Gladio's tentacles

[Anthony Thorne]

Following Alex Jones' pointed mention of Operation Gladio during his heated interview with Piers Morgan, Infowars have posted a lengthy, Gladio-specific interview with Richard Cottrell, author of the most recent English language book on the subject. This is well worth a look even if you don't care for Jones or his recent flame up on Morgan's show, and hopefully some viewers of the debate will watch it and learn something new. I'll note that, despite the somewhat sensationalistic cover, Cottrell's book is beautifully written and researched, and is probably the best thing Progressive Press have published in the past few years.

Researchers studying the JFK assassination should also find a certain section of Cottrell's discussion to be of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0fxLS0B...Lg&index=6

[Peter Lemkin]

Following Alex Jones' pointed mention of Operation Gladio during his heated interview with Piers Morgan, Infowars have posted a lengthy, Gladio-specific interview with Richard Cottrell, author of the most recent English language book on the subject. This is well worth a look even if you don't care for Jones or his recent flame up on Morgan's show, and hopefully some viewers of the debate will watch it and learn something new. I'll note that, despite the somewhat sensationalistic cover, Cottrell's book is beautifully written and researched, and is probably the best thing Progressive Press have published in the past few years.

Researchers studying the JFK assassination should also find a certain section of Cottrell's discussion to be of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0fxLS0B...Lg&index=6

I do suggest the book [foremost] -although it is quite short on documentation!], and the interview [next]. He has outlined an important connection that many of us were aware of, but didn't see the significance of...that being that from being fired as head of the JCS, Lemnitzer was appointed as the head of NATO - where he took his Northwoods plan not allowed by JFK and put it work under Gladio. I think this is likely so. Cottrell's idea that Lemnitzer was the main planner of JFK's Assassination might not be completely on the mark, but I'd stake my reputation that Lemnitzer was involved in some way at a very high level in its planning!!!!

-----------------------------
Gladio by Richard Cottrell
August 28, 2012
NK
1 comment

Subtitled NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe,' it's by Richard Cottrell, who was the Conservative MEP for Bristol for ten years, and now lives in Italy.

book review by Kevin O'Connor

Richard Cottrell's new book, Gladio is an outstanding piece of work.

It explains how after the second world war the National Security Act of 1947 in reality turned the USA into a military dictatorship under corporate rule, both the democratic and republican parties being different wings of the corporate pentagon machine.

Gladio was set up after WW2 as a set of stay-behind armies' to wage armed resistance if the Warsaw Pact armies should invade Western Europe. However, Gladio quickly changed into an instrument of the USA and Western-European corporate elite, whereby they could stage false-flag terrorist attacks which were carried out by Gladio's far-right allies, and then be blamed on the left. The purpose of this, was to enable draconian new security laws and even a military coup.

The best-known example of this is the bomb at Bologna station in August 1980, which was discovered to have been carried out by far-right allies of Gladio but was initially blamed on the red brigades, as an excuse to keep the Italian Communist Party out of the Italian government.

What is even more disturbing is, Gladio plans were unmasked for military coups in Italy in 1976, Belgium in 1973 and even a coup against the Wilson Labour government in Britain.

On the subject of false flag terrorism, the book deals with Operation Northwoods' in 1964, the USA military's mad plan to attack Miami, Florida and then blame it on Cuba as an excuse to launch an all-out American invasion of Cuba.

The London Bombings are described in some detail. Richard Cottrell explains how the train time the alleged bombers took from Luton to London was changed three times: from the 7.40 am train which never ran, to 7.48 and then they settled for 7.30 am however this train only got into London Kings Cross eleven minutes before the bomb went off. So, by the time they walked to Kings Cross tube station and bought their tube tickets they would have comfortably missed their scheduled tube trains for the terror practice drill they believed they were involved in. The book reports how many passengers on the tube trains where the bombs were supposed to have exploded reported bombs exploding underneath the tube trains.

The final false flag act looked at is Olso 21/7/2011.It explains how many of the young people on Utoya Island Labour Party youth summer camp claimed to have seen shots coming from several directions. As for the bomb in the city centre of Oslo, as also with London 7/7/200, there were so-called training drills on the same day.

In conclusion Richard Cottrell explains how the technocratic bankers' dictatorship in the EU with its dictates to Greece and other countries is a kind of climax of the corporate elite's Gladio plans.

As a political activist of many years' standing I found this frightening new book by Richard Cottrell to be quite an eye-opener.

[Peter Lemkin]

False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence
By Prof. James F. Tracy
Global Research, August 10, 2012

The news media's readiness to accept official pronouncements and failure to more vigorously analyze and question government authorities in the wake of "domestic terrorist" incidents contributes to the American public's already acute case of collective historical amnesia, while it further rationalizes the twenty-first century police state and continued demise of civil society.

Some may recall "Bugs Raplin" (Giancarlo Esposito), the resolute investigative journalist depicted in Tim Robbins' 1992 political mockumentary Bob Roberts. After being framed as the culprit in a false flag assassination attempt by corrupt political huckster Bob Roberts (Robbins), Raplin delivers a perceptive soliloquy that among other things effectively describes the American public's moribund civic condition and short-circuited democracy. "The reason Iran-Contra happened," Raplin begins,

is because no one did anything substantial about Watergate. And the reason Watergate happened is because there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They're all the same operativesthe foot soldiers at the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran-Contraall the same people, same faces. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out the connection here: A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no one. And the closer we are to discovering the connection, the more Congress turns a blind eye to it. "We can't talk about that in open session," they say. "National security reasons." The truth lies dormant in their laps and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence.

Twenty years later amidst the vast outsourcing of intelligence and military operations many more events may arguably be added to such a shadow government's achievementsthe 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, the September 11 terror attacks, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction prompting the occupation of Iraq, the July 7, 2005 London tube bombings, the shoe and underwear "bombings"all of which have contributed to the official justification of imperial wars abroad and an ever-expanding police state at home.

Lacking meaningful contexts with which to understand such events in their totality the general public is incapable of recognizing the road it is being forced down. The most recent set of events that give pause are the horrific, military-style shootings in Aurora Colorado and Oak Creek Wisconsin that authorities maintain were carried out by "lone wolf" gunmen.

Operation Gladio in America?

A potential backdrop and precursor to the Colorado and Wisconsin events is the oft-forgotten Operation Gladio, a campaign involving US and British intelligence-backed paramilitaries anonymously carrying out mass shootings and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe. Hundreds of such attacks took place between the late 1960s and early 1980s by "stay behind armies" of right wing and fascist saboteurs in an overall effort to terrorize populations, deploy a "strategy of tension," and thereby maintain a centrist political status quo.[1] In the uncertain environment the petrified citizenry pled for stepped-up security and stood poised to part with personal freedoms. At the same time the maneuver allowed for political adversariesin Gladio's time socialist and communist groupsto be blamed for the attacks and thereby demonized in the public mind.

The string of still unresolved US political assassinations throughout the 1960s suggest how such practices were not restricted to foreign countries. Nor were they solely the terrain of intelligence agencies. Along lines similar to Gladio, in the early 1960s the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed Operation Northwoods, where terrorist attacks would be initiated against US civilians in American cities and the violence blamed on Cuban combatants to justify war against the island nation.[2] The Kennedy administration rejected the proposal. While Northwoods exhibited the capacity for government to conceive and propose such plans, Gladio was demonstrably carried out against Western civilian populations in multiple locations over many years.

Consideration of Gladio and Northwoods might be dismissed were it not for early eyewitness accounts following the Colorado and Wisconsin shootings contending how there were two or more killers present at each incidenttestimonies contradicting official government narratives that have accordingly been suppressed in the public mind.[3]

As communications historian Christopher Simpson observes, "the tactics that created the [Gladio] stay behinds in the first place are still in place and continue to be used today. They are standard operating procedure."[4] Such potential explanations will appear foreign to an American public that is systematically misinformed and easily distracted. And in times of crisis especially that very public is tacitly assured of its safe remove from such practices, looking instead to political authorities and experts to reestablish a stasis to the carefully constructed "reality" major media impose on the mass psyche.

In this alternate reality Gladio has effectively been "memory-holed." A LexisNexis Academic search for "Operation Gladio" retrieves a mere 31 articles in English language news outletsmost in British newspapers. In fact, only four articles discussing Gladio ever appeared in US publicationsthree in the New York Times and one brief mention in the Tampa Bay Times. Barring a 2009 BBC documentary [5] no network or cable news broadcasts have ever referenced the maneuver.

Almost all of the articles related to Gladio appeared in 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly admitted Italy's participation in the process. The New York Times downplayed any US involvement, misleadingly calling Gladio "an Italian creation" in a story buried on page A16.[6] In reality, former CIA director William Colby revealed in his memoirs that covert paramilitaries were a significant agency undertaking set up after World War II, including "the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington [and] NATO."[7]

A Plausible Narrative / Conclusion

Gladio's successful concealment for so many years demonstrates how mass atrocities can be carried out by a shadow network with complete impunity. Most incidents from the Gladio period remain unsolved by authorities. In the US, however, a plausible narrative appears to be required for public consumption. For example, just a few hours after the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials swept in and wrested the case from Oak Creek authorities by classifying it as an act of "domestic terrorism."[8]. Less than twenty four hours later one of the federal government's foremost de facto propaganda and intelligence-gathering armsthe Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)developed a storyline that was unquestioningly lapped up by major news media.[9]

In an August 6 Democracy Now interview with SPLC spokesman Mark Potok and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Don Walker, Potok explained in unusual detail how the alleged killer was involved in "white supremacist groups," "Nazi skinhead rock bands," and that the SPLC had been "tracking" the groups he was in since 2000. Potok's remarks, which dominate the exchange and steer clear of the suspect's experience in psychological operations, contrasted sharply with Walker's, who more cautiously pointed out that the suspect's "work in [US Army] PsyOps is still a bit of a mystery to all of us … We talked to a psychiatrist who said that [being promoted to PsyOps is] like going from the lobby to the 20th floor very quickly."[10]

Like the Aurora Colorado storyline of a crazed shooter who expertly booby-trapped his apartment with exotic explosives, such appealingly sensationalistic narratives serve to sideline the countervailing testimonies of eyewitnesses and are difficult to contest or dislodge once they are driven home by would-be experts through almost every major news outlet.

A similar scenario played out in the wake of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing when the ATF, FBI and SPLC together constructed the dominant frame of Timothy McVeigh as the lone bomber, an account that likewise diverged with the local authorities' initial findings, early news reports of unexploded ordinance and a mysterious accomplice of McVeigh, and the overall conclusions of the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation Committee's Final Report.[11] The narrative nevertheless served to maintain the political status quo while securing the Clinton administration's second term in office. To this day most Americans believe McVeigh was solely responsible for the bombing despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

For its time Raplin's prognosis was an accurate description of America's cascading socio-political nightmare. Elected officials abdicate their responsibility of oversight for personal gain and thus perpetuate "a conspiracy of silence." Yet over the past two decades, the quickening pace of "terrorist" events suggests how shadow networks have grown in boldness and strength, while each attack has contributed to the steady erosion of civil society and constitutional rights.

With this in mind both the mainstream and "alternative" news media, through their overt censorial practices, their consistent failure to place events in meaningful historical contexts, and their overall deliberate obeisance to dubious and unaccountable authorities, compound this conspiracy by ensnaring the public in questionable realities from which it cannot readily escape.

Notes

[1] Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, New York: Routledge, 2005; Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Progressive Press, 2012.

[2] James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, New York: Anchor Books, 2002, 83. For a recent applications see Michel Chossudovsky, "Syria: Killing Innocent Civilians as Part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Support for a R2P War," GlobalResearch.ca, May 30, 2012,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=31122. Entire Operation Northwoods document available at
http://archive.org/stream/OperationNorth...0/mode/2up

[3] Overall sufficient scrutiny of the Colorado and Wisconsin shootings is entirely lacking save a handful of alternative news media. See Alex Thomas, "Wisconsin Sikh Shooting False Flag: Multiple Shooters, Army Psy-Ops, The FBI, Operation Gladio, and the SPLC," Intellhub.com, August 6, 2012,
http://theintelhub.com/2012/08/06/wiscon...-the-splc/
Jon Rappoport, "Shooting in Sikh Temple: Who Benefits Big Time?" August 5, 2012,
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2012/0...-big-time/

[4] NATO's Secret Armies, Andres Pichler, director, 2009. Simpson interview at 46:23,
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/07...653266.php.

[5] NATO's Secret Armies.

[6] Clyde Haberman, "Evolution in Europe: Italy Discloses Its Web of Cold War Guerrillas," New York Times, November 16, 1990, A16.

[7] Stephen Lendman, "NATO's Secret Armies" [A Review of Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, op cit.] September 15, 2010, http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/na...rmies.html

[8] Steven Yaccino, Michael Schwirtz, and Marc Santora, "Gunman Kills 6 at a Sikh Temple Near Milwaukee," New York Times, August 6, 2012, A1.

[9] For example, Erica Goode and Serge F. Kovaleski, "Wisconsin Killer Was Fueled by Hate-Driven Music," New York Times, August 7, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/us/arm...wanted=all,
Madison Gray, "Sikh Temple Shooter Identified, Had Ties to White Supremacist Movement," Time News Feed, August 6, 2012,
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/06/sikh...-movement/,
Dinesh Ramde and Todd Richmond, SPLC: Frustrated neo-Nazi Opened Fire on Sikh Temple," Associated Press, August 6, 2012,
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display...kh-temple/

[10] Amy Goodman, "Neo-Nazi Rampage: Army Psy-Ops Vet, White Power Musician ID'd as Gunman in Sikh Temple Shooting," Democracy Now, August 7, 2012,
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/7/sik...chael_page

[11] Charles Key, The Final Report on the Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, 2001. http://www.okcbombing.net/

James F. Tracy is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Additional information is available at his blog, memorygap.org.

[Adele Edisen]

Following Alex Jones' pointed mention of Operation Gladio during his heated interview with Piers Morgan, Infowars have posted a lengthy, Gladio-specific interview with Richard Cottrell, author of the most recent English language book on the subject. This is well worth a look even if you don't care for Jones or his recent flame up on Morgan's show, and hopefully some viewers of the debate will watch it and learn something new. I'll note that, despite the somewhat sensationalistic cover, Cottrell's book is beautifully written and researched, and is probably the best thing Progressive Press have published in the past few years.

Researchers studying the JFK assassination should also find a certain section of Cottrell's discussion to be of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0fxLS0B...Lg&index=6

Description

Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis (paperback 484 pages) by former European parliamentarian Richard Cottrell reveals the dark side of NATO. This explosive book covers a vast array of NATO assassination, false-flags and other covert operations.

The recent attack on Libya laid bare the iron fist behind the velvet glove of slogans like "human rights" and "international community." This latest aggression, like the destruction of Yugoslavia and the rape of Afghanistan, proceeds under the cover of NATO. And what is NATO? Author Richard Cottrell tells the story of mayhem, murder and subversion behind the "alliance for peace."

Masquerading as a rear guard against Soviet invaders, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was promoted during the Cold War as a force for peace. Yet NATO always had its very dark side since its inception. NATO's covert forces warped into psychological and physical terrorism. These were the "years of lead," in which hundreds perished in a synthetic war in the streets of Europe. In addition, NATO commander General Lyman Lemnitzer ordered serial attacks on French president Charles de Gaulle. Sacked from the Pentagon by John F. Kennedy for rank insubordination, then exiled to Europe, did Lemnitzer also reap his revenge in Dallas?

Once the Soviet threat vanished, NATO became the aggressor against a series of small, independent nations: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya with Syria and Iran next on the list. These supposed peace keepers are constantly engaged in a cycle of overthrowing independent governments and constant warfare at the behest of their globalist handlers.

A deeper look at NATO uncovers even more unsettling facts about this global police force. The secret armies forged bonds with organized crime and neo-fascists. NATO-backed coups struck down governments in Greece and Turkey; the island state of Cyprus was sundered amid bitter genocide. Urban guerrillas like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang were cunningly manipulated. Italy gained a deep-state government, the ultra-secret P2 pseudo-Masonic lodge, founded by former Blackshirts.

The covert units of NATO continue to operate and their fingerprints are found on many different world events. Swedish premier Olof Palme and Italian ex-PM Aldo Moro were assassinated. Pope John Paul II was shot by Turkish gangsters who had regular work as Gladio guns for hire. The shootings in Norway in July 2011, and in Belgium, France and Italy in 2012, all bore the classic stripe of Gladio false-flag operations.

Cottrell documents how the infamous Northwoods Plot virus was transmitted into the reign of terror that has struck the western world in the wake of 9/11. The old communist bogey-man was replace with new enemies: jihadists and anarchists supposedly opposed to the global world order. He shows that the Gladio virus is not past history, but is highly active today. He writes "Terror is being used as a weapon to destroy the cherished freedoms of democratic societies. This is the forerunner of the autocratic authoritarian system for which Lemnitzer yearned."

Softcover, 484 pages
First Edition: 2012
Format: 6 x 9 inches
Published by Progressive Press
ISBN-13: 978-1615776870

Adele

[Lauren Johnson]

From #13, we read:

the federal government's foremost de facto propaganda and intelligence-gathering armsthe Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

What's the deal with the SPLC?

[Peter Lemkin]

From #13, we read:

the federal government's foremost de facto propaganda and intelligence-gathering armsthe Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

What's the deal with the SPLC?

I was a bit put off by that sentence.....to my knowledge the SPLC is legit, on the side of those of us trying to stop what wrong is going on. Among other things, they have developed an expertise in tracking violent or potentially violent right-winger persons and especially groups [originally anti-Black; but long ago expanded to cover all flavors of right-wingers]. I've never before heard anyone I consider credible make disparaging remarks about them. Unless they have recently been infiltrated [something I've not heard peep about], I think this is not a correct general characterization of them. I have not examined what they said or researched in this SPECIFIC matter.

[Jan van den Baard]

Gladio NATO's dagger at the Heart of Europe; the Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis Richard Cottrell Progressive Press, 2012, $17.00, p/b http://www.ProgressivePress.com
The e-mail pitch was intriguing: a former Conservative MEP and journalist has written a big book about the Gladio network with
....entirely new accounts on the assassination of the ex Italian PM Aldo Moro, the Swedish premier Olof Palme and his star pupil Anna Lindh, and the real motives behind the attack on Pope John Paul II. I also expose the myths behind the killing in London of the Bulgarian émigré Georgi Markov, another fabulous media fest. In the chapter devoted to Belgium I advance evidence that the Heysel football stadium disaster in May 1985 was politically orchestrated .....For the first time anywhere in print, I point to General Lyman Lemnitzer, ex US Chief of the General Staff, later NATO supremo, as a key figure involved in the assassination of JFK.'
The reality is a disappointment, to say the least. There is almost no documentation. We have hundreds of pages of unsupported assertion; and if you are going to offer a sweeping new narrative it has to be solid, well documented. And this just isn't. It's full of speculation and assertion supported by..... Well, take this, for example: discussing the idea that Franceso Gullino and Michael Townley had been responsible for the Olof Palme shooting, he writes (p. 63):
The possibility that Townley was the set designer in Stockholm and Gullino the imported stage technician, is persuasive.'
Persuasive possibility'? I prefer evidence. On page 12 he writes:
[Mrs Thatcher's] famous stock market "Big Bang" deregulation exercise in 1986 introduced the corrosive forces of rampant corporatism at the expense of oldfashioned outmoded manufacturing.'
It wasn't corporatism: it was the opposite of corporatism. Nor did the Big Bang' have much to do with manufacturing, pro or con. It was about the stock market. It's not that he's got this wrong, that makes me nervous, but his assurance.
Most of this book is about events in Europe about which I know little and would have difficulty checking. In this situation the reviewer heads for familiar territory and Cottrell has included the anti-Labour events of the 1960s and 70s which I know pretty well; and his account is error-strewn and fanciful. In the first two pages of that section he conflates events of the 1960s with the 1970s. He has a coup being plotted by David Stirling's GB75 in 1974. For this there is no evidence and he offers none. Stirling was preoccupied by the left threat' in the trade unions; and GB75, if it ever really existed it might just been a psy-ops job; all we saw were some bits of paper was talking of stepping into the breach and keeping the UK power generation industry going in the event of a left shutdown. To this non-existent coup' plan of 1974 Cottrell has added the Cecil King-Lord Mountbatten meeting of 1968. (pp. 236/7)
He has Sir Maurice Oldfield, a career-long SIS officer, as MI5's director of counter-intelligence and deputy controller'.
He tells us (p. 240) that Peter Wright's book gave credence to [Harold] Wilson's persistent claims that he was the target of a conspiracy against him by a cabal consisting of at least 30 extremist MI5 officers.' Wilson didn't claim that. The 30 figure came from Wright who said that up to 30' MI5 officers were involved in or cognisant of the attempts to unseat Wilson.
As for Gladio being behind the Wilson plots, of that there is no evidence at all. But apparently he doesn't need evidence: mere assertion will suffice. For example he says of Mrs Thatcher's defeat of Edward Heath for the leadership of the Tory Party in 1975:
'Behind the scenes, it was Gladio's triumph. Heath was destroyed by the libels revolving around his sexuality
and his own loftiness, rooted in insecurity, which rendered him easy prey to ruthless secret service gossip mongers.' (p. 248)
Which is nonsense. The stories about Heath's sexuality had no coverage and almost no impact. Heath was defeated by Thatcher because he lost the two elections of 1974 and caused the great inflation of the period. He might have he got away with what Mrs Thatcher and the late Sir Rhodes Boyson described as his monetary incontinence' but losing the elections as well of course he would be challenged. Sometimes politics is just politics.
Wilson's surprise resignation in 1976 provides Cottrell with scope for more vivid imaginings. The most likely explanation is that Wilson received visitors and, left in a room with a loaded pistol, pulled the metaphorical trigger.' (p. 248) And he quotes a Dutch MEP as saying:
It was quite [well?] known in Dutch intelligence circles why Wilson really went in that sudden and abrupt fashion. It was because he had some relationship, I think it was supposed to be when he was a younger man, of a highly personal and secretive nature with one of his ministers, and the CIA were threatening to fish it out.' (p. 252)
Which rumour is about par for the course in all this. In fact we don't need to speculate because we know what happened; and Cottrell could have found out had he wanted to. Wilson told his inner circle and his senior colleagues that he was retiring at 60 years of age and they didn't leak it. He was tired, rather bored, drinking too much and worried that he would get what was then known as senile dementia which had afflicted his mother. So he got out while the going was good.
As for the role of NATO's General Lemnitzer in any of this, the author has nothing at all. His comment in his e-mail that he point[s] to General Lyman Lemnitzer, ex US Chief of the General Staff, later NATO supremo, as a key figure involved in the assassination of JFK' is accurate: he points but
he has no evidence.
He thinks the 7/7 London Tube-bus bombings was a phoney (though isn't sure if it was Gladio or not) and offers some of the usual critique of the official version.10 As others have before him, Cottrell makes much of the Peter Power story. Former Met officer Power had been running a desk- based terrorism exercise on 7/7 which eerily echoed the events of that day, notably that the Tube stations in his exercise were those chosen for the real explosions. Cottrell spends almost two pages trying to portray this as something sinister. But the problem with all attempts to make something of this is that Power was a volunteer; he rang BBC Radio 5 Live on the afternoon of 7/7 to report this creepy coincidence. I was listening at the time.
The author is offering a hidden hand' conspiracy theory about post-war European history. He has history X-ray specs on which enable him to see through the veil of falsehoods. The hidden hand was Gladio. In some areas it has been documented as true; in some of those he discusses here there is little or no evidence; and in the British section, about which I know enough to comment, he has neither the evidence to sustain his thesis nor the basic attention to detail required to do so even if he had it.
Robin Ramsay

[Peter Lemkin]

Robin Ramsay and Lobster are top notch and not to be taken lightly. I have to admit I've not yet read the book by Cottrell, but it seems to me to resonate correctly [or near correctly] on many of the topics undertaken. From many sources the book is deficient in references, including Ramsay. It is on my order list of books and others will critique it, as well. I greatly admire Robin Ramsay and his magazine, but I suggest withholding final judgment a bit longer. I'd like to hear what Ganser has to say about the book, myself.

[Anthony Thorne]

Ramsay makes good points, but his observation that Peter Powers phoning in on 7/7 to note the 'odd coincidence' of the drills makes those drills innocent of suspicion seems off base to me, unless one assumes the conspirators would have been itching to let Powers know exactly why they wanted preparatory and obfuscatory drills running in synch with their live action replacements. The same template occurred on 9/11, when various drills and exercises (too many to count, and this has been exhaustively documented elsewhere) left various officials scratching their head at the coincidence, and noting the odd occurrence to the media. A majority of those officials were likely kept in the dark, but I'm disinclined to view their lack of knowledge as evidence of the 9/11 drills being innocent exercises. (Ramsay is a fine writer who, I personally think, occasionally errs in judgement. I won't dispute his knowledge of British politics however).

From memory (writing this at work) the Cottrell book notes numerous Italian-language references in its bibliography which Cottrell has evidently read and digested. John Leonard from Progressive Press mentioned to me years ago that he was aware of some of the newer Italian books and wished he could translate them for the US market, and the Cottrell book fulfills his interest in the subject. If Cottrell was referencing those other sources however, he and Leonard should have made some extra efforts to document the factual basis for the book's assertions. Even so, I still find much of the book compelling.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Firstly, the world is a better place for the existence of Lobster, and there are very few publications I would say that about.

Secondly, Robin Ramsay is Robin Ramsay.

I've been reading him for decades, sometimes with huge respect and admiration, sometimes with teeth gnashing in frustration.

In his Cottrell review, he makes some good points, some marginal points and some poor points.

His conclusion is classic Ramsay:

The author is offering a hidden hand' conspiracy theory about post-war European history. He has history X-ray specs on which enable him to see through the veil of falsehoods. The hidden hand was Gladio. In some areas it has been documented as true; in some of those he discusses here there is little or no evidence; and in the British section, about which I know enough to comment, he has neither the evidence to sustain his thesis nor the basic attention to detail required to do so even if he had it.

Ramsay's comments on much of the British detail being wrong are strong, with the caveat that I would be fascinated to know if there is anything new in the Italian language material.

Ramsay also asserts that this is a "Conspiracy Theory", that Cottrell must be a comic book superhero to see through the falsehoods. This is colourful rhetoric which has the effect of undermining the entire hypothesis.

And yet, Ramsay also writes of that hypothesis:
"The hidden hand was Gladio. In some areas it has been documented as true;"

And here lies my frustration. It is as if, in his rhetorical dismissal, Ramsay is declaring that Cottrell doesn't live up to his expectations as a resesarcher and his hypothesis is thus dismissed. Yet Ramsay knows, better than almost anyone on the planet, the difficulty of researching Gladio and getting primary source material amidst the Oswald LeWinters and the false trails. He also knows the importance of Gladio to understanding post-WW2 history.

Amidst the good and important points, Robin Ramsay risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater.