Operation Gladio: The Secret CIA Program to Control Europe

Operation Gladio

BBC (1992)

Film Review

This 1992 documentary is based on rare archival interviews of former Gladio operatives. Gladio was a secret US/UK intelligence-run program run across Europe between 1945 and its public exposure in 1990. It’s main purpose was to crush strikes and public protests and to prevent groups unfriendly to US/UK interests from coming to power. The main strategies employed were false flag terrorist attacks (mainly bombings and assassinations) that were officially blamed on left wing groups

The Office of Strategic Services or OSS (which became the CIA in 1947) and MI6 (the British secret service) divided up spheres of influence. The Brits ran Gladio in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium and the US France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Turkey and Greece. In each of these countries, UK/US intelligence recruited police and secret services, fascist groups and Nazi spies “left behind” when Hitler’s army withdrew from occupied Europe.

Although elected parliaments (and many prime ministers) were never informed of Gladio’s existence, all NATO countries were forced to join as a condition of NATO membership. Moreover the French continued to participate in Gladio after President Charles DeGaulle withdrew France from NATO in 1966.**

In this film, former Gladio operatives from Italy and Belgium discuss their motivation for participating, their role in infiltrating targeted left wing groups,*** the role of local CIA operatives in providing funding, training and other support, and their eventual disillusionment with illegal terrorist actions that deliberately targeted civilians. There are also interviews with CIA officials involved in funding, arming and training Gladio operatives and with Italian Investigating judges, whistleblowers and journalists who helped bring Gladio to public attention.

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*In a false flag operation, deliberate deception creates the appearance of responsibility of a particular group or nation for a given atrocity, disguising the actual source of responsibility.

**DeGaulle made the 1966 decision to withdraw French troops from NATO after learning a secret assassination team operating out of NATO headquarters in Belgium was responsible for four assassination attempts against him. French intelligence would provide details about this group to New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison in his prosecution of Kennedy assassination co-conspirator Clay Shaw (see New Evidence in JFK Assassination). French troops would rejoin NATO under President Nicholas Sarkozy in 2009.

***Germany’s Red Army Faction (aka Beider-Meinhoff gang), Italy’s Red Brigades and France’s Action Directe are the best known so-called leftist groups infiltrated (and likely run) by Gladio.

 

The 1968 Global Revolt and the Brutal 1969 Global Crackdown

1968 Global Revolt – Part 3 The Explosion

DW (2018)

Film Review

Part 3 focuses on 1969 and the extreme police and military violence directed at anti-government protests in the US, Japan, Italy and Germany.

In the US, 1969 saw the occupation of derelict University of California-Berkeley property for the formation of a People’s Park and the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The latter would be destroyed by heavy CIA/FBI infiltration and assassination and false imprisonment of many of its leaders. 1969 also saw the sidetracking of many US antiwar protestors into environmental activism, women’s and gay liberation and alternative lifestyles (the hippy peace, love and truth movement, Woodstock and communal living).

In Germany, the students rejecting bourgeois capitalist lifestyles formed the Kommune movement. The filmmakers erroneously describe the Baader-Meinhoff Gang (aka the Red Army Faction), responsible for setting fire to department stores and warehouses, as a fringe offshoot of the the Kommune movement. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang was exposed in the early 90s as a CIA/NATO-driven product of Operation Gladio.*

The filmmakers also mischaracterize Italy’s Red Brigades as a violent offshoot of the Italian antifascist movement that mobilized tens of thousands of workers and students. The Red Brigades, responsible for tens of thousands of false flag bombings and assassinations, was also created and run by Operation Gladio. The Italian government used the Red Brigades “terrorist” activities events to justify the adoption of extreme repressive measures, including the imprisonment of 30,000 antifascist activists.

Also disappointing is the filmmakers’ failure to identify the root cause of Japan’s anti-American protests (ie the CIA funding of their single party government). In his book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson compares Japan’s US-controlled post-war government to East Germany’s dictatorship. Also see CIA supported Japan’s ruling party during Cold War era

*Operation Gladio is the code name for a CIA/NATO backed paramilitary network that carried out thousands of false flag terrorist operations to justify repressive government legislation to suppress grassroots anti-capitalist organizing. It was exposed in a 1992 BBC documentary.

 

 

False Flag Terrorism 101

The following presentation was part of Left Out forum, which 9-11 Truth organized to coincide with the Left Forum held in June 2017 in New York. It featured Dr Kevin Barret (the speaker) and other activists who were denied permission to speak at the Left Forum.*

In his talk, Barrett traces false flag terrorism back to Operation Gladio. The latter was a US military operation in Europe involving bombings and other terrorist attacks targeting civilians that were falsely blamed on left wing groups (eg the Red Brigades, the Baadar Meinhoff Gang and the KGB).

The overall purpose of Operation Gladio terrorism was to influence European elections at a time when Communist politicians enjoyed large majorities in the polls.

The Purpose of Trauma-Based Mind Control

According to Barrett, this strategy represents a form of trauma based mind control or  psyops (psychological operation). As with Gladio, the cumulative effect of such attacks is to swing the vote for right wing authoritarian leaders who promise people protection and security.

Barrett has collaborated with ex-CIA undercover officer Robert David Steele to conduct extensive research into the false flag attacks in London in 2005 and 2017; in Manchester in 2017; in Paris in 2015, in Nice in 2016; in Munich in 2016, in San Bernadino in 2015 and in Orlando in 2016.

In this presentation, he briefly summarizes the pattern of anomalies suggesting each of these events was staged by individuals with links to the US military and/or US intelligence.

He has written about them in a series of books – Another French Flag: Bloody Tracks from Paris to San Bernadino, Orlando False Flag: the Clash of History, and We Are Not Charlie Hebdo: Free Thinkers Question the French 9/11.

It’s Barrett’s view that both the British and French false flags resulted in the defeat of left leaning candidates (Corbyn in Britain and Melenchon in France) who were riding high in the polls – just like the Operation Gladio false flags of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

9/11: Mother of All False Flag Events

Barrett maintains 9/11 was the mother of all false flag events, in addition to decapitating the burgeoning antiglobalization move (sending 75,000 into the streets of Seattle in 1999), 9/11 and its aftermath transferred immense power to Bush’s neocon supporters (Cheney, Rumsfeld  et all), enabling them to suspend civil liberties, increase surveillance and police state powers and carry out massive US military expansion in the Middle East.

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*Barrett also mentions the “gatekeeping” function played by the “official” US Left as regards 9-11 and CIA and US military involvement in assassinations, false flag events and the funding of ISIS. I have always attributed this phenomenon to the infiltration of the US left by the CIA and CIA-funded gatekeeping foundations. See The History of CIA-funded Foundations and  Does the CIA Fund Both the Right and the Left