None Dare Call It Conspiracy #1

[Cain]

From the 1950s through to the late 1980s, Italy was in the grip of a frenzied and violent terrorist campaign, the likes of which few western democracies have ever endured*.

The bombings were small scale at first, and mysterious in their origins.  As the years rolled by, and minor players in these plots were apprehended, it became more and more clear that Italian civil society was being targeted by neo-Fascist organizations.  Bitter at the death of Il Duce, the loss of the war and the subsequent occupation by American forces, Italian nationalists carried out small raids, shootings and bombings, in addition to many acts of sabotage.

But as the 60s rolled around, the violence had undergone a qualitative change.  The bombings became more prolific, more violent and more obviously targeted.  The far left also took up arms, partly in response to an economic recession that left many University educated students unemployed but with heads filled with Marxist rhetoric, and partly because the far left bore the brunts of the far right's terrorist tactics. 

As the 60s dragged into the 70s, the violence became ever more extreme.  Journalists were assassinated frequently, as were state prosecutors and judges.  Even the Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and murdered.  The violence threatened to spiral out of control, as the terrorist groups relinquished all attempts at strategic moderation, and bombed and killed almost indiscriminately.  It was now the far left who carried out the majority of the attacks, though the right was still present in various forms.

What was widely suspected, but unprovable at the time, was that both the far right and the far left were being armed, directed and in some cases directly controlled by elements of the Italian state security, to achieve domestic policy goals and secure the centre-right Christian Democrats against both a Communist-Socialist alliance and a Fascist-Nationalist alliance (the Christian Democrats included many "reformed" Fascists amongst their number, it should be pointed out, but they were really were moderate, when compared to some in the Italian Neo-Fascist movement).  Even more worryingly, some of the terrorists seemed to have international connections which informed their activities.

Italy was not the only one to suffer mysterious and violent terrorist attacks, either.  The assassination of Julian Lahut, the charismatic leader of the Belgian Communist Party in August 1950, was only the first in a rash of unsolved murders and bombings in the country.  While secret service ties cannot be definitely linked to Lahut's death, that the Belgian stay-behind group was operational at the time is unquestionable. 

A number of weapons went missing from a Belgian police station that had been taking part in a NATO training exercise.  A Belgian Gladio trooper and a number of US marines were due to the attack the station, but were stood down at the last minute.  Yet someone attacked the base, killing a warrant officer, and taking a number of weapons which later ended up in the hands of supposed left-wing terrorists, the Communist Fighting Cells (whose leader, nevertheless, was also involved heavily in far-right terrorism).  The government insisted that the attack had been the work of unspecified "terrorists".

There were also the Brabant Massacres, 16 armed assaults on supermarkets, shops and factories in the area around Brussels, which occurred between 1983 and 1985.  Masked killers assaulted these areas, taking paltry sums of money, which were later found dumped.  They were especially brutal in their methods, and seemed to take a certain delight in ambushing and killing police officers.  Belgian Senators investigating these attacks requested names from the Belgian stay-behind forces, but their request was declined.  Evidence emerged in subsequent investigations that the killers may have been members of a far-right paramilitary group, cooperating with the secret soldiers to destabilize the Belgian government in preparation for a right-wing coup.  The group suspected was the Westland New Post, which was made up of Gendarmerie officers who were members of the far-right Front de la Jeunesse.  Martial Lekeu, a member of the WNP, testified that elements of the security services were involved, which the Belgian parliament agreed with.  That the WNP had previously stolen sensitive NATO and Belgian army documents, yet were acquitted by military courts, and claimed they had been given the documentation, leads further credence to these accusations of state sponsorship.

In West Germany, from the early 1950s, large numbers of men, many former Waffen-SS, or else German military with Neo-Nazi tendencies, were being trained in paramilitary and sabotage techniques by a mysterious American, referred to only by the name Mr Garton.  A repentant member of the group gave himself up to the German police, telling them he was part of a "political resistance group" that was being trained to resist a potential Soviet invasion, which he agreed with, but he felt alienated by the "terrorist preparations" the group was undertaking.  This group was not only to target Soviet troops in the case of invasion, but also undertake activities against the KPD and SPD, the Communist and Socialist parties of Germany.  Police raids led to large quantities of arms being seized, along with assassination lists drawn up for "day X", presumably the date of a Soviet invasion.  This list included not only Communists, but members of the more moderate, and politically popular, SPD, and left-leaning journalists as well.  Nevertheless, the Supreme Court demanded the release of all men arrested by the investigation of the clandestine group.

Confirmation of a secret network of covert partisans operating in Germany also comes from a most unexpected source – reports in the KGB's archives.  The common language and culture of East and West Germany made each nation's intelligence services far easier than normal to infiltrate, and Soviet records confirm the existence of parallel network hiding within NATO and West German intelligence.

Another chief scandal was the discovery of up to 34 arms caches in the forests near the village of Uelzen.  The caches were huge, holding over 14,000 rounds of ammunition, 156kg of explosives, 50 anti-tank guns and over 500 anti-personnel devices and grenades.  That such weapons could have been acquired legitimately is impossible, yet there were no reports of thefts or misappropriated equipment from German or American military depots.  After the first cache was unearthed by forest workers, police arrested a far-right militant by the name of Heinz Lembke, who led them to the rest, and it was claimed all of them belonged to him and his militant group.

Some of the stash of weapons had been used, though, regardless of their provenance.  In 1980, terrorists detonated a bomb during the Oktoberfest, the annual beer festival in Munich, killing 13. The bomb was highly sophisticated, and in the opinion of the investigators far beyond the skill of the supposed bomb-maker, who conveniently was one of the 13 killed by his device.  It was discovered, in the light of these arms caches, that some of the material for that bomb had come from these weapons that the right-wing terrorist, Lembke, knew about. 

In Greece, the US had had a powerful presence since the Greek Civil War, in which US and British assistance had been a critical factor, and indeed supplied the prototype for American interventions throughout the Cold War.  In particular, the Americans supported a far-right paramilitary force known as the Hellenic Raiding Group during the conflict.  After it ended, as with other NATO partners, US assistance meant shared intelligence collecting and military cooperation.  Much of this involved coordinated activity against leftists in the country.

But in 1963, the right's stranglehold on power was broken by a centre-left coalition, led by George Papandreou.  Working with the King, royalists, right-wing military officers and Greek intelligence, the CIA Chief of Station, Jack Maury, conspired successfully to order Papandreou out of office via royal perogative.  While this only got rid of the man himself, a series of bomb attacks, carried out by members of the Hellenic Raiding Group, who were themselves advised by a member of Greek intelligence, helped create a climate in which the right could seize power again.  However, the centre-left coalition held on until 1967, with the charismatic leadership of Andreas Papandreou, son of George.  In fact, it was scheduled to have a massive victory in Parliament.

Because of this, elements of the Hellenic Raiding Force took over the Defence Ministry, rolled into Athens and took over.  10,000 people were arrested, including of course members of the ruling coalition.  The constitution was suspended.  People could be arrested without charge, and be brought in front of military tribunals.  Demonstrations and strikes were outlawed.  Torture was routine, indeed systemic.  The regime eventually collapsed, due to a near total lack of internal support, and an ill-planned coup on Cyprus, which helped facilitate the Turkish invasion and partition of the island.

In Portgual, a secret unit going under the unusual name of Aginter Press was set up in 1966.  It was led by Yves Guerin Serac, a French veteran who had also been a member of the OAS terrorist organization.  He quickly set about offering the regime his skills, in return for protection from a vengeful French government, and set up what can only be described as an advanced training school for right-wing terrorists all over Western Europe. 

Serac set down clear guidelines for how the Communist threat had to be confronted.  "In the first phase of our political activity we must create chaos in all structures of the regime.  Two forms of terrorism can provocate such a situation: the blind terrorism , and the selective terrorism.  This destruction of the state must be carried out as much as possible under the cover of "Communist activities".  After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus... Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation."   Serac was even more explicit about the need to infiltrate and manipulate left-wing groups to blame the violence on the Communists.  To this end, Serac's group was heavily funded by Portuguese intelligence and the CIA, and sent to wage war in the colonies.

Their war did not stop in Africa, though.  Aginter Press training materials were found among Italian neofascist terrorists responsible for the Piazza Fontana massacre in 1969, a bloody series of bombings that were initially blamed on Communist groups, despite internal Italian intelligence reports suggesting just the opposite – that it had been carried out by the right, with American support.  Serac's troops also took part in killings in Guatemala, during the "counter-terror" operations of 1968-71.  Aginter agents were also present during the 1973 coup in Chile. 

When the "Revolution of the Flowers", led by a left-leaning faction of the Portuguese military, occurred in 1974, Aginter Press prepared to take over the Azores with regime loyalists and use it to launch a civil war on the mainland.  But for various reasons, their plans went unrealised, and police units were dispatched by the new regime to raid Aginter Press safe-houses.  They were abandoned, almost entirely stripped down.  The remaining few documents showed the clear relationship that existed between Aginter Press, PIDE and the CIA, but as the new regime prepared to publish the documents relating to the organization, the dossier and all related files were somehow stolen, never to be recovered.

Guerin Serac and most of Aginter Press made their way to Spain, and found sanctuary with the Franco regime, where they offered their expertise in terrorism and assassination to be used against ETA in return for protection.  They also undertook a campaign of false-flag bombings, implicating the Algerian opposition in them.  One bomb, in Germany, failed to explode, allowing investigators to get a very good look at it.  They were astonished to discover it was made with C4, a US military explosive, rather than the more crude methods of various "anarchist groups".  When Franco's regime collapsed, Aginter Press fled to Chile, and have not been seen since.   

[Cain]

What could possibly justify this litany of bloodshed and murder?

After World War II, the United States had been deeply worried that the Soviet Union would attempt a covert takeover of Western Europe, using the destruction of WWII and the high respect Communist partisans in many countries had to put them into office – and then keep them there, permanently.  There were official programs to help with propping up European governments after the war, such as the much lauded Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance and various pacts on military-intelligence cooperation.

But there were also more covert programs, designed to use "political, paramilitary and psychological operations", in the words the Pentagon used, to prevent Communist takeover.  From the early 1950s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were adamant that "this objective has to be reached by the employment of all means."  Plans such as Operation Demagnetize, a joint CIA-G2 operation to undermine Communists in Italy and France, were put into play.

However, such plans were not just one-off affairs, set-up under this agent or that at the relevant CIA station, working through the channels to obtain support from government departments and host government groups.  No, there was a structure behind these efforts, a structure build into the very organization of NATO itself.  As NATO itself eventually admitted, a "stay-behind network" - commonly referred to as Gladio, after the nickname of its most well known branch, in Italy – was coordinated by officials in SHAPE, under the control of the Allied Clandestine Committee.  Missions themselves were co-ordinated by a "Special Forces Section", an area set in a separate wing of the NATO headquarters in Casteau, and directed exclusively by American and British officers.

The history of this network precedes even the Atlantic alliance.  As Belgian parliamentary investigations discovered, all nations involved in Gladio were also members of the pre-NATO "Clandestine Committee of the Western Union", which was concerned with the planning of non-orthodox warfare, and was integrated into the NATO command structure after the alliance was created.

It is hard to argue with the conclusions of the Belgian Jan Willems, that "the fight against the internal enemy has been an integral part of the NATO pact ever since it was signed."  It also shows the ease at which techniques to hamper an enemy invasion – which the Gladio troopers were thoroughly trained in – could easily be turned to the purposes of internal terrorism on behalf of either the state, or ideological elements within it.  Gladio troops were frequently kept secret from even their own parliaments, hidden within divisions of the security services or the army/paramilitary police, like Russian dolls, divisions within divisions that only a careful and very suspicious researcher would be able to discern.  Weapons were stored illicitly, agents communicated exclusively via code-name, safe-houses were set up and troops were divided into cells.

These secret soldiers did not only take orders from NATO, though they were a part of its command structure, but also could be used for other "activities" as required by their member state, such as the Belgian and Portuguese Gladio troops used for training soldiers in Zaire and Rwanda.  Their primary purpose, built into the nature of their recruitment, was however severe anti-Communism, with a willingness to carry out orders, whatever they may be.

Such a combination could only ever lead to the outcome that it did.  This does raise several rather uncomfortable questions about European democracies, though.

In states where broadly sympathetic parties to Communism did not obtain power, or were not close to it, these Gladio troopers were much less violent.  The Netherlands and Denmark come to mind.  While they undertook worryingly political activities, such as spying on "subversive" groups and attempting to manipulate them at times, they did not cross the line into terrorist violence.    Yet, in countries with strong and popular Communist parties, like Italy, the political violence was immense.  At worst, elements of the secret armies colluded in military coups in Greece and Turkey, and immediately went about creating horrific and authoritarian regimes, which routinely undertook torture of political prisoners, and the assassination of members of the opposition. 

Furthermore, the especially Fascist nature of these soldiers cannot be denied.  While, again, some of the more restrained Gladio networks preferred to recruit from more traditionally religious and conservative backgrounds, such as Denmark again, in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Belgium and others, clear preference was given to training and arming neofascists.  There also appears to have been a tacit policy or at least toleration of these Gladio troopers sharing their expertise and weapons with outright terrorist organizations.

That no-one has been criminally prosecuted for these organizations since their existence was revealed in the early 1990s is also a cause for concern.  Each stay-behind unit seemed to prefer to destroy their records than open them up to democratic accountability, which is in keeping with their general contempt for democracy at all (given many of these units were not even openly known to exist by their respective parliaments).

Underlying all of this is the strong suggestion that European powers are nothing but mere satraps of American-British interests.  If European countries are not truly free to choose their own governments and determine their own politics, then how free are they, really?  America and Britain ran the stay-behind networks.  They determined their overall policies and missions, they spent the money on arming them and hiding them from democratic accountability.  There is a strong whiff of Kissingerian "we will not allow these countries to go Communist through the stupidity of their own citizens" vibe to all of this.  No, not Communist, but they will allow them to go fascist, or military-authoritarian. 

These questions are not merely academic, of interest to the historian.  The Turkish secret state continued well into the 1990s and, if you believe the theories of its current Prime Minister (which are somewhat more questionable) it continues to exist to this day, albeit supported by Russian Eurasianists rather than Americans.  The Greek financial crisis can be linked back to the fascist junta, and the freely given loans it passed out to political cronies and front organizations of their own businesses.  In 2005, the Italian press revealed the existence of the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies, a parallel intelligence network set up by former members of Gladio.  Wiretaps showed it had been planning the kidnap of a prominent Communist activist, and one of its members was killed undertaking unspecified activities in Iraq.  And the Norwegian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, alluded strongly to Gladio when, upon arrest, he claimed to be a member of "anti-Communist resistance forces".

We live in a world where, at the very least, we have to live with the consequences of this network and its many hidden actors.  It has also opened up the possibility of "occupation on the cheap".  Rather than station tens of thousands of troops in a nation, as the Soviets did with their Warsaw Pact "allies", instead, use a sophisticated method of divide and rule to keep them at each other's throats, and weaken the primary threat, who might otherwise seize control of the machinery of the state.  This method appears to have been replicated in Uzbekistan and possibly Iraq.  And so long as it continues to work, it will continue to be used.







* The particular case of Italy merits special interest, because Gladio was not the only covert actor at work there, and indeed, works well as an example of how foreign interference, organized crime, ambition and secret societies can effectively neutralize what is, in theory, a functioning liberal democracy.  This will be dealt with in a future instalment.

[Doktor Howl]

Aginter Press training materials were found among Italian neofascist terrorists responsible for the Piazza Fontana massacre in 1969,

Just wiki'd this one.

Jesus, the way the police acted afterward (including an anarchist that "jumped out of a 4th floor window" during a "routine interrogation" that occurred long after he was supposed to have seen a judge) would lead anyone to smell a rat of some kind.

[Cain]

Yeah, the most generous interpretation of those years is that the Italian police had incredibly inferior training and a perculiar set of priorities.

[Doktor Howl]

Yeah, the most generous interpretation of those years is that the Italian police had incredibly inferior training and a perculiar set of priorities.

I think they just wanted a patsy that couldn't deny the charges due to being dead.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Jesus fuck.

There's a lot of info here that I've never heard before. I think this series is going to cause me to go on long google/wikipedia jaunts.

[East Coast Hustle]

Wow, that's alot to absorb but it's incredibly interesting. Thanks for posting this.

[Cain]

Bump.  Part 3 coming shortly.  It was unfortunately delayed, because a particular book I needed took forever in arriving.  As in, I ordered it towards the end of March, and just got it today.