Google
 

View Full Version : Operation Gladio


Criminal
11-24-2005, 06:44 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio#Gladio_in_Germany

Operation Gladio was a clandestine "stay-behind" operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence in Italy, as well as in other European countries. While Gladio is usually used to refer to only the Italian "stay-behind", the term has also been applied to all other "stay-behind" operations. It is widely believed that NATO stay-behind armies existed in all countries of Western Europe during the Cold War. On October 24, 1990, Giulio Andreotti, head of Italian government, acknowledged the existence of a "structure of information, response and safeguard" before the "Camera dei deputati", known as "Operazione Gladio".

Gladio was a secret service operating in all of NATO. It had as central axe the Gehlen Org, and was coordinated by the Clandestine Planning Committee, the multi-national organ overseen from Belgium by SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe). Gladio also had strong ties to the CIA, which financed most of its operations. CIA founder Allen Dulles is said to be one of the key people in instituting Operation Gladio. Aldo Moro (who was assassinated by the Red Brigades) also has been named as one of the key figure in organizing Gladio.

In an article dated November 13, 1990 and published by the "International Herald Tribune", Joseph Fitchett talks about the "Nato resistance", and says that those anti-communist networks, which were partly funded by CIA, where presents in all of Europe, including neutral countries like Sweden or Switzerland. In french newspaper "Le Monde" of November 7, 1990, a Gladio official says that "depending on the cases, we would block or encourage far-left or far-right terrorism" [1]. This is usually refered to as the Strategy of tension.

The main aim of Operation Gladio was to counter a possible invasion by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact of Western Europe through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. NATO feared the fact that Soviet Union possessed a vast superiority in conventional military power. It was feared that Western Europe and NATO could not hope to defeat the Red Army in a direct conflict without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.

NATO's "stay-behind" organizations represented a way to fight on in case of defeat by the overwhelming military might of the Soviet Union. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind (hence the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations, as well as other clandestine, non-conventional resistance, such as "false flag operations" and terror attacks were considered.

Criminal
11-24-2005, 06:45 AM
In 2004 the German spymaster Norbert Juretzko published a book about his work at the BND. He went into details about recruiting partisans for the German stay-behind network. He was sacked from BND following a secret trial against him, because the BND could not find out the real name of his Russian source "Rubezahl" whom he had recruited. A man with the name he put on file was arrested by the KGB following treason in the BND, but was obviously innocent, his name having been chosen at random from the phone book by Juretzko.

According to Juretzko, the BND built up its branch of Gladio, but discovered after the fall of the GDR that it was 100% known to the Stasi early on. When the network was dismantled, further odd details emerged. One "spymaster" had kept the radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the engineering test call every 4 months, on the grounds that the equipment was too "valuable" to remain in civilian hands. Juretzkos found out because this spymaster had dismantled his section of the network so quickly there had been no time for measures such as recovering all caches of supplies.

Civilians recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with a clandestine shortwave radio with a fixed frequency. It had a keyboard with encryption, making use of Morse code unnecessary. They had a cache of further equipment for signalling helicopters or submarines to drop special agents who were to have stayed in their homes while mounting sabotage operations against the communists

Google