Operation Gladio

[RPankn]

Had to steal some of this stuff from DU because it's very relevant to recent events.

Italy probes 'parallel police'

Italian police have launched a big inquiry into a "parallel" intelligence agency, say Italian news reports.

The Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA) was reportedly created after the 2004 Madrid bombings to combat Islamic extremism.

Genoa-based investigators carrying out a probe into the DSSA have arrested two people and placed more than two dozen others under investigation.

Anti-terror squads have also carried out raids in nine Italian regions.

'Regular employees'

Many of those under investigation are said to be employed by regular law-enforcement bodies. Prosecutors believe that DSSA "employees" were sometimes using official police badges and other equipment to carry out their own investigations.

The alleged parallel force is also accused of illegally using the Interior Ministry database for its own purposes.

The DSSA operated its own website, which was disabled after the arrests were reported on Friday morning.

Reports say the site was available in four languages - Italian, English, French and Spanish - and profiled terror organisations as well as urging the public to come forward with information.

Kidnap inquiry

Italian state radio Rai later reported that the two arrested men may have had links with Gladio, the Italian branch of a secret paramilitary network set up in post-war Europe with the backing of the CIA.

There are also reports of a possible connection with a far-right political group. [P2 Lodge?]

The investigation that uncovered the alleged parallel structure is an offspring of a previous inquiry into the death of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four Italians kidnapped in Iraq in April 2004. [Hmmm...this makes me wonder. If I wanted to get the rubes back in the US wringing their hands over Muslims, could I do that by beheading some hapless workers from "coalition" countries?]

Mr Quattrocchi was shot dead by the abductors, while his colleagues were eventually released.


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4640247.stm

[RPankn]

Sword Play: America's Hidden Role as a Sponsor of Terror

February 24, 2005
Chris Floyd / The Moscow Times

Boolstered by the testimony of participants, a new book on Operation Gladio, details a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West. Initially designed to assassinate foreign enemies, these secret armies have been used to seize political power through fear by using terrorism against their own populations.

context.themoscowtimes.com/story/140175/

(February 18, 2005) — 'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West — against their own populations.

Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks — on train stations, supermarkets, cafes and offices — which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents.

The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders — and their elitist cronies.

First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years.

These have been gathered in a new book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.

Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and manipulation, directed by NATO and Washington.

Using right-wing militias, underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds.

A US Manual on Staging Fake Terror Attacks
Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which details the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion."

Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." [Mr. Leeden? A Tony Bliar is on line one for you.]

Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.

Italian, US 'State Institutions' behind Bologna Bombing
Indeed, it would not do for the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the Aug. 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.

The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's masters called "the strategy of tension" — fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat. [Mr. Leeden? A Jose Maria Aznar is on line two.] And, as Rajiva notes, this strategy wasn't limited to Western Europe.

It was applied, with gruesome effectiveness, in Central America by the Reagan and Bush administrations. During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security forces — armed, trained and supplied by the United States — murdered tens of thousands of people throughout the region, often acting with particular savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts seemed about to take hold. [Ok. Now this is freakin scary knowing that Negroponte is now "Intelligence Czar"]

'Saraya Iraqna': First US-backed Death Squad
Last month, it was widely reported that the Pentagon is considering a similar program in Iraq. What was not reported, however -- except in the Iraqi press — is that at least one pro-occupation death squad is already in operation. Just days after the Pentagon plans were revealed, a new militant group, "Saraya Iraqna," began offering big wads of American cash for insurgent scalps — up to $50,000, the Iraqi paper Al Ittihad reports. "Our activity will not be selective," the group promised. In other words, anyone they consider an enemy of the state will be fair game.

Strangely enough, just as it appears that the Pentagon is establishing Gladio-style operations in Iraq, there has been a sudden rash of terrorist attacks on outrageously provocative civilian targets, such as hospitals and schools, the Guardian reports. Coming just after national elections in which the majority faction supported slates calling for a speedy end to the American occupation, the shift toward high-profile civilian slaughter has underscored the "urgent need" for US forces to remain on the scene indefinitely, to provide security against the ever-present terrorist threat.

Meanwhile, the Bushists continue constructing their long-sought permanent bases in Iraq: citadels to protect the oil that incoming Iraqi officials are promising to sell off to American corporations -- and launching pads for new forays in geopolitical domination.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence. But the US elite's history of directing and fomenting terrorist attacks against friendly populations is so extensive — indeed, so ingrained and accepted — that it calls into question the origin of every terrorist act that roils the world. With each fresh atrocity, we're forced to ask: Was it the work of "genuine" terrorists or a "black op" by intelligence agencies — or both?

While not infallible, the ancient Latin question is still the best guide to penetrating the bloody murk of modern terrorism: Cui bono? Who benefits? Whose powers and policies are enhanced by the attack? For it is indisputable that the "strategy of tension" means power and profit for those who claim to possess the key to "security."

And from the halls of the Kremlin to the banks of the Potomac, this cynical strategy is the ruling ideology of our times.

Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
Posted in accordance with Section 107, Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.


www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=2421

[RPankn]

Operation Gladio
from the book The CIAs Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer

The CIA was created by the National Security Act of 1947. The ink was barely dry on it before an army of spooks began marching through the law's major loophole: the CIA could "perform such other functions and duties...as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This deliberately vague clause opened the door to a half-century of criminal activity in the name of "national security."

One of the first duties the NSC deemed necessary was the subversion of Italian democracy...in the name of democracy, of course. Italy seemed likely to elect a leftist government in the 1948 election. To make sure Italians voted instead for the candidates Washington favored-leftover brownshirt thugs from Mussolini's party and other Nazi collaborators-millions of dollars were spent on propaganda and payoffs. It was also intimated that food aid would be cut off if the election results were inconsistent with US desires.

The US got its way in 1948 without having to resort to violence but-as was discovered in 1990- the CIA had organized a secret paramilitary army in postwar Italy, with hidden stockpiles of weapons and explosives dotting the map. Called Operation Gladio (gladius is Latin for sword), the ostensible excuse for it was laughable-the threat of a Soviet invasion. But the real purpose wasn't so funny-Operation Gladio's 15,000 troops were trained to overthrow the Italian government should it stray from the straight and narrow.

Similar secret armies were formed in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany- often directed, quite naturally, by former SS officers. They didn't just wait around for the Russians to come marching in; they assembled huge arms caches (many of which remain unaccounted for), compiled blacklists of leftists and, in France, participated in plots to assassinate President DeGaulle.

Many members of Operation Gladio were also in a shadowy organization known as P-2; it too was financed by the CIA. P-2 had connections with the Vatican and the Mafia, and eventually with an international fascist umbrella organization called the World Anti-Communist League.

One of P-2's specialties was the art of provocation. Leftist organizations like the Red Brigades were infiltrated, financed and / or created, and the resulting acts of terrorism, like the assassination of Italy's premier in 1978 and the bombing of the railway station in Bologna in 1980, were blamed on the left. The goal of this "strategy of tension" was to convince Italian voters that the left was violent and dangerous-by helping make it so.


www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Gladio_CIAHits.html

[RPankn]

THE PROVOCATEUR STATE
Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi "Insurgents"--and Global Terrorism?

by Frank Morales

The requirement of an ever-escalating level of social violence to meet the political and economic needs of the insatiable "anti-terrorist complex" is the essence of the new US militarism. What is now openly billed as "permanent war" ultimately serves the geo-political ends of social control in the interests of US corporate domination, much as the anti-communist crusade of the now-exhasuted Cold War did.

Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--would actually carry out secret missions designed to provoke terrorist groups into committing violent acts. The P2OG, a 100-member, so-called "counter-terrorist" organization with a $100-million-a-year budget, would ostensibly target "terrorist leaders," but according to P2OG documents procured by Arkin, would in fact carry out missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among "terrorist groups"--which, according to the Defense Secretary's logic, would subsequently expose them to "counter-attack" by the good guys. In other words, the plan is to execute secret military operations (assassinations, sabotage, "deception") which would intentionally result in terrorist attacks on innocent people, including Americans--essentially, to "combat terrorism" by causing it!

This notion is currently being applied to the problem of the Iraqi "insurgency," it seems. According to a May 1, 2005 report by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine, two of the top US advisers to Iraqi paramilitary commandos fighting the insurgents are veterans of US counterinsurgency operations in Latin America. Loaning credence to recent media speculation about the "Salvadorization" of Iraq, the report notes that one adviser currently in Iraq is James Steele, who led a team of 55 US Army Special Forces advisers in El Salvador in the 1980s. Maass writes that these advisors "trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses."

The current senior US adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which Maass writes "has operational control over the commandos," is former top US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Steve Casteel, who worked "alongside local forces" in the US-sponsored "Drug War" in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, "where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel."

The US "drug war" in Latin America also serves as a cover for ongoing counterinsurgency, employing terrorist methods to achieve two aims: one, actually combating genuine insurgency; two, the ratcheting up of a "strategy of tension," heightened social violence designed to induce fear among the citizenry and the subsequent call for greater "security."

This was the essence, for example, of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of provocateur-style terrorism and deceit. The ostensible purpose of Gladio, officially launched as a covert NATO program in 1952, was to establish a clandestine network of "stay-behind" teams which would organize armed resistance and sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the network actually took a far more proactive role. Directed by US/NATO intelligence services of the West against their own populations, Operation Gladio led to possibly hundreds of innocent people being killed or maimed in "terrorist" attacks which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The most notorious such attack was the 1980 bombing of the train station at Bologna, which left 85 dead. Initially blamed on left-wing radicals, the blast was revealed upon investigation to be the work of an ultra-right network linked to the Italy's Gladio team; four Italian neo-fascists were eventually convicted of the crime.

The purpose was again twofold: to demonize designated enemies (the "communists") and to frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for the national security state. It appears the Pentagon has been implementing Gladio-style operations for quite some time--possibly including 9-11. A stretch? Maybe not.

Witness the US Joint Chiefs discussion of "Operation Northwoods" back in 1962, a plan to blow up U.S. "assets"--including U.S. citizens--in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Later, US Army Field Manual 30-31B, entitled "Stability Operations Intelligence - Special Fields," dated March 18, 1970 and signed by Gen. William C Westmoreland, promoted terrorist attacks (and the planting of false evidence) in public places which were then to be blamed on "communists" and "socialists." It called for the execution of terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, carried out through a network of covert US/NATO armies, in order to convince European governments of "the communist threat."

What's striking is that during this period the primary source for US government info on the Russian "threat" was coming from the Gehlen Organiation, Hitlers eastern front intelligence apparatus, which in the aftermath of World War II had cut a deal with the CIA's Allen Dulles and worked out of Fort Hunt, just outside Washington DC, before being relocated back to Munich. Headed up by super-spy Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the Org's "special operations" expertise was heeded, financed and well-protected by U.S. tax dollars well into the 1970's. Could the Gehlen Org have had an influence in the production of FM 30-31B?

According to FM 30-31B, "there may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger."

The U.S. Army now claims the document was a Russian forgery. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and US/NATO "special operations" terrorism, asked Ray Cline, CIA deputy director from 1962 to 1966, if he believed FM 30-31B was for real and he replied: "Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it's the kind of special forces military operations that are described," to be implemented at the discretion of the president and Defense Department on the "appropriate occasion."

It could be that in Iraq--and elsewhere around the world--the "appropriate occasion" has arrived. Bush's war on terrorism could be the ultimate manifestation of the provocateur state; carrying out of clandestine "executive actions" and "special operations" directed against populations, including our own, who are truly ignorant of the real "enemy" in the face of the ever-present manufactured one, traumatized by strategic terror designed to engender fear and acquiescence to further "security measures"--thereby enriching the military, police agencies, and munitions and nuclear business enterprises.

RESOURCES:

Peter Maass, "The Salvadorization of Iraq?," New York Times Magazine, May
1, 2005.

A.K. Gupta, "Unraveling Iraq's Secret Militias," Z Magazine, May 2005

Lila Rajiva, "The Pentagon's 'NATO Option'," CommonDreams, Feb. 10, 2005.

Statewatch Briefing on Operation Gladio

US Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Operation Northwoods", 1962

National Security Archives on Operation Northwoods

US Army, Field Manual 30-31B, 1970

FM 30-31B excerpts from Cryptome.org

WW4 REPORT #58 on P2OG

Frank Morales, "John Negroponte and the Death Squad Connection," WW4 REPORT #108

------------------

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

WW4Report.com


www.ww4report.com/node/457

[RPankn]

4. PENTAGON PLANS "SECRET WAR"

In what may be the largest expansion of covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era, the Bush administration has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black world" to pursue the War on Terrorism, defense analyst William M. Arkin wrote in the LA Times Oct. 27. Arkin states that the Pentagon is building up an "elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities." Officials say the increasingly dominant role of the military reflects both frustration with civilian intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the desire of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "to gain greater overall control of the war on terror." Outlining the new strategy, Rumsfeld said in May: "Prevention and preemption are... the only defense against terrorism. Our task is to find and destroy the enemy before they strike us."

Development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, which sparked creation of the Army's Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). Established in 1981, this secret unit fought in drug wars and counter-terror operations from the Middle East to South America, building "a reputation for daring, flexibility and a degree of lawlessness." In May 1982, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci called the ISA "uncoordinated and uncontrolled." Though its freelance tendencies were curbed, the ISA continued to operate, including deep-cover mission in Bosnia and Somalia. The ISA today operates under the code-name Gray Fox. In addition to covert operations, it provides the kind of "close-in" signals monitoring--including interception of cell phone conversations--that helped bring down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Gray Fox's eavesdropping planes fly without military markings. Coordinating closely with Special Forces and the CIA, Gray Fox also places operatives inside hostile territory. In Afghanistan, Gray Fox was part of a secret operations groups that included the CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command. An Army brigadier general at Bagram air base commands the Joint Interagency Task Force, coordinating CIA, Pentagon and coalition forces in Afghanistan. A new Campaign Support Group has been established at Ft. Bragg, NC, and a Special Operations Joint Interagency Collaboration Center in Tampa, FLA.

The North Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as Delta Force, is still so secret that it is not officially acknowledged to exist. Its two-star commander, Army Maj. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, who spent much of the Afghan war in Oman, has no public biography. Arkin writes that Dailey's assets include a fleet of aircraft specially equipped for secret operations--conventional and covert military planes and helicopters, and even former Soviet choppers. The bulk of those craft, including the reconfigured Russian choppers, fly from airfields in Uzbekistan and from two Pakistani air bases, Shahbaz and Shamsi.

Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism says in its classified "outbrief"--drafted to guide other Pentagon agencies--that the War on Terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and organization." The board recommends creation of a "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" to coordinate CIA and Pentagon covert action. Among other things, this body would conduct operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction--for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by US forces. Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk," the briefing paper declares. (LAT, Oct. 27)


www.ww3report.com/58.html#shadows4

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VO: To persuade the President (Reagan), the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don’t know what their motive was. I mean, I don’t know what people’s motives are, hardly ever. And I don’t much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn’t exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

VO: In the end, Casey found a university professor who described himself as a terror expert, and he produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist. Under such intense lobbying, Reagan agreed to give the neoconservatives what they wanted, and in 1983 he signed a secret document that fundamentally changed American foreign policy. The country would now fund covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world.


www.billstclair.com/nightmares/11.html

[RPankn]

Look into the face of evil.

Michael A. Ledeen

American Enterprise Institute: Resident Scholar
Coalition for Democracy in Iran: Cofounder
American Spectator: Foreign Editor

last updated: 11/22/2003

Institutional Affiliations
American Enterprise Institute: Resident Scholar (1)
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: Member, Board of Advisors (4)
Coalition for Democracy in Iran: Co-founder (10)
American Spectator: Foreign Editor (4)
The New Republic: Rome Correspondent (1975-1977) (1)
Washington Quarterly: Founding Editor (3)
National Review Online: Contributing Editor (3)
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon: Golden Circle Supporter (7)
Benador Associates: Speakers bureau
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): Senior Fellow (1982-86)/Senior Staff Member (1977-1981) (1)
University of Rome, Italy: Visiting Professor of History (1975-1977) (1)
Washington University: Instructor and Assistant Professor of History (1967-1974) (1)
American Committee for Peace in Chechnya: Member

Government Service
U.S.-China Commission: Vice Chairman (1)
Department of State: Consultant, Under Secretary of Political Affairs (1982-86) (2)
Department of Defense: Consultant, Office of the Secretary (1982-86) (2)
White House: Consultant, National Security Advisor to the President (1982-86) (2)
Department of State: Special Advisor to the Secretary (1981-82) (1)

Education
University of Wisconsin: Ph.D., history and philosophy (1)
University of Wisconsin: M.S., history and philosophy (1)
Pomona College: B.A. (1)

Highlights & Quotes
Michael Ledeen, the neocons' point man on regime change in Iran (and in Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia), is apparently capable of viewing diplomacy only through the barrel of a gun, arguing in a November 2003 piece for the National Review Online that the "appeasers" in Congress and the State Department "don't want to know about Iran, because if they did, they would be driven to take actions that they do not want to take. They would have to support democratic revolution in Iran, and they prefer to schmooze with the mullahs." He concludes, "I guess some top official will have to die at the hands of (obviously) Iranian-supported terrorists before the Pentagon is permitted to work on the subject." (8)

Commenting on Ledeen's screed, Anthony Gancarski of Antiwar.com wrote, "[Ledeen] talks of military confrontation with Iran, which will be ugly like nothing since the Korean war, like he's a frat boy trying to get laid. Ledeen is a risible presence on the American scene, and this column hopes that his enemies in Washington find a way to take him to task for reckless, foolish talk that will lead to the death of more Americans and further diffusion of the Administration's credibility." (9)

Ledeen has a colorful track record, which has produced substantial grist for the conspiracy mill: He was allegedly tied to the Italian P2 Masonic Lodge, a violent right wing group that was involved in a number of terrorists attacks in Italy in the 1970s the 1980s; in the late 1970s, while P2 was doing its dirty work, Ledeen was working as a consultant to Italian intelligence on terrorism issues; as a consultant to the National Security Council in the 1980s, Ledeen acted as a go-between for Oliver North in the early stages of the Iran-Contra affair, working with the Israeli spy David Kimche to gain the release of U.S. hostages in Beirut through an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar; he helped promote the "Bulgarian Connection" theory that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt on the pope in 1981; and, more recently, the Sydney Morning Herald reported (August 8, 2003) that Ledeen worked with Pentagon staffers to redevelop the channel to arms dealer Ghorbanifar in support of resistance efforts in Iran. Reported the Herald: "[Harold] Rhode recently acted as a liaison between [Douglas] Feith's office, which drafted much of the Administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile groomed for leadership by the Pentagon. Mr. Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid 1980s when he introduced Mr. Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a NSC aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-Contra affair. It is understood Mr. Ledeen reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Mr. Feith's staff." (9, 10)

According to his bio page on the web site of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: "Michael A. Ledeen is one of the world's leading authorities on contemporary history and international affairs. In a few years in government, he carried out some of the most sensitive and dangerous missions in recent American history. He has been profiled in the New York Times, and was the subject of a front-page article and a lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal. A profile of him concluded that 'a portrait emerges of a man with an intense knowledge of 20th-century history, a deep commitment to democracy, and a willingness to be adventurous. This is a man who has helped shape American foreign policy at its highest levels.'" (4)

Not one to mince words, Ledeen urged the then-newly installed Bush administration (National Review Online, March 8, 2001) to purge the "environmental whackos, radical feminazos," and "foreign-policy types on the National Security Council Staff and throughout State, CIA, and Defense, who are still trying to create Bill Clinton's legacy in the Middle East."

Ledeen's books include Grave New Worlds and Freedom Betrayed: How the United States Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away. From his book The War against the Terror Masters: "The awesome power of a free society committed to a single mission is something [our enemies] cannot imagine. ... Our unexpectedly quick and impressive victory in Afghanistan is a prelude to a much broader war, which will in all likelihood transform the Middle East for at least a generation, and reshape the politics of many older countries around the world" (quoted in the American Enterprise Institute's 2002 Annual Report).

In addition to his work with the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen has supported or co-founded a number of advocacy groups pushing for a radical transformation of the Middle East, including the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and Ziad Abdelnour's U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sources
(1) American Enterprise Institute: Michael Ledeen
www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.35/scholar.asp

(2) Michael Ledeen Fact Sheet
www.aei.org/docLib/20021205_ledeen.pdf

(3) Benador Associates International Speakers Bureau: Michael Ledeen
www.benadorassociates.com/ledeen.php

(4) JINSA: Michael Ledeen
www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=742

(5) Beeman, William O., "Who is Michael Ledeen?" Pacific News Service, May 8, 2003
www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15860

(6) Michael Ledeen, "US Time to Focus on Iran : The Mother of Modern Terrorism," JINSA
www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1930/documentid/2012/history/3,648,1930,2012

(7) U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon: Golden Circle Supporters
www.freelebanon.org/gc.htm

(8) Michael Ledeen, "Unpunished Failure," National Review Online, November 3, 2003
www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200311030801.asp

(9) Anthony Gancarski, "Michael Ledeen on the Run," Antiwar.com, August 22, 2003
www.antiwar.com/gancarski/gan082203.html

(10) Jim Lobe, "Veteran Neocon Adviser Moves on Iran," Asia Times, June 26, 2003
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html


rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/ledeen/ledeen.php

[RPankn]

************FEATURE***************
WITH A NEW ITALIAN GOVERNMENT THAT INCLUDES THE SELF-DECLARED NEOFASCIST PARTY, THE ROLE OF AGENCIES WITHIN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IN PUSHING ITALIAN POLITICS TO THE RIGHT IS MORE NEWSWORTHY THAN EVER. "GLADIO" TELLS THE STORY OF NEARLY A HALF-CENTURY OF EFFORTS BY THE CIA, THE U.S. MILITARY, AND AT TIMES, THE WHITE HOUSE, TO FORESTALL A FEARED "COMMUNIST TAKEOVER."

ROWSE REVEALS THE DETAILS OF THIS POLICY, INCLUDING UNDERCOVER PAYMENTS TO ITALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, THE USE OF FASCIST WAR CRIMINALS, NAZIS, AND MOBSTERS TO FORM AND LEAD UNDERGROUND PARAMILITARY GROUPS, U.S. LINKS TO A TERROR BOMBING CAMPAIGN, AND REVIEWS DISQUIETING QUESTIONS ABOUT U.S. LINKS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF ALDO MORO.

ARTHUR E. ROWSE'S EXHAUSTIVE INVESTIGATION OF THE ORIGINS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE DECADES-LONG COVERT U.S. EFFORT TO INFLUENCE ITALIAN POLITICS MARKS THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT "GLADIO" IN A U.S. PUBLICATION.

ARTHUR E. ROWSE, FORMERLY ON THE STAFF OF THE WASHINGTON POST AND U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS.

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GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY
by Arthur E. Rowse
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This January, Silvio Berlusconi rode onto the turbulent Italian political scene on a white charger. Voters had become disenchanted with long-time centrist leaders who were mired in massive corruption scandals. With crucial parliamentary elections only two months away and the likelihood that the left would win power for the first time since World War II, 1 the billionaire businessman entered the fray with a slate of right-wing candidates who had never held office. Helped by voter disgust and his own vast media and industrial holdings, Berlusconi's coalition won big, averting the anticipated leftist victory. His win lifted the right, including the neo-fascists, to new postwar heights. 2 Real change seemed unlikely, however, as Berlusconi repackaged the old politics with new names and slogans. Berlusconi himself was weaned on the system and owed much of his success to Bettino Craxi, a former Socialist prime minister who went on trial for corruption the day after the March election. It wasn't long before the right's ``clean hands'' were upstaged by arms raised in fascist salutes and cries of ``Il Duce.''

While Berlusconi's rapid ascent took most observers by surprise, the stage was set for it by nearly 50 years of U.S. interference in Italian politics. In the name of fighting communism, the U.S. helped generate a level of political turmoil that sometimes approached civil war. U.S. agents and their Italian surrogates took control of key government agencies, at times reducing Italian democracy to little more than a proving ground for the CIA's and the White House's aggressive tactics. The undercover campaign, known as ``Gladio,'' for a double-edged Roman sword, was officially acknowledged for the first time in 1990, when it was finally closed down [or was it?].

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THE DIMENSIONS OF GLADIO
The Italian people had received many signs over the years that the centrist parties (the Christian Democrats and the Socialists) were promoted and to some degree controlled by Washington. But it was only when the Italian government officially admitted it in 1990 that the ruling coalition began to crumble, ready to be picked apart two years later by corruption scandals. The startling story of Gladio, which continues to make headlines in Europe, has barely been mentioned in the U.S., where many of its darkest chapters remain secret.

The program in Italy was aimed at the threat that communists might mount an insurrection or gain a share of political power through the ballot box. An insurrection was unlikely, however, since nearly all posts in the bureaucracy were filled after the war by solidly anticommunist veterans of Mussolini's forces, with Allied approval.

During the war, most Americans considered themselves heroes who freed Western Europe from its brutal Nazi and fascist rulers. It wasn't long after the American landings on Italian soil, however, that the white hats got sullied. While some OSS agents worked with antifascists to help lay the basis for Italian democracy, many of those higher up the ladder conspired with backers of Mussolini or the former king to impede it. 3

Although many European intelligence agencies have admitted participating, the CIA has denied any connection with Gladio. But enough information has emerged to show that the CIA sponsored and financed a large portion of the terrorism and disruption that plagued Italy for nearly half a century. Among other things, the U.S. government:

Forged secret alliances with the Mafia and right-wing elements of the Vatican to prevent the left from playing any role in government;

Recruited Mussolini's ex-police into paramilitary bands secretly financed and trained by the CIA, ostensibly to fight Soviets, but really to conduct terror attacks blamed on the left; [Just as it did with former Nazis.]

Employed the gamut of psychological warfare tactics, including paying millions in slush funds to political parties, journalists, and other influential contacts to tilt parliamentary elections against the left; [Just like Operation Mockingbird]

Created a secret service and a parallel government structure linked to the CIA whose ``assets'' attempted several times to overthrow the elected government; and

Targeted Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who was later kidnapped and murdered under mysterious circumstances after offering to bring communists into the Cabinet.

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THE SECRET NATO COVER
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provided international cover for Washington's postwar operations in Italy. A secret clause in the initial NATO agreement in 1949 required that before a nation could join, it must have already established a national security authority to fight communism through clandestine citizen cadres. This ``Stay Behind'' clause grew out of a secret committee set up at U.S. insistence in the Atlantic Pact, the forerunner of NATO. Each NATO member was also required to send delegates to semiannual meetings on the subject. 4

U.S. authority for such moves flowed in a steady stream of presidential directives transmitted through the National Security Council (NSC). In December 1950, the council gave the armed forces carte blanche to use ``appropriate'' military force even if the communists merely ``gain participation'' in government by legal means or ``threaten to achieve control...or the government ceases to evidence a determination to oppose communist internal or external threats.'' 5

The CIA helped the Italian police set up secret squadrons staffed in many cases with veterans of Mussolini's secret police. 6 The squadrons were trained for intensive espionage and counter-espionage, against communists and other perceived enemies of the status quo. The plan to use ``exceptional means'' was patterned after the highly militarized French intelligence service, the Suret Nationale, which was reportedly so tough on communists that many fled to other countries. 7

The newly organized intelligence agency, SIFAR, began operations in September 1949, under the supervision of an undercover American, Carmel Offie, nicknamed ``godfather'' by the Italians. 8 Interior Minister Mario Scelba headed the operation. At the same time, Scelba was directing a brutal repression, murdering hundreds of workers and peasants who sought improved conditions after the war. 9

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OPERATION DEMAGNETIZE
With the Italian secret service under control, the Americans then expanded it under the name Operation Demagnetize and tied it to an existing network of cadre in northern Italy. In 1951, the Italian secret service formally agreed to set up a clandestine organization within the military to coordinate with the northern cadres. In 1952, SIFAR received secret orders from Washington to adopt ``a series of political, paramilitary and psychological operations destined to diminish the power of the Italian Communist Party, its material resources, and its influence on government. This priority objective must be attained by all means.'' 10

Operation Demagnetize marked the institutional hardening of Gladio. A State Department historian characterized it as the ``strategy of stabilization,'' 11 although it could be more accurately described as one of destabilization. From the start, the offensive was secretly directed and funded by the U.S. government. In 1956, the arrangement was formalized in a written agreement, using the name ``Gladio'' for the first time. According to 1956 documents uncovered in Italy in 1990, Gladio was divided into independent cells coordinated from a CIA camp in Sardinia. These ``special forces'' included 40 main groups. Ten specialized in sabotage, six each in espionage, propaganda, evasion and escape tactics, and 12 in guerrilla activities. Another division handled the training of agents and commandos. These ``special forces'' had access to underground arms caches, which included hand guns, grenades, high-tech explosives, daggers, 60-millimeter mortars, 57-millimeter machine guns and precision rifles. 12

In 1956, Gen. Giovanni De Lorenzo was named to head SIFAR on the recommendation of U.S. Ambassador Claire Boothe Luce, the avidly anticommunist wife of the publisher of Time magazine. 13 A key player in Gladio was now in place. In 1962, the CIA helped place De Lorenzo at the head of the national police (carabinieri), while he retained effective control of the secret service.

The general brought with him 17 lieutenants to begin purging insufficiently right-wing officers. It was the first step to a right-wing coup attempt, with U.S. military attaché Vernon Walters in the vanguard. In a memo to De Lorenzo the same year, Walters suggested types of intervention aimed at provoking a national crisis, including blocking a center-left coalition, creating schisms among the socialists, and funding forces favorable to the status quo. 14 [This must be where DLC got its idea from.]

Meanwhile, according to CIA files found in Rome in 1984, CIA station chief William Harvey began to recruit ``action teams'' based on a list of 2,000 men capable of throwing bombs, conducting attacks, and accompanying these actions with indispensable propaganda. 15 These teams had a chance to practice their skills in 1963 as part of an anti-union offensive. U.S.-trained gladiators dressed as police and civilians attacked construction workers peacefully demonstrating in Rome, leaving some 200 wounded and a large section of the city in shambles. The link to Gladio was made in later testimony by a former general in the secret service. 16

SIFAR Lt. Col. Renzo Rocca was also training a civil militia composed of ex-soldiers, parachutists and members of Junio Valerio ``Black Prince'' Borghese's paramilitary organization, Decima MAS (Tenth Torpedo Boat Squadron), for the pending coup. 17 President Antonio Segni reportedly knew of the plan, which was to conclude with the assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro, under fire for not being tough enough with the communists. 18

The long-planned takeover, known later as Plan Solo, fizzled in March 1964, when the key carabinieri involved remained in their barracks. As a subsequent inquiry moved to question Rocca about the coup attempt, he apparently killed himself, possibly to fulfill Gladio's oath of silence. After officials determined that state secrets were involved, three hamstrung inquiries failed to determine the guilty parties. 19

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THE STRATEGY OF TENSION
Despite the failure of Plan Solo, the CIA and the Italian right had largely succeeded in creating the clandestine structures envisioned in Operation Demagnetize. Now the plotters turned their attention to a renewed offensive against the left.

To win intellectual support, the secret services set up a conference in Rome at the luxurious Parco dei Principi hotel in May 1965, for a ``study'' of ``revolutionary war.'' The choice of words was inadvertently revealing, since the conveners and invited participants were planning a real revolution, not just warning of an imaginary communist takeover. The meeting was essentially a reunion of fascists, right-wing journalists, and military personnel. ``The strategy of tension'' that emerged was designed to disrupt normality with terror attacks in order to create chaos and provoke a frightened public into accepting still more authoritarian government. 20

Several ``graduates'' of this exercise had long records of anticommunist actions and would later be implicated in some of Italy's worst massacres. One was journalist and secret agent Guido Giannettini. Four years earlier, he had conducted a seminar at the U.S. Naval Academy on ``The Techniques and Prospects of a Coup d'Etat in Europe.'' Another was notorious fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie, who had reportedly been recruited as a secret agent in 1960. He had organized his own armed band known as Avanguardia Nationale (AN), whose members had begun training in terror tactics in preparation for Plan Solo. 21

General De Lorenzo, whose SIFAR had now become SID, soon enlisted these and other confidants in a new Gladio project. They planned to create a secret parallel force alongside sensitive government offices to neutralize subversive elements not yet ``purified.'' Known as the Parallel SID, its tentacles reached into nearly every key institution of the Italian state. Gen.Vito Miceli, who later headed SID, said he set up the separate structure ``at the request of the Americans and NATO.'' 22

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FRATERNAL BONDS
Two ancient, mysterious, international fraternities kept the loosely-linked Gladio programs from flying apart. The Knights of Malta played a formative role after the war, but the order of Freemasonry and its most notorious lodge in Italy, known as Propaganda Due (pronounced ``doo-ay'' ), or P-2, was far more influential. In the late 1960s, its ``Most Venerable Master'' was Licio Gelli, a Knight of Malta who fought for Franco with Mussolini's Black Shirts. At the end of World War II, Gelli faced execution by Italian partisans for his Nazi collaboration, but escaped by joining the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. 23 In the 1950s, he was recruited by SIFAR.

After some years of self-imposed exile in Argentine fascist circles,24 he saw his calling in Italy as a Mason. Quickly rising to its top post, he began fraternizing in 1969 with Gen. Alexander Haig, then assistant to Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security chief. Gelli became the main intermediary between the CIA and SID's De Lorenzo, also a Mason and Knight. Gelli's first order from the White House was reportedly to recruit 400 more top Italian and NATO officials. 25

To help ferret out dissidents, Gelli and De Lorenzo began compiling personal dossiers on thousands of people, including legislators and clerics. 26 Within a few years, scandal erupted when an inquiry found 157,000 such files in SID, all available to the Ministers of Defense and Interior.[/b] 27 Parliament ordered 34,000 files burned, but by then the CIA had obtained duplicates for its archives. 28 [And a National Guard unit in California was accused of doing something similar recently.]

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Provocateurs on the Right
In 1968, the Americans started formal commando training for the gladiators at the clandestine Sardinian ``NATO'' base. Within a few years, 4,000 graduates had been placed in strategic posts. At least 139 arms caches, including some at carabinieri barracks, were at their disposal. 29 To induce young men to join such a risky venture, the CIA paid high salaries and promised that if they were killed, their children would be educated at U.S. expense. 30

Tensions began to reach critical mass that same year. While dissidents took to the streets all over the world, in Italy, takeovers of universities and strikes for higher wages and pensions were overshadowed by a series of bloody political crimes. The number of terrorist acts reached 147 in 1968, rising to 398 the next year, and to an incredible peak of 2,498 in 1978 before tapering off, largely because of a new law encouraging informers ( penitenti ). 31 Until 1974, the indiscriminate bombers of the right constituted the main force behind political violence.

The first major explosion occurred in 1969 in Milan's Piazza Fontana; it killed 18 people and injured 90. In this and numerous other massacres, anarchists proved handy scapegoats for fascist provocateurs seeking to blame the left. Responding to a phone tip after the Milan massacre, police arrested 150 alleged anarchists and even put some on trial. But two years later, new evidence led to the indictment of several neofascists and SID officers. Three innocent anarchists were convicted, but later absolved, while those responsible for the attack emerged unpunished by Italian justice. 32

Conclusive Gladio links to political violence were found after a plane exploded in flight near Venice in November 1973. Venetian judge Carlo Mastelloni determined that the Argo-16 aircraft was used to shuttle trainees and munitions between the U.S. base in Sardinia and Gladio sites in northeast Italy.33 The apogee of right-wing terror came in 1974 with two massacres. One, a bombing at an antifascist rally in Brescia, killed eight and injured 102. The other was an explosion on the Italicus train near Bologna, killing 12 and wounding 105. At this point, President Giovanni Leone, with little exaggeration, summed up the situation: "With 10,000 armed civilians running around, as usual, I'm president of nuts." 34

At Brescia, the initial call to police also blamed anarchists, but the malefactor later turned out to be a secret agent in the Parallel SID. 35 A similar connection was also alleged in the Italicus case. Two fascists who were eventually convicted were members of a clandestine police group called the Black Dragons, according to the left-wing paper, Lotta Continua. 36 Their sentences were also overturned. Although in these and other cases, many leftists were arrested and tried, fascists or neofascists were often the culprits, in league with Gladio groups and the Italian secret services. Reflecting the degree to which these forces controlled the government through the Parallel SID, nearly all the rightists implicated in these atrocities were later freed.

By 1974, right-wing terror began to be answered by the armed left, which favored carefully targeted hit-and-run attacks over the right's indiscriminate bombings. For the next six years, leftist militants, especially the Red Brigades, responded with a vengeance, accounting for far more acts of political violence than the right. 37 For several years, Italy plunged into a virtual civil war.

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[Continued in next post]

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[Continued from previous post]

PLOTTING COUPS D'ETAT
Meanwhile, groups of right-wingers were busy planning more takeovers of the elected government, with the active encouragement of U.S. officials. A seminal document was the 1970 132-page order on ``stability operations'' in ``host'' countries, published as Supplement B of the U.S. Army's Field Manual 30-31. Taking its cue from earlier NSC and CIA papers, the manual explained that if a country is not sufficiently anticommunist, ``serious attention must be given to possible modifications of the structure.'' If that country does not react with adequate ``vigor,'' the document continues, ``groups acting under U.S. Army intelligence control should be used to launch violent or nonviolent actions according to the nature of the case.'' 38

With such incendiary suggestions and thousands of U.S.-trained guerrillas ready, the fascists again attempted to take over the government by force in 1970. This time, the instigator was the ``Black Prince'' Borghese. Fifty men under the command of Stefano Delle Chiaie seized the Interior Ministry in Rome after being let in at night by an aide to political police head Federico D'Amato. But the operation was aborted when Borghese received a mysterious phone call later attributed to General Vito Miceli, the military intelligence chief. The plotters were not arrested; instead, they left with 180 stolen machine guns. 39

News of the attack remained secret until an informer tipped the press three months later. By then, the culprits had escaped to Spain. Although the ringleaders were convicted in 1975, the verdict was overturned on appeal. All but one of the machine guns were returned earlier. 40

It was in this atmosphere that the U.S. decided to make another all-out effort to block the communists from gaining strength in the 1972 elections. According to the Pike Report, the CIA disbursed $10 million to 21 candidates, mostly Christian Democrats. 41 That amount did not include $800,000 that Ambassador Graham Martin, going around the CIA, obtained through Henry Kissinger at the White House for General Miceli. 42 Miceli would later face charges for the Borghese coup attempt but, fitting the pattern, he was cleared.

Police foiled another attempted coup that same year. They found hit lists and other documents exposing some 20 subversive groups forming the Parallel SID structure. Roberto Cavallaro, a fascist trade unionist, was implicated, as were highly placed generals, who said they got approval from NATO and U.S. officials. In later testimony, Cavallaro said the group was set up to restore order after any trouble arose. ``When these troubles do not erupt [by themselves],'' he said, ``they are contrived by the far right.'' Gen. Miceli was arrested, but the courts eventually freed him, declaring that there had been no insurrection. 43

Still another right-wing attempt to overthrow the government was set for 1974, reportedly with the imprimatur of both the CIA and NATO. Its leader was Edgardo Sogno, one of Italy's most decorated resistance fighters, who had formed a Gladio-style group after the war. Sogno, who had gained many influential American friends while working at the Italian embassy in Washington during the 1960s, was later arrested, but he, too, was eventually cleared. 44

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GLADIO UNRAVELS
A triple murder at Peteano near Venice in May 1972 turned out to be pivotal in exposing Gladio. The crime occurred when three carabinieri, in response to an anonymous phone call, went to check out a suspicious car. When one of them opened the hood, all three were blown to bits by a boobytrap bomb. 45 An anonymous call two days later implicated the Red Brigades, the most active of the left's revolutionary groups. The police immediately rounded up 200 alleged communists, thieves and pimps for questioning, but no charges were brought. Ten years later, a courageous Venetian magistrate, Felice Casson, reopened the long-dormant case only to learn that there had been no police investigation at the scene. Despite receiving a false analysis from a secret service bomb expert and confronting numerous obstructions and delays, the judge traced the explosives to a militant outfit called New Order and to one of its active members, Vincenzo Vinciguerra. He promptly confessed and was sentenced to life, the only right-wing bomber ever locked up. 46

Vinciguerra refused to implicate others, but described the coverup:

"The carabinieri, the Ministry of Interior, the Customs and Excise police, the civilian and military secret services all knew the truth behind the attack, that I was responsible and all this within 20 days. So they decided, for totally political reasons, to cover it up. 47"

As for his motive, the fascist true believer Vinciguerra said his misdeed was ``an act of revolt against the manipulation'' of neofascism since 1945 by the whole Gladio-based parallel structure. 48

Casson eventually found enough incriminating evidence to implicate the highest officials of the land. In what was the first such request to an Italian president, Casson demanded explanations from President Francesco Cossiga. But Casson didn't stop there; he also demanded that other officials come clean. In October 1990, under pressure from Casson, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti ended 30 years of denials and described Gladio in detail. He added that all prime ministers had been aware of Gladio, though some later denied it. 49

Suddenly, Italians saw clues to many mysteries, including the unexplained death of Pope John Paul I in 1978. Author David Yallop lists Gelli as a suspect in that case, saying that he, ``for all practical purposes, ran Italy at the time.'' 50

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MEMENTO MORO
Perhaps the most shocking political crime of the 1970s was the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and five of his aides in 1978. The abduction occurred as Moro was on his way to submit a plan to strengthen Italian political stability by bringing communists into the government.

Earlier versions of the plan had sent U.S. officials into a tizzy. Four years before his death, on a visit to the U.S. as foreign minister, Moro was reportedly read the riot act by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and later by an unnamed intelligence official. In testimony during the inquiry into his murder, Moro's widow summed up their ominous words: ``You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration...or you will pay dearly for it.'' 51

Moro was so shaken by the threats, according to an aide, that he became ill the next day and cut short his U.S. visit, saying he was through with politics. 52 But U.S. pressure continued; Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) issued a similar warning two years later in an interview in Italy. 53 Shortly before his kidnapping, Moro wrote an article replying to his U.S. critics, but decided not to publish it. 54

While being held captive for 55 days, Moro pleaded repeatedly with his fellow Christian Democrats to accept a ransom offer to exchange imprisoned Red Brigade members for his freedom. But they refused, to the delight of Allied officials who wanted the Italians to play hardball. In a letter found later, Moro predicted: ``My death will fall like a curse on all Christian Democrats, and it will initiate a disastrous and unstoppable collapse of all the party apparatus.'' 55

During Moro's captivity, police unbelievably claimed to have questioned millions of people and searched thousands of dwellings. But the initial judge investigating the case, Luciano Infelisi, said he had no police at his disposal. ``I ran the investigation with a single typist, without even a telephone in the room.'' He added that he received no useful information from the secret services during the time. 56 Other investigating magistrates suggested in 1985 that one reason for the inaction was that all the key officers involved were members of P-2 and were therefore acting at the behest of Gelli and the CIA. 57

Although the government eventually arrested and convicted several Red Brigade members, many in the press and parliament continue to ask whether SID arranged the kidnapping after receiving orders from higher up. Suspicions naturally turned toward the U.S., particularly Henry Kissinger, though he denied any role in the crime. In Gladio and the Mafia, Washington had the perfect apparatus for doing such a deed without leaving a trace.

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PENETRATING THE RED BRIGADES
That the Red Brigades had been thoroughly infiltrated for years by both the CIA and the Italian secret services is no longer contested. The purpose of the operation was to encourage violence from extremist sectors of the left in order to discredit the left as a whole. The Red Brigades were a perfect foil. With unflinching radicalism, they considered the Italian Communist Party too moderate and Moro's opening too compromising.

The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, with some members not realizing it had CIA ties. The school had been founded by three pseudo-revolutionary Italians, one of whom, Corrado Simioni, had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe. 58 Another, Duccio Berio, has admitted passing information about Italian leftist groups to SID. 59 Hyperion opened an office in Italy shortly before the kidnapping and closed it a few months later. An Italian police report said Hyperion may be ``the most important CIA office in Europe.'' 60 Mario Moretti, one of those who handled arms deals and the Paris connection for the Red Brigades, managed to avoid arrest in the Moro case for three years even though he personally handled the kidnapping. 61

Venice magistrate Carlo Mastelloni concluded in 1984 that the Red Brigades had for years received arms from the PLO. 62 Mastelloni wrote that ``the de facto secret service level accord between the USA and the PLO was considered relevant to the present investigation into the ... relationship between the Red Brigades organization and the PLO.'' 63 One Gladio scholar, Phillip Willan, concludes that ``the arms deal between the PLO and the Red Brigades formed part of the secret accord between the PLO and the CIA.'' 64 His research indicates that the alleged deal between the CIA and the PLO occurred in 1976, a year after the U.S. promised Israel that it would have no political contacts with the PLO.

At the time of the Moro kidnapping, several leaders of the Brigades were in prison, having been turned in by a double agent after they kidnapped a judge. According to journalist Gianni Cipriani, one of those arrested was carrying phone numbers and personal notes leading to a high official of SID, who had boasted openly of having agents inside the Red Brigades. Other intriguing finds included the discovery in the Brigade offices of a printing press which had previously belonged to SID and ballistics tests showing more than half of the 92 bullets at the kidnapping scene were similar to those in Gladio stocks. 65

Several people have noted the unlikelihood of the Red Brigades pulling off such a smooth, military-style kidnapping in the center of Rome. Alberto Franceschini, a jailed member of the Brigades, said, ``I never thought my comrades outside had the capacity to carry out a complex military operation. ... We remembered ourselves as an organization formed by inexperienced young lads.'' 66 Two days after the crime, one secret service officer told the press that the perpetrators appeared to have had special commando training. 67

When letters written by Moro were found later in a Red Brigades site in Milan, investigators hoped they would reveal key evidence. But Francesco Biscioni, who studied Moro's responses to his captors' questions, concluded that important sections had been excised when they were transcribed. Nonetheless, in one uncensored passage, Moro worried about how Andreotti's ``smooth relationships with his colleagues of the CIA'' would affect his fate. 68

The two people with the most knowledge of Moro's letters were murdered. The Carabiniere general in charge of anti-terrorism, Carlo Alberto Della Chiesa, was transferred to Sicily and killed Mafia-style in 1982, a few months after raising questions about the missing letters. 69 Maverick journalist Mino Pecorelli was assassinated on a Rome street in 1979 just a month after reporting that he had obtained a list of 56 fascists betrayed to the police by Gelli. 70 Thomas Buscetta, a Mafia informer under witness protection in the U.S., accused Andreotti of ordering both killings for fear of being exposed. 71 But an inquiry by his political peers last year found no reason to prosecute the prime minister.

Della Chiesa and Pecorelli were only two of numerous witnesses and potential witnesses murdered before they could be questioned by judges untainted by links to Gladio. 72 President Cossiga, the interior minister when Moro died, told BBC: ``Aldo Moro's death still weighs heavily on the Christian Democrats as does the decision I came to, which turned my hair white, to practically sacrifice Moro to save the Republic.'' 73

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THE BOLOGNA TRAIN STATION BOMBING
A huge explosion at the Bologna train station two years after Moro's death may have whitened the hair of many Italians - not just for the grisly toll of 85 killed and more than 200 injured - but for the official inaction that followed. Although the investigating magistrates suspected neofascists, they were unable to issue credible arrest warrants for more than two years because of false data from the secret services. By that time, all but one of the five chief suspects, two of whom had ties to SID, had skipped the country. 74 The T4 explosive found at the scene matched the Gladio material used in Brescia, Peteano and other bombings, according to expert testimony before Judge Mastelloni. 75

In the trial, the judges cited the ``strategy of tension and its ties to `foreign powers.''' They also found the secret military and civilian structure tied into neofascist groups, P-2, and the secret services. 76 In short, they found the CIA and Gladio.

But their efforts to exact justice for the Bologna bombing came to nothing when, in 1990, the court of appeals acquitted all the alleged ``brains.'' P-2 head Gelli went free, as did two secret service chiefs whose perjury convictions were overturned. Four gladiators convicted of participating in an armed group also won appeals. That left Peteano as the only major bombing case with a conviction of the actual bomber, thanks to Vinciguerra's confession.

The sorry judicial record in these monstrous crimes showed how completely the Gladio network enveloped the army, police, secret services and the top courts. Thanks to P-2, with its 963 well-placed brothers, 77 the collusion also extended into the top levels of media and business. [Skull and Bones anyone?]

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FRUITS OF GLADIO
By the early 1980s, however, court data revealed enough CIA fingerprints to provoke strong anti-U.S. sentiment. In 1981, the offices of three U.S. firms in Rome were bombed. In 1982, the Red Brigades kidnapped James L. Dozier, a U.S. general attached to NATO, calling him a ``Yankee hangman.'' 78 He was freed after five weeks by police commandos, reportedly with the help of the CIA's Mafia connections. 79 But damage to the U.S. image has been remarkably constrained considering what the U.S. did to Italian society and government for 50 years in the name of anticommunism.

Moro's final prediction came true. Instead of bolstering the center parties, Gladio, helped by the corruption scandals, destroyed them. Instead of destroying the leftists, Gladio revelations helped them win control of major cities while retaining one-third of parliament. By the early 1980s, the Red Brigades were wiped out, but the major sources of right-wing terrorism - the Mafia and the neofascists - remained active.80

The end results lead some to question the whole rationale of U.S. involvement in Italy, particularly in regard to the ``communist menace.'' According to Phillip Willan, who wrote the definitive book on Italian terrorism:

"The U.S. has consistently refused to recognize the Italian Communist Party's increasingly wholehearted commitment to the principles of Western democracy and its validity as an alternative to the generally corrupt and incompetent political parties that have governed Italy since the war. Had it done so, much of the bloodshed resulting from the strategy of tension might have been avoided. 81"

Willan goes on to ask ``whether U.S. and Italian intelligence officials may have deliberately over-emphasized the communist threat in order to give themselves greater power and greater leeway for their own maneuvers.'' 82

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THE LESSONS OF GLADIO
As long as the U.S. public remains ignorant of this dark chapter in U.S. foreign relations, the agencies responsible for it will face little pressure to correct their ways. The end of the Cold War brought wholesale changes in other nations, but it changed little in Washington. In an ironic twist, confessed CIA mole Aldrich Ames has raised the basic question of whether the U.S. needs ``tens of thousands of agents working around the world primarily in and against friendly countries.'' ``The U.S.,'' he adds, ``still awaits a real national debate on the means and ends - and costs - of our national security policies.'' 83

The new government in Italy touts itself as a revolution of the disenfranchised, a clean break from the past. But the fascists are back and gaining ground. The anti-Mafia party has been rejected, and the big cartels have tightened their grip on the economy. With P-2 brother Berlusconi continuing to trade on the Cold War fear of communists, the Gladio perpetrators still unpunished, and ``experts'' in Washington raising fears of more terrorism, 84 it looks like business as usual in Italy.

*************************

Gladio's Roots
The policies that would evolve into Gladio began during World War II, when U.S. anticommunist phobias combined with geopolitical fears of a victorious USSR to create a holy war against the left. An ``ends justify the means'' atmosphere within the U.S. government and particularly within the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), fostered the creation of ``Stay Behind'' programs throughout Western Europe, ostensibly as the first line of defense in case the Soviets invaded.

But the main worry was internal. The Americans' great fear for Italy was that communist partisans fighting in the north would join with organized labor to bring the left to power. The OSS and its successors were apparently prepared to use any measures to forestall that event, including political assassination, terrorism, and alliances with organized crime. According to one OSS memo to Washington, the U.S. seemed to support a monarchist plan to use ``fascist killers'' to commit acts of terror and blame the left. 1 U.S. involvement in Italian politics began in 1942, when the OSS successfully pressured the Justice Department to release imprisoned mobster Charles ``Lucky'' Luciano. In return for early freedom, Luciano agreed to make contacts with Mafia pals to ease the way for the U.S. invasion of Sicily in 1943.2

The Luciano deal forged a long-standing alliance between the U.S. and the international Cosa Nostra. It also set a pattern of cooperation between U.S. intelligence agencies and international criminal organizations involved in drugs and arms traffic. The deal's godfather was Earl Brennan, OSS chief for Italy. Before the war, he had served in the U.S. Embassy, using his diplomatic cover to establish contacts with Mussolini's secret police and leading fascists. 3

The Catholic Church also cooperated. U.S. ties to the Vatican were already substantial; one of the strongest links was a secret fraternity, the Rome-based Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which dates back to the First Crusade. OSS head William ``Wild Bill'' Donovan was a member. So were other top U.S. officials, including Myron Taylor, U.S. envoy to the Vatican from 1939 to 1950, and William Casey, an OSS operative who rose to CIA chief under Reagan. OSS Italy chief Brennan had contacts as early as 1942 with Vatican Under-Secretary of State Gian Battista Montini, who became Pope Paul VI in 1963.4

Among the notable OSS operatives was James Jesus Angleton, the legendary, paranoid, future CIA counter-intelligence chief. Angleton built on family and business connections in Italy to lay the basis of Gladio by forming and financing a clandestine network of right-wing Italians who shared his fierce gung-ho style. 5 The paramilitary groups were filled with devout anticommunists ready to wage war on the left. He also helped notorious Nazi/fascist mass-murderers such as Junio Valerio ``Black Prince;; Borghese elude justice at war's end. 6

U.S. officials were worried that the communists and socialists would join forces after the fighting. The communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948 added to their fears. As a result, the U.S. cooked up a variety of plans to manipulate Italian politics. Angleton, who by late 1948 had been promoted to special assistant to CIA director Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, used the Vatican's 20,000 Civic Committees to conduct psychological warfare against communist influences, particularly in the unions. 7

The newly formed National Security Council (NSC) also joined the fray: ``If the Communist Party wins the [1948] election,'' the NSC advised, ``such aggression should immediately be countered by steps to extend the strategic disposition of U.S. armed forces in Italy.'' 8 The Communists did not win that pivotal election (nor any subsequent ones). But that didn't stop the U.S. from trying to destroy the left. The total cost to American taxpayers for such activities (and various aid programs) was $4 billion from the end of the war to 1953. 9 And that was just the beginning of the U.S. assault on Italian sovereignty.


www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html

[RPankn]

A major spy scandal is brewing in Italy

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

WASHINGTON & ROME, July 6, 2005 (waynemadsenreport.com)—Genoa police have arrested the two leaders of a neo-fascist unofficial intelligence and "anti-terrorism" police network in Italy and have conducted searches of homes throughout the country in a major crackdown on a group that recruited police and intelligence agents to their cause.

The two neo-fascist leaders—Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca—who reportedly have close ties to both the P-2 (Propaganda Due) Masonic lodge and a secret Cold War network known as Gladio, were arrested. Some 25 members of the regular state police, the Carabinieri, the Frontier police, and the Prison police were placed under official investigation. Tens of searches, including two houses in Genoa, were conducted by police in nine Italian regions: Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Molise, Sicily and Sardinia. The investigation may soon extend to members of the Italian intelligence service SISMI.

In 2004, Saya and Sindoca established the Department of Strategic Anti-Terrorism Studies, which reportedly had links to both the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government in Israel.

Some Italian police were tricked into assisting the organization because they thought it was legitimate. Saya and Sindoca were leaders of the Destra Nazionale-Nuovo MSI (an offshoot of the neo-fascist MSI Pparty represented in the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi). The group is also unofficially known as the Fiamma Tricolore (Tri Color Flame). Police temporarily shut down the web site of Destra Nazionale-Nuovo MSI. The web sitewas back up on July 3.

There is now a suspicion by prosecutors in Genoa and Milan that the neo-fascist intelligence group may have been involved with American covert operators in the kidnaping of Imam Abu Omar (Moustapha Hassan Nasr) from a street in Milan in 2003. Omar, a political refugee in Italy, was spirited out of Italy to Egypt by a covert team of U.S. Defense Department Special Forces, mercenaries, and intelligence agents who are now the subject of international arrest warrants (see more articles). There is now mounting evidence that the U.S. team was working with the parallel Italian intelligence network.

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga has quickly distanced the parallel intelligence network from official intelligence and police networks by claiming the two men arrested are just criminals and not tied to the Italian Gladio, which a number of intelligence experts believe Cossiga once headed. Cossiga also defended the secret U.S. intelligence operation in Italy that is presently under attack by Milan prosecutors. Cossiga said that by not telling the Italian government of the operation, the U.S. avoided having its secret plans spread throughout the Middle East.

By mentioning both the Milan and Genoa cases, Cossiga may have unintentionally linked the two. The parallel intelligence network is reportedly the outgrowth of a Gladio network consisting of six divisions that operated in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East during the Cold War. The P-2 Lodge, headed by fascist leader Licio Gelli, reportedly maintained close links to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig and his one-time foreign affairs adviser, Michael Ledeen.

A number of SISMI agents and assets have also been tied to the group, including Francesco Pazienza, an SISMI agent, and Rocco Martino, who said he was the source of the faked Niger yellowcake uranium documents that were laundered through Rome and used as proof by the Bush White House that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium in Niger. That charge prompted the CIA to send Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, resulting in a retaliatory outing of Wilson's wife as a covert CIA operative and exposure by the White House of the CIA's covert weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation network.

Italian sources report that the Milan case against the Americans and the Genoa case against the private Italian network may be linked in another way. The reported CIA station chief in Milan, Honduran-born Robert Seldon Lady (whose name may be an alias and whose CIA connections may be incorrect or overstated) was, prior to his assignment in Milan, in charge of a covert American unit in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua charged with penetrating anti-American groups and taking them over. It is now believed that Lady was in charge of a similar operation to turn Abu Omar and others into intelligence assets for the Americans. Abu Omar, according to Albanian intelligence sources, assisted the U.S. with intelligence on Islamic militants in Albania.

It is also believed that the late deputy SISMI chief, Nicola Calipari, became aware of information in Iraq that linked the control of terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere to a "third level" in "an anti-terrorism country." Calipari was shot to death by U.S. troops while transporting freed Italian hostage and journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad International Airport. The U.S. ruled the shooting an "accident."

Abu Omar may have become a hot potato for the Americans after Calipari discovered links between the Americans and terrorist groups in Iraq and elsewhere—and a decision was made to conduct a "rendition" of the imam to Egypt to get him out of circulation. Abu Omar, also said to have been a credible intelligence source, may have also become aware of U.S. connections to terrorist groups.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is author of the forthcoming book, "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates." He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report


www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/070605Madsen/070605madsen.html

[Moses]

This doesn't really belong in "Conspiracy Theories". I have been watching the Italian media (which is controlled by Berlusconi, but nonetheless...) about the round up of the Gladio organization fronting as a counter-terrorism group, and alot of this was reported in the mainstream Italian media -- what is becoming clear, is how key a role this particular Israeli/fascist organization has been in this, and their role in arming all sides and their role in providing false information and propaganda, in assasinations and possibly in terrorist attacks should be mainstream by now.

[Moses]

Monday 18th July 2005 (14h53) :
Mathias Broeckers and the Gladio al-Qaeda Op


Mathias Broeckers’ blog (badly translated from the German by Google) reveals an interesting bit of information: the so-called London suicide bombers had purchased round-trip tickets, according to the British newspaper the Mirror. “The London bombers may have been duped into killing themselves so their secrets stayed hidden,” writes Jeff Edwards for the Mirror. In response to this revelation, British police are pushing the line that the “al-Qaeda handlers” of the bombers duped the unwitting bombers because if they had “lived and were caught they’d probably have cracked. Would their masters have allowed that to happen? We think not.” Of course, it is open to interpretation who their “masters” were, although predictably (and on-script) the deafening roar of the corporate media resounds with the slavering chant al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda.

Broeckers’ take on the London bombings (it wasn’t al-Qaeda, or not the al-Qaeda we read about in the New York Times) is especially relevant because he wrote a book (in German) about the peculiarities surrounding nine eleven (in Europe such books are actually published and sold in bookstores) and also had an article published in Telepolis on March 13, 2004, entitled “Al Qaeda, ETA-Gladio?” Broeckers writes that the Madrid attack “rather points to a very obvious parallel: the bomb attack on the central station of Bologna in August 1980, with 80 dead and 200 wounded, which then marked the high point of a whole series of terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Italy.” Fifteen years after the Bologna attack, two members of the fascist NAR (nuclei armati revoluzionari) were arrested and sentenced, along with two members of the Italian secret services, as well as the head of the P-2 lodge, Licio Gelli, and his aide, CIA agent Francesco Pazienza, Broeckers writes for Telepolis. Investigations revealed the hand of the Gladio network in the attacks and the murder of three Carabinieri men (Arma dei Carabinieri, an Italian military corps of the gendarmerie type with police functions, which also serves as the Italian military police).

Gladio was (possibly still is) a right-wing terror organization responsible for discrediting (and killing and framing) leftists in Italy. Gladio employed a “strategy of tension,” that is it engaged in terrorism (such as the Oktoberfest bomb blast of 1980 in Munich and the above mentioned bombing of the “Italicus” train and the Bologna train station) in the hope such terror would push the Italian populace to the right and away from progressive political organizations. “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security,” admitted Gladioite Vincenzo Vinciguerra.

Gladio was in the news last month when a “parallel police” organization (the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies, or DSSA) was discovered in Italy. Two long-time Gladio operatives, Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca, were arrested and charged with running the DSSA. It was also discovered Saya and Sindoca are founders of a political organization called Destra Nazionale - Nuovo Msi, loosely translated as the National Right, which is a right-wing terrorist outfit once funded by the CIA and thought to be responsible for the above mentioned 1980 Bologna Railway Station bombing (note: the T4 explosive found at the scene in Bologna matched the Gladio material used in the Brescia, Peteano, and other bombings, according to expert testimony presented to Italian Judge Mastelloni).

Broeckers’ take is that al-Qaeda is a Gladio-like operation. Now, instead of demonizing commies, the idea is to demonize Muslims and force “the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.” I believe London was selected as a target because it “probably [has] the most secure public transit system in the world,” according to Steve Weber, researcher and international consultant. “Cameras everywhere, people watching everywhere.” And this redoubling of security and Big Brother snooping did nothing to stop the supposed suicide bombings last week. Obviously, the terrorism-weary citizens of the empire will need “turn to the state to ask for greater security” and beg for protection from evil Muslims (and the corporate media is now in the process of making sure larger and larger portions of Islam are considered evil and irredeemable, as the neocons have told us all along).

kurtnimmo.com/blog/?p=833


by : Kurt Nimmo
Monday 18th July 2005

[Moses]

Giuliani

[Moses]

4 days before the London bombing:

Italian defends 'phoney police'
BBC

A man accused of setting up a parallel secret police force in Italy has spoken out from house arrest, saying the group was legal and its activity well-known.

The man has pledged to provide investigators with a full list of his employees, which he said numbered 150, Italian media reports say.

But the Genoa chief prosecutor says official police forces were unaware of the work carried out by the agency.

The structure was set up after the 2004 Madrid bombings to fight terrorism.

"The Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA) is a centre that monitories Islamist terrorism," daily newspaper La Repubblica quotes the organisation's alleged chief, Gaetano Saya, as saying.

"Anybody can join as an external consultant. Among them there are also top police officials."

Meanwhile, a third person has been arrested and senior police officers have been placed under investigation.

Three police officers who had allegedly used an interior ministry database to provide the DSSA with reserved information have been temporarily suspended from office.

The investigation that uncovered the alleged parallel structure is an offspring of a previous inquiry into the death of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four Italians kidnapped in Iraq in April 2004 and later shot dead by his abductors.