‘The life of every one is manipulated by those with more power. In my case I accept that I have been a puppet in the hands of ideas, but not in the hands of men from the secret services here [in Italy] or abroad. That is to say that I have voluntarily fought my own war, following the strategic design that came from my own ideas. That is all.’
-Franco Freda
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
-Parable of the blind men and the elephant
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From the Washington Post archives, November 14, 1990:
“CIA ORGANIZED SECRET ARMY IN WESTERN EUROPE.”
ROME, NOV. 13 -- A secret army created by the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s to organize resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe has finally come in from the cold, and the disclosures of its past actions are producing a political flap that stretches across the continent.
The existence of a clandestine paramilitary network code-named "Operation Gladio" was disclosed last Thursday by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in a speech to his nation's Senate. Since then, European officials have described similar operations in most of the other NATO countries.
The CIA-backed paramilitary network included units in Belgium, France, Greece, West Germany and the Netherlands, according to European newspaper and news-service reports.
"The operation was expanded to all of Western Europe by 1959," including neutral Sweden and Switzerland, according to a story scheduled to appear Wednesday in the German newspaper Die Welt.
European officials familiar with the paramilitary network have come forward in the past several days and described stockpiles of weapons and explosives hidden in Western European countries since the start of Cold War, news services have reported. The arms were to be used by hundreds of resistance fighters trained to counter a Soviet invasion, the officials said.
A Belgian former army intelligence official quoted by the Associated Press today said at least six arms caches were spread over the countryside in his nation until two months ago. In addition, the wire service quoted a Dutch ex-defense minister who said large weapons dumps also existed there and that some were discovered over the past decade.
Andreotti told the Italian Parliament that at the height of Cold War tensions in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Italian unit had hidden caches of arms at depots throughout the country. The operation has now been scaled down, Andreotti said, but more than 600 people remain on the payroll.
Andreotti said he believes the operation should now be dismantled, given the new "climate which has freed us from the nightmare of wars and divisions."
In Washington, a U.S. government official familiar with Operation Gladio -- Italian for "sword" -- said the continued existence of the force in Italy was "solely an Italian operation. We have no control over it whatsoever." The official would not comment on allegations that Gladio was part of a broad resistance network throughout Western Europe.
Andreotti disclosed the covert operation after a Venetian magistrate, Felice Casson, stumbled on its existence during an investigation into a neo-fascist terrorist attack that took place 18 years ago.
The investigation revealed that the explosives used in a 1972 car-bombing came from one of the 139 secret weapons depots kept for the use of Gladio forces. The bomb, which killed three policemen near the town of Gorizia in northeast Italy, was placed by neo-fascist activist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Andreotti said the 139 arsenals were broken up in 1973, but that weapons from 12 of them were never recovered.
Casson and fellow magistrate Carlo Mastelloni are now investigating possible links between Operation Gladio and extreme right-wing terrorists who are thought to have been responsible for a string of unsolved bombings in Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s.
In Washington, the U.S. government official familiar with Gladio said, "If there are allegations that the CIA was involved in terrorist activities in Italy, they are absolute nonsense."
Andreotti said the United States first approached Italy as early as 1951, when the CIA broached the idea of mounting what it called a "stay behind" organization, one of several in post-war Europe.
The American and Italian intelligence agencies worked together, he said, to establish a network of crack military troops, most of them concentrated in the northeast near the Yugoslav border, where the threat of a Communist invasion seemed most credible. In 1959, Operation Gladio came under the umbrella of NATO, he added.
In Paris, the newspaper Liberation said the French arm of the secret network was dissolved only after disclosures of the Italian operation created a controversy. French Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement on Monday confirmed France's involvement in the project.
The network was dissolved on presidential orders, Chevenement said, declining to specify when the order was issued. For most of its existence, the group had been "dormant," Chevenement said.
In Belgium, a Belgian former army intelligence official, Andre Moyen, told the leftist newspaper Le Drapeau Rouge he knew of "at least six arms caches" that existed in Belgium as recently as two months ago.
Henk Vredeling, the Dutch defense minister 1973-77, told the Associated Press he had been briefed about the existence of weapons caches on Dutch soil destined for behind-the-lines sabotage.
Few post-war revelations have sparked more controversy, confusion, and awe in the public mind than that of Operation Gladio. A mysterious fog seems to envelop that project, an intoxicating mystique, an opaque shell that thwarts all attempts at penetrating its mysteries. Any researcher who tries to shed light on those events has that very light refracted into the strangest of phantasms, like a crystal ball conjuring the dark desires and anxieties of the inquisitor. Whenever I try and explain Gladio to a friend, I begin with the parable of the blind man and the elephant.
To the parapolitics left, Gladio is proof of the CIA’s demiurgic omnipotence, their hidden hand up the ass of every post-war government. The communist gazes at Gladio and finds proof that deep-state fascists continue to run the Italian government. I have noticed that some right wingers share this delusion, and develop an admiration for the project, as if the ghost of Il Duce was valiantly running things behind the scenes. But this political poltergeist is of a very different nature.
The Catholic traditionalist looks at the project and instead finds proof of a centuries-long Masonic conspiracy, the final evolution in the devil’s schemes to destroy the Catholic Church. The communists on the other hand scoff at such notions, the church is not the victim but the perpetrator!
So what in the world did this project signify? Who was behind it? Genuine Neo Fascists? The CIA? The Catholic Church? The global masonic conspiracy? The Jews maybe? Reptillians???
In this series of articles, I will be attempting to dispel these phantoms, to pursue a sober understanding of the events that transpired and the implications. As always, my methodology will be unorthodox.
Man is drunk on conspiracy, he has worked himself into a stupor. And like a golem, the shadows cast by genuine occult machinations have taken on lives of their own.
We will begin with a case study, a figure unknown to anglosphere researchers, who will serve as a microcosm for the entire operation.