30-07-2013, 12:48 AM
Albert Rossi Wrote:Albert Rossi Wrote:Certainly I agree with Fensterwald's assertion that a well-conceived intel op has multiple objectives, which may very well include the fostering of generalized confusion and a sense of impotence (please excuse the gendered metaphor).
Speaking of state-sponsored panic and confusion, I just got done watching that 3-part BBC piece from 1992 on Gladio. "La strategia della tensione" (the strategy of tension) is a phrase I remember hearing repeated quite often on Italian TV and in the press during the 1990s. Interesting that my wife (who missed the bomb in the Bologna station in 1980 by one day -- she had taken that same train the day before) says none of her acquaintances thought the Brigate Rosse responsible for Moro's assassination: it didn't make sense for the Left to kill their strongest advocate inside the DC. Sounds familiar. And of course, the BR didn't have the expertise or wherewithal to pull off an operation like that without help from infiltrators.
I think the Gladio template was used in the US intermittently during the Cold War, but has really become commonplace during the last 20 years. The ending of the Cold War was a crisis for the National Security State. I know - I was working in the defense industry at the time, and there was near-panic. If we don't have an enemy, how will we justify our existence? And the American people have been culturally conditioned since WWII to think in those terms. So, since the collapse of the USSR, there have been desperate attempts to find new enemies: Iraq, right-wing militias, religious extremists, Islamic terrorists, domestic terrorists, cyber-terrorists, you name it. And if you can't find real enemies, you need to create fake ones.