GORDON DUFF: GLADIO, HOW WE TERRORIZE OURSELVES Pt. 3

Norway

In 1957, the director of 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, the matter was resolved in 1958, after Norway was assured about how stay-behind networks were to be operated.^{[65][page needed]}

In 1978, the police discovered an arms cache and radio equipment at a mountain cabin and arrested Hans Otto Meyer, a businessman accused of being involved in selling illegal alcohol. Meyer claimed that the weapons were supplied by Norwegian intelligence. Rolf Hansen, defense minister at that time, stated the network was not in any way answerable to NATO and had no CIA connection.^[66]

Portugal

Further information: Aginter Press

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. Aginter Press was suspected of having assassinated GeneralHumberto Delgado (1906–1965), founder of the Portuguese National Liberation Frontagainst Salazar‘s dictatorship (prominent historians and several sources also claim Delgado’s assassination was performed by PIDEoperational Rosa Casaco), as well as anti-colonialist leader Amilcar Cabral (1924–1973), founder of the PAIGC(African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) and Eduardo Mondlaneleader of the liberation movement FRELIMO(Frente de Libertação de Moçambique), in 1969 (prominent historians and several sources also claim Cabral’s assassination was performed by indivuduals within Cabral’s guerrilla movemment, the PAIGC, and Mondlane’s death was work of his enemies inside FRELIMO – according to these versions, both assassinations were the result of struggles for power within the independentist movements).^[28][67]

Turkey

Main article: Counter-Guerrilla

Further information: Deep state, Ergenekon network, and Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele

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.^[68] According to Italian magistrate Felice Casson, the Turkish stay-behind forces are two-pronged: the military “Counter-Guerrilla”, and the civilian “Ergenekon”.^[69] An offshoot of the latter organization is currently the subject of a major investigation. Casson says Turkey is home to the most powerful branch of Operation Gladio.^[70]

The counter-guerrilla’s existence in Turkey was revealed in 1973 by then prime minister Bülent Ecevit,^[71] and he immediately became a target for several assassination plots.

During the ongoing trials since summer of 2008 it has been revealed that the group named Ergenekon is actually consisted of Armed Forces officers and various civilians working to influence the governments of Turkey, either by subversion or direct coup d’etat.^{[citation needed]}

The United Kingdom

In Great Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1940 to assist resistance movements and carry out subversive operations in enemy-held territory across occupied Europe.Guardianreporter David Pallister wrote in December 1990 that a guerrilla network with arms caches had been put in place following the fall of France. It included Brigadier “Mad Mike” Calvert, and was drawn from a special-forces ski battalion of the Scots Guards which was originally intended to fight in Nazi-occupied Finland.^[21] Known as Auxiliary Units, they were headed by Major Colin Gubbins, an expert in guerrilla warfare who would later lead the SOE. The Auxiliary Units were attached to GHQ Home Forces, and concealed within the Home Guard. The units were created in preparation of a possible invasion of the British Isles by the Third Reich. These units were allegedly stood down only in 1944. Several of their members subsequently joined theSpecial Air Service and saw action in France in late 1944. The units’ existence did not generally become known by the public until the 1990s though a book on the subject was published in 1968.^[72] In fiction, Owen Sheers’Resistance (2008), set in Wales, takes as one of its central characters a member of the Auxiliary Units called to resist a successful German invasion.

After the end of World War II, the stay-behind armies were created with the experience and involvement of former SOE officers.^[28] Following Giulio Andreotti’s October 1990 revelations, General Sir John Hackett (1910–1997), 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, Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley (1924–2006), former commander-in-chief of NATO’s Forces in Northern Europe from 1979 to 1982, declared to The Guardian that a secret arms network was established in Britain after the war.^[50] General John 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 a campaign for a new Home Guard against eventual Soviet invasion.^[73]

Gladio membership included mostly ex-servicemen but also followers of Oswald Mosley‘s pre-war fascist movement.^{[citation needed]} Among the 200,000+ Polish ex-servicemen in the UK after the end of World War II, unable to return home for fear of communist repression, were conspiratorial groups maintaining combat readiness ready to fight for a free Poland should the Warsaw Pact attack western Europe. The ‘Pogon‘ organisation, linked to the Polish Government-in-Exile held regular paramilitary exercises until the 1970s; many of its members were associated with the Polish scouting movement in the UK which had a strong paramilitary flavour. Links with ‘Stay-behind’ networks are strongly suspected.^{[citation needed]}

General Serravalle’s revelations

General Gerardo Serravalle, who commanded the Italian Gladio from 1971 to 1974, related that “in 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, Luxemburg, 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 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. “.^[74] 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 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”.^[75] General Serravale declared to the Commissione Stragi headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino that the Italian Gladio members trained at a military base in Britain.^[50] Documents shown to the committee also revealed that British and French officials members of Gladio had visited in the 1970s a training base in Germany built with US money.^[50]

The Guardian’s November 1990 revelations concerning plans under Margaret Thatcher

The Guardian reported on November 5, 1990, that there had been a “secret attempt to revive elements of a parallel post-war plan relating to overseas operations” in the “early days of Mrs Thatcher‘s Conservative leadership”. According to the British newspaper, “a group of former intelligence officers, inspired by the wartime Special Operations Executive, attempted to set up a secret unit as a kind of armed MI6 cell. Those behind the scheme included Airey Neave, Mrs Thatcher’s close adviser who was killed in a terrorist attack in 1979, andGeorge Kennedy Young, a former deputy chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.” The newspaper stated that Thatcher had been “initially enthusiastic but dropped the idea after the scandal surrounding the attack by the French secret service on the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand in 1985.”^[59] The Swiss branch, P-26, as well as Italian Gladio, had trained in the UK in the early 1970s.^[59][76]