A Commentary by Lance Freeman:
At a time when NATO is preparing for an expanded ‘War on Terror’, in the aftermath of 'Charlie Hebdo' and other terrorist activity in the EU, NATO'S secret history makes it abundantly clear that the alliance has always had links to terrorism.
In Italy, on August 3, 1990, then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the existence of a secret army, code-named ‘Gladio’ (the Latin word for ‘sword’) within the state. His testimony before the Senate sub-committee investigating terrorism in Italy sent shock waves through the Italian Parliament and the public, as speculation arose that the secret army had possibly manipulated Italian politics through acts of terrorism. Andreotti revealed that the secret Gladio army had been hidden within the Defense Ministry as a sub-section of the military’s intelligence arm (SISMI).
According to a document compiled by Italian military intelligence in 1959, the secret armies had a two-fold strategic purpose: first, to operate as a so-called ‘stay-behind’ group in case of a Soviet invasion and to carry out a guerilla war in the occupied territories; and second, to carry out domestic operations in case of ‘emergency situations’.
Felice Casson, an Italian judge who during his investigation into right-wing terrorism had first discovered the secret Gladio army, found that the secret army had linked up with right-wing terrorists in order to confront ‘emergency situations’. The terrorists, supplied by the secret army, carried out bomb attacks in public places, blamed them on the Italian left and were thereafter protected from prosecution by military intelligence.
As right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explained this cooperative ‘strategy of tension’ to Casson: “The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state and ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened”.
The Italian Senate chose to be more explicit and concluded in its investigation in 2000: “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.”
Upon discovery of the secret armies, the European Parliament responded with harsh criticism, suspecting them to have been involved in manipulation and domestic terror operations.
Dr. Daniele Ganser, senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the ETH in Zurich and author of “NATO’s Secret Armies”, confirms for the first time that the secret networks spread across Western Europe, including Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and involved the strategic planning of Britain and the USA. The ‘stay-behind’ armies were coordinated on an international level by the so-called Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) and the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), linked to NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). And they used cover names such as ‘Absalon’ in Denmark, ‘P26' in Switzerland, ‘ROC’ in Norway, and ‘SDRA8' in Belgium. Interestingly, large differences existed from country to country. In some nations, the secret armies became a source of terror, while in others they remained a prudent precaution.
In Turkey, the ‘Counter-Guerilla’ was involved in domestic terror and torture operations against the Kurds; and in Greece, the ‘LOK’ took part in the 1967 military ‘coup’ to prevent a socialist government. In Spain, the secret army was used to prop up the fascist dictatorship of Franco; and in Germany, right-wing terrorists used the explosives of the secret army in the 1980 terrorist attack in Munich.
In other countries, including Denmark, Norway, and Luxembourg, the secret soldiers prepared for the eventual occupation of their home country and never engaged in domestic terror or manipulation. In the context of the on-going so-called ‘War on Terror’, the Gladio data promotes the sobering insight that governments in the West have sacrificed the lives of innocent citizens and covered up acts of terrorism in order to manipulate the population. Allegations that NATO, the Pentagon, MI6, the CIA, and other European intelligence services have been linked to terror, coup d’etats, and torture are obviously of an extremely sensitive nature, and will require that much more attention be paid to this dark subject by public ‘watchdog’ agencies, as well as senators, journalists, and judges.
More importantly, the American and European populations need to wake up from their deep slumber and face up to the reality that their governments lie to them on an on-going basis, and manipulate them shamelessly in order to pursue nefarious objectives that have nothing to do with their safety or well-being.