Misplaced Pages

#605394

88-543: With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services approved on 1 August 2007, CESIS was replaced by DIS . Since the end of World War II, Italian intelligence agencies have been reorganized many times in an attempt to increase their effectiveness and bring them more fully under civilian control. The committee was established as part of a broader reform of the Italian intelligence community, which represented

176-590: A 1992 interview with The Nation , that certain elements from the network were involved in terrorist activities against de Gaulle and his Algerian policy. A section of the 11th Choc regiment split over the 1962 Évian peace accords, and became part of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), but it is unclear if this also involved members of the French stay-behind network. La Rose des Vents and Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow") network were part of Gladio. François de Grossouvre

264-488: A campaign for a new Home Guard against a potential Soviet invasion. NATO provided a forum to integrate, coordinate, and optimise the use of all SB assets as part of the Emergency War Plan. This coordination included the military SB units, which were part of NATO's order of battle, and the clandestine SBOs run by NATO nations. Western secret services had cooperated in various bilateral, triparty, and multilateral fora in

352-553: A century later that SOE was complemented by a stay-behind organisation in Britain, created in extreme secrecy, to prepare for a possible invasion by Nazi Germany . A network of resistance fighters was formed across Britain and arms caches were established. The network was recruited, in part, from the 5th (Ski) Battalion of the Scots Guards (which had originally been formed, but was not deployed, to fight alongside Finnish forces fighting

440-511: A clandestine shortwave radio homed in on a fixed frequency. It had a keyboard with digital encryption, making use of traditional Morse code obsolete. They had a cache of further equipment for signalling helicopters or submarines to drop special agents who were to stay in the partisan's homes while mounting sabotage operations against the communists. When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the country's special forces, LOK ( Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn , i.e., "mountain raiding companies"), were integrated into

528-696: A former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi". "The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press." Documents shown to the Italian parliamentary terrorism committee revealed that in the 1970s British and French officials involved in the network visited a training base in Germany built with US money. In 1976, West German secret service BND secretary Heidrun Hofer

616-601: A former chief of Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID), was arrested for "conspiracy against the state" after the attempted Golpe Borghese . In 1977, a legislative act reorganized intelligence agencies under civilian control. This re-organization mainly consisted of: In October 1990, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti 's public revelation of the existence of Gladio , a stay-behind anti-Communist network supported by NATO , caused another scandal. The SISMI's chief, Nicolò Pollari , resigned in November 2006 after his indictment in

704-726: A press officer at the US embassy in Rome. 'So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the terrorist group was in the pay of the American embassy in Rome.' a report released by the Democrats of the Left party says. General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian Gladio from 1971 to 1974, related that "in

792-427: A secret arms network was established in Britain after the war. Hackett had written in 1978 a novel, The Third World War: August 1985 , which was a fictionalized scenario of a Soviet Army invasion of West Germany in 1985. The novel was followed in 1982 by The Third World War: The Untold Story , which elaborated on the original. Farrar-Hockley had aroused controversy in 1983 when he became involved in trying to organise

880-586: A state secret falls under the prerogative of the Prime Minister, who may do so for fifteen years, renewable to thirty. It may not be applied to activities involving subversion , terrorism or to attacks aimed at causing deaths. The Constitutional Court may not be denied access to documents on the basis of them being state secrets. The Prime Minister can lift state secrets, as well as COPASIR unanimously. Gladio in Italy Operation Gladio

968-517: A successful coup d'état in 1980, served as the head of the Counter-Guerrilla , the Turkish branch of Operation Gladio. Historians and outside investigators have speculated that Counter-Guerrilla and several subordinate Intelligence, Special Forces, and Gendarmerie units were possibly involved in numerous acts of state-sponsored terrorism and engineering the military coups of 1971 and 1980 . Many of

SECTION 10

#1732859266606

1056-572: Is allowed, except for cases involving false testimony before judicial authorities, concealing evidence of a crime, or intending to mislead investigations. Three to ten-year prison sentences are envisaged for officers who illegally fix the conditions under which "authorized operations" are granted. Three to ten-year prison sentences may be incurred for compiling illegal dossiers outside of the intelligence agency's objectives, with secret archives also forbidden. State secret status may cover documents, news, activities or any other thing. Declaring object

1144-653: Is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and in some neutral countries. According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare , and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them, such as Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. The United States Department of State rejected

1232-640: The Abu Omar case , which concerned the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan in 2003. The judiciary investigation into the abduction of Abu Omar uncovered a SISMI-run black operation targeting center-left politician Romano Prodi and a domestic surveillance program involving Telecom . The SISMI was also implicated in the Niger uranium forgeries scandal, during which SISMI agents transmitted false documents to US President George W. Bush which were used as pretext in

1320-547: The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), a foreign intelligence and security agency, and Dipartimento delle Informazioni per la Sicurezza (DIS), a security information department. The parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence agencies ( COPASIR ) was granted additional oversight and control powers, with the DIS general director acting as secretary. While the intelligence agencies used to be divided between

1408-670: The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security , which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers . The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness. The Military Information Service , known in Italian as Servizio Informazioni Militare or SIM,

1496-568: The Chief Staff of Defense , there were instructions to infiltrate left-wing groups and provoke social tension by carrying out attacks and then blame them on the left. In 2000, a parliamentary commission report from the left-wing coalition Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo asserted that a strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to " stop the PCI , and to a certain degree also

1584-586: The Commissione Stragi headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino that the Italian Gladio members trained at a military base in Britain. After the 1967 withdrawal of France from NATO's military structure, the SHAPE headquarters were displaced to Mons in Belgium. In 1990, following France's denial of any "stay-behind" French army, Giulio Andreotti publicly said the last Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) meeting, at which

1672-501: The European Parliament sharply condemned NATO and the United States in a resolution for having manipulated European politics with the stay-behind armies. New legislation governing intelligence agencies' missions and methods was passed in 1998, following two government inquiries and the creation of a permanent parliamentary committee in 1991, which was to bring them under the authority of Belgium's federal agencies. The commission

1760-651: The Grey Wolves ( Turkish : Bozkurtlar ), the youth wing of the MHP . Nazar was an Uzbek born near Tashkent who had deserted the Red Army to join the Nazis during World War II in order to fight on the Eastern Front for the creation of a Turkistan. After Germany lost the war, some of its spies found haven in the U.S. intelligence community . Nazar was such a person, and he became

1848-521: The Italian Massacres Commission , found out that several far-right terrorist organizations were the trench troops of a secret army who were linked to the CIA. Salvini said: "The role of the Americans was ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities". Judge Gerardo D'Ambrosio found out that in a conference that had the patronage of

SECTION 20

#1732859266606

1936-480: The PSI , from reaching executive power in the country ". It stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." The report stated that US intelligence agents were informed in advance about several terrorist bombings, including

2024-706: The Soviet invasion of Finland ). The network, which became known as the Auxiliary Units , was headed by Major Colin Gubbins – an expert in guerrilla warfare (who would later lead SOE). The units were trained, in part, by "Mad Mike" Calvert , a Royal Engineers officer who specialised in demolition by explosives and covert raiding operations. To the extent that they were publicly visible, the Auxiliary Units were disguised as Home Guard units, under GHQ Home Forces . The network

2112-488: The Syndicat de la magistrature French union. In March 2007, the center-left government of Romano Prodi created a new "information system for security" called Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica. It introduced far more detailed procedures with regards to state secrets, cooperation with police forces and public administrations, judicial investigation of the conduct of secret service personnel, regulating

2200-512: The invasion of Iraq . In August 2007, Italian magistrates searching the SISMI's headquarters found documents proving that the intelligence agency had spied on various European magistrates between 2001 and 2006 who it considered to be carrying a "destabilization" potential. These included the Medel , a European association of magistrates, and as three French judges including Anne Crenier, a former president of

2288-513: The 1970s the members of the CPC [Coordination and Planning Committee] were the officers responsible for the secret structures of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy. These representatives of the secret structures met every year in one of the capitals... At the stay-behind meetings representatives of the CIA were always present. They had no voting rights and were from

2376-461: The 1980s. It was located in a park near Scheveningen . Some of the stolen weapons, including hand grenades and machine guns, later turned up when police officials arrested criminals John Mieremet and Sam Klepper in 1991. The Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD feared at the time that disclosure of the Gladio history of these weapons would have been politically sensitive. In 1957, the director of

2464-502: The ACCG. By 1961 though, 'both SHAPE and CPC [now] accepted that such SB activity [guerrilla warfare and resistance under Soviet occupation] was a purely national responsibility'. Upon learning of the discovery, the parliament of the European Union (EU) drafted a resolution sharply criticizing the fact. Yet only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland carried out parliamentary investigations, while

2552-627: The CIA chief of station in Athens, answered, "How can you rape a whore?" Arrested and then exiled in Canada and Sweden, Andreas Papandreou later returned to Greece, where he won the 1981 election , forming the first socialist government of Greece's post-war history. According to his own testimony, Ganser alleges, he discovered the existence of the secret NATO army, then codenamed "Red Sheepskin", as acting prime minister in 1984 and had given orders to dissolve it. Following Giulio Andreotti's revelations in 1990,

2640-741: The CIA headquarters of the capital in which the meeting took place... members of the US Forces Europe Command were present, also without voting rights. " Next to the CPC a second secret command post was created in 1957, the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). According to the Belgian Parliamentary Committee on Gladio, the ACC was "responsible for coordinating the 'Stay-behind' networks in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, United Kingdom and

2728-522: The CIA's station chief to Turkey. In Austria, the first secret stay-behind army was exposed in 1947. It had been set up by the far-right Theodor Soucek and Hugo Rössner, who both insisted during their trial that "they were carrying out the secret operation with the full knowledge and support of the US and British occupying powers." Sentenced to death, they had their sentences commuted to life in prison and 20 years, respectively, by Karl Renner , to prevent them from potentially becoming martyrs. In August 1952,

CESIS - Misplaced Pages Continue

2816-643: The Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) at SHAPE. The peacetime role of the CPC would have been to coordinate the different military and paramilitary plans and programmes in NATO nations (and partners like Switzerland and Austria) in order to avoid duplication of effort. The CPC itself had at least two working groups – one on communications and one on networks. SACEUR also established a Special Projects Branch to develop and coordinate 'clandestine forces operating in support of SACEUR's military forces'. In 1957,

2904-678: The December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place. It also reported that Pino Rauti , former leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party, journalist and founder of the Ordine Nuovo (new order) subversive organisation, received regular funding from

2992-693: The Defense Ministry (SISMI) and the Interior Ministry (SISDE), the main division line is now between "internal" and "external" security. The Italian military 's new intelligence agency, II Reparto Informazioni e Sicurezza of the Stato maggiore della difesa (RIS), is not integrated into the "information system for security", and is limited to activities of a technical military and military police nature, such as to protect armed force outposts and activities abroad. According to Statewatch , "the law also envisages

3080-510: The Dutch Parliament that his office was running a secret organisation that had been set up inside the Dutch defence ministry in the 1950s, but denied it was supervised directly by NATO or other foreign bodies. He went on to inform that successive prime ministers and defence chiefs had always preferred not to inform other Cabinet members or Parliament about the secret organization. It was modelled on

3168-618: The European stay-behind network. The CIA and LOK reconfirmed on March 25, 1955, their mutual cooperation in a secret document signed by US General Truscott for the CIA, and Konstantinos Dovas , chief of staff of the Greek military. In addition to preparing for a Soviet invasion, the CIA instructed LOK to prevent a leftist coup. Former CIA agent Philip Agee , who was sharply criticized in the US for having revealed sensitive information, insisted that "paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in

3256-420: The European, national, regional, and local level, or members of governing bodies or constitutional bodies, judges, religious ministers and journalists." The DIS opened an investigation office to verify that the activities of the various agencies respect rule of law and to conduct internal investigations. The commission of illegal acts by intelligence officers, excluding license to kill , must be authorised by

3344-556: The French branch of Gladio was present, had been on October 23 and 24, 1990, under the presidency of Belgian General Van Calster, director of the Belgian military General Service for Intelligence (SGR). In November, Guy Coëme , the Minister of Defense, acknowledged the existence of a Belgian "stay-behind" army, raising concerns about a similar implication in terrorist acts as in Italy. The same year,

3432-559: The Greek Defence Ministry while Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos gained control of communication centres, parliament, the royal palace, and according to detailed lists, arrested over 10,000 people. According to Ganser, Phillips Talbot , the US ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the military coup which established the " Regime of the Colonels " (1967–1974), complaining that it represented "a rape of democracy"—to which Jack Maury,

3520-505: The Greek defence minister confirmed that a branch of the network, known as Operation Sheepskin, operated in his country until 1988. In December 2005, journalist Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema , a Greek Sunday newspaper, in which he accused "Sheepskin" for the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens in 1975, as well as the assassination of British military attaché Stephen Saunders in 2000. This

3608-506: The Netherlands for sabotage purposes. Already in 1990, it was known that the weapons cache near Velp, while accidentally 'discovered' in 1983, had been plundered partially before. It still contained dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, automatic pistols, munitions and explosives at the time of discovery, but five hand grenades had gone missing. A Dutch investigative television program revealed on 9 September 2007, that another arms cache that had belonged to Gladio had been ransacked in

CESIS - Misplaced Pages Continue

3696-513: The President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga , and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, had been involved in the Gladio organization and coverup ..." Researcher Francesco Cacciatore, in an article based on recently de-classified documents, writes that a "note from March 1972 specified that the possibility of using 'Gladio' in the event of internal subversions, not provided for by the organization's statute and not supported by NATO directives or plans,

3784-415: The Prime Minister or delegated authority, in compliance with a principle of justification for such conduct as part of an authorized operation. In cases of "absolute urgency" that do not allow the normal procedure for authorization to be followed, agency directors may authorize the activities, informing the Prime Minister and DIS "immediately", and explaining the reasons for such a course of action. According to

3872-552: The US decided to create "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations, with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited, whether in Italy or in other European countries. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind in enemy-controlled territory and to act as resistance movements , conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations. Clandestine stay-behind (SB) units were created with

3960-402: The United States". During peacetime, the activities of the ACC "included elaborating the directives for the network, developing its clandestine capability and organising bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE; organisers were to activate clandestine bases and organise operations from there". General Serravalle declared to

4048-613: The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Benelux countries, all of which ran SBOs in Western Europe, established the 'Six Powers Lines Committee' which became the Allied Clandestine Committee in 1958 and, after 1976, the Allied Coordination Committee (ACC). The ACC has been described as a technical committee to bring national SBOs together. It took its guidance from the CPC and organized multinational exercises. The authority of SACEUR when it came to clandestine operations

4136-506: The WUCC was integrated into NATO , whose headquarters were established in France, under the name "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC). In 1958, NATO founded the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare. The network was supported with elements from SDECE , and had military support from the 11th Choc regiment . The former director of DGSE , Admiral Pierre Lacoste , alleged in

4224-485: The accidental discovery of large arms caches in 1980 and 1983. In the latter incident, people walking in a forest near the village of Rozendaal , near Arnhem , chanced upon a large hidden cache of arms, containing dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, automatic pistols, munitions and explosives. That discovery forced the Dutch government to confirm that the arms were related to NATO planning for unorthodox warfare. In 1990, then-Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers told

4312-579: The administration of President George H. W. Bush refused to comment. NATO's "stay-behind" organizations were never called upon to resist a Soviet invasion. According to a November 13, 1990, Reuters cable, " André Moyen – a former member of the Belgian military security service and of the [stay-behind] network – said Gladio was not just anti-Communist but was for fighting subversion in general. He added that his predecessor had given Gladio 142 million francs ($ 4.6 million) to buy new radio equipment." The Italian NATO stay-behind organization, dubbed "Gladio",

4400-413: The adoption of a regulation including provisions to guarantee the information services' access to the computer archives of public administrations and public utility providers, with technical means of monitoring what personal data was checked after the event." Furthermore, the "intelligence services are forbidden from employing or commissioning advisory or co-operation services from elected politicians at

4488-474: The bombings committed from the 1960s to the 1980s. Andreotti declared that the Italian military services (predecessors of the SISMI) had joined in 1964 the Allied Clandestine Committee created in 1957 by the US, France, Belgium and Greece, and which was in charge of directing Gladio's operations. However, Gladio was actually set up under Minister of Defence (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani 's supervision. Besides,

SECTION 50

#1732859266606

4576-456: The case of Richard Welch, "Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials" while "Sheepskin" couldn't have assassinated Stephen Saunders for the simple reason that, according to the US government, "the Greek government stated it dismantled the 'stay behind' network in 1988." Speculation that the Netherlands was involved in Gladio arose from

4664-451: The convicts were pardoned and released by President Theodor Körner . While there is evidence suggesting that the activities of Soucek and Rössner were tolerated to an extent by local occupation authorities, available American archives do not suggest that they had any connection to U.S. intelligence. A secret review of the situation by US forces in Austria in early January 1948 implies that while

4752-839: The creation, training, and running of clandestine Stay-behind organisations (SBO) soon after World War II. In 1947, France, the United Kingdom, and the Benelux countries had created a joint policy on SB in the Western Union Clandestine Committee (WUCC), a forum of the Western Union , the European defence alliance predating NATO. The format entered into NATO structures around 1951–1952 when the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) established such an 'ad hoc' committee,

4840-649: The experience and involvement of former SOE officers . Following Giulio Andreotti's October 1990 revelations, General Sir John Hackett , former commander-in-chief of the British Army on the Rhine , declared on November 16, 1990, that a contingency plan involving "stay behind and resistance in depth" was drawn up after the war. The same week, Anthony Farrar-Hockley , former commander-in-chief of NATO's Forces in Northern Europe from 1979 to 1982, declared to The Guardian that

4928-472: The founding member of the Counter-Guerrilla ; Alparslan Türkeş — a product of that CIA initiative. As one of the nations that prompted the Truman Doctrine , Turkey is one of the first countries to participate in Operation Gladio and, some say, the only country where it has not been purged. The counter-guerrillas' existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit . General Kenan Evren , who became President of Turkey following

5016-480: The high ranking plotters of the 1971 and 1980 coup, such as Generals Evren, Memduh Tağmaç , Faik Türün , Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu , Kemal Yamak and Air Force Commander Tahsin Şahinkaya , served at various times under the command of Counter-Guerrilla or the subordinate Tactical Mobilisation Group and Special Warfare Department . Additionally, the CIA employed people from the far-right, such as Pan-Turkist SS-member Ruzi Nazar (father of Sylvia Nasar ), to train

5104-468: The highest level of NATO command, coordination in time of crisis had to be arranged. Thus, to coordinate these activities at different command levels in wartime, SACEUR created the Allied Clandestine Coordinating Groups (ACCG) staffed with personnel from NATO nations at SHAPE and the subordinate commands. In case of war, SACEUR was meant to exercise operational control of national clandestine services' assets, according to each nation's existing policies, through

5192-418: The intelligence agencies. The Secretary General exerted, by proxy, the role of ANS ("National Security Authority"), peculiar of the President of Council. Italian Intelligence Services Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy . Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and

5280-434: The latest in a long string of government attempts to effectively manage Italy's intelligence agencies. CESIS's first Secretary General was Prefect Gaetano Napoletano, the last one was Lieutenant General Giuseppe Cucchi . CESIS was a collective body, chaired by the President of Council , and composed of the main political, public security, military and intelligence agency top authorities: The Secretary General of CESIS

5368-464: The list of Gladio members given by Andreotti was incomplete. It didn't include, for example, Antonio Arconte, who described an organization very different from the one brushed by Giulio Andreotti: an organization closely tied to the SID secret service and the Atlanticist strategy. According to Andreotti, the stay-behind organisations set up in all of Europe did not come "under broad NATO supervision until 1959." The judge Guido Salvini , who worked in

SECTION 60

#1732859266606

5456-425: The local Communist press, Soviet diplomats and loyal Scandinavians who hoped that neutrality or nonalignment would allow them to slip through a World War III unharmed. In 1947, Interior Minister Édouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". The next year, the "Western Union Clandestine Committee" (WUCC) was created to coordinate secret unorthodox warfare. In 1949,

5544-427: The matter was resolved in 1958, after Norway was assured about how stay-behind networks were to be operated. In 1978, the police discovered an arms cache and radio equipment at a mountain cabin and arrested Hans Otto Meyer ( no ), a businessman accused of being involved in selling illegal alcohol. Meyer claimed that the weapons were supplied by Norwegian intelligence. Rolf Hansen , defence minister at that time, stated

5632-455: The name he put on file was arrested by the KGB following treason in the BND, but was obviously innocent, his name having been chosen at random from the public phone book by Juretzko. According to Juretzko, the BND built up its branch of Gladio, but discovered after the fall of the German Democratic Republic that it was fully known to the Stasi early on. When the network was dismantled, further odd details emerged. One fellow "spymaster" had kept

5720-402: The nation's World War II experiences of having to evacuate the royal family and transfer government to a government-in-exile, originally aiming to provide an underground intelligence network to a government-in-exile in the event of a foreign invasion, although it included elements of guerrilla warfare. Former Dutch Defence Minister Henk Vredeling confirmed the group had set up arms caches around

5808-764: The network was not in any way answerable to NATO and had no CIA connection. In 1966, the CIA set up Aginter Press which, under the direction of Captain Yves Guérin-Sérac (who had taken part in the founding of the OAS), ran a secret stay-behind army and trained its members in covert action techniques amounting to terrorism, including bombings, silent assassinations, subversion techniques, clandestine communication and infiltration and colonial warfare. In an excerpt from Mehtap Söyler's 2015 book entitled The Turkish Deep State: State Consolidation, Civil-Military Relations and Democracy , Söyler details how certain Western forces encouraged Turkish nationalism via Operation Gladio. Specifically, Operation Gladio empowered Turanism through

5896-471: The procedure for undertaking acts normally deemed illegal, and the acquisition of secret documentation by oversight bodies or judicial authorities. The system placed intelligence agencies more closely under the Prime Minister's supervision, who is responsible for nominating directors and deputy directors of each agency. The SISDE, SISMI and CESIS were replaced with the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), an internal information and security agency,

5984-430: The radio equipment in his cellar at home with his wife doing the engineering test call every four months, on the grounds that the equipment was too "valuable" to remain in civilian hands. Juretzko found out because this spymaster had dismantled his section of the network so quickly, there had been no time for measures such as recovering all caches of supplies. Civilians recruited as stay-behind partisans were equipped with

6072-452: The reforms, the principle of justification is not applicable to actions such as: Endangering or harming life, physical integrity, individual personality, personal freedom, moral freedom, the health or safety of one or more people. Authorized operations explicitly exclude ordinary illegal acts in the offices of political parties , regional parliaments or councils, trade union offices, or against professional journalists. Aiding and abetting

6160-410: The secret service NIS , Vilhelm Evang , protested strongly against the pro-active intelligence activities at AFNORTH , as described by the chairman of CPC: "[NIS] was extremely worried about activities carried out by officers at Kolsås . This concerned SB, Psywar and Counter Intelligence." These activities supposedly included the blacklisting of Norwegians. SHAPE denied these allegations. Eventually,

6248-419: The set up of a West German stay-behind network. CIA documents released in June 2006 under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act , show that the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of West German agents between 1949 and 1953. According to The Washington Post , "One network included at least two former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues—and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp ,

6336-591: The setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia : The situation in each Scandinavian country was different. Norway and Denmark were NATO allies, Sweden held to the neutrality that had taken her through two world wars, and Finland were required to defer in its foreign policy to the Soviet power directly on its borders. Thus, in one set of these countries the governments themselves would build their own stay-behind nets, counting on activating them from exile to carry on

6424-415: The sixties throughout Europe [and he stressed that] perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion." According to Daniele Ganser , LOK was involved in the military coup d'état on 21 April 1967 , which took place one month before the scheduled national elections. Under the command of paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides , LOK took control of

6512-478: The struggle. These nets had to be co-ordinated with NATO's plans, their radios had to be hooked to a future exile location, and the specialised equipment had to be secured from CIA and secretly cached in snowy hideouts for later use. In the other set of countries, CIA would have to do the job alone or with, at best, "unofficial" local help, since the politics of those governments barred them from collaborating with NATO, and any exposure would arouse immediate protest from

6600-532: The view that they supported terrorists and maintains that the operation served only to resist a potential invasion of Western European countries by the Soviet Union . Following the fall of France in 1940, Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to both assist resistance movements and carry out sabotage and subversive operations in occupied Europe . It was revealed half

6688-560: Was Gladio's leader for the region around Lyon in France until his alleged suicide on April 7, 1994. Grossouvre would have asked Constantin Melnik, leader of the French secret services during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), to return to activity. He was living in comfortable exile in the US, where he maintained links with the Rand Corporation . US intelligence also assisted in

6776-568: Was allegedly disbanded in 1944; some of its members subsequently joined the Special Air Service and saw action in North-West Europe . While David Lampe published a book on the Auxiliary Units in 1968, their existence did not become widely known by the public until reporters such as David Pallister of The Guardian revived interest in them during the 1990s. After World War II, the UK and

6864-620: Was arrested after having revealed the secrets of the West German stay-behind army to her husband, who was a spy of the KGB . In 2004 the German author 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 " Rübezahl " whom he had recruited. A man with

6952-536: Was created following events in the 1980s, which included the Brabant massacres and the activities of the far-right group Westland New Post . The Danish stay-behind army was code-named Absalon , after a Danish archbishop , and led by E. J. Harder. It was hidden in the military secret service Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE). In 1978, William Colby , former director of the CIA , released his memoirs in which he described

7040-536: Was denied by the US State Department , who responded that "the Greek terrorist organization ' 17 November ' was responsible for both assassinations", and that Grivas's central piece of evidence had been the Westmoreland Field Manual which the state department, as well as an independent congressional inquiry, have alleged to be a Soviet forgery. The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in

7128-525: Was discussed in the early 1950s as one can gather from the document 'SHAPE Problems Outstanding with the Standing Group', which, under sub-heading 'IV. Special Plans' calls for the 'Delineation of Responsibilities of the Clandestine Services and of SACEUR on Clandestine Matters Including Pertinent Definitions and Organizations' and 'Principles for Unorthodox Warfare Planning'. While all this concerned

7216-528: Was founded on October 15, 1925. It originated from a military information system structure within the Italian Armed Forces . From February 6, 1927, it was placed under the direct control of the Chief of General Staff. Benito Mussolini is said to have changed the leadership frequently as he did not have complete confidence in the service. The SIM was largely focused on France , Austria and Yugoslavia , and

7304-628: Was not involved in quelling anti-fascist opposition during Mussolini's reign, which was handled by the Ministry of the Interior and the OVRA . By January 1934, the SIM had approximately 40 people in service (in addition to informers) and a budget of around two million lire . When Mario Roatta was put in charge of the agency, the budget was doubled to around four million lira. Source: In 1974, General Vito Miceli ,

7392-645: Was not only a member, but, as the chief of General Secretariat of CESIS (see below), he also acted as the Secretary of this body. The General Secretariat, the Office of the Secretary General, was a focal point which, amongst other things: UCSI's role is to protect the Italian secret of State. By means of the General Secretariat, the President of Council ensures the unity of political leadership and management of

7480-426: Was outside the scope of the original stay-behind and, therefore, 'never to be considered among the purposes of the operation'. The pressure put forward by the Americans during the 1960s to use 'Gladio' for purposes other than those of a stay-behind network would appear to have failed in the long term." According to the former Italian Ministry of Grace and Justice Claudio Martelli , during the 1980s and 1990s Andreotti

7568-452: Was set up under Minister of Defense (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani 's ( DC ) supervision. Gladio's existence came to public knowledge when Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed it to the Chamber of Deputies on 24 October 1990, although far-right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra had already revealed its existence during his 1984 trial. According to media analyst Edward S. Herman , "both

7656-488: Was the codename for clandestine " stay-behind " operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU) (founded in 1948), and subsequently by NATO (formed in 1949) and by the CIA (established in 1947), in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War . Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, Operation Gladio

7744-587: Was the political reference of Licio Gelli and the Masonic lodge Propaganda 2 . Christian Democrat Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly recognized the existence of Gladio on 24 October 1990. Andreotti spoke of a "structure of information, response and safeguard", with arms caches and reserve officers. He gave to the Commissione Stragi a list of 622 civilians who according to him were part of Gladio. Andreotti also stated that 127 weapons caches had been dismantled, and said that Gladio had not been involved in any of

#605394