15-05-2009, 05:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 15-05-2009, 05:59 PM by Jan Klimkowski.)
David Guyatt Wrote:I think you've hit the nail on the head Jan, in attributing this to a Gladio False Flag operation.
I have never ever considered before whether the US had its very own Gladio/Stay Behind units operating domestically during the Cold War, but when reflecting on this, I think it makes perfect sense that they would've done.
This thread, I think, has revealed these types of operations with greater clarity than we've had before. It could be a case study on the art of strategy of tension.
David - thanks.
I am also specifically thinking in terms of the know modus operandi of Gladio. A few examples:
i) The types of front companies/groups/individuals involved - eg infiltrated or intelligence-created terrorist groups, (im)plausibly deniable "adventurers";
ii) the absolutely ruthless End justifies the Means ideology, with the aim often being simply the creation of fear and terror in the civilian population itself;
iii) the commission of atrocities, often on "one's own side", as part of the Strategy of Tension. As part of the MO, clues are left enabling the blame to be put on the ideological opponents of the Gladio operation. Eg in Italy, blaming Italian leftists for bombings committed by right-wing Gladio groups. Eg in Bolivia, Rozsa Flores' apparent plans to assassinate and/or bomb prominent members of the right wing, foreigner-led, "Camba Nation" separatist group in Santa Cruz;
iv) the nature of the movers and players behind the scenes - ideologically far right wing, with strong links to international finance, extremist factions within intelligence agencies, Nazism and arcane religious groups such as Opus Dei, SMOM, and American Orthodox Catholic Church wandering bishops. However, it is provocative that Opus Dei member Rozsa Flores declared himself a muslim convert and a friend of Palestine, despite being a Jew - suggesting that once again the End justifies the Means. But then Rozsa Flores was, allegedly, once the interpreter of Carlos the Jackal, whose true masters are also shrouded in Gladio-esque mystery;
v) indeed, the ultimate raison d'etre appears to be geopolitical Power and Control achieved through Terror: the Strategy of Tension as the oldest magician's trick.
Gladio in Italy seems a near perfect template for the Strategy of Tension:
Quote:2000 Parliamentary report: a "strategy of tension"
In 2000, a Parliament Commission report from the "Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo" concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country". A 2000 Senate report, stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." According to The Guardian, "The report [claimed] that US intelligence agents were informed in advance about several rightwing terrorist bombings, including the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place. It also [alleged] that Pino Rauti [current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party], a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from a press officer at the US embassy in Rome. 'So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome,' the report says."[22]
General Maletti's testimony concerning alleged CIA involvement
General Gianadelio Maletti, commander of the counter-intelligence section of the Italian military intelligence service from 1971 to 1975, alleged in March 2001 during the eight trial for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombings that the CIA had foreknowledge of the event.[23] According to the Guardian, he said:[24]
...his men had discovered that a rightwing terrorist cell in the Venice region had been supplied with military explosives from Germany. Those explosives may have been obtained with the help of members of the US intelligence community, an indication that the Americans had gone beyond the infiltration and monitoring of extremist groups to instigating acts of violence...
General Maletti told the Italian 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 rightwing terrorism," and continued on by declaring: "I believe this is what happened in other countries as well." Gianadelio Maletti also said to the court: "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."
General Maletti himself in the first Piazza Fontana trial received a four year sentence for providing a false passport to one of the accused bombers, this sentence was overturned in 1985.[25] Maletti received, while in exile, a 15-years sentence in 2000 for his role in trying to cover up a 1973 bomb attack in Milan against the Interior minister, Mariano Rumor (DC - 4 killed and 45 injured), but was acquitted on appeals.[26] According to the court, General Maletti knew in advance of the plan of the attacker, Gianfranco Bertoli, allegedly an anarchist but in reality a right-wing activist and a "long-standing SID informant" according to The Guardian, but had deliberately failed to inform the interior minister of it.[24]
Responding to charges made by Maletti in La Repubblica one year earlier, the CIA called the allegation that it was involved in the attacks in Italy "ludicrous."[27]
A quick chronology of Italy's "strategy of tension"
1964 Operation Solo
In 1964, Gladio was involved in a silent coup d'état when General Giovanni de Lorenzo in Operation Solo forced the Italian Socialists Ministers to leave the government.[28]
1969 Piazza Fontana bombing
According to Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra: "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the politic and military authorities to declare a state of emergency"[29]
1970 Golpe Borghese
In 1970, the failed coup attempt Golpe Borghese gathered, around fascist Junio Valerio Borghese, international terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie and P2 headmaster Licio Gelli.
1972 Gladio meeting
According to The Guardian, "General Geraldo Serravalle, a former head of "Office R", told the terrorism commission that at a crucial Gladio meeting in 1972, at least half of the upper echelons "had the idea of attacking the communists before an invasion. They were preparing for civil war." Later, he put it more bluntly: "They were saying this: "Why wait for the invaders when we can make a preemptive attack now on the communists who would support the invader? The idea is now emerging of a Gladio web made up of semi-autonomous cadres which – although answerable to their secret service masters and ultimately to the NATO-CIA command – could initiate what they regarded as anti-communist operations by themselves, needing only sanction and funds from the existing 'official' Gladio column (...) General Nino Lugarese, head of SISMI from 1981-84 testified on the existence of a 'Super Gladio' of 800 men responsible for 'internal intervention' against domestic political targets."[4]
May 31, 1972 Peteano massacre
Magistrate Felice Casson discovered that "the explosives used in the attack came from one of 139 secret weapons depots of a secret army organized under the code name Operation Gladio".[17] Neofascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra confessed in 1984 to judge Felice Casson of having carried out the Peteano terrorist attack, in which three policemen died, and for which the Red Brigades (BR) had been blamed before. Vinciguerra explained during his trial how he had been helped by Italian secret services to escape the police and to fly away to Francoist Spain. However, he was abandoned by NATO as soon as he started talking about Gladio, declaring for example during his 1984 trial: "with the massacre of Peteano and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages. [This structure] lies within the states itself. There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity, that is, to organise a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army... A super-organization which, lacking a Soviet military invasion which might not happen, took up the task, on NATO's behalf, of preventing a slip to the left in the politcial balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces..." He then said to The Guardian, in 1990: "I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organised matrix... Avanguardia Nazionale, like Ordine Nuovo (the main right-wing terrorist group active during the 1970s), 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 within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the Atlantic Alliance."[4][7]
November 23, 1973 Bombing of the plane Argo 16
General Geraldo Serravalle, head of Gladio from 1971 to 1974, told a television programme that he now thought the explosion aboard the plane Argo 16 on 23 November 1973 was probably the work of gladiatori who were refusing to hand over their clandestine arms. Until then it was widely believed the sabotage was carried out by Mossad, the Israeli foreign service, in retaliation for the pro-Libyan Italian government’s decision to expel, rather than try, five Arabs who had tried to blow up an Israeli airliner. The Arabs had been spirited out of the country on board the Argo 16.[30]
1974 Piazza della Loggia bombing, Italicus Express massacre, and arrest of Vito Miceli, chief of the Army intelligence service and member of P2, on charges of "conspiracy against the state"
In 1974, a massacre committed by Ordine Nuovo, during an anti-fascist demonstration in Brescia, kills eight and injures 102. The same year, a bomb in the Rome to Munich train "Italicus Express" kills 12 and injures 48. Also in 1974, Vito Miceli, P2 member, chief of the SIOS (Servizio Informazioni), Army Intelligence's Service from 1969 and SID's head from 1970 to 1974, got arrested on charges of "conspiration against the state" concerning investigations about Rosa dei venti, a state-infiltrated group involved in terrorist acts. During his trial, he revealed the existence of the NATO stay-behind secret army.
1977 Reorganization of Italian secret services following Vito Micelli's arrest
In 1977, the secret services were thus reorganized in a democratic attempt. With law#801 of 24/10/1977, SID was divided into SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare), SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica) and CESIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e Sicurezza). The CESIS was given a coordination role, led by the President of Council.
1978 Murder of Aldo Moro
Prime minister Aldo Moro was murdered in May 1978 by the Second Red Brigades (BR), headed by Mario Moretti, in obscure circumstances. The head of the Italian secret services, accused of negligence, was a P2 member. The so-called "historic compromise" between the Christian-Democracy and the PCI was abandoned:[31] "As the conspiracy theorists would have it, Mr. Moro was allowed to be killed either with the acquiescence of people high in Italy’s political establishment, or at their instigation, because of the historic compromise he had made with the Communist Party" "During his captivity, Aldo Moro wrote several letters to various political figures, including Giulio Andreotti. In October 1990, "a cache of previously unknown letters written by the former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, just prior to his execution by Red Brigade terrorists in 1978... was discovered in a Milan apartment which had once been used as a Red Brigade hideout. One of those letters made reference to the involvement of both NATO and the CIA in an Italian-based secret service, 'parallel' army."[32] "This safe house had been thoroughly searched at the time by Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the head of counter-terrorism. How is it that the papers had not been revealed before?" asked The Independent[31] Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was murdered in 1982 (see below). In May 1978, investigative journalist Mino Pecorelli thought that Aldo Moro's kidnapping had been organised by a "lucid superpower" and was inspired by the "logic of Yalta". He painted the figure of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa as "general Amen," explaining that it was him that, during Aldo Moro's kidnap, had informed Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga of the localization of the cave where Moro was detained. In 1978, Pecorelli wrote that Dalla Chiesa was in danger and would be assassinated (Dalla Chiesa was murdered four years later). After Aldo Moro's assassination, Mino Pecorelli published some confidential documents, mainly Moro's letters to his family. In a cryptic article published in May 1978, wrote The Guardian in May 2003, Pecorelli drew a connection between Gladio, NATO's stay-behind anti-communist organisation (which existence was publicly acknowledged by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in October 1990) and Moro's death. During his interrogation, Aldo Moro had referred to "NATO's anti-guerrilla activities."[33] Mino Pecorelli, who was on Licio Gelli's list of P2 members discovered in 1980, was assassinated on March 20, 1979. The ammunitions used, a very rare type, where the same as discovered in the Banda della Magliana 's weapons stock hidden in the Health Minister's basement. Pecorelli's assassination has been thought to be directly related to Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who was condemned to 20 years of prison for it in 2002 before having the sentence cancelled by the Supreme Court of Cassation in 2003.
1980 Bologna massacre
"The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according to a parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the Bologna massacre is potentially the most serious of all the accusations levelled against Gladio, and comes just two days after the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, cleared Gladio’s name in a speech to parliament, saying that the secret army did not drift from its formal Nato military brief."[34] In November 1995, Neo-Fascists terrorists Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro, members of the Nuclei Armati Revoluzionari (NAR), were convicted to life imprisonment as executors of the 1980 Bologna massacre. The NAR neofascist group worked in cooperation with the Banda della Magliana, a Mafia-linked gang which took over Rome's underground in the 1970s and was involved in various political events of the strategy of tension, including the Aldo Moro case, the 1979 assassination of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who published articles alleging links between Prime minister Giulio Andreotti and the mafia, as well as the assassination of "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi in 1982. The investigations concerning the Bologna bombing proved Gladio's direct influence: Licio Gelli, P2's headmaster, received a sentence for investigation diversion, as well as Francesco Pazienza and SISMI officers Pietro Musumeci and Giuseppe Belmonte. Avanguardia Nazionale founder Stefano Delle Chiaie, who was involved in the Golpe Borghese in 1970, was also accused of involvement in the Bologna massacre[35][15]
1982 murder of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, head of counter-terrorism.
General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa's 1982 murder, in Palermo, by Pino Greco, one of the Mafia Godfather Salvatore Riina's (aka Toto Riina) favorite hitmen, is allegedly part of the strategy of tension. Alberto Dalla Chiesa had arrested Red Brigades founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini in September, 1974, and was later charged of investigation concerning Aldo Moro. He had also found Aldo Moro's letters concerning Gladio.
October 24, 1990 Giulio Andreotti’s acknowledgement of Operazione Gladio
After the discovery by judge Felice Casson of documents on Gladio in the archives of the Italian military secret service in Rome, Giulio Andreotti, head of Italian government, revealed to the Chamber of deputies the existence of "Operazione Gladio" on October 24, 1990, insisting that Italy has not been the only country with secret "stay-behind" armies. He made clear that "each chief of government had been informed of the existence of Gladio". Former Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi said that he had not been informed until he was confronted with a document on Gladio signed by himself while he was Prime Minister. Former Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini (Republican Party), at the time President of the Senate, and former Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani, at the time secretary of the ruling Christian Democratic Party claimed they remembered nothing. Spadolini stressed that there was a difference between what he knew as former Defence Secretary and what he knew as former Prime Minister. Only former Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga (DC) confirmed Andreotti's revelations, explaining that he was even "proud and happy" for his part in setting up Gladio as junior Defence Minister of the Christian Democratic Party. This lit up a political storm, requests were made for Cossiga's (Italian President since 1985) resignation or impeachment for high treason. He refused to testify to the investigating Senate committee. Cossiga narrowly escaped his impeachment by stepping down on April 1992, three months before his term expired.[36]
1998 David Carrett, officer of the U.S. Navy
David Carrett, officer of the U.S. Navy, was indicted by magistrate Guido Salvini on charge of political and military espionage and his participation to the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, among other events. Judge Guido Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, Italian official for the US-NATO intelligence network, and pentito Carlo Digilio. La Repubblica underlined that Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man at Milan, was surprised in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio, thus demonstrating that all was not over.[29]
1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, which started Italy's anni di piombo, and the 1974 "Italicus Expressen" train bombing were also attributed to Gladio operatives. In 1975, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Pinochet during Franco's funeral in Madrid, and would participate afterward in operation Condor, preparing for example the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton, a Chilean Christian Democrat, or participating in the 1980 'Cocaine Coup' of Luis García Meza Tejada in Bolivia. In 1989, he was arrested in Caracas, Venezuela and extradited to Italy to stand trial for his role in the Piazza Fontana bombing. Despite his reputation, Delle Chiaie was acquitted by the Assize Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow accused Massimiliano Fachini (as yet no convictions have been made for the attack). According to Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra: "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the political and military authorities to declare a state of emergency."[29]
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...brigade%22
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war

