It also reported that Pino Rauti, former leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party, journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from a press officer at the US embassy in Rome. ", in, This page was last edited on 21 February 2021, at 22:55. This one looks at Europe in 2021. This was denied by the US State Department, who responded that "the Greek terrorist organization '17 November' was responsible for both assassinations", and that Grivas's central piece of evidence had been the Westmoreland Field Manual which the state department, as well as an independent congressional inquiry, have alleged to be a Soviet forgery. These representatives of the secret structures met every year in one of the capitals... At the stay-behind meetings representatives of the CIA were always present. "[80], According to General Fausto Fortunato, head of Italian SISMI from 1971 to 1974, France and the US had backed Spain's entrance to Gladio, but Italy would have opposed it. He gave to the Commissione Stragi[38] a list of 622 civilians who according to him were part of Gladio. "[60]:221, Arrested and then exiled in Canada and Sweden, Andreas Papandreou later returned to Greece, where he won the 1981 election, forming the first socialist government of Greece's post-war history. "[97] In a mostly positive review for the journal Cold War History, Beatrice Heuser praises Ganser's "fascinating study" while also noting that "it would definitely have improved the work if Ganser had used a less polemical tone, and had occasionally conceded that the Soviet Empire was by no means nicer. [17] A 2000 Italian parliamentary inquiry later reported that terrorist massacres and bombings had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions who were linked to American intelligence. In 1945, Interior Minister Yrjö Leino exposed a secret stay-behind army which was closed down (so-called Weapons Cache Case). One fellow "spymaster" had kept the radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the engineering test call every four months, on the grounds that the equipment was too "valuable" to remain in civilian hands. "[45] Next to the CPC a second secret command post was created in 1957, the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). "[32], The Italian NATO stay-behind organization, dubbed "Gladio", was set up under Minister of Defense (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani's (DC) supervision. It was located in a park near Scheveningen. P-26 was led by Efrem Cattelan, known to British intelligence. The alleged Soviet-authored forgery, disseminated in the 1970s, explicitly formulated the need for a "strategy of tension" involving violent attacks blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It was modeled on the nation's World War II experiences of having to evacuate the royal family and transfer government to a government-in-exile,[65] originally aiming to provide an underground intelligence network to a government-in-exile in the event of a foreign invasion, although it included elements of guerilla warfare. This concerned SB, Psywar and Counter Intelligence." Finnish Defence Minister Elisabeth Rehn called the revelations "a fairy tale", adding cautiously "or at least an incredible story, of which I know nothing. [13] Salvini said that the American services encouraged them to commit atrocities. Marshals rescued 26 children in the state of Georgia after a two-week operation. While this network was allegedly never put in place, Finnish codes, SIGINT equipment and documents were brought to Sweden and apparently exploited until the 1980s.[76]. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues—and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp, a former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi". He was living in comfortable exile in the US, where he maintained links with the Rand Corporation. “Of the 33 children recovered, eight were being sexually exploited at the time of recovery. But former MP, Helmut Hubacher, President of the Social Democratic Party from 1975 to 1990, declared that although it had been known that "special services" existed within the army, as a politician he never at any time could have known that P-26 was behind this. In Austria, the first secret stay-behind army was exposed in 1947. Britain's Got Talent 2021 has been scrapped until the autumn as COVID-19 lockdown scuppered plans for nationwide auditions.. The Gladio File: did fear of communism throw West into the arms of terrorists? [28], The existence of these clandestine NATO units remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. Austrian President Thomas Klestil and Chancellor Franz Vranitzky insisted that they had known nothing of the existence of the secret army and demanded that the US launch a full-scale investigation into the violation of Austria's neutrality, which was denied by President Bill Clinton. [23] According to The Guardian, "P-26 was backed by P-27, a private foreign intelligence agency funded partly by the government, and by a special unit of Swiss army intelligence which had built up files on nearly 8,000 "suspect persons" including "leftists", "bill stickers", "Jehovah's witnesses", people with "abnormal tendencies" and anti-nuclear demonstrators. The same week, Anthony Farrar-Hockley, former commander-in-chief of NATO's Forces in Northern Europe from 1979 to 1982, declared to The Guardian that a secret arms network was established in Britain after the war. [70][page needed], In 1978, the police discovered an arms cache and radio equipment at a mountain cabin and arrested Hans Otto Meyer, a businessman accused of being involved in selling illegal alcohol. In 1978, William Colby, former director of the CIA, released his memoirs in which he described the setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia:[49]. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries. [52][53], La Rose des Vents and Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow") network were part of Gladio. The FBI said that, as of November 2020, the bureau had more than 1,800 open trafficking investigations and leads 86 Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Forces across the country. However, six years later, the Boston Globe revealed the existence of secret CIA arms caches in Austria. In November, Guy Coëme, the Minister of the Defense, acknowledged the existence of a Belgian "stay-behind" army, raising concerns about a similar implication in terrorist acts as in Italy. Shop comforters featuring original art of your favorite thing made by artists who love that thing too. According to a November 13, 1990, Reuters cable,[31] "André Moyen – a former member of the Belgian military security service and of the [stay-behind] network – said Gladio was not just anti-Communist but was for fighting subversion in general. It stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." Despite a year filled with hardships stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Samaritan’s Purse was able to push forward with its annual Operation Christmas Child event, which works to provide shoeboxes filled with small toys, hygiene items, and school supplies to children across the globe. What went wrong is that successive Washington administrations simply decided not to talk to the Austrian government about it. CIA documents released in June 2006 under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, show that the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of German agents between 1949 and 1953. "The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press. According to Felix Würsten of the ETH Zurich, "P-26 was not directly involved in the network of NATO's secret armies but it had close contact to MI6. Ganser alleges that on various occasions, stay-behind movements became linked to right-wing terrorism, crime and attempted coups d'état. And if yes, was it part of NATO's stay-behind network? "[96], Lawrence Kaplan wrote a mixed review commending Ganser for making "heroic efforts to tease out the many strands that connect this interlocking right-wing conspiracy", but also arguing that "connecting the dots between terrorist organizations in NATO countries and a master plan centred in NATO's military headquarters requires a stretch of facts that Ganser cannot manage." After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after France's official withdrawal from the NATO military organization – but not from NATO – which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements.[26]. Another motive might be to acquire access to new victim networks in order to resume operation in … According to the Belgian Parliamentary Committee on Gladio, the ACC was "responsible for coordinating the 'Stay-behind' networks in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States". Two were recovered multiple times during the operation while on the “track,” a common term used to describe a known location for commercial sex trafficking. In August 2020, U.S. A network of resistance fighters was formed across Britain and arms caches were established. Italy insisted identical clandestine units had also existed in all other countries of Western Europe. "Unknown to the Swiss government, British officials signed agreements with P-26 to provide training in combat, communications, and sabotage. [4][5][6][7] Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. "[94] Olav Riste of the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, writing for the journal Intelligence and National Security, mentions several instances where his own research on the stay-behind network in Norway was twisted by Ganser and concludes that "a detailed refutation of the many unfounded allegations that Ganser accepts as historical findings would fill an entire book. André Moyen, former Belgian secret agent, also declared that Gladio had operated in Spain. It found that P-26 was without "political or legal legitimacy", and described the group's collaboration with British secret services as "intense". Marshals Service this year, we have also recovered more than 440 kids in Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana and other states. Operation Opera (Hebrew: מבצע אופרה ‎), also known as Operation Babylon, was a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on 7 June 1981, which destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometres (11 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. [23] Following Giulio Andreotti's October 1990 revelations, General John Hackett, former commander-in-chief of the British Army on the Rhine, declared on November 16, 1990, that a contingency plan involving "stay behind and resistance in depth" was drawn up after the war. He was later found in his house, stabbed with his own bayonet. “Several other victims located had been sexually exploited in the past and were considered vulnerable missing children prior to their recovery. 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 public phone book by Juretzko. [86] He said that Gladio had bases in Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastián, and the Canary islands. According to the Washington Post, "One network included at least two former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. In 1958, NATO founded the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare. [23][47], New legislation governing intelligence agencies' missions and methods was passed in 1998, following two government inquiries and the creation of a permanent parliamentary committee in 1991, which was to bring them under the authority of Belgium's federal agencies. The former director of DGSE, admiral Pierre Lacoste, alleged in a 1992 interview with The Nation, that certain elements from the network were involved in terrorist activities against de Gaulle and his Algerian policy. In 1947, Interior Minister Édouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". We installed communication centres in several regions of Austria", confirming that "special units were trained in the use of weapons and plastic explosives". Cicuttini was a naturalized Spaniard and exiled in Spain since 1972 (date of the Peteano bombing). [77] According to a report by the Italian CESIS (Executive Committee for Intelligence and Security Services), Carlo Cicuttini (who took part in the 1972 Peteano bombing in Italy alongside Vincenzo Vinciguerra), participated in the 1977 Massacre of Atocha in Madrid, killing five people (including several lawyers), members of the Workers' Commissions trade-unions closely linked with the Spanish Communist Party. The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe. [18] [57], When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the country's special forces, LOK (Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn, i.e., "mountain raiding companies"), were integrated into the European stay-behind network. The network was allegedly disbanded in 1944; some of its members subsequently joined the Special Air Service and saw action in North-West Europe. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited, whether in Italy or in other European countries. The ACC's duties included elaborating on the directives of the network, developing its clandestine capability, and organizing bases in Britain and the United States. [65] A Dutch investigative television program revealed on 9 September 2007, that another arms cache that had belonged to Gladio had been ransacked in the 1980s. Under the command of paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides, LOK took control of the Greek Defence Ministry while Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos gained control of communication centers, parliament, the royal palace, and according to detailed lists, arrested over 10,000 people. Andreotti declared that the Italian military services (predecessors of the SISMI) had joined in 1964 the Allied Clandestine Committee created in 1957 by the US, France, Belgium and Greece, and which was in charge of directing Gladio's operations. “While this Virginia operation is the most recent recovery of endangered and missing children led by the U.S. [65] Members of the cell are believed to have taken part in a training exercise in Sicily. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member. A new jab to tackle the mutated Kent coronavirus variant could be ready by autumn, Oxford vaccine developers have said.. 'So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome.' "[59], According to historian Daniele Ganser, LOK was involved in the military coup d'état on 21 April 1967,[60]:221 which took place one month before the scheduled national elections for which opinion polls predicted an overwhelming victory of the centrist Center Union of George and Andreas Papandreou. The latest agreement was signed in 1987... P-26 cadres participated regularly in training exercises in Britain... British advisers – possibly from the SAS – visited secret training establishments in Switzerland." This operation was organized by Finnish general staff officers (without foreign help) in 1944 to hide weapons in order to sustain large-scale guerrilla warfare in the event the Soviet Union tried to occupy Finland in following the end of combat on the Finnish-Soviet front of WWII. [16], Swiss historian Daniele Ganser in his 2005 book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe,[60] accused Gladio of trying to influence policies through the means of false flag operations and a strategy of tension. [78], Following Andreotti's 1990 revelations, Adolfo Suárez, Spain's first democratically elected prime minister after Franco's death, denied ever having heard of Gladio. He added that his predecessor had given Gladio 142 million francs ($4.6 millions) to buy new radio equipment. [90], Peer Henrik Hansen, a scholar at Roskilde University, wrote two scathing criticisms of the book for the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and the Journal of Intelligence History, describing Ganser's work as "a journalistic book with a big spoonful of conspiracy theories" that "fails to present proof of and an in-depth explanation of the claimed conspiracy between USA, CIA, NATO and the European countries." Franz Olah set up a new secret army codenamed Österreichischer Wander-, Sport- und Geselligkeitsverein (OeWSGV, literally "Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society"), with the cooperation of MI6 and the CIA. [72], The counter-guerrillas' existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit.[73]. It is not uncommon for victims who are rescued to return to commercial sex trafficking either voluntarily or by force, fraud, or coercion. [12], If Gladio was "the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II",[29] it must be underlined, however, that on several occasions, arms caches were discovered and stay-behind paramilitary organizations officially dissolved. [55], US intelligence also assisted in the set up of a German stay-behind network. SHAPE denied these allegations. Grossouvre would have asked Constantin Melnik, leader of the French secret services during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), to return to activity. The operation led to 179 arrests that were made by the Central Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force. [68][69], In 1957, the director of the secret service NIS, Vilhelm Evang, protested strongly against the pro-active intelligence activities at AFNORTH, as described by the chairman of CPC: "[NIS] was extremely worried about activities carried out by officers at KolsÃ¥s. [62] The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in the case of Richard Welch, "Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials" while "Sheepskin" couldn't have assassinated Stephen Saunders for the simple reason that, according to the US government, "the Greek government stated it dismantled the 'stay behind' network in 1988. In a statement, … [54] François de Grossouvre was Gladio's leader for the region around Lyon in France until his alleged suicide on April 7, 1994. The resort has joined the UK-wide campaign Operation Recuperation, which was launched in March 2020 by Rachel Sherwood to give healthcare workers "a light at the end of the Covid … Hansen also criticized Ganser for basing his "claim of the big conspiracy" on US Army Field Manual 30-31B, a supposed Cold War-era forged document. [13] Salvini said: "The role of the Americans was ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities". [83] Alberto Vollo also declared that as a Gladio operative, he had received trainings in Maspalomas, on Gran Canaria in the 1960s and the 1970s. “While this operation surged resources over a limited period of time with great success, the FBI and our partners investigate child sex trafficking every day of the year and around the clock.”. In the other set of countries, CIA would have to do the job alone or with, at best, "unofficial" local help, since the politics of those governments barred them from collaborating with NATO, and any exposure would arouse immediate protest from the local Communist press, Soviet diplomats and loyal Scandinavians who hoped that neutrality or nonalignment would allow them to slip through a World War III unharmed. [citation needed], Already in 1990, it was known that the weapons cache near Velp, while accidentally 'discovered' in 1983, had been plundered partially before. These nets had to be co-ordinated with NATO's plans, their radios had to be hooked to a future exile location, and the specialised equipment had to be secured from CIA and secretly cached in snowy hideouts for later use. [21] The network, which became known as the Auxiliary Units, was headed by Major Colin Gubbins – an expert in guerrilla warfare (who would later lead SOE). No links between them and terrorist attacks were found, and the inquiry noted that the Belgian secret services refused to provide the identity of agents, which could have eliminated all doubts. Rolf Hansen, defence minister at that time, stated the network was not in any way answerable to NATO and had no CIA connection. Meyer claimed that the weapons were supplied by Norwegian intelligence. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind in enemy-controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations. The stay-behind armies were created with the experience and involvement of former SOE officers. Constantin Melnik is alleged to have been involved in the creation in 1952 of the Ordre Souverain du Temple Solaire, an ancestor of the Order of the Solar Temple, created by former A.M.O.R.C. [24], In 1976, the secret service BND secretary Heidrun Hofer was arrested after having revealed the secrets of the German stay-behind army to her husband, who was a spy of the KGB. The US State Department published a communiqué in January 2006 that, while confirming the existence of NATO stay-behind efforts, in general, and the presence of the "Gladio" stay-behind unit in Italy, in particular, with the purpose of aiding resistance in the event of Soviet aggression directed westward, from the Warsaw Pact, dismissed claims of any United States ordered, supported, or authorized terrorism by stay-behind units.

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