Operation Gladio

“In my 30-year career in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.” — Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit.

This is the craziest book I've ever read. This is the type of book that, even describing it, sounds insane. But it is heavily sourced and written by a respectable author. High recommend for anyone who wants to learn about US crimes against humanity.

To describe Project Gladio in one sentence...
Project Gladio was a CIA-backed operation to sell heroin to the Italian-American Mafia and give that money to the Vatican Bank to fund fascist paramilitary organizations and mobsters tasked with subverting democracy and committing false-flag terrorist acts to frame and derail anti-capitalist political groups in Italy and across Europe.

Part 1: The USA has always sympathized with Nazis

The fact that the US was not on the same side of the Nazis in WW2 is a historical fluke. They were (and still are) much more closely ideologically aligned with Nazi Germany than their ally of circumstance: the Soviet Union. Before, during, and after WW2, the US government and business interests have had strong sympathies with Nazis and their ideology.

Allen Dulles, director of the OSS (precursor to the CIA), said “We're fighting the wrong enemy” in 1942, in reference to Nazi Germany. He planned treasonous back room deals with the Nazi high command while the war was still happening, trying to achieve a separate peace. Read “The Devil's Chessboard” for more on him.

“Hohenlohe [a liaison between Dulles and German High Command] was surprised to learn that Dulles not only endorsed the Nazi proposal, but also maintained that a strong Germany was necessary as a bulwark against Bolshevism...”. See: Operation Sunrise
These guys loved Nazism if it meant stopping communism. This is a foundational ideology of US capitalists to this day. They will always side with fascists to protect capitalism. Whether libertarians, Soc-Dems, Neoliberals, when it comes down to it, they always end up backing fascists.

Dulles worked with Nazi General Reinhard Gelhen to create Nazi “stay-behind units” as a police force against the soviets. “Gehlen had been asked by the OSS to set up stay-behind units made up of fellow Nazis to spy on the Soviet Union.” They later became the BND under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1956.

A US director of a covert agency working with literal Nazis to keep Nazis in power during and after WW2. The US funded and supplied these Nazi units with the help of Dulles' other Nazi friend Karl Wolff.

These stay-behind units became integrated into “Operation Gladio”.

Part 1.1: US&Vatican-backed Nazi ratlines

The Vatican and OSS helped Nazis escape justice around the end of WW2, helping them flee to SA (primarily Argentina)

“At the close of the war, the pope [Pius XII], along with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, his Undersecretary of State, had worked with Dulles and the OSS to create the ratlines used to help Nazis escape Europe, something he viewed as an essential means to address the threat of Communism. Several prominent Nazis, including Walter Rauff—who had led an extermination unit of the SS across Italy—still remained sheltered within Vatican City, ready to join in the struggle against the Red Menace.”

Klaus Barbie, “[t]he so-called ‘Butcher of Lyons' was responsible for 4,342 murders and 7,591 deportations to death camps during his two-year posting in the French city. After the war, US intelligence placed him in a safe house in Augsburg, provided him with a sanitized identity, and granted him a generous stipend of $1,700 a month. In 1983, the Justice Department belatedly admitted that US intelligence officials had arranged for Barbie's escape to Bolivia (where he became known as Klaus Altmann and opened a sawmill in La Paz), and that they had lied by denying to French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld that he was under their protection.” This Nazi was critical in the CIA's anti-communist terror campaigns throughout South America.

Part 1.2: US-Backed Nazi Argentina

“On March 25, 1976, two days after the coup, William Rogers, assistant secretary for Latin America, advised Kissinger that the military takeover of Argentina would result in ‘a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood.' To this warning, Kissinger responded, ‘Yes, but that is in our interest.'” If there were really any justice in this world, Henry Kissinger would be rotting in a jail cell.

In April, 1976, the US gave the Argentinian military dictatorship $50,000,000. Also “In April 1976 the public was invited by two groups calling themselves the Aryan Integral Nationalist Fatherland and the Pious Christian Crusade to attend Masses in the Buenos Aires cathedral ‘for the eternal rest of our blood brother in Christ, Adolf Hitler.'” The regime went on to commit a Jewish Pogram.

Argentina's “Dirty War” (1976-1983) resulted in up to 30,000 people killed or disappeared.

Part 2: Drugs for Guns

The newly anointed CIA did not want the citizenry of the United States of America to know about the fact that they were arming fascists to overthrow democracy in ally nations, but they needed money.

“Gladio was a covert operation and had not been initiated by an act of Congress or a mandate from the Pentagon. Few federal officials knew of its existence. The $200 million in original funding came from the Rockefeller and Mellon foundations. But a new and steady stream of revenue had to be created almost overnight....”

Therefore, the CIA oversaw the growing of poppies for the manufacture of heroin, which was sold to buy guns and bombs for the fascists in Europe & SA. The heroin was sold to gangsters in the USA and resulted in the skyrocketing of opiate addiction in the US after WW2. In 1947, the CIA began working with the Mafia to transport heroin into the US.

Part 3: The Mafia and the Vatican

“During the summer of 1947, the terms of the working relationship between the CIA and the Mafia were ironed out by Frank Wisner and Angleton. Meyer Lansky and Helliwell would work in tandem to handle the financial aspect of the narcotics venture through General Development Corporation, a shell company in Miami. Angleton would handle any legal disputes between the mob and the CIA through New York lawyer Mario Brod.”

The CIA oversaw the Italian-American Mafia as they sold heroin, specifically targeting Harlem and other black areas. The CIA's money couldn't go to the fascist paramilitary groups directly... “It had to be channeled through a financial firm that would not be subjected to scrutiny by US treasury agents, Italian bank examiners, or international fiscal monitors. Only one institution possessed such immunity, and it was located in the heart of Vatican City.”

The Vatican Bank served as a money-launder to turn the CIA's dirty drug money into clean money for the Gladio stay-behind units. This makes sense, given that they were also sheltering literal Nazis.

“In 1945, the pope had held private audiences with Wild Bill Donovan [executive director of the OSS and chairman of the World Commerce Corporation] to discuss the implementation of Gladio and had decorated him as a crusader against Communism with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester”

The Vatican has already been proven to be a cesspool of pedophiles and their protectors. It is not a legitimate democracy. It is a rogue state with diplomatic immunity from Italy. It's not a surprise at all to assert that it is full of crime. The damn place has no regulatory body! “As a sovereign state, the Holy See cannot be subjected to any ruling by any foreign court. It remains an institution with over $50 billion in securities, gold reserves that exceed those of some industrialized nations, real estate holdings that equal the total area of many countries, and opulent palaces containing the world's greatest art treasures.”

Perfect place to do crimes. A gangsters paradise.

Part 4: Subverting Democracy

The CIA had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. Their fundamental ideology was the maintenance of the US as a oligopolistic superpower, and destabilize any government or organization that even slightly threatened US hegemony. To them, the ends justified the means. So whether it was rigging elections, assassinating political figures, overthrowing democratically elected governments, funding death squads, bombing civilians, or funneling addictive drugs into the USA's underprivileged communities, that was all perfectly acceptable to them.

As previously mentioned, two world wars caused by imperialist capitalist nations resulted in a skyrocketing of anti-capitalist sentiment. Italian Communists helped win the war against Mussolini.

“Postwar Italy stood poised to become the first Communist country in Western Europe. Hundreds of thousands of northerners had either actively supported or actively fought for the partisan movement that had finally forced the German army out of Italy. It was the partisans who had captured Mussolini and who had hung him upside down with his mistress; it was the partisans who continued to assassinate Fascists after the war ended; and it was the partisans who constituted the [Italian Communist Party]. By 1946, the division in the country had become acute, with the people in the north wanting a Communist republic and the people in the south wanting a Catholic monarchy.”

Guess which side the USA sided with! The 1948 election in Italy started the new era of US imperialism: The US-backed subversion of democracy to install fascist dictators that were pro-US business interests. To achieve this, the US funded fascist paramilitary groups.

“In the months before [Italy's] 1948 national election, the CIA dumped $65 million of its black money into the Vatican Bank. [...] The CIA's black money for mob muscle was paid out by the Vatican bank from ecclesiastical organizations, including Catholic Action. [...] Don Calo and an army of thugs, including Vito Genovese's cousin Giovanni Genovese, burned down eleven Communist branch offices and made four assassination attempts on Communist leader Girolamo Li Causi. The gang...also opened fire on a crowd of workers celebrating May Day in Portella della Ginestra, killing eleven and wounding fifty-seven. [...] Throughout 1948, in Sicily alone, the CIA-backed terror attacks resulted in the killing of on average five people a week. [...] Monsignor Don Giuseppe Bicchierai, acting upon papal authority, assembled a terror gang charged with the task of beating up Communist candidates, smashing left-wing political gatherings, and intimidating voters. The money, guns, and jeeps for the Monsignor's terror attacks were furnished by the CIA from surplus World War II stockpiles. [...] On Election Day, Don Calo and his men stuffed ballot boxes and bribed voters with gifts of freshly laundered drug money.... The mob's tactics worked, and the Christian Democrats triumphantly returned to power. In his memoirs, William Colby, who would later become the director of the CIA, wrote that the Communists would have gained 60 percent of the vote without the Agency's sabotage.”

The quotes above are just a small fraction of what the US government did through Project Gladio, and Project Gladio is just one small piece of their international terror campaign.

When I say ‘The United States Federal Government is the largest terrorist organization on earth,' I mean that quite literally. Whether the CIA, the DoD, the State Department or the rest, they are together responsible for the vast majority of global terror over the last 70 years. When I say “Everyone to the left of Bernie Sanders gets assassinated by the CIA” I mean that literally. Historically everyone within The West who garners any political power and is politically to the left of Bernie Sanders ends up getting assassinated by the CIA or one of their terror groups.

Part 5: Vietnam, et al.

As the CIA-backed terror campaigns exploded across Europe, their heroin money started to run dry. So they expanded to French Indo-China: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with the help of the Corsican Mafia.

“In 1949, the CIA and the Luciano syndicate sorely needed the talents of the Corsicans for the creation of a new narcotics network. But the labor unions in Marseilles [France], where the heroin laboratories were located, remained controlled by Communists, who refused to load and unload ships coming from French Indochina, where the rebel army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (a force that would morph into the Viet Cong) was fighting for independence from the French Union.”

This really makes the tapestry of history come together nicely. Why did we invade Vietnam, a French colony on the other side of the world? “To stop the spread of Communism?” Yes, by shoring up the heroin manufacturing in Vietnam to fund their covert operations and overt global terror campaigns. Fucking bananas.

Part 6: The US-led Global Terror Campaign - SPEED ROUND

The US-led global terror campaign is so vast and extensive that my summary can never do it justice. Here are some things you can google to learn more...

• Operation Paper (not to be confused with Operation Paperclip)
• Operation Mockingbird
• Counter-Guerrilla: CIA backed military coup in Turkey in 1960, resulting in the extremist Nationalist Action Party to take power. Also staged another coup in 1980 “that toppled the government of Bülent Ecevit and the Democratic Left Party. Upon hearing the news, President Jimmy Carter phoned Paul Henze, the CIA station chief in Ankara, and said, with great relief, ‘Your people have made the coup!'” Shouts out to war criminal Jimmy Carter.
• Grey Wolves of Turkey: “the CIA unleashed them to fight the PKK—the Kurdistan Workers Party. Formed in 1978, the PKK sought to establish a Marxist-Leninist state in a swath of land [...] which they called Kurdistan.”
• Fethullah Gülen - A guy trying to undermine the Turkish government whom the CIA protects from extradition to a NATO country. Worked with Graham Fuller.
• Yaşar Öz, whom the FBI busted for drug smuggling but was let go because he had “diplomatic immunity, along with special NATO clearance”
• Operation Demagnetize
• Operation Eagle, 1968
• Operation Condor
• Liberation Theology - A sect of Christianity taught by many South American Catholics. “In 1975, the Bolivian Interior Ministry—a publicly acknowledged subsidiary of the CIA—drew up a master plan with the help of Vatican officials for the elimination of liberation theology.”
• Argentina's “Dirty War” (1976-1983)
• Project Haven - The 1977 IRS investigation into Castle Bank, which was used for the transferring of heroin money. “Such evidence led to a grand jury investigation. But after the jury was assembled, the investigation was called off. The CIA had issued a warning to the US Justice Department that the pursuit of criminal proceedings against the Castle Bank would endanger ‘national security.'
• Operation Phoenix - “a Stalin-like program that resulted in the assassination of an estimated forty thousand South Vietnamese civilians who were suspected of collaborating with the Viet Cong.”
• Operation Cyclone - spreading radical militant islam throughout Central Asian republics, resulting in the rise of Al Qaeda
• The BCCI, one of the CIA's favorite corporate banks for transferring drug money
• Kintex - Bulgarian illegal arms trafficker and “used extensively by NATO and the CIA”
• Air America, Frederick Luytjes, & Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport - The plane company, pilot, & route set up by the CIA to smuggle drugs and money for Pablo Escobar.
• The October Surprise - The time George H. W. Bush committed treason to help Ronald Reagan win the presidency
• The Brabant Massacre in Belgium
• Iran-Contra: Am I really supposed to believe that was a one-off?
• The Uyghurs and Graham Fuller (the craziest part of the book. Stupid text limit)
• “European Parliament resolution on Gladio - Joint resolution replacing B3-2021, 2058, 2068, 2078 and 2087/90”

Part 6.1: Just Italy

• Piano Solo - A CIA-backed coup plot in Italy in 1963
• The Golpe Borghese - December 7 1970, Another CIA-backed coup plot in Italy
• The Sicilian Coup plot of 1972, which almost resulted in Sicily becoming the a US State.
• Piazza Fontana bombing, December 12 1969 - CIA-backed false flag attack that killed 17 and wounded 88. Giovanni Ventura, a collaborator of the attack, provided “confidential CIA files. One document, dated May 4, 1969, listed a number of detailed steps to be taken, including ‘a possible wave of terror attacks to convince public opinion of the dangers of maintaining the [government's] alliance with the left.'”
• Peteano Massacre - May 31 1971, Neofascist terrorist attack blamed on communist groups
• Piazza della Loggia bombing
• Italicus Rome-Munich Express Bombing
• Prime Minister Aldo Moro Kidnapping & murder
• CIA plot to assassinate Pope John-Paul II - “The arrangements had been made by members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, P2, and the Safari Club, a covert organization that had been established by Henry Kissinger. The gunmen would be Çatlı and Ağca.”
• Coup plot outlined in “Memorandum sulla Situazione Italiana” and “Piano di Rinascita Democratica”
• “Parliamentary Commission of the Italian Senate for the Investigation of Terrorism in Italy” and “The So-Called Parallel SID—Operation Gladio”

Part 7 - “Reigning in” the CIA
“In the wake of Watergate and revelations about the CIA's involvement in the toppling of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance (Hughes–Ryan) Act in 1974, which stipulated that the president must be personally informed of all covert operations and must endorse a ‘finding' that such operations are necessary for ‘national security.'”

From its founding in 1947 to 1974, the CIA had ~3 decades of free reign to do whatever without oversight even by the President.

But nothing has changed since 1974 in the CIA. Their reign of global terror has continued on to this day. We must call for nothing short of the CIA's complete abolition and prosecution of crimes committed by its agents and directors.

Part 8 - Operation Cyclone

After the US lost the war in Vietnam, they needed a new place to grow heroin. They chose Afghanistan. In 1975, there was a conflict between the Afghan government and fundamentalist Pashtun tribesmen. “The tribesmen were led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who became the new darling of the CIA.”

“Hekmatyar urged his followers to throw acid in the faces of women not wearing a veil, kidnapped rival Islamic chieftains, and, in 1977, began to build up an arsenal, courtesy of the CIA.” Coooool.

The CIA was aiding radical Islamic sects in Afghanistan way before the Soviet Union invaded. “Throughout 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion, Hekmatyar and his mujahideen burned universities and girls' schools throughout Afghanistan and gained feudal control over many of the poppy farmers.” Poppy cultivation skyrocketed. In 1979, the Afghani president was killed in a coup. The new guy, Hafizullah Amin, previously served as president of a CAI front organization, was educated in the west, and was highly amenable to the interest of the CIA, which was funding his regime.

“Fearing a fundamentalist, US-backed regime at its border, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979.” And who can blame them, really?

“To provide more support for the mujahideen, the CIA used Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's mentor, to set up a cell of al-Qaeda within Masjid al-Farooq on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The cell, known as the al-Kifah Refugee Center, acted as a front for the transference of funds, weapons, and recruits to Afghanistan.” ...uuhhh...Did Operation Cyclone inadvertently result in 9/11?