Operation Gladio / The Strategy of Tension
What has come to be called Operation Gladio was never intended to be publicly acknowledged. It was a multi-national military plan to arm and train clandestine groups in many (perhaps all) of its member countries and elsewhere in Europe. The official narrative on these networks is confused, contradictory and definitely incomplete, with many basic questions unanswered. The stated reasons for establishing undercover armed groups has tended to focus on use of the secret armies as a fifth column to provide armed resistance in the case of a Soviet invasion.
Problems
The power hierarchy of Gladio remains unclear to this day, and is unknown to elected national leaders. When the European Union learned of the existence of Gladio, it passed a resolution mandating national investigations to reveal what was going on, but as of 2016, only 5 countries have done so (including Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland). A large question mark therefore remains over the role that Operation Gladio has played, and continues to play in influencing events. It seems very likely that the deep state controls these forces whether through the national intelligence services or in more informal fashion. The connection, in particular, with false flag terrorist attacks is particularly concerning.
Operation Gladio first came to light in Italy in 1990, after over 40 years of clandestine operations. Members of the project revealed that similar projects existed in most if not all countries of Western Europe.
These stay-behind networks were, in essence, super secret armies in at least 14 European countries, which were kept secret from the official governmental structures of the host countries – being controlled by other forces such as the CIA and MI6. They remained mostly dormant but were also involved in anti-communist activities including anti-democratic agitation and false flag terrorism.
The name Gladio, (or ‘Sword’ in Italian) was technically the name given to their operations in Italy, but has since come by extension to stand for the phenomenon as a whole. Evidence of such arrangements, which had been kept secret from both public and politicians democratically elected governments in the host countries for a quarter of a century was revealed through a series of scandalous revelations in Italy and other NATO countries during the 90s, and meticulously documented by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser in his 2004 book NATO’s Secret Armies,
arguably the most shocking book ever to be ignored by the corporate media. The evidence contained in Ganser’s book, of terrorism directed against the people by secret armies funded and organised by NATO and answerable to deep state elements within NATO, MI6 and the CIA rather than the respective governments is so shocking that the initial reaction of most people would be to reject it.
Prudent precaution or Source of Terror?
At the end of his book, Ganser asks this question in an attempt to draw out the historical lessons. The answer is of course both. The strategic need for the stay-behind armies was reasonable in the light of what was known at the time, but the excesses directed against the people and democratic institutions of the host countries amounted to a wholly unacceptable assault on the sovereignty of these countries, of a sort that was familiar in Warsaw Pact countries but which was assumed to be absent from NATO countries. The terrorist bombings proved to be a means by which Pentagon planners were able to take their own (imaginary or delusional) fears about the rise of the Left and turn them into very real and concrete fears for the populace. The swiftness with which the fear of Communism has since been transmuted following the end of the Cold War into a fear of Islamic terrorism, along with the arrival of the whole security-military-industrial-complex paraphernalia of the "War on Terror" illustrates that this is almost a modus operandi of military planners.