Operation Gladio

Operation Gladio was a clandestine "stay-behind " operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence in Italy, as well as in other European countries. While Gladio is usually used to refer to only the Italian "stay-behind", the term has also been applied to all other "stay-behind" operations.

Gladio was regarded at times a conspiracy theory, but secret NATO stay-behind armies have existed in all countries of Western Europe during the Cold War. Set up by the CIA and the MI6 they were designed to fight a Soviet invasion, but in some countries became linked to torture, terror, crime and coup d’états, such as the Oktoberfest bomb blast 1980 in Munich, the explosives of which was from a Gladio cache according to the perpetrator.

It is also unclear if Gladio operatives, including the former OSS/CIA operative Licio Gelli were involved in domestic terrorism in Italy, in particular the bombing of the "Italicus" train and the Bologna train station. Gelli was closely assocated with Propaganda Due, a secret organization involved in the strategy of tension , an operation to destabilize Italian civil society at a time when the political power of the left was at its crest.

Gladio was a secret service operating in all of NATO. It was coordinated by the Clandestine Planning Committee , the multi-national organ overseen from Belgium by SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe). Gladio also had strong ties to the CIA, which financed most of its operations. CIA founder Allen Dulles is said to be one of the key people in instituting Operation Gladio.

The main aim of Operation Gladio was to counter a possible invasion by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact of Western Europe through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines.

NATO feared the fact that Soviet Union possessed a vast superiority in conventional military power. It was generally accepted that Western Europe and NATO could not hope to defeat the Red Army in a direct conflict.

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

While "stay-behind" networks existed in all NATO countries, the most notable is the Italian branch of Gladio. In addition to prepare for a Soviet invasion, this branch also was to act in case of a communist government being elected in Italy. Since Italy was the country most likely to vote into power a communist government (with the communist party receiving up to 25% of the popular vote, being at times the strongest party in parliament), the Italian branch of Gladio also became the largest NATO "stay-behind" organization.

In 2004 the german spymaster Norbert Juretzko published a book about his work at the BND. He went into details about recruiting partisans for the german stay-behind network. He was sacked from BND following a secret trial against him, because the BND could not find out the real name of his russian source "Rubezahl " whom he had recruited. A man with the name he put on file was arrested by KGB following treason in BND, but he was obviously innocent, his name was taken from the phone book by Juretzko. The BND built up this Gladio network but after the fall of the GDR found out that it was 100% known to MfS early on, which the public only learned from the book. When the network was dismantled, further funny details emerged, e.g. one spymaster had kept the radio equipment in his cellar at home, with his wife doing the engineering test call every 4 months on the grounds that they were too "valuable" for the civilians. Juretzkos found out because this spymaster was so fast in dismantling his section of the network, so he needed not dug out all the caches etc. Civilians recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with a clandestine shortwave radio with fixed installation. It had a keyboard with encryption so no Morse was necessary. They had a cache with further equipment that would allow them to signal helicopters or submarines to drop special agents which would stay in their house to run their sabotage against the communists.

While the existence of "Stay-Behind" organizations such as Gladio has long been disputed, it has been confirmed by several high ranking politicians in NATO countries:

• Former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti ("Gladio had been necessary during the days of the Cold War but, that in view of the collapse of the East Block, Italy would suggest to Nato that the organisation was no longer necessary.")
• Former French minister of defense Jean-Pierre Chevenement ("a structure did exist, set up at the beginning of the 1950s, to enable communications with a government that might have fled abroad in the event of the country being occupied.").
• Former Greek defence minister, Yannis Varvitsiotis ("local commandos and the CIA set up a branch of the network in 1955 to organise guerrilla resistance to any communist invader")

literature

Daniele Ganser : Natos Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe ISBN 0714685003

Operation Gladio

Stay-Behind Networks

recent research on Gladio in Switzerland