This is the story of the secret armies funded by the United States, trained by Britain, and left behind in post-war Europe to fight the rise of communism. This is also the story of how they turned against their own people. Nato’s Secret Armies, Military Channel 2009
Milan 12th December 1969 a bomb exploded … 17 people were killed and 80 seriously wounded … Munich 26th September 1980: killed 13 people and injured over 200 … Brussels 9th November 1985 a gang of men opened fire … ‘8 killed and 8 injured’ … one of a staggering 16 similar attacks carried out between 1982 and ’85 that came to be known as the Brabant massacres. ibid.
Over a period of about 15 years Europe was rocked by a series of terror attacks; the lives of thousands of people were turned upside down. ibid.
Documents that connected this mysterious force to Nato … The secret orgnisation Gladio existed … part of a much wider network of secret stay-behind armies coordinated by Nato throughout Western Europe during the Cold War. ibid.
After the Second World War, Britain and the US established a secret network of stay-behind armies in over 15 European countries including neutral Switzerland and Austria … Gladio foot-soldiers were recruited from a variety of sources. ibid.
Western Europe possessed each a particular branch but to these cells are discovered suspicions of terrorist activities, of fascist ideology. Retour aux Sources: Gladio, RTBF 2014
During the Cold War thousands of sleeping agents were ready to enter into action in case the Red Army would have occupied Western Europe. ibid.
Belgium too has known in the ’80s a wave of terror through a series of heists of extreme violence that caused 28 deaths between 1983 to 1985. ibid.
Stay-behind networks are independent but interconnected … They are in radio contact. ibid.
Gladio: the stay-behind networks had been set up to repel a Soviet invasion. Yet the invasion never came … The myth of Soviet expansionism remained an important component of Cold War propaganda ... In Europe Gladio would provide the ammunition … With no Soviet army to repel, the Fascists increasingly focused on what they regarded as the enemy within. False flag terror would be their primary weapon. Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations s1e3: The Strategy of Tension, 2013
The programme was closely linked to a Masonic league known as P2 or Propaganda Due. It was made up of military and intelligence officers, political leaders, industrialists, Mafioso, bankers and even Vatican contacts. ibid.
Gladio: The Strategy of Tension was a Europe-wide enterprise. ibid.
On March 16th 1978 Italy’s former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped in a sophisticated military-style operation. His three bodyguards were killed during the assault. The attacks were blamed on the Red Brigades, a militant communist group. Moro had been attempting to create a power-sharing arrangement by which the Italian Community Party (PCI) would be allowed to participate in operations of government with the Christian Democrats. His compromise was fiercely opposed by the United States. According to Moro’s widow, he was told at a meeting with Henry Kissinger, ‘You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration … or you will pay dearly for it. Moro was murdered shortly after his kidnapping. ibid.
It remains unknown how many terrorist outrages perpetrated during the Cold War were staged or provocateured by intelligence assets posing as leftists or other political groups. ibid.
In 1971 at the height of the ‘strategy of tension’ the Berne Club was formed. It was made up of the intelligence services of the 27 states of what now constitutes the European Union, as well as Norway, Switzerland, and the United States. It exists to this day. ibid.
Secret armies of NATO … The CIA had imagined a coordination of groups of agents to counter the communist risks in western Europe … groups of far-right terrorists with the complicity of politicians to create a strategy of tension. Gladio: La Scandale des Armees Secretes de L’Otan, 2016
From the early ’50s to the end of the ’80s during the Cold War, Europe was the scene of a war … a far-right terrorism … ibid.
Many believe that the CIA continued to meddle in Italian elections for decades, making sure Italy was always governed by a right of centre government. But some historians claim that wasn’t the end of interference in Italian politics. They claim that after three decades of anti-communist parties in Italy, the US along with Nato went far further, brutally murdering Italy’s popular prime minister Aldo Moro. Conspiracy s1e6: The Cold War Files
In 1947 one Western country in particular popped on the anti-communist radar: Italy ... The CIA continued to meddle in Italian elections for decades . ibid.
Gladio was so secret that their existence was only revealed as a result of a judicial inquiry in 1990. ibid.
This strategic relationship between NATO, neo-fascist terrorist groups and the CIA culminated in an attempt on Bologna train station in August 1990: eighteen kilos of military plastic explosive were detonated. 7/7: Seeds of Destruction, Vimeo 2:27:25
The man actually responsible for the Petiano bombing was Vincenzo Cinciguerra. He was a member of right-wing terrorist groups … Once his guilt had been established and he was no longer protected by the security services, Cinciguerra became very candid about how Gladio operated. ibid.
A series of trials ensued in Italy. It wasn’t until 1995, 15 years after the bombing, that a conclusive verdict was reached. 2 members of a neo-fascist group were convicted of the [Bologna] bombing. Also convicted for diverting the investigation were 2 Italian intelligence agents who were members of the P2 Masonic lodge. The grandmaster of that lodge, Licio Gelli, was also convicted for conspiring to divert the investigation. It became clear that P2 was not just a Masonic Order but a CIA-funded parallel government. The list of members of the lodge was found in a raid on Licio Gelli’s house in 1981. Among the 962 names were those of the heads of all 3 Intelligence Services, 48 MPs, industrialists, bankers, media moguls, journalists, civil servants, judges, military officials, and Silvio Berlusconi. ibid.
Milan: The massacres … where Italy lost its innocence … The start of what would become known as the Years of Lead. Years of Lead: An Italian Conspiracy, Youtube 52.11, 2022
Friday, December 12th 1969: At 4.37 p.m. a bomb devastated the central hall of the National Agrarian Bank, the Piazza Fontana. ibid.
Then within the hour four further bombs went off in Milan and Rome. ibid.
The result of a conspiracy and the template for the wave of terrorist attacks to come. ibid.
The ‘black lead’ was the one that led to the far right. ibid.
Gladio, the double-edge sword: one of the best kept secrets of the post-war period. The codename for the secret army intended to lead the resistance against any potential Soviet invasion. ibid.
July 1970: A bomb on a train in Calabria. 6 dead, 50 injured. ibid.
May 1973: A grenade outside the Milan Prefecture. 4 dead, 52 injured. ibid.
1974: A bomb on the Italicus train between Rome and Brennero. 12 dead, 44 injured. ibid.
Secret protection ensured the impunity of the true perpetrators of this terrorist plot: a small fascist group called Ordine Nuovo (New Order), a veritable nerve centre of black terrorism. ibid.
‘A hidden structure linked to the Italian and American secret services.’ ibid. convicted bomber
Bologna railway station, Saturday August 2nd 1980: 85 dead, more than 200 injured. ibid.
If the instigators of the massacre were never discovered, it is undoubtedly thanks to the manoeuvres of this man, Licio Gelli … the venerable master of a Masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2. ibid.
Gelli emerged from the shadows in 1981 during investigations into the collapse of a bank, implicating the Mafia, the Vatican’s banker and P2. ibid.
The ‘stay-behind’ was set up at the end of the Second World War on the initiative of the United States and the Pentagon under the auspices of NATO. It was a matter of creating a whole network of ultra-secret sleeper cells from violent right-wing extremist groups all over the NATO member countries, recruiting young people while training them, and they could be used in case the Soviet Union tried to invade Europe again. Spy Ops IV: The Plot to Kill the Pope, woman in the know, Netflix 2023
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden. The man who helped establish the agency has been its president for six years, Paul Dickpopf, a top official with an apparently clean record, suggests that he had been an opponent of the Nazis. Until 1971 and in the Brandt era he is West Germany’s top criminal investigator … In 1968 he becomes head of Interpol. Nazis in the CIA, Netflix 2012
They became willing helpers, spies, because the US Intelligence Services could use their past to blackmail them. ibid.
The American Intelligence services were fighting a new enemy, communism, with the help of Nazis who worked for them as spies. ibid.
‘They were used for covert operations and this type of thing.’ ibid. man in the know
The Americans search all over Germany for the former SS officer [mass murderer] Intelligence officer, Eugen Steimle. ibid.
German industry made arrangements to keep its capital safe. ibid.
It [CIA] recruits fascists in Italy during the Cold War. They are to fight communism on behalf of the Americans. Since the 1960s, Italy is shaken by a series of bomb attacks. Hundreds of people die. These acts are first blamed on leftists, but it has been shown that they were committed by the far right. Stefano Delle Chiaie became the leader of the new right. ibid.
In 1970 the fascists and their backers want to stage a coup in Italy and eliminate the left-wing parties. ibid.
The unit is named Gladio and it is under the control of the CIA. ibid.
Many Italians believe that Moro was killed because he wanted to pursue a third way that contradicted Yalta. ibid.
‘Andreotti was the puppet of the Americans.’ ibid. man in the know
Licio Gelli was master of the influential Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge. Gelli had been an American agent since the War. ibid.
After the War, Barbie was recruited by the American Intelligence Services. ibid.
The Americans hide Barbie and other war criminals first in Germany, then in South America. ibid.