Gladio B: Gladio Revisited

[Jan Klimkowski]

American Judas Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One
Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two

These are pretty decent summaries of Sibel Edmond's Gladio B hypothesis, kindly compiled by Robert Paulsen.

Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One
There are two seminal world events that, more than any other events since, have shaped my understanding of how the world really works as opposed to what we are told and have galvanized my consciousness to document my awareness of political reality. One is the lies that led this country to go to war in Iraq and the government treachery, culminating in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, used to justify this crime. The other is the lies surrounding 9/11 that led to the termination and gagging of FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Recently, Edmonds was interviewed in a podcast by Canadian journalist James Corbett (Well, he says he's originally from Canada, though his link about his website states he has been living and working in Japan since 2004) for his show The Corbett Report. The interview was broken up into four different segments lasting over four hours, as well as a listener Question and Answer session lasting an hour and a half. I've listened to the interview segments twice, the first time just sitting back having my mind blown, the second time taking feverish notes, trying to lay out all the pieces of the puzzle which Edmonds describes as Gladio B. This blog post is the first in a series attempting to synopsize the interview from the notes I scribbled, as well as to provide analysis with how the explosive information provided by Edmonds connects with earlier research I have conducted on 9/11 and Valerie Plame.

(If you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, [no sleight intended toward Sibel Edmonds' appearance, who happens to be quite beautiful] here are the links for the interview: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and the Question and Answer session.)


Part One Synopsis: Sibel Edmonds begins this mammoth interview with an overview of how Operation Gladio morphed in Turkey. She makes clear that though the field of operations is global, and that she would delve into the former Soviet bloc countries of Central Asia, Turkey was always the most important operation center of Gladio before the fall of the Soviet Union. The reasons for this are a) geographic and b) drugs (Edmonds didn't explicitly make this the b point, but I believe the implication based on the subsequent account is correct). During the Cold War, behind the Turkish military there was always the para-military or ultra-nationalist groups. These groups had their Godfathers, or "Babas" running drugs. She says you could always tell who these guys were by their looks, many wore little "Hitler" mustaches. What NATO, which was running Operation Gladio, did that was so scandalous was they took these guys out of prison, trained with Turkish military and given passports for the express purpose of running operations. What kind of operations? Drug running, false flag ops, assassinations and murder.

The primary example Edmonds gives of this type of Gladio operative is Abdullah Çatlı. He was a major para-military nationalist with a criminal record so notorious he was on Interpol's 10 Most Wanted list. Arrested in Switzerland during the 80's and placed in a high-security prison, he escaped via a helicopter that was owned by NATO! Çatlı (pronounced Chat-lee) next shows up in London in 1989 where he is granted UK citizenship! Next he comes to the United States, specifically Chicago in 1990-1991 where he is given a green card. There are dozens of exits and entrances from America indicating his participation in the kind of nefarious operations listed above, but because he carries 4 or 5 diplomatic passports, he has immunity to do whatever he wants. In 1995, Çatlı travels to Azerbaijan from Chicago and attempts to assassinate President Aliyev. The attempt fails to kill Aliyev, but succeeds in Çatlı's real goal: making Aliyev loyal to US/NATO. Prior to the assassination attempt, Aliyev was loyal to Russia but had a terrible weakness ripe for exploitation: he had big debts with casinos. Following the assassination attempt, Aliyev became pro-US, so with his mission accomplished, Çatlı came back to Chicago. He was also heavily involved with organizing terror operations in an area of West China known as Turkestan prior to his death.

Before discussing the dirty details of Çatlı's death and the scandal erupting from it, Edmonds sets up the context in which this occurs by stating that during the period of 1994-1996, there is a debate within NATO. This debate is focused on how to proceed with Operation Gladio in having Soviet bloc nations on our side. There are two options: 1) Continue like before the fall of the Soviet Union or 2) Proceed like with the Balkans and Afghanistan. Edmonds can't confirm whether the decision to proceed with option 2 occurred prior to Çatlı's death or as a result of it. What's undeniable is that the enormity of scandal in the wake of his death kind of forced NATO's hand to evolve that direction.

In 1996, Çatlı was killed in a major car crash in Susurluk, Turkey. But he was not the only big name involved in this crash. Also in the car with him was the chief of police, a powerful member of Parliament and Çatlı's lover, a former beauty queen. Before the details could be covered up, local police had confirmed the event and local media reported it. The subsequent investigations exposed what is called the Deep State: that killings were done for the state and drug runnings were done by the state. The fear within the US/NATO was that our role in this would come out, state secrets would be exposed. You know how people in this country scream "9/11!" to protest a cover-up and/or conspiracy? Edmonds says that in Turkey people scream "Susurluk!" to protest the cover-up there. The US Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman was pulled even though he still had 1-2 years left to serve. Also pulled was someone who figured directly in Sibel Edmonds' termination from the FBI, Major Douglas Dickerson, who directed Gladio in Khazakstan and Turkmenistan. Another big blow was the chief guy in the Turkish military was pulled who was in charge of "counter-terror", i.e. false-flag operations.

At this point in 1997, NATO went ahead with the plans to change to what Edmonds calls Gladio B. Plan B would no longer involve paramilitary, ultra-nationalist groups. Instead they would go with Islamic factions, the Mujahadeen. Some of these ultra-nationalist, paramilitary groups went rogue in some very interesting ways which Edmonds will detail later. There was quite a bit of uncertainty at the time in Turkey as to how the evolution of Operation Gladio would proceed. But in the aftermath of Çatlı's death, it appears they did have a leader in mind.

That leader was Fethullah Gulen. An Islamic preacher who has been called "moderate", his message is similar to other Turkish preachers in calling for bringing Islamic brothers together, but is unique in that it is not nationalistic, but inclusive of other Central Asian nations. But his movement was not particularly well liked by the Turkish military, so after receiving threats from them, he came to Washington, D.C. He now heads a $20 billion organization through which 350 mosques and madrassahs have opened! But there's a catch if you want to join: you must learn English. And all "English teachers" are given diplomatic passports! Edmonds also lists another big player in the Gladio B network, Yusuf Turani. Turani was actually given US citizenship in 1997 and called the President of Turkestan in absentia. Again, Turkestan is an area of West China known as the Xinjiang province.

But another relationship NATO had was with a name more familiar: Ayman al-Zawahiri. Known as the "brains" behind al-Qaeda in many circles, Edmonds says that NATO through Gladio worked closely with Zawahiri and Bin Laden. From 1997-2001, Plan B of Gladio included dozens of operations with Mujahadeen. Edmonds points out that during this time they were never called al-Qaeda within official circles, always Mujahadeen. NATO asked President Mubarak of Egypt (where Zawahiri is originally from) to release anti-regime people (friends of Zawahiri) who they had tasks for in Turkey. During this time, Zawahiri had come to Turkey, but was also working in Albania and Kosovo. Edmonds mentions an interesting fact regarding the FBI: they keep tabs on all countries (their diplomatic arms) through monitoring (i.e. wiretapping) except four. These four countries are 1) Turkey 2) Azerbaijan 3) United Kingdom and 4) Belgium, the seat of NATO. The Cold War within the context of a "war over resources" didn't end. The ultimate prize, as Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in The Grand Chessboard, is Central Asia.

So then 9/11 happens. What's the official reaction? Edmonds characterizes it as the US saying "our partners", those we did joint operations with, did it. And of course we had nothing to do with it. It's one of the oldest games in the UK we've now learned: "Use Islam to get what you want!" Edmonds then goes into the role that drugs played. One of the reasons Belgium is one of the four countries not being monitored is that it is "extremely important" in the distribution of heroin. She notes that while many sites write about the Taliban getting rid of heroin prior to 9/11, this is not quite the whole story. The Taliban cut production from 2000-2001, but did not relinquish control. The Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan since 1996, and from 1996-2000, there was no slack in heroin production. Until 9/11, the majority of heroin operations were by Russia, an estimated 70-80% under Russian control. After 9/11 that control shifts to NATO. With their takeover of the Afghan poppy, production skyrockets. Edmonds ends Part One of the interview mentioning that Gladio operations were linked to Chechnyan operations and that in the wake of the transition to Gladio B, many ultra-nationalists defected to Russia.


Part One Analysis: To call Operation Gladio labyrinthian is an insult to labyrinths, the understatement of the millenium. What really blew my mind is how some of the information within this interview dovetailed with what I learned from my research in 2006 for the second edition of American Judas. Specifically information on Operation Gladio that I obtained from a reporter working for an online news service who wishes to remain anonymous. What I learned about Gladio was in the context of the Valerie Plame scandal and how Michael Ledeen, who was involved with the Niger forgeries that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, debunked, had a dark history with Italian intelligence going back to the late 70's. Now Edmonds made an effort in the interview to distinguish between the Italian side of Gladio, which has been heavily documented, and the Turkish side, which has received less press here. But I had no idea about the Operation Gladio connection with a Masonic lodge in Italy called P2, which engaged in a series of terror attacks called the Strategy of Tension. It was a campaign of false-flag terror in the late 1970s, waged by outright fascists who enjoyed the patronage of the CIA, the Mafia and far right elements of the Italian State. At the time the reporter detailed this skullduggery culminating in the 1980 Bologna train station bombing that killed 81 people, I really had a faint sketch of how this fit into the context of the War on Terror. After listening to Part One, my understanding is that just as Gladio B is the next stage of Operation Gladio, the War on Terror is the next stage of the Strategy of Tension. 9/11 was an Operation Gladio false-flag operation on steroids.

This is truly terrifying information to digest. It's so much easier for Americans to look at a scandal like Susurluk and say, "Well, that's something that happens over there, we don't have that kind of corruption here." Someone on the internet, I'm not sure who to credit, made this analogy: "Imagine a car accident at, say, a hotel in West Viginia. Several people are killed, among them Jeff Gannon, Douglas Feith, Warren Christopher, and Osama bin Laden." But if we look closer at what Sibel actually says about the scandal, there was a high ranking American official who had to high-tail it out of Turkey in the wake of these criminal revelations: Marc Grossman. I've documented some of his other dark deeds in American Judas, which I will quote directly here:

One man described as a pillar of the ATC that Edmonds has been able to talk about is Marc Grossman. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09...-marc.html The same Marc Grossman who told Scooter Libby on June 11 or 12, 2003, more than a month before Novak's column, about Wilson's wife working at the CIA. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001046.php The same Marc Grossman mentioned in the 1st edition of American Judas who had a meeting that was reported on September 10, 2001, as "most important" with General Mahmoud Ahmad, who resigned from being Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief the following month in the wake of an investigation by Times of India, confirmed by the FBI, that he authorized ISI agent Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire transfer $100,000 in August 2001 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 9/11 attacks. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timel...saeed.html When questioned in April 2006 by director Mathieu Verboud for an interview that was later cut out of a documentary about Sibel Edmonds titled Kill the Messenger, Grossman claimed he didn't know anything about Sibel Edmonds or Valerie Plame. This cannot be true, according to Edmonds, because Grossman was one of three officials the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09...-marc.html


Now, if I'm connecting the dots correctly, I really have a deeper understanding of why Valerie Plame's cover was blown. The popular story has always been either the benign, "Armitage-the-gossiper-made-a-boo-boo" or the malignant, "Neo-cons-made-Plame's-CIA-cover-Fair-Game-for-hubby-criticizing-Bush". I always leaned toward blaming the neo-cons. But when we understand that Grossman is the genesis from which Plame's CIA identity was spread within the government (Armitage, Libby, Rove) and subsequently to reporters (Woodward, Cooper, Miller, Novak), the "Neo-cons-protecting-their-justification-for-invading-Iraq" motive becomes a sheep-dipped cover for the real motive: protecting Operation Gladio's criminal networks, including the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Walmart that Plame was tracking through her CIA cover company. Does this let my favorite American Judas villain Dick Cheney off the hook since he is a neo-con? Not by a long shot. First, the Grossman revelations do not change the documented links between Cheney and the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network where the motive to blow Valerie Plame's CIA cover is concerned. Second, Cheney's complicity in the facilitation of 9/11 in light of the history of Gladio false-flag operations only makes the case seem stronger.

If all this is correct, that would make the assessment I made on September 11, 2010 that the genesis of 9/11 originates in 1972 with the creation of BCCI a bit premature. The true origins go all the way back to at least 1947, when the United States was constructing a clandestine network in Northern Italy to act if there was a communist electoral victory or insurrection. Operaton Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union in 1948, which was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee under NATO in 1949. Though Gladio initially referred to the Italian branch, Operation Gladio has become the name for all the NATO "stay behind" paramilitary organizations, each with its own shady history. In Germany, for example, it was involved with the ODESSA ratlines, helping Nazi war criminals escape to safety, through the Gehlen Org, named after Reinhard Gehlen, himself a Nazi Major General who became West Germany's first head of intelligence. But it was in Italy during the 1970's that Gladio erupted into a truly ugly machine of mayhem, murder and false-flag terror operations through the Strategy of Tension, as mentioned above, which almost served as a template for 9/11.


So who do I hold ultimately responsible for this hydra-headed monstrosity? That would be Allen Dulles. The whole exercise that became known as Operation Gladio was "born in the head of Allen Dulles" and was financed by the CIA. For those who are familiar with the political world that author Peter Dale Scott describes as "Deep Politics", this puts Dulles squarely in the nexus of two of the biggest "deep events" in American history. Scott defines a deep event as "events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which violate the … social structure, have a major impact on … society, repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, and in many cases proceed from an unknown dark force." Dulles has long been suspected of involvement in the assassination of JFK, or at least covering up CIA involvement through his position on the Warren Commission. Though Dulles died in 1969, long before the events of 9/11, by being the architect of Operation Gladio, his influence is all over that conspiracy as well.

Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two
In this continuing series of synopsizing the Sibel Edmonds interviews on The Corbett Report and providing my own analysis as I did in last week's blog post, I think it's important to provide a link to an analysis by Sibel herself at her website, Boiling Frogs Post. She provides the connections linking Afghan heroin business with "cargo" transportation through Azerbaijan and the Balkans in an informative and entertaining way. I also want to encourage everyone interested to read Classified Woman, just written last year, where Sibel tells her whole story.


Part Two Synopsis: In the second part of this interview, James Corbett starts out mentioning a couple recent news reports to provide a starting point. First, he points out a story regarding the recent US Embassy bombing in Ankara, Turkey from the Times of Israel where they describe the bombers as leftist radicals who "didn't get the memo" that the Cold War ended. Sibel Edmonds responds to this by saying that whenever Turkish media or the Turkish government use the word "leftist", that's kind of a code word for Russia, who has been demonized specifically for their aid to Assad in Syria. She then directs the conversation to another recent event, the arrest of Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Suleyman Abu Ghaith. Reputed to be one of the top five al-Qaeda leaders and number two spokesperson, the rumor was that he had been located in Iran. But Edmonds reminds us that Iran has never had any relations with al-Qaeda. She refers to certain geographical areas that have activity, but not state sanction, they are kind of a "no-man's land" where al-Qaeda has operated, specifically Baluchistan. This region of Baluchistan has also been very important for the United States, like Xinjiang mentioned in Part One, we really don't hear to much in the media, but there is quite a lot of terror activity. But while rumors circulated for years about Abu Ghaith and Zawahiri being imprisoned in Iran, he officially resurfaced in February of this year with his arrest in Turkey, where he had been "hiding" in a penthouse suite of a 5 star hotel just blocks from the Presidential Palace. Supposedly notified about this development by the CIA, he was held and interrogated, but the Turkish police could find no evidence he had done anything to Turkey, so initially they refused to extradite him and the CIA was OK with this! At this point, Corbett interjects that this is the same CIA that has no problem kidnapping other terror suspects, flying them to other countries to be tortured, but not bin Laden's son-in-law!

Edmonds points out that this is similar to the pattern established with Yassin al-Qadi, associated with the Ptech scandal. Just after 9/11, he left the US and spent 6-8 months in Albania, then went to Turkey. The US asked for him to be extradited because he was on their terror blacklist connected with 9/11, but Turkey refused because they had no evidence he had done anything wrong to them. He currently resides in the UK and has cleared himself from terror blacklists there, as well as in Switzerland and the EU. Corbett points out how the US originally tried to prosecute him during the late 90's with the FBI investigation called Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Edmonds relates how both Robert Wright and John Vincent, FBI agents connected with this case, are now members of her organization National Security Whistle Blowers Coalition (NSWBC). She explains how the US government (CIA, State Department and White House) forced this investigation that Wright and Vincent were spearheading to shut down. In fact, as a direct result from this pressure, the FBI said the 9/11 Commission was not allowed to interview Wright! Vincent went directly to the 9/11 Commission to present their investigation that would have lead to 9/11.

This investigation had been centered in Chicago, which Edmonds points out she keeps mentioning Chicago because where Gladio B is concerned, a lot of the operational and logistics were done from Chicago. She describes it as the "easiest" city for money laundering. The United States actually has an office in the Pentagon for Gladio operations. It isn't called Gladio B, but it is a designated section in the Pentagon, the physical office also dealt with the previous Gladio operations. Starting a few days after 9/11 when she was hired by the FBI, Edmonds goes into the tasks she was assigned tracking terror suspects, meeting a quota of how many terror arrests they could publicize, yet Qadi was not detained prior to his departure in October 2001. But a lot of Qadi's operations spill over to white collar crime investigations in Chicago. Because Edmonds was asked by FBI agent Joel Roberts to translate documents pertaining to these investigations as well as crimes involving the Chicago network of Abdullah Çatlı, who was covered in Part One, she was in a unique position to connect the dots with the Operation Vulgar Betrayal investigation.

Getting back to Qadi's Albanian connection, Edmonds explains that the biggest focus of the Gladio B operatives from the early to late 90's was the Balkans. This includes not only Qadi and Çatlı's networks, but also the Fethullah Gulen network discussed in Part One. At this time, many Albanians coming into Chicago were some of the "most ferocious and strongest" mafia operators in the US. Even Italians wouldn't mess with these guys. The FBI set up major arrests that would consistently be thwarted because the State Department would tell them these guys had diplomatic immunity! Why did they do this? Time magazine's 2002 person of the year, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley believes that it's because there were too many moles in the FBI, that the CIA had penetrated the FBI on behalf of the State Department. The CIA-State Department would "tip off informants" in cases known to the NSWBC of impending sting operations by the FBI. This was really the big underlying problem that Edmonds had to deal with during her employment as an FBI translator. It was not the bureaucratic nobody Mike Feghali that she mentions in her book, it was the CIA-State Department moles within the FBI.

After her termination from the FBI, Edmonds put the pieces of the puzzle together with her NSWBC organization. She knew the 9/11 Commission was "bull" because of all the facts that were intentionally omitted from their report. Time person of the year Colleen Rowley was not even going to be interviewed by the Commission. Rowley, Wright, Vincent; these were all agents 20+ years on the force. Edmonds then went to the media to protest this oversight. She was able to tell her story to the Commission through a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) so that no operatives identities would be compromised. All of these agents she mentioned, as well as Tony Shaffer of Operation Able Danger went on record saying there was a huge 9/11 cover-up! While this may seem like a clear case of Bush administration malfeasance to many, Edmonds clarifies that many of these investigations were stymied during the late 90's, which would implicate the Clinton administration as well.

It is this last point that Americans find especially hard to digest because we are conditioned to think along the lines of a black hat/white hat mentality. It's so much easier to be partisan rather than dig deeper to find the darker truth that intersects across party lines. The classic example is the story of Watergate and how it was covered by Bob Woodward and the Washington Post. That story seems pretty clear-cut, but if they really got Watergate, why didn't they get Iran/contra? Or did they really get Watergate? It seems from Sibel Edmonds perspective that when you really get the story, the way Gary Webb did with Iran/contra, you don't become a multi-millionaire entrenched in the system like Woodward, you get marginalized like Webb. Corbett concurs, noting that the Watergate burglary was purposely screwed up and Woodward had the story handed to him on a silver platter.

Corbett wraps up Part Two addressing some viewers questions. Were the Gladio B transition plans in existence before Susurluk? Edmonds says yes, pointing out how our relationship with the Mujahadeen started in the 1980's in Afghanistan. These religious relationships existed, but were on the periphery and not the focal point of Operation Gladio. They were operating through CIA and British intelligence, but it was not until after Susurluk that it became part of NATO and Gladio operations. Another question: how do we know Grossman and Dickerson being pulled from Turkey was connected with Susurluk? While so much is classified where proof is concerned, Edmonds was part of an FBI investigation directly focused on Grossman. While his high profile job was the #3 guy (at the time she investigated him at FBI) at the State Department, his real job was always with NATO/Gladio operations. Same thing with Dickerson: NATO got him out of US into Brussels. FBI Counter-Intelligence has established this; their file on Grey Wolves (Turkish paramilitary) was turned to Gladio B. That's why these operations had to be stopped by the State Department and Pentagon: it steps on their operations through NATO! The final question concerns Ergenekon trials in Turkey: are they a US backed operation to replace secular government with more compliant capitalists? Edmonds says yes, 100%, the Turkish military "can't even pee" without permission from the United States. It's that way everywhere, even Iran, why did the Shah fall? The US felt it was time, he was "fair game". (Edmonds hates the Shah BTW, he tortured her father!) So what is happening in Turkey is all with a US green light. Edmonds concludes Part Two by saying the worst, self-destructive element of the 9/11 Truth movement is this divisiveness over LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) vs. MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose). She doesn't know how much is caused by planted elements or just naturally misguided viewpoints. But we must stop the semantics. You've got to get rid of the old conditioning, the black hat/white hat mentality, and do your own research!

Part Two Analysis: Lots of new characters and relationships revealed in this part! There's a lot that's familiar to me through my previous research, but some that I hadn't heard yet. Working backwards, I had not heard about Ergenekon, wouldn't even know how to spell it if not for the diligent research of Wombaticus Rex at Rigorous Intuition (RI) who provided this link detailing this part of Turkish history and how it relates to Operation Gladio. The RI forum discussion is worth following on this topic. My contribution so far has been finding out about the Grey Wolves referred to in the Q and A section of this interview. I thought it sounded familiar. Turns out this is the organization that Mehmet Ali Agca was part of. That's the guy who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. Grey Wolves, according to this link on their history, were ideologically neo-fascist. This goes against the rumor at the time that Agca was working with Bulgarian Communists at the behest of the Soviet Union. Who was responsible for this phoney rumor? That would be Michael Ledeen, of P2, Iran/contra and Niger forgery infamy.

If I could ask Sibel Edmonds one question in regard to this part of the interview, I would ask what is the name the Pentagon gave their designated section she refers to as Gladio B? We know these "stay-behind" armies existed, page 7 of the link above states the State Department finally admitted the existence in 2006. Finding out what the official name is could help researchers like me immensely! I'm sure Sibel knows what it is, but I'm not sure if the States Secret gag order prevents her from disclosing the exact name on the grounds of "national security", of course.

There are two sections of this interview that I believe deserve deeper analysis: Ptech and Able Danger. I put a couple links into the synopsis on Yassin al-Qadi and Ptech. In addition to the investigation Edmonds refers to that Robert Wright and John Vincent were conducting for the FBI, there was a whistleblower who really helped shine the light on this scandal named Indira Singh. History Commons has neatly condensed the beginnings of her story:


May-December 5, 2002: US Investigators Pressed to Look Into Ptech
Edit event
Indira Singh. Indira Singh. [Source: Michael Kane]In October 2001, Ptech insiders attempted to warn the FBI that suspected terrorist financier Yassin al-Qadi had funded Ptech (see Shortly After October 12, 2001). Then Indira Singh, an employee at JP Morgan Chase bank, develops her own suspicions about Ptech after her bank assigned her to investigate Ptech for a potential business deal. In May 2002, she speaks with the FBI about her concerns. Weeks later, she learns the FBI still has not told any other government agencies about the potential Ptech security threat. She later will recall, "the language, the kind of language law enforcement, counterterrorism, and the FBI agents themselves were using basically indicated to me that absolutely no investigation was going on, that it was totally at a standstill, at which point my hair stood on end." She contacts a Boston CBS television station, WBZ-TV, and a reporter for the station named Joe Bergantino begins investigating Ptech. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; National Public Radio, 12/8/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Around the same time, a former government official with contacts in the Bush administration tells officials at the National Security Council about the Ptech allegations. By late August, Operation Greenquest then opens its own Ptech investigation. The FBI then tries "to muscle its way back into the probe once it [becomes] clear that [Greenquest is] taking the case seriously." [Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Beginning in late November, US agents begin calling Ptech officials and asking them if they have ties to money laundering, thus tipping them off. Ptech will also be notified when a December raid will be occurring before it happens. [Associated Press, 1/3/2003] WBZ-TV prepared a story on Ptech, but withheld it from the public for more than three months after receiving "calls from federal law enforcement agencies, some at the highest levels." The station claims the government launched its Ptech probe in August 2002, after they "got wind of our investigation" and "asked us to hold the story so they could come out and do their raid and look like they're ahead of the game." [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
Entity Tags: Operation Greenquest, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ptech Inc., National Security Council, Indira Singh
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline



How much damage could Ptech have potentially done? In an interview with From the Wilderness, Singh gives a pretty dark indication by answering a scary question:

FTW: You said at the 9/11 Citizens' Commission hearings, you mentioned - it's on page 139 of transcript - that Ptech was with Mitre Corporation in the basement of the FAA for 2 years prior to 9/11 and their specific job was to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force, in case of an emergency.

Indira Singh: Yes, I have a good diagram for that.


FTW: And that relationship had been going on mediated by Ptech for 2 years prior to 9/11. You elsewhere say that the Secret Service is among the government entities that had a contract with Ptech. Mike Ruppert's thesis in Crossing the Rubicon, as you know, is that the software that was running information between FAA & NORAD was superseded by a parallel, subsuming, version of itself that was being run by the Secret Service on state of the art parallel equipment in the PEOC with a nucleus of Secret Service personnel around Cheney. In your view, might it have been the case that Cheney was using Ptech to surveil the function of the people in FAA & NORAD who wanted to do their jobs on 9/11, and then intervene to turn off the legitimate response?


Indira Singh: Is it possible from a software point of view? Absolutely it's possible. Did he (Cheney) have such a capability? I don't know. But that's the ideal risk scenario - to have an overarching view of what's going on in data. That's exactly what I wanted for JP Morgan. You know what's ironic about this - I wanted to take my operational risk blueprint which is for an operational event going wrong and I wanted to make it generic for extreme event risk to surveil across intelligence networks. What you're describing is something that I said, 'boy if we had this in place maybe 9/11 wouldn't have happened.' When I was going down to DARPA and getting these guys excited about creating an extreme event risk blueprint to do this, I'm thinking of doing exactly what you're saying Cheney might have already had!

Effectively, we have deep black cells, operating in isolation from one another, performing drug trafficking, money laundering, sabotage, assassinations and bombings.

Many of the individuals in these cells are hardened ruthless killers, recruited from mafia or extremist organisations, sometimes even spirited out of prison.

Key individuals are given every conceivable form of protection, as if they are invisible: diplomatic immunity to move freely with their wares across borders, immunity from prosecution because the grunts are called off, literally untouchable.

We only know about the murderer Çatlı's celebrity car crash - the serial killer accompanied by the Turkish Chief of Police, a senior politician and a glamour queen - because it was an unscripted accident, and the street cops released details before Gladio could cover the tracks.

Gladio is not really about "anti-communist stay behind armies".

Gladio is The Strategy of Tension.

Some of the individuals were recruited from European rightist and Nazi elements, and their anti-communist ideology may have been exploited as they bombed civilians so the atrocity could be blamed on "terror groups" of say the Left or Islam.

Some of the indivudals were simply violent criminals who liked money, drugs, violent sex and hurting other people.

The "stay-behind" structures merely provided killers that geopolitical elements - some within NATO, some using Trade groups as cover (eg Clay Shaw), some probably using business-intelligence-reliigious lodges (eg P2) - could exploit.

The cells, or indviduals within them, could be tasked to create chaos and terror, to further The Strategy of Tension.

From what we can tell, Çatlı loved violence. His God was the infliction of Violence and the spreading of Terror.

I'm reminded of the tale told by Lt Commander Thomas Narut, as recalled by Walter Bowart:

According to the Sunday Times story, naval psychologist
Lt. Comdr. Thomas Narut was assigned to the
U.S. Regional Medical Center at Naples, Italy. When he
first made public the navy's part in programming assassins,
he was attending a NATO conference in Oslo on "Dimensions
of Stress and Anxiety." In attendance at that conference
were 120 psychologists of all descriptions and from
many countries. Many of them were involved in research
on how to improve man's ability to cope with stress, but
none of them felt compelled, as Narut did, to discuss their
work so fully or so frankly.
The stated objective of the conference was to exchange
information on how soldiers and people in difficult jobs
could cope with stress. Dr. Narut's talk was on "The Use
of a Symbolic Model and Verbal Intervention in Inducing
and Reducing Stress." His speech began with a plug for the
navy. He knew, he said, that many of the scientists present
had often encountered problems in their purely scientific
research because of the military's inclination to research
that would yield quick and useful results. He sympathized
with those who had trouble getting subjects, funds, or both,
out of the military for their purely scientific research. But
things were different in the navy he said.
In the navy, Narut bragged, there were plenty of captive
personnel who could be used as guinea pigs. In the navy
there was a computerized record of each man's background
and psychological profile, so that a quick selection of men
with suitable psychological inclinations for experiments
could be made. Navy psychologists not only had access to
computerized records, but also to psychological tests and
background data on a large number of people. In the navy,
Narut said, funds were plentiful, and there were no problems
with transporting subjects for study to nearly any
place in the world. Narut stated proudly that the U.S.
Navy provided scientists with the most advanced research
facilities in the world.
A Canadian psychologist at the conference later remarked,
"Narut's message was loud and clear�'Join the
navy and study the world.'"
In his brief discourse, Dr. Narut did no more than hint
at the work he had been doing in teaching "combat readi-
Operation Mind Control 163
ness units" to cope with the stress of killing. Later, however,
during private questioning with a small group of listeners
(reporter Peter Watson of the Sunday Times, a
former psychologist, among them), Narut unfolded the
amazing story of the navy's programming of assassins on
an assembly-line basis.
In his mid-thirties, Dr. Narut had just completed his
doctoral dissertation on the question of whether certain
films provoke anxiety, and whether forcing a man to do
irrelevant tasks while watching violent films would help
him cope with the anxiety they produced.
When pressed by Watson to explain the details of this
kind of conditioning, Narut said that he had worked with
"combat readiness units" which included men being programmed
for commando-type operations and for undercover
placement at U.S. embassies. These, Narut said, were
"hit men and assassins" (Narut's words) made ready to kill
in selected countries should the need arise. Dr. Alfred Zitani,
an American delegate to the conference, was very surprised
by Narut's disclosure. "Do you think Dr. Narut realizes
what he has just said?" Zitani asked. "That kind of
information must be classified."
The conditioning of Narut's assassins was accomplished
by audio-visual desensitization, a standard behavior modification
process. These men were "desensitized" to mayhem
by being shown films of people being killed or injured in a
number of different ways. At first the films would show
only mild forms of bloodshed. As the men became acclimated
to the scenes of carnage, they would see progressively
more violent scenes. The assassin candidates, Narut
explained, would eventually be able to dissociate any feelings
they might have from even the goriest scenes they
viewed.
Narut said that of course U.S. naval psychologists would
have first selected the candidates for training by their psychological
makeup. Those selected for assassination assignments
were often from submarine crews and paratroops.
Others were convicted murderers from military prisons
who had already shown a proclivity for violence.
Still others were men who had been given awards for
valor. World War II Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy
was a subject of extensive research.
The best killers, according to Narut, were men whom psychologists would classify as "passive-aggressive" personalities.
These were people with strong drives that were
usually kept under tight control. Such types were usually
calm, but from time to time would exhibit outbursts of temper
during which they could literally kill without remorse.
Narut said that through psychological testing, he and his
colleagues were looking for more such men, for further
conditioning.
Among the tests used by the navy to determine violent
natures was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory,
which is used widely by educators and businessmen to
determine psychological qualities of students and employees.
The tests consist of hundreds of questions designed to
measure such personality traits as hostility, depression, and
psychopathy.
According to Narut, the men selected by the tests, or by
evidence of past violence, were taken for programming to
the navy's neuropsychiatric laboratory in San Diego, California,
or to the Naples medical center which employed
Dr. Narut.
Audio-visual desensitization was the major technique
used in programming the assassins. Psychological indoctrination
completed the programming by instilling the desired
prejudicial attitudes.
The audio-visual desensitization began with the subject
strapped into a chair with his head clamped so that he
could not look away from the screen. A special mechanism
prevented the subject's eyelids from closing.
The candidate was then shown a film of an African
youth being crudely circumcised by fellow members of his
tribe. The youth was circumcised with a blunt knife, painfully
and without anesthetic. This well-known film is used
widely in psychological experiments to create stress. Afterwards
the candidate was asked about details of what he had
seen. He was asked, for example, to describe the color of
the belt on the doctor's trousers, or the motif on the handle
of the knife that cut off the foreskin.
The next film showed a man in a sawmill, where planks
were sliced from huge logs. In the operation of the saw the
man slipped and cut off his fingers.
As the films progressed in gruesomeness, the reactions of
the candidate were measured by sensing devices. Heartbeat,
breathing rate, and brain waves were recorded, very much
Operation Mind Control 165
as on a polygraph. If the physiological responses, which
might have been great in the beginning, slowed down and
resumed normal patterns as the more bloodthirsty scenes
were viewed, the candidates were judged to have completed
this stage of conditioning.
The last phase of conditioning, Narut said, was to indoctrinate
the candidates to think of their potential enemies as
inferior forms of life. By this stage, the candidates would
have already been selected for assignment to particular
countries. They would be shown films and given lectures
which portrayed the customs and cultural habits of the foreign
countries in a biased fashion. The people of those
countries would be portrayed as enemies of the United
States and were always spoken of in demeaning terms.
They were often presented as if they were "less than human."
Their customs were ridiculed, and local leaders were
presented as evil demagogues, even if they were legitimate
political figures.
According to Dr. Narut it took only a few weeks to indoctrinate
susceptible candidates by this process. Those
who were not susceptible to the conditioning were dropped
earlier in the program and returned to other assignments.
Narut admitted that he did not have the necessary "need to
know" as to where all the programmed men were sent, although
at one point in his conversation with Peter Watson,
Narut specified that programmed assassins have been installed
in the Athens embassy. He said that his busiest time
was when a large group of men went through such training
towards the end of 1973, at the time of the Yom Kippur
War.
After the Oslo conference interview, Watson returned to
London to file his story. Writing up the details, he found a
few points which needed clarification but he could not
reach Narut either at his home or in his laboratory in Naples.
Watson then asked the U.S. embassy in London to
comment on the information Narut had volunteered. The
embassy passed the buck to the U.S. Navy.
Within a few days the Pentagon issued a categorical denial
that the U.S. Navy had ever "engaged in psychological
training or other types of training of personnel as assassins.
"They also denied that any such training had ever taken
place either in San Diego or in Naples. They said they too
had been unable to contact Lieutenant Commander Narut, but they did confirm that he was on the staff of the U.S.
Regional Medical Center in Naples as a psychologist. But
Dr. Zitani later offered to testify about what Narut had told
him to "appropriate authorities." Watson was also approached
later by a psychologist in Los Angeles who said
he had seen the Pentagon denials so thought Watson would
like to know that he had lent the San Diego psychologists a
copy of his film on circumcision which was used in the
desensitization conditioning.
A few days later Narut was located. He flew to London
to discuss the matter ostensibly with Watson's paper, the
Sunday Times, but instead he held a press conference saying
only that he had been talking in "theoretical and not
practical terms." He then flew back to the Naples base.
After his return to Naples, U.S. naval headquarters in
London offered the official explanation for Narut's statement:
Narut had "personal problems." A few days later
Watson was able to contact Narut at the U.S. hospital in
Naples, but he refused to elaborate on his disclosure.
During the Oslo conference interview, Narut had said
several times that what he was saying about the assassins
was "coming out anyway." He was referring to the congressional
disclosures about CIA assassination plots. But the
fact that the navy had been operating along lines similar to
the CIA was not known to the public nor has it subsequently
been admitted. The details of the story that Lieutenant
Commander Narut related have been strongly and
categorically denied in all subsequent queries of the navy.
It came as no surprise to many that the navy had been
interested in psychological research to help its men cope
with "stress." Several years before, one of the organizers of
the Oslo conference, Dr. Irwin Sarason, had been approached
by the navy to work on projects similar to Narut's.
At the time, the navy had said nothing to him about
programming assassins; it said it wanted him to adapt his
work for applications to "spies."
In response to that request, Sarason devised a film which
showed how successful students asked questions in school.
The film was shown to a group of juvenile delinquents for a
period of time until they, too, learned how to pose the right
questions. As a result, over the next two years they did
much better in their studies and got in trouble less. The
control group who had not seen the films did just as poorly
Operation Mind Control 167
in school as they'd always done and were just as delinquent.
Since his "symbolic modeling" study had been successful,
Sarason wanted to continue his research and applied to
the Office of Naval Research for more funding. A few
weeks after his application was received, Sarason was
called by a navy official who asked him if he would object
to having his work classified. Sarason wondered why, and
the navy official told him his research would be most valuable
to the navy's neuropsychiatric laboratory in California,
as spies were being trained there to resist interrogation.
The naval official said that if Sarason would allow his work
to be classified, he'd get all the funds he needed.
But Sarason was interested in the peaceful scientific nature
of his work, not its military applications, so he refused
to have the project classified. His goal was the exception
rather than the rule.
The federal government supports most scientific research
in the United States. Enough psychologists and other social
scientists haven't asked questions about what their research
is to be used for; their main objective has been to get the
grant, so they could support themselves and their scientific
curiosity. Since too many of them have been politically disinterested
or naive, they have been easy prey for the cryptocracy.
Lieutenant Commander Narut was therefore but
one in a long line of psychologists being employed for psychological
warfare and illegal clandestine operations.
Another such operation was the training of security officers
at the Washington-based International Police Academy
by psychologists and sociologists. The officers were
supposedly being taught interrogation techniques for Third
World countries; actually it was a highly sensitive clandestine
operation organized for the training of U.S. spies. Congress
closed the Academy on January 1, 1974, after its real
purpose was disclosed to the press.