
Due to the direct involvement of the Hellenic Raiding Force the Greek military
coup has been labelled 'a Gladio coup'. Only in one other country, namely in
Turkey, the secret anti-Communist armies were equally involved in coup d'etats.
In Italy the Gladio network carried out a 'silent coup' in June 1964 when CIA's
trusted General De Lorenzo in operation 'Piano Solo' entered Rome with tanks,
armoured personnel carriers, jeeps and grenade launchers while NATO forces
staged a large military manoeuvre in the area which led the Socialists to silently
abandon their ministerial posts. US historian Bernard Cook has rightly
stressed that 'Plan Solo resembles the subsequent Prometheus Plan utilised
by Colonel George Papadopoulos in 1967 to impose a military government on
Greece. With its intent to destabilise Italy to prevent the advance of the Left, the
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plan was no more than "a carbon copy of Gladio".'32 And military expert Collin
agrees that 'What De Lorenzo had in mind was a plan similar in its mechanical
aspects to the one successfully executed a few years later by Colonel Papadopoulos
of Greece.'33
The Greek junta consolidated its power through a regime of imprisonment and
torture, the like of which had not been seen in Western Europe since the end of
the Second World War. Most of those who had been arrested in the first hours after
the coup were later moved to police and army cells. Communists, Socialists,
artists, academics, journalists, students, politically active women, priests, including
their friends and families, were tortured. Their toe and fingernails were torn out.
Their feet were beaten with sticks, until the skin came off and the bones were
broken. Sharp objects were shoved into vaginas. Filthy rags, often soaked in
urine, and sometimes excrement, were pushed down their throats to throttle them,
tubes were inserted into their anus and water driven in under very high pressure,
and electro shocks were applied to their head.34 'We are all democrats here'
Inspector Basil Lambro, the chief of the secret police in Athens, was fond of
stressing. 'Everybody who comes here talks. You're not spoiling our record.' The
sadist torturer made it clear to his victims: 'We are the government, you are nothing.
The government isn't alone. Behind the government are the Americans.' If in
the mood Basil also offered his analysis of world politics: 'The whole world is in
two parts, the Russians and the Americans. We are the Americans. Be grateful
we've only tortured you a little. In Russia, they'd kill you.'35
The Italian right and their secret soldiers were impressed with how efficiently
the Greeks together with the CIA had defeated the left.