Gladio: Nato's shadow state (III): against communism by any means necessary

The third article[es] of Daniele Ganser on the Gladio affair (French version) is most interesting for the present time, especially as communist forces like SYRIZA in Greece (or maybe others in the near future or at sub-state level, as may be the Basque case) aspire to reach to power by purely electoral means.

Some, very naively, expect the state apparatus to obey them as soon as they reach power but the reality is quite the opposite and the increased Nazi penetration in the Greek police forces is the proverbial tip of the iceberg that evidences that the deep state of the Balcanic country is getting ready to counter such an eventuality by all means. 

Gladio investigations established that NATO is not merely a defensive alliance but first and foremost an anti-communist organization of global reach. They also evidence that the real command is in Washington and not Brussels, with Europeans being relegated to a secondary role as auxiliary forces of the American Empire. Role that nevertheless many exert enthusiastically. 

A key organism is the hyper-secret Security Bureau, created in 1949 and whose declared mission is to coordinate, oversee and implement NATO's security policies. It's top officer is the Security Director, main councilor of NATO's Secretary General and President of the Security Committee of NATO. This committee gathers the chiefs of security services of NATO member states and discusses matters such as espionage, terrorism, subversion and other threats, including communism. 

In other words: it coordinates all NATO secret services. However some such services seem to have acted independently from their governments with full blessing by NATO. According to Portuguese newspaper Expresso (1990):

It seems evident that NATO applies a criterion of restricted trust. Under such doctrine some governments are not active enough in the struggle against communism, so it is not useful to inform them about the activities of the NATO's secret army. 

In a closed doors meeting, whose details were revealed by Portuguese media, Manfred Wörner, then NATO's Secretary General, explained that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) coordinates the activities of the Gladio network through the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created in 1952. 

This network was first created in Italy as early as 1947 (the same year in which the CIA was organized) and then extended to the rest of Europe: France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Greece.

Former NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns declared to the press that he had no knowledge of the network. Luns implied that every secret operation was part of NATO, emphasizing that NATO is controlled by the USA and that the Commander General of the organization (SACEUR) is always a US-American appointed by Washington (the Deputy SACEUR has been mostly British but, since 1980, also occasionally German).

Thomas Polgar, retired CIA officer, acknowledged that there exists "a sort of group in charge of planning non-conventional war". He also emphasized US control of this department. 

According to the Belgian parliamentary committee, this organization was founded even before NATO itself with the name of Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), which coordinated the allied secret services. This seems to be the same as the Security Bureau, as it's known nowadays, but was known for long as Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC). 

The first public evidence of the existence of secret anti-communist protocols was revealed in 1966, soon after De Gaulle retired France from the NATO structure (not the alliance itself) and expelled NATO headquarters from French soil. It was De Gaulle himself who denounced such protocols as a violation of national sovereignty.

According to US journalist Arthur Rowse (1994):

A secret clause of the original NATO treaty stipulated that every country candidate to adhesion must have established first a National Security authority in charge of directing the fight against Communism through clandestine citizen groups. 

Italian journalist Giuseppe de Lutiis found that in 1949, in the event of joining NATO, Italy had to sign a protocol establishing an unofficial organization in charge of guaranteeing the alignment of Italy's internal policies with those of the Western bloc by all means necessary, even in the event that the population would manifest a divergent inclination.

NATO officers have confirmed on condition of anonymity that such protocols explicitly protect far right members considered useful in the fight against communists. Even West Germany signed such protocols, in which it explicitly agreed to abstain from prosecuting notorious Nazi activists (Searchlight 1991).

The CPC was all the time directed by Washington, with a secondary role for London and Paris (before De Gaulle's walk out). In all CPC meetings there were CIA officers. A parallel structure is the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created by order of the fourth SACEUR, Lauris Norstadt, in 1952. It's more relaxed and horizontal ambient allowed Gladio commanders to share their networks more effectively.

To this day NATO still denies the existence of either the CPC or the ACC. But even former CIA officers like Thomas Polgar have acknowledged them as very real. However no public debate has ever existed in the North American federation on these matters. Just a few journalists have attempted to inquire on these matters but had no or very limited success. 

Britain must also be mentioned. In 1991 the BBC reported that the role of Great Britain in the creation of these "stay behind" networks was central. This should surprise nobody considering that London was deeply implicated in the ascent of European fascisms in the 1920s and 1930s, including that of Hitler, naturally (just that he got off the leash by threatening to invade Russia single-handedly, which would have given Berlin too much power if successful). British democracy is a mere facade, serving as cover for terribly secret entities like the MI6, whose very existence was only revealed to the public in 1994.

Almost nothing of the British dirty war is known to this day. Nobody in Westminster seems concerned: the regime has 100% of the seats or almost.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Gladio: Por qué la OTAN, la CIA y el MI6 siguen negando" (also in French). 

Previous entries: I, II.

Gladio: NATO's shadow state (II)

I continue here synthesizing the most important historical data provided by Daniele Ganser at Voltaire Network in Spanish and French on NATO's secret army, popularly known by its Italian codename Gladio. 

As we saw in the previous entry, Andreotti's confessional discourse revealed that Gladio existed in all other NATO member states and that it was a NATO organization under US ultimate control. His discourse took place however on August 2nd 1990, the very same day in which Saddam Hussein's Army (baited by Washington, who winked to him implying that it was a well earned prize for its efforts against Iran) invaded Kuwait.

The non-free European media saw in that developing conflict the perfect excuse to ignore, as much as possible, the murky story of Gladio. However some investigations did took place, notably in Belgium. 

Most governments tried to avoid the matter altogether or at least minimize its relevance. The most notorious were the British, whose ministers declined again and again to make any comment "on security issues". The Parliament also avoided pushing any investigation.

France explicitly denied the existence of such network in its soil, claiming that it had been disbanded in the 1950s. Andreotti replied that France was present in the latest meeting of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), the command of the stay-behind network, in 1990, what forced the authorities to argue that it was just a preemptive force which played not active role.

Portuguese authorities also stepped in to deny that the local Gladio branch was used in defense of the Fascist regime of Salazar. However a retired general contradicted them. 

In Spain, Minister Oliart laughed at the questions by journalists as naive: "here the government itself was Gladio", he said, meaning the fascist government of Franco. However the incipient investigation on the continuity of the Spanish Gladio after 1978 were curtailed by simply firing the journalists researching the matter, as I recall clearly. 

In Denmark the minister in charge was contradictory, appealing to the confidentiality of the matter, while denying the existence of the secret state in the most vague terms. 

In Norway, the authorities acknowledged the existence of the local Gladio but rejected to discuss its details on the grounds of being top secret. 

Luxembourg also acknowledged the existence of the stay-behind network but denied that it had any other activity than being prepared for the event of a hypothetical Soviet invasion. 

In the Netherlands the Prime Minister assumed all the responsibility and denied that the network was under NATO command. 

Greece was the first state to be splashed by the Gladio scandal after Italy. The Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou claimed with his characteristic cold blood that, as soon as he discovered the existence of such secret army in 1984, he commanded its elimination. Some MPs demanded an investigation to find out the role played by the Greek Gladio in the fascist dictatorship but the government ignored them. 

In Germany there was some investigation on demand of the Green Party, while the media revealed that former members of the SS took part in the secret army. Not just in Germany: in other countries also extreme right activists had been recruited into Gladio.

Hans Klein, Speaker of Helmut Kohl's government appealed to military secrecy in order not to reveal any details. The opposition used the scandal for the upcoming elections, being a clear case of unconstitutional structure, which was even compared to the Ku Klux Klan.

A parliamentary commission was created. In it Burkhard Hirsch, on charge of the secret services in Kohl's government, recognized he was very unease with the matter, claiming that he had never heard of it before. He said with unusual sincerity for a spy chief:

If something can remain secret for so long, and you can trust my long experience, is because there is something rotten. 

As soon as the conservative government declared that the socialdemocrat ministers of past governments were also privy to those secrets, the SPD abandoned all belligerence. Therefore the commission met in secret in spite of the protests of Die Grünen. 

One wonders what role played this secret organization in the murder of Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian just a couple of years later. Back in the day it was rumored that they were in the course of investigating something big, possibly this very imperial secret army.

The biggest investigation took place in Belgium, where PM Wilfried Martens declared to ignore everything about it. He said with apparent worry:

I have been Prime Minister for the last eleven years but I have always ignored the existence of a network in our country. 

The investigation revealed that the actual commander of the Belgian Gladio was the secret service boss General Raymond Van Calster. Van Calster initially denied everything but later he admitted that it existed with a mere intelligence goal for the hypothetical event of a Soviet invasion. 

There was great worry because, as in Italy, indiscriminate terrorist attacks had been performed against the civilian population. In 1980, mysterious men dressed in black opened fire against supermarket customers in Brabant, killing many.

But maybe the most striking case with repercussions reaching to this very day was the Turkish one. Ankara admitted that Gladio existed in the country and pretended, as in other states, that it was a mere passive network in preparation of a Soviet invasion. 

However it soon became known by mouth of former PM Bülent Ecevit that the Turkish network, eventually known as Ergenekon, was deeply involved in tortures, terrorist attacks and murders.

In 1996 a car accident at Susurluk killed three not-so-unlikely buddies: a member of the anti-Kurdish terrorist groups, a top police officer and a member of Parliament. Thousands protested against the "deep state".

Two years later, PM Mesut Ylmaz had to acknowledge the existence of a death squad at the very heart of the state with full knowledge of the authorities. The Ergenekon case was only brought to trial recently, but it seems that only some of those involved have been prosecuted, those against whom Erdogan's Islamists wanted revenge. The bulk are probably still at large.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Cuando se descubrió el Gladio en los Estados europeos…" (also available in French).

Gladio: NATO's shadow state (I)

When Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said that the attackers of September 9th 2001 were "America's chicken coming home to roost" he was nailing it. However the chicken are not, as he implied, bearded Islamists but rather Christian right-wing extremists who make up the real shadow government in Europe, that overseas province of the USA, and now also in the homeland as well. 

Daniele Ganser has written for Voltaire Network a series of articles in Spanish (most also available in French) on the "stay-behind" network of NATO known popularly as Gladio, it's Italian name. 

The work is almost monumental but I will try to synthesize here and in future articles the most essential of it, because it is something that we must all know about, surely more important than electoral politics and the like.

The first article deals with the best known Gladio network and the only properly deserving that name: the Italian one. 

Bologna station after the NATO attack

Between 1969 and 1987, the so-called years of lead, several terrorist massacres against civilians took place in Italy, inspiring fear and serving as pretext to persecute the communists, who were blamed for the attacks (just as they were blamed for the Reichstag fire by the Nazis). Not just the Brigate Rosse were persecuted until their annihilation but many many intellectuals and activists who had no part in armed struggle were as well.

Italy had the belated luck that a judge, Felice Cassone, eventually began investigating the many issues surrounding all these massacres and political attacks. As it became known in the trial, almost 15,000 acts of political violence shattered Italy between those dates, many of them being brutal indiscriminate attacks in which 491 people were killed and 1181 injured.

Cassone indicted one man, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a fascist member of the secret organization Ordine Nuovo (New Order), who confessed that he enjoyed total protection by a whole well-positioned network in Italy as in other countries.

In the trials, General Giandelio Maletti, former chief of the Italian counter-espionage, declared that not just nearly all the Italian state was involved in Gladio but that every single attack was approved by the White House and the CIA. In his own words:

The CIA, following the orders of their government, wanted to forge an Italian Nationalism able to counter what they considered a slide to the Left and, with that goal, they could use far-right terrorism. (...) One was under the impression that the Americans were willing to do anything to impede that Italy leaned to the Left. (...) Don't forget that it was Nixon who was the head of the government and Nixon was not any common guy, he was a very smart politician but a man of very unorthodox methods. 

In 1988 the Italian Senate created a commission to investigate the matter. It was a difficult process, as witnesses did not want to speak, documents were destroyed and the Right sabotaged the investigation all they could. However in 1990 Gladio was confirmed as a very real thing. 

However the conscience of this terrorist network existed since long before. In 1974, another judge, Giovanni Tamburino, brought General Vito Miceli, commander of the SID (military secret service, later SISMI) to trial, accused of creating a secret organization that gathered civilians and officers alike, whose goal was to stir an armed insurrection in order to illegally modify the Constitution and the composition of the government.

Miceli, who had also been chief of NATO's Security Bureau, declared in anger:

Did I have a super-SID under my command? Of course! But I did not organize it myself in order to stage a coup, I merely obeyed the orders of the USA and NATO!

Giulio Andreotti

Sadly Miceli got away on bail and the network remained poorly known until the revelations of quasi-permanent Prime Minister Andreotti in 1990, who acted only on demand of the Senate and in a climate of many investigations, which even put the very godfather of Italian politics in jail for some time. It was the only occasion in which Gladio was revealed in full.

Andreotti edited his first written declaration. However Senator Gualtieri, President of the Commission, had made copies of the original version. When compared, it became obvious that Andreotti had edited all the references to international connections and the existence of Gladio in other states. 

It was such a poor trick that in his final version Andreotti admitted that Gladio was a network extending through all NATO, which in Italy was originally agreed between the CIA and the local secret services as a "stay behind" network against possible Soviet invasion. 

This cooperation was structured within NATO's Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1959, which was part of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). In 1964 the Italian secret services got incorporated also to the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). 

However Andreotti's report was in some contradiction with the declarations of Vinciguerra in the sense that the veteran politician claimed that Gladio was not involved in the terrorist attacks. He also declared that every single Prime Minister was informed of the existence of the stay-behind network, causing major embarrassment to the other Prime Ministers of the First Republic. Only the then President Francesco Cossiga acknowledged the fact, declaring his "pride" for contributing to its creation in the 1950s and to be able to keep such a secret for so long. 

Subsequent political turbulence forced his resignation in 1992.

Meanwhile Andreotti had confirmed in public audience that Gladio was a NATO structure and that it existed also in other member states, mentioning by name Germany, Greece, Denmark, Belgium and even France.

The Senate Commission concluded that:

Those massacres, those bombings, those military operations were organized, instigated or supported by people who worked for the Italian institutions and, as was discovered more recently, by individuals linked to the US intelligence structures.

Those are the "chickens" who came back "home to roost". Let's not forget that G.W. Bush' administration was almost exactly that of Nixon.