World Opinion & Gladio

[bloom]

Seems to me that people in General Discussion and the country at large (instead of only people who read the obscure conspiracy theory forums )should have some awareness of what "Glaido" was (because the rest of the world does... and maybe everybody here knows about it - but somehow I doubt that):



PLEASE NOTE THIS IN THE BBC recently:

Updated Friday, 1 July, 2005, 12:34 GMT 13:34 UK

Italy probes 'parallel police'

Italian police have launched a big inquiry into a "parallel" intelligence agency, say Italian news reports. The Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA) was reportedly created after the 2004 Madrid bombings to combat Islamic extremism.

Genoa-based investigators carrying out a probe into the DSSA have arrested two people and placed more than two dozen others under investigation.

Kidnap inquiry

Italian state radio Rai later reported that the two arrested men may have had links with Gladio, the Italian branch of a secret paramilitary network set up in post-war Europe with the backing of the CIA.

There are also reports of a possible connection with a far-right political group.

The investigation that uncovered the alleged parallel structure is an offspring of a previous inquiry into the death of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four Italians kidnapped in Iraq in April 2004.

Mr Quattrocchi was shot dead by the abductors, while his colleagues were eventually released.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4640247.stm
------

See also the Demopedia:

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Operation_Gladio

------

Other mentions (last February):

Italian, US 'State Institutions' behind Bologna Bombing
Indeed, it would not do for the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the Aug. 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.

The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's masters called "the strategy of tension" — fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat. And, as Rajiva notes, this strategy wasn't limited to Western Europe.

It was applied, with gruesome effectiveness, in Central America by the Reagan and Bush administrations. During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security forces — armed, trained and supplied by the United States — murdered tens of thousands of people throughout the region, often acting with particular savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts seemed about to take hold.

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=2421

[Minstrel Boy]

1. Michael Ledeen linked to Gladio

From my blog last summer (Links live on the site):

Yellow Cake and Black Shirt

We should have been paying attention all along, but particularly since the sadly unsurprising revelation that Italian military intelligence looks to have served as a linchpin in the Niger "Yellow Cake" caper, we would do well to brush up on the strange case of Michael Ledeen

You know Ledeen: arguably Washington's most influential neoconservative. He's resident scholar of the senior neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, and regarded widely as one of the world's leading authorities on intelligence, counter-intelligence and international affairs. From the beginning, and before the beginning, Ledeen has been one of the loudest cheerleaders for the "War on Terror."

Now, do you know of Italy's "Strategy of Tension"? It was a campaign of false-flag terror in the late 1970s, waged by outright fascists who enjoyed the patronage of the CIA, the Mafia and far right elements of the Italian State. These were the Gladio Brigades and Licio Gelli's P2 Lodge, and they intended to discredit the increasingly popular Communist Party, and to ensure it would not take power, by staging terrorist acts in the name of the Left. Their campaign culminated in the Bologna train station bombing of 1980.

Now, do you know where Michael Ledeen was during these years, what he was doing, and with whom he was doing it?

From tompaine.com:

"...terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence."

From Asia Times:

"Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig.

Over the next several years, Ledeen used his position as consultant to Haig, the Pentagon and the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan to boost the notion of a global terrorist conspiracy based in the Kremlin, whose KGB pulled the strings of all of the world's key terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East."

An excerpt from Herman and O'Sullivan's The "Terrorism" Industry:

"In 1980 Ledeen entered into a collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists who had staged the attack."

From Barbara Honegger's October Surprise:

"When the Italian police raided (P2 Lodge founder) Gelli's home in March 1981, it was Michael Ledeen who, at the instigation of Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, offered to buy the list of 953 P2 members in an apparent attempt to keep it from becoming public. Henry Kissinger had also reportedly sent Ledeen to Italy to try to squash an investigation into his and Haig's involvement in the founding of P2.

"On the morning of August 2, 1980, a massive bomb since linked to Gelli...exploded in the waiting room of the central train station in Bologna, killing 81 people and injuring 200 others. General Santorito, the chief of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, who was also reportedly a member of P2, testified in the wake of the bombing that it had been planned by the British-Swiss-American Montecarlo Comite, P2's "sister" organization based in Monaco. When P2 had come under increasing scrutiny in 1979, grandmaster Licio Gelli had reportedly made his base of operations the Montecarlo Comite.... Not surprisingly, reported members of the Montecarlo Comite are Gelli, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Michael Ledeen."

And this assessment, translated from the Italian:

"One of the most dangerous of these "bad teachers" is Michael Ledeen, promoter of the the idea of "universal fascism". These days he does not stop threatening war against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, and has evidently been chosen once more by the establishment to manipulate institutions and threaten those who oppose his dangerous and wicked madness. On the other hand, Ledeen has a long history of interference in Italy's strategic choices. During the Moro case he was among those "most suspected" of having misled the enquiries, with the collaboration of the "bretheren" of the P2. It was wondered and it is still wondered why the Italian magistrates do not carry out adequate enquiries about him and his work"

And now, from the man himself. Some of Ledeen's own words, on a leadership trait he admires, from his book Universal Fascism:

"In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging... we are rotten.... It’s true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led."

Back to Italy, for some of his thoughts on the fascist era:

"...fascism nevertheless constituted a political revolution in Italy. For the first time, there was an attempt to mobilize the masses and to involve them in the political life of the country."

And on Mussolini himself:

"He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism."

The resemblance between the recent mass murder in Madrid and the Bologna bombing extends, I suspect, well beyond the scale of carnage.

Why do some insist on calling these people neo-fascists? I see nothing new here.

[bloom]

11. "Michael Ledeen, promoter of the the idea of "universal fascism"

Those people at the "American Enterprise Institute" give me the creeps.

If I ran the world - they would be the ones who are kept off of television.

But here they are - all over "credible" mainstream news sources - Cspan, everywhere - spreading disinformation about everything.

[Minstrel Boy]

12. Ledeen: for noble ends, "the leader may have to 'enter into evil.'"

"In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging... we are rotten.... It’s true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led."

Who can put anything past people who think in such a way?

[Eloriel]

76. Not only that, but it's impossible to reach them

Literally. There's NO way into their worldview to shake sense into their heads.

They believe lying is not just allowable but expected and right, what real leaaders -- GOOD leaders -- are expected to do, MUST do. It's a self-reinforcing little pathology, too. Deceit is necessary because "the people" are so weak, so simple, so contemptible, and they are the strong ones. No one can shame them into seeing or believing otherwise, no one can reason with them to the contrary, etc. because they honestly see themselves as morally superior. It's a closed system they live in, VERY closed, and they are the only beneficiaries but they believe that they are benefitting mankind as well. No shame, no conscience, nothing but their rationalized philosophy of they way things should be. Not even trying them in a court of law would reach them. There IS no moral center to them.

Edited: After all, how on earth do you argue with (or against) "noble ends"???? You can't.

[CentralEuropeanDude]

27. an older article, but ...

this guy seems to be a serious danger.
Does anyone know what his current job is?

http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html

[bloom]

28. The article "Flirting with Fascism" as seen in the American Conservative "

"In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. <snip>

As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new” when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising.” It all sounds rather prophetic."


You never know. I wouldn't normally think of "the American Conservative" as a progessive source - but it's a great article. Every now and then...

[wli]

30. what to do

Well, I never bothered articulating much in the way of reasons, but I have pretty much always considered "terrorism" to be false flag by default, particularly when the heartstrings are pulled with propaganda campaigns.

So now that the "two-party system" is exposed as the sham everyone always thought it was anyway, and we've spotted the fascists in our midst, what do we do?

Is this covered by any criminal statutes? Perjury? War crimes?

The MSM as usual presents a problem.

[paulthompson]

84. Minstrel Boy or anyone else...

I have a challenge for you. Back around 1991, I remember seeing front page big headlines in both the New York Times and the Washington Post about Operation Gladio. This doubly blew my mind. First, for the fact that they published stories about it at all, much less front page ones. The news was just breaking then, and it seemed so shocking. Second, I was stunned that there was no follow up discussion or debate at all. I looked at the pages of the newspapers for follow up stories, editorials, letters to the editor, etc... but there was nothing. In my innocence, I expected a big public debate.

Anyway, those articles seem nearly lost to history because they're older now than Lexis Nexus allows one to search for, and they're not on the Internet either. So it's like they didn't exist. It would be great if you could go to the library, find them, photocopy them, and put them on the web so they can be remembered and brought back to light. I think Operation Gladio is so amazing that many people would say, "well, if it was that big of a thing and it's on the level, then why wasn't it big news?" You could point to those stories and say, "it was!"

Please let me know if anyone can find the texts of these articles and/or images of their front page headlines.

[gandalf]

89. Operation Gladio in the NY Times

See post below...

[Minstrel Boy]

2. "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children..."

Sword Play
by Chris Floyd

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West -- against their own populations. Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks -- on train stations, supermarkets, cafes and offices -- which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders -- and their elitist cronies.

First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.

Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and manipulation, directed by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias, underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds.

Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which details the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "U.S. army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/02/18/120.html

[bloom]

13. It's hard to imagine

what people from other countries must think about this. I think they know most of the people in the US are clueless - but that isn't much consolation.


"Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds."

[burythehatchet]

22. MB, I always appreciate learning something from every one of your posts.

Thanks

[KoKo]

100. 15.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe

Can ya tell yet I think this is a critical subject? :)

[bloom]

5. I admit that I only had vague idea

about it. I remembered reading that people in Europe all knew about it because it came up in a trial and it was all over the news over there. It seems very timely and something that Americans should know about.

I'm frustrated in general by the lack of informed news we get about a lot of things. The war, of course. But so many things that affect people's political views.

A friend over in th UK assumed that his friends in the States would know all about the issues involved in the G8/Live8 educational endeavor. Over here it seemed billed as just a concert. Over there - there were informative programs about trade policies and subsidies - the issues that people over there wanted to see addressed. Not just debt-reduction (money that is then taken out of the aid package) - but actual ethical actions that the G8 should be taking.

:grr:

[Minstrel Boy]

7. If more North Americans knew about Gladio,

speculation that the London bombings could be acts of provocateurship wouldn't sound so off the wall. Because (a) the precendents have been established, (b) the crypto-fascist security networks are still in place (viz the BBC story), and (c) neocons such as Ledeen are directly linked to those networks.

[bloom]

9. I guess

that I am going to have to become more familiar with "credible mainstream news sources" from Europe. :)

I wonder what people on the street over there are saying.

[donkeyotay]

21. I saw that post about London, and I thank you for it Minstrel Boy nt

[Minstrel Boy]

4. "the art of provocation"

Called Operation Gladio (gladius is Latin for sword), the ostensible excuse for it was laughable-the threat of a Soviet invasion. But the real purpose wasn't so funny-Operation Gladio's 15,000 troops were trained to overthrow the Italian government should it stray from the straight and narrow.

Similar secret armies were formed in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany- often directed, quite naturally, by former SS officers. They didn't just wait around for the Russians to come marching in; they assembled huge arms caches (many of which remain unaccounted for), compiled blacklists of leftists and, in France, participated in plots to assassinate President DeGaulle.

Many members of Operation Gladio were also in a shadowy organization known as P-2; it too was financed by the CIA. P-2 had connections with the Vatican and the Mafia, and eventually with an international fascist umbrella organization called the World Anti-Communist League.

One of P-2's specialties was the art of provocation. Leftist organizations like the Red Brigades were infiltrated, financed and / or created, and the resulting acts of terrorism, like the assassination of Italy's premier in 1978 and the bombing of the railway station in Bologna in 1980, were blamed on the left. The goal of this "strategy of tension" was to convince Italian voters that the left was violent and dangerous - by helping make it so.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Gladio_CIAHits.html

[long_green]

23. Would this be the sort of thing Reinhard Gehlen would do?

You mention the ex-SS officers in charge of Gladio units. It reminds me of the things posted here recently from maebrussell.com about Gehlen and the ex-Nazi intelligence types smuggled here from Europe after V-E Day. Those links had a JFK context if I remember right.

[Minstrel Boy]

24. FM 30-31B sounds like him

And at the time of its drafting, his org was the principal source for US intel on the Soviet threat to Europe:

...

What's striking is that during this period the primary source for US government info on the Russian "threat" was coming from the Gehlen Organiation, Hitlers eastern front intelligence apparatus, which in the aftermath of World War II had cut a deal with the CIA's Allen Dulles and worked out of Fort Hunt, just outside Washington DC, before being relocated back to Munich. Headed up by super-spy Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the Org's "special operations" expertise was heeded, financed and well-protected by U.S. tax dollars well into the 1970's. Could the Gehlen Org have had an influence in the production of FM 30-31B?

According to FM 30-31B, "there may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger."

The U.S. Army now claims the document was a Russian forgery. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and US/NATO "special operations" terrorism, asked Ray Cline, CIA deputy director from 1962 to 1966, if he believed FM 30-31B was for real and he replied: "Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it's the kind of special forces military operations that are described," to be implemented at the discretion of the president and Defense Department on the "appropriate occasion."
http://www.ww4report.com/node/457

[Al-CIAda]

6. Rec'd & kick.

[Minstrel Boy]

8. Gladio needs a good, swift kick n/t

[Frederik]

10. Kick

Thanks to you, Bloom and Minstrel Boy, for taking the time to compile all these links, it is of critical importance that people learn about these things. This isn't just history - the networks are intact, the same people are in control, and only a fool would think that their policies have changed.

[bloom]

15. "the networks are intact"

Yeah - knowing what we know about Rumsfeld and Cheney and all of these players - and all of their experiences from the 80s and such. Nobody is ever seriously held accountable. It's not like they would change.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. This is one of those topics, like BCCI,

that "CT" naysayers like to pretend doesn't exist. Because it's established, conspiracy fact that provides a precedent and framework for informed conspiracy theory.

[bloom]

17. It's kept out of the MSM

So you're only going to get the story from other sources.

It's interesting to google it. "Gladio, Bologna" for instance. You get 11,700 hits and they are mostly sites I haven't heard of.

I googled "Gladio, BBC" to get BBC stories - of which there are a lot - though a lot of those are obscure sites referencing the BBC.

[Al-CIAda]

19. Curiously enough they seem to be absent from such threads as well.

Head in the sand.

[nashville_brook]

33. conspiracy = secret plan to do something unlawful

we KNOW this is the modus operandi of the Bush administration. it doesn't take a leap of faith.

almost everything they do is secret.

why the need for the secrecy?

[Uncle Joe]

96. It is also quite amazing how Bush and the neocons

have turned failing upward in to an art form. If anybody in his administration royally screws up they get promoted.I am expecting any day to hear that Rove will recieve the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[Eloriel]

75. Well said. It's also one of the types of things I shied awaty from for

far too long -- to my DETRIMENT. I shied away from it, along with the reports of Prescott Bush and the Nazis, because "what relevance is that TODAY? None," I thought.

How utterly wrong I was. I hope I'll never be that wrong over anything ever again.

[seemslikeadream]

16. Who is Michael Ledeen? What does he say? Who does he influence?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3037473

The Power of Nightmares / BBC exposes the American NeoCons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2876040

[bloom]

18. Ledeen. I remember reading that...

"In fact, Ledeen’s influence goes even further. The BBC, the Washington Post and Jim Lobe writing for the Asia Times report that Michael Ledeen is the only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove. Ledeen has regular conversations with Rove. The Washington Post said, "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.

“Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned.”


and from Tinoire:

((Benador Associates is very interesting/scary for our times... They're the ones who pot threw that very intimate little party where Daniel Pipes and Lieberman were schmalzing with Reza Pahlavi who they want to reinstall as the pliable puppet head of Iran. Have you been following them? ))

and some great links in post #6

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3037473

[bloom]

20. "BBC NEWS: The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside"

I guess it's time to watch that...

[bloom]

25. The links aren't working to the video...

(that I could find) but there are transcripts:

http://www.billstclair.com/nightmares/11.html

[Al-CIAda]

29. Working link to aformentioned video-

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_september11.htm

BBC series – The Power of Nightmares
TV documentary that explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion

part 1
baby it's cold outside
real player

part 2
the phantom victory
real player

part 3
the shadows in the cave
real player

[seemslikeadream]

44. Thanks Al-CIAda

[Al-CIAda]

61. You're welcome. n/t

;)

[bloom]

43. ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN:

through interpreter: A concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity, is taking place. And it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?!


VO: This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true, but it was necessary, to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny, that would give meaning and purpose to their lives. The neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction—a vision of the Soviet Union as the center of all evil in the world, and America as the only country that could rescue the world. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the neoconservatives great power and influence.


(from the transcripts)

[bloom]

45. CIA and fake terror & Ledeen - from Part 1

VO: To persuade the President (Reagan), the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don’t know what their motive was. I mean, I don’t know what people’s motives are, hardly ever. And I don’t much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn’t exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

VO: In the end, Casey found a university professor who described himself as a terror expert, and he produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist. Under such intense lobbying, Reagan agreed to give the neoconservatives what they wanted, and in 1983 he signed a secret document that fundamentally changed American foreign policy. The country would now fund covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world.

[bloom]

50. 9/11 planned by "Khalid Sheik Mohammed"

From Part 3 -

"The attack on America by 19 hijackers shocked the world. It was Ayman Zawahiri’s new strategy, implemented in a brutal and spectacular way. But neither he nor bin Laden were the originators of what was called the “Planes Operation.” It was the brainchild of an Islamist militant called Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who came to bin Laden for funding and help in finding volunteers. But in the wake of panic created by the attacks, the politicians reached for the model which had been created by the trial earlier that year: the hijackers were just the tip of a vast, international terrorist network which was called, “Al Qaeda.”


http://www.billstclair.com/nightmares/31.html

[Minstrel Boy]

36. "Ledeen has a colorful track record..."

From Ledeen's biography on RightWeb (("exposing the architecture of power that's changing the world"):

Ledeen has a colorful track record, which has produced substantial grist for the conspiracy mill: He was allegedly tied to the Italian P2 Masonic Lodge, a violent right wing group that was involved in a number of terrorists attacks in Italy in the 1970s the 1980s; in the late 1970s, while P2 was doing its dirty work, Ledeen was working as a consultant to Italian intelligence on terrorism issues; as a consultant to the National Security Council in the 1980s, Ledeen acted as a go-between for Oliver North in the early stages of the Iran-Contra affair, working with the Israeli spy David Kimche to gain the release of U.S. hostages in Beirut through an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar; he helped promote the "Bulgarian Connection" theory that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt on the pope in 1981; and, more recently, the Sydney Morning Herald reported (August 8, 2003) that Ledeen worked with Pentagon staffers to redevelop the channel to arms dealer Ghorbanifar in support of resistance efforts in Iran. Reported the Herald: "Harold Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Douglas Feith's office, which drafted much of the Administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile groomed for leadership by the Pentagon. Mr. Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid 1980s when he introduced Mr. Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a NSC aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-Contra affair. It is understood Mr. Ledeen reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Mr. Feith's staff."

According to his bio page on the web site of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: "Michael A. Ledeen is one of the world's leading authorities on contemporary history and international affairs. In a few years in government, he carried out some of the most sensitive and dangerous missions in recent American history. He has been profiled in the New York Times, and was the subject of a front-page article and a lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal. A profile of him concluded that 'a portrait emerges of a man with an intense knowledge of 20th-century history, a deep commitment to democracy, and a willingness to be adventurous. This is a man who has helped shape American foreign policy at its highest levels.'" (4)

Not one to mince words, Ledeen urged the then-newly installed Bush administration (National Review Online, March 8, 2001) to purge the "environmental whackos, radical feminazos," and "foreign-policy types on the National Security Council Staff and throughout State, CIA, and Defense, who are still trying to create Bill Clinton's legacy in the Middle East."
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/ledeen/ledeen.php

[emcguffie]

26. Thank you for all that "factual" information.

I wonder if it will change any minds?

[bloom]

31. "Gladio, the Italian branch of a secret paramilitary network set up...

in post-war Europe with the backing of the CIA."


I think it's interesting that the BBC would just throw a line like that and it would be perfectly understandable to their readership - whereas people here would probably go, "huh?" That was my point.

And if people are not familiar with Gladio - they may want to look into it. That is my second point.

I think there is plenty for people who are curious to start looking for more information. Google - Gladio, Ledeen - for instance. Or if you want to know more about the trial google that. The article I posted that came up with the BBC doesn't have that much info - you might have to fill in the blanks somewhere else.

And Thanks to MB and the others for their input.

[emcguffie]

80. All excellent points.

I have a colleague who is from Italy. And we've been whispering to each other for a little while. I had no idea there was a very reasonable theory -- I guess that would indeed make it a "conspiracy theory" -- that the first Pope John Paul was murdered, poisoned. Because he was going to clean up their financial dirt, which quite a few folks had their hands in.

This went back to when Italy asked the Vatican to start paying taxes, and the Vatican did not want to. So they found a way to hide their money, or to put it elsewhere, so that they could avoid paying taxes. The guys handling this deception began to make quite a bit for themselves, and they did not want to see it cleaned up.

There was a book, and I do not know if it came out in English. But that was the P2 as well, and Gelli. I think. Certainly Gelli's name was involved.

Sorry I'm not more factual at this moment. I just was astonished when I first came across this stuff, which, as you say, is practically a secret on this side of the Atlantic.

We've been very well trained to discount any conspiracy theory at all, anytime, without ever giving it even a second glance. My life has been changed, however, and I do a little looking now.

[Minstrel Boy]

81. Here's a link re P2 and Pope John Paul I

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/my-god-they-killed-him.html

This stuff only sounds made up. So those who don't know better imagine that it must be.

[bloom]

82. I was just reading that....

"This is one of those things that make being a "conspiracy theorist" seem entirely superfluous. Just try imagining P2: an elite, ultra-secretive, neo-fascist, Masonic cabal, involved in money laundering, assassination and false-flag terrorism. (The "Strategy of Tension," to discredit Italy's Communist Party. For instance, the engineering of Aldo Moro's kidnapping and murder, and the Bologna train bombing.) P2 counted among its members the future Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, and reputedly boasted honourary members like Henry Kissinger, George HW Bush and arch-neocon, Michael Ledeen."

[nashville_brook]

37. this is an interesting thought -- changing minds? deprogram?

the term "conspiracy" is so emotionally charged that it simply doesn't function anymore to convey its meaning -- a secret plan to something unlawful.

it's infuriating that this word has the effect of degaussing minds b/c we NEED to use this word so often with the Bush administration. this isn't to paint the whole operation as the BFEE -- you don't have to go that far. it's not needed. what IS needed is wholesome critical analysis of the smelly situations in front of us. as long as we don't have a vocabulary it makes discussion impossible.

[CentralEuropeanDude]

39. there's some help ...

Alternate Framing For Arguments Termed "Conspiracy Theories"

[bloom]

41. I like "coincidence theories"

that often works.

and also:

"Parapolitics"

"From Jonathan Marshall, economics editor of the SF Chronicle:
"Parapolitics" hasn't made it into Webster's yet, but it basically means the same as "covert politics." It includes the intelligence community, drug and gun running, mercenaries, exile political activities, terrorism, organized crime, covert high-finance, international money laundering, assassinations -- everything you can't get on the evening news.

A British friend of mine turned me on to this term. He has extensively researched the Kennedy assassinations. The counter he always uses when people bring out the "conspiracy theory" tagline is: parapolitics.

He will say "It is not a conspiracy theory. It is parapolitics. The Warren commission is the real conspiracy theory". He then smoothly leads into asking the other person to explain certain inconsistancies between the facts and the Warren commission."

[Minstrel Boy]

40. "Conspiracy Theory and the State of the Nation"

A brilliant address by scholar Jamey Hecht delivered last year at the Toronto 9/11 inquiry on the power of the term "conspiracy theory."

...

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

...

If we say, 9-11 was orchestrated by the bin Laden organization, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and elements of the neoconservative group that seized power in 2000, that’s an hypothesis, derived logically from a set of documented facts that constitute evidence. It isn’t a theory. It can become part of a theory if it’s joined with other hypotheses into a coherent descriptive pattern that can help to predict future events in general terms.

For instance, the amply demonstrated hypothesis that the 35th President of the United States was murdered by a consortium of interests including the CIA, Cuban exiles, organized crime, and the military. 11-22 and 9-11 are examples of premeditated murder by more than one person – in law, they are cases of conspiracy to commit murder (and fraud, and perjury, and treason). Taken together, they imply a theory whose greatest expression is the work of Peter Dale Scott, who coined the term deep politics: “the constant, everyday interaction between the constitutionally elected government and forces of violence, forces of crime, which appear to be the enemies of that government.”<7> Deep politics is a robust theory, a powerful explanatory account of demonstrable phenomena; it applies to myriad cases and offers a unified understanding of their causes and meanings. Like Goethe’s conceptual account of color, and like Newton’s rival account which refuted it, Scott’s deep-political theory applies uniformly to the domain it describes.

...

The appeal of the phrase “conspiracy theory” lies in the slang meaning of “theory”: unproven and even unprovable claims about the way things get done in government and business. But there are two problems here.

...

http://www.911inquiry.org/Presentations/JameyHecht.htm

[Al-CIAda]

42. If Rove is charged with 'conspiracy', will it become a verbotten topic?

[emcguffie]

79. you are so right.

We need to frame it differently.

Personally, since I opened my eyes a wee bit, I now see CTs even in the worst of CTs, which are only out there as red herrings. Or I should say may be out there as red herrings. But they're certainly effective.

Like the "Jewish banking" CT. That's a big red herring, so as soon as people hear anything about that, they turn off.

Hey, I've gone from never-a-second-thought to a dedicated wearing of tinfoil.

I have a headache and must go home. I hope you will keep thinking about how to rename it. I will do so also.

[bloom]

32. This is a good overview:

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html


Or at least it seems to be. :shrug:

[Minstrel Boy]

34. self delete n/t

[bloom]

35. There is also the recent CIA thing is Italy...

A major spy scandal is brewing in Italy

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

WASHINGTON & ROME, July 6, 2005 (waynemadsenreport.com)—Genoa police have arrested the two leaders of a neo-fascist unofficial intelligence and "anti-terrorism" police network in Italy and have conducted searches of homes throughout the country in a major crackdown on a group that recruited police and intelligence agents to their cause.

The two neo-fascist leaders—Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca—who reportedly have close ties to both the P-2 (Propaganda Due) Masonic lodge and a secret Cold War network known as Gladio, were arrested. Some 25 members of the regular state police, the Carabinieri, the Frontier police, and the Prison police were placed under official investigation. Tens of searches, including two houses in Genoa, were conducted by police in nine Italian regions: Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Molise, Sicily and Sardinia. The investigation may soon extend to members of the Italian intelligence service SISMI.

In 2004, Saya and Sindoca established the Department of Strategic Anti-Terrorism Studies, which reportedly had links to both the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government in Israel.

Some Italian police were tricked into assisting the organization because they thought it was legitimate. Saya and Sindoca were leaders of the Destra Nazionale-Nuovo MSI (an offshoot of the neo-fascist MSI Pparty represented in the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi). The group is also unofficially known as the Fiamma Tricolore (Tri Color Flame). Police temporarily shut down the web site of Destra Nazionale-Nuovo MSI. The web site was back up on July 3. <more>

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/070605Madsen/070605madsen.html

[JohnyCanuck]

38. Consider this thread kicked and bookmarked n/t

[Karenina]

46. Kick!

:kick:

[Octafish]

47. Operation GLADIO was no theory.

Hatched by the BFEE mega-turd Allen Dulles, the plan was to keep fighting the commies, should Europe get overrun. Most of the arms and money were never used. What seems to have happened is the neo-Reich grabbed a couple of the arms caches for their own evil deeds. That and the "conservative" connections that were made continue to the present day.

From STATEWATCH:

OPERATION GLADIO

ITALY

1947 Origins of Gladio

"As early as 1947, the United States was constructing a clandestine network
in Northern Italy to act in the event of a communist insurrection or
electoral victory." (Wolfgang Achtner, Sunday Independent, 11/11/90)

"Though the Stay Behind operation was officially started only in 1952, "the
whole exercise had been in existence for a long time, in fact ever since
it was born in the head of Allen Dulles," said the ex-Nato source who has
access to files in several West European nations. According to him,
Dulles, the first chief of the CIA, worked out the original plan to build
secret anti-communist guerilla forces across Europe when he was based in
Switzerland at the end of the second world war. Dulles, Sir Stewart Menzies
(SIS) and the Belgian Premier Paul Henri Spaak codified the plan in a
secret pact sometime between 1949 and 1952 under the umbrella of the
Clandestine Co-ordinating Committee at the Supreme Headquarters Allied
Powers Europe, (SHAPE), which became Nato. "There was a division of labour
between the British and the US," he continued, "with Britain taking
responsibility for the operation in France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and
Norway and the Americans looking after Sweden, Finland and the rest of
Europe" (Searchlight, January 1991)

1951 Formation of Clandestine Planning Committee

"In 1951, said the newspaper , Allied intelligence agencies and
each participating nation - Germany, Italy and France being among the first
- agreed to set up a Committee for planning to oversee the network"
(Associated Press, 13/11/90)

1955-58 CIA control of Italian secret services

"Former defence minister Paulo Taviani 1990 investigation] that during his time in office (1955-1958), the Italian
secret services were bossed and financed by the boys in Via Veneto' - ie
the CIA agents in the US Embassy in the heart of Rome. (William Scobie,
Observer, 18/11/90)

1956 General Giovanni de Lorenzo appointed head of Sifar

"De Lorenzo was...appointed head of the secret services (Sifar) in 1956 by
President Granchi, he stayed on as head of Sifar after he was made
commander of the carabinieri in 1962." (Stuart Christie, "Stefano de
Chiaie", Anarchy/Refract, 1984)

CONTINUED...

http://users.westnet.gr/~cgian/gladio.htm

Your post and this thread are chock full o' information. Thanks, bloom! Gee. If the whoring New York Times actually did its job, we wouldn't have to scour the Internets for the TRUTH.

[bloom]

48. Thanks to all the contributors!

:bounce:

[bloom]

49. kick for the insomniacs!

:kick:

[Minstrel Boy]

51. and kick for the early risers! n/t

[rman]

52. where are the coincidence theorists now?

-

[Minstrel Boy]

53. off telling themselves how clever they are somewhere else n/t

[Al-CIAda]

62. Well, where are you folks who make us look 'good'?

[JNelson6563]

54. Fabulous thread!

To those who insist DU hasn't changed, this sort of thread used to be more the norm rather than the exception.

Great to see this, bookmarked. Thanks to all who posted all this info.

Julie

[seemslikeadream]

57. The norm rather than the exception

Absolutely

What a enlightening time that was

[JNelson6563]

58. *sigh*

Ah the good ol' days....

:toast:

[tosca_veritas]

55. connections

Thank you for an excellent thread! What a keeper!

I wanted to add, although I can't find the links and am running out of time, that I found sources which noted that Gladio also had ties to the RAF (Red Army Faction- Germany) and Red Brigades (Italy). Some say Gladio infiltrated those two movements, and some also say that some criminal acts were commited by Gladio operatives to then be blames on RAF or the Red Brigades. This of course, terrorized the common people who were frightened into accepting ALL 'security measures' the 'state' produced. And the real issues of the left were thrown out as 'terrorist propaganda'.

more another time, gotta run

tosca

[CentralEuropeanDude]

56. Another in-depth article

from Daniele Ganser, author of the book "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe"
see post #3

After the Cold War had ended, then Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed to the Italian Senate in August 1990 that Italy had had a secret stay-behind army, codenamed Gladio - the sword. A document dated 1 June 1959 from the Italian military secret service, SIFAR, revealed that SIFAR had been running the secret army with the support of NATO and in close collaboration with the US secret service, the CIA. Suggesting that the secret army might have linked up with right-wing organizations such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale to engage in domestic terror, the Italian Senate, amid public protests, decided in 1990 that Gladio was beyond democratic control and therefore had to be closed down.
...

Secret Warfare: Gladio

[bloom]

59. Thanks CentralEuropeanDude!

And welcome to DU!

:toast:

[CentralEuropeanDude]

60. thanks, I like this thread

:applause:
it's a pity that it drops like a rock.

[bloom]

64. Everybody is thinking about Rove right now.

I wonder what all Rove and Ledeen have been up to.

[bloom]

68. ROVEGATE - Rove & Ledeen & Calipari & Gladio

<>By mentioning both the Milan and Genoa cases, Cossiga may have unintentionally linked the two. The parallel intelligence network is reportedly the outgrowth of a Gladio network consisting of six divisions that operated in Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East during the Cold War. The P-2 Lodge, headed by fascist leader Licio Gelli, reportedly maintained close links to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig and his one-time foreign affairs adviser, Michael Ledeen.

A number of SISMI agents and assets have also been tied to the group, including Francesco Pazienza, an SISMI agent, and Rocco Martino, who said he was the source of the faked Niger yellowcake uranium documents that were laundered through Rome and used as proof by the Bush White House that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium in Niger. That charge prompted the CIA to send Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, resulting in a retaliatory outing of Wilson's wife as a covert CIA operative and exposure by the White House of the CIA's covert weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation network.

Italian sources report that the Milan case against the Americans and the Genoa case against the private Italian network may be linked in another way. The reported CIA station chief in Milan, Honduran-born Robert Seldon Lady (whose name may be an alias and whose CIA connections may be incorrect or overstated) was, prior to his assignment in Milan, in charge of a covert American unit in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua charged with penetrating anti-American groups and taking them over. It is now believed that Lady was in charge of a similar operation to turn Abu Omar and others into intelligence assets for the Americans. Abu Omar, according to Albanian intelligence sources, assisted the U.S. with intelligence on Islamic militants in Albania.

It is also believed that the late deputy SISMI chief, Nicola Calipari, became aware of information in Iraq that linked the control of terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere to a "third level" in "an anti-terrorism country." Calipari was shot to death by U.S. troops while transporting freed Italian hostage and journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad International Airport. The U.S. ruled the shooting an "accident."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/070605Madsen/070605madsen.html

-----

Rove, Rove, Rove

[Minstrel Boy]

70. Gladio is the Deep Politics to Rove's politics.

From my blog last week:

Perhaps even more maddening than every last, bloody outrage of the Cheney-Bush cabal has been the free pass each one has received from the media divisions of weapons manufacturers and the cowed, bought and emasculated wing of the Democratic Party.

So now, at last, that the open secret of Karl Rove's having been the source of the Plame leak threatens to become the administration's open sore, it makes eminent sense to keep picking at it. Yet still, I'm uneasy about the glee the story is generating amongst the regime's critics.

I'm not saying the story's going nowhere. (Though after the example of so many before it, I understand why one might have that thought.) What I'm saying is Karl Rove can go down, and nothing will change. Because as rich as the story is, the Plame story remains political, and politics - as demonstrated by recent election cycles - doesn't really matter all that much anymore.

There are bigger fish than Rove, and if they are to fry, attention should be paid to another unfolding story.

Just as parapolitics trumps politics, global power networks eclipse American domestic power structures. Rove's domain is certainly significant, but it remains one circle within many. And potentially more damaging to the Power Elite than the Plame leak, though perhaps not as satisfying to us as Rove's expected perp walk, is the disclosure of a secret, "parallel" counter-terrorism network embedded in Italy's security infrastructure. (Which, by the way, now provides a compelling motive for Nicola Calipari's single bullet to the head.)

If this sounds familiar, you've been paying attention. It's Gladio, it's P2; it's the fascist-Masonic false flag terror: the assassins of Pope John Paul I and the true Balogna train bombers. It's the gang to which Michael Ledeen served as an "advisor" in the late 1970s.

Nearly a year ago, in Yellow Cake and Black Shirts, I wrote about the connection of Ledeen's Italian network to the Niger fraud, so perhaps, actually, we're really talking about different facets of the same story, and what's unravelling in Italy now is the deep politics to Rove's politics.

Rove can go down and it will only make us feel better, and only for a little while. But if such a network goes down, it threatens to take with it the whole, rotten system.


"Mussolini" by Diego Rivera, 1933

[Al-CIAda]

71. Underscore, bold, and in neon...

"Perhaps even more maddening than every last, bloody outrage of the Cheney-Bush cabal has been the free pass each one has received from the media wing of weapons manufacturers and the cowed, bought and emasculated wing of the Democratic Party."

[bloom]

73. Sometimes people just have to be ready....

"Nearly a year ago, in Yellow Cake and Black Shirts, I wrote about the connection of Ledeen's Italian network to the Niger fraud, so perhaps, actually, we're really talking about different facets of the same story, and what's unraveling in Italy now is the deep politics to Rove's politics."


And it helps to have context to be able to hear properly.

Originally - when I started this - I was thinking about the possible London connection and that people needed to get some context to be able to consider the possibilities. It is interesting the Rove/Plame/Wilson angle (Which is probably also the Ledeen, Niger, SISMI, Calipari, WMD, Iraq, etc.) angle as well.

And I'm never going to understand all of it - but it's good to know the basics, anyway. And it's interesting how so much fits together. People trying to make sense of the world. :crazy:

[gandalf]

63. Guess how many recensions are there of Ganser's book?

Right. Zero.

At least according to my Lexis Nexis search. He is a Swiss author, so you would expect a recension in the German press (even though the book is in English, but perhaps some freaks in the newspapers can understand this language). It was mentioned in Der Spiegel (German magazine), but not really analyzed.

Perhaps the problem is that as Ganser is a serious researcher with a PhD, it is not so easy to dismiss the book as conspiracy crap. So it is simply ignored. Seems to work well.

[Minstrel Boy]

65. The truth is out there, but it's hard to find, and costly.

Sometimes even the authors' own publishers would rather you not read their books.

From Gerald Colby's essay in Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press:

"In the thirty years I have been a freelance investigative journalist, I've seen books suppressed in varying ways, sometimes by the subjects of books, sometimes by publishers, and sometimes by authors succumbing to self-censorship out of fear of repercussions for telling the truth. In the 1970s, a new term came into the vernacular of industry-wise writers: privishing.

"According to the sworn testimony in federal court of a twenty-year Viking Press editor, William Decker, the term was used in the industry to describe how publishers killed off books without authors' awareness or consent. Privishing is a portmanteau meaning to privately publish, as opposed to true publishing that is open to the public. It is usually employed in the following context: 'We privished the book so that it sank without a trace.' The mechanism used is simple: cut off the book's life-support system by reducing the initial print run so that the book 'cannot price profitably according to any conceivable formula,' refuse to do reprints, drastically slash the book's advertising budget, and all but cancel the promotional tour. The publisher's purpose is to kill off a book that, for one reason or another, is considered 'troublesome' or potentially so.'"

Privishing helps keep America's secret history secret.

Gerald Colby's expose of the Duponts, The Dupont Dynasty, which was removed from press run under pressure from the Duponts, is out of print with used copies fetching upwards of three figures on Amazon. The same for Colby's 1995 Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, which was reviewed as "a triumph of investigative journalism." Respected assassinations researcher Lisa Pease says "This book contains a history of many of the CIA's blackest moments. Crucial for the historical context."

The Trail of the Octopus, by Donald Goddard, detailing DIA's complicity in permitting the Lockerbie bombing in order to kill whistleblowers returning to expose officially-sanctioned US drug smuggling through Beirut, is not even available in an American edition. Linda Hunt's Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990, listed at $19.95, is unavailable but for used copies fetching, again, three figures.

Thankfully, Thunder's Mouth Press reprinted William Turner's The Assassination of Robert Kennedy ten years ago. Until then, copies of the single edition Random House printed in the mid-70s was fetching $250. Random House had incinerated its stock because it feared a lawsuit by one of the parties named. Pete Brewton's masterful The Mafia, CIA & George Bush was signed by Simon & Shuster, which then refused to print it. It finally was published by S.P.I. Books.

Serious research into America's hidden history is not big business. Most big publishing houses, for one reason or another, will either reject a title altogether or privish the run. Hard truths are often left to the alternative presses, as with alternative media, which keeps them hidden from most Americans. And when they're not, they're often privished and priced out of reach.

[gandalf]

77. Thanks for the interesting list

I read the Buzzsaw book, too. One year ago or so it even appeared in German. But probably one could write such a book on the German press as well...

[JohnyCanuck]

66. kick n/t

[me b zola]

67. excellent post & thread

My hat is off to you and the handful of other truthseeking researchers who bring this wealth of info to those with an open mind and a curiosity to also seek the truth.

:toast:

[sintax]

69. for further treatment on this topic

see "NATO's Secret Armies Linked to Terrorism? www.globalresearch.ca/articles/GAN412A.html

Unfortunately only the usual suspects are looking into your important post. It is very difficult to face up to this concept for once you do your view of conventional/party politics will be shattered. However until one does true solutions will never arise as we continue to shadowbox in the comfortable political bubble of party politics.

Thanx for post

[Minstrel Boy]

72. you say a mouthful there:

"Unfortunately only the usual suspects are looking into your important post. It is very difficult to face up to this concept for once you do your view of conventional/party politics will be shattered."

Rather than engage material like this and BCCI, it's more consoling for some to nyuk nyuk about tinfoil, and cherry-pick the most off-the-wall examples (often, examples they themselves construct: aliens and tsunamis, for instance), and to think smugly that's it; that's all they got.

Steve Earle, "Conspiracy Theory":

What if I told you it was done with mirrors?
What if I showed you it was all a lie?
Better be careful, someone might hear ya
The walls have ears and the sky has eyes
What if I said you were only dreamin'?
What you wanna bet that all you gotta do
Is open up your eyes and you will wake up screamin'
When you realize that it's all come true

Hush, now don't you believe it
Cover your head and close your eyes
Now, take it or leave it
Go back to bed
And don't you cry

Half a million soldiers fly across the water
One in ten are never comin' back again
Fifty thousand sons who never grew to fathers
Don't you ever wonder who they might have been
What if you could've been there on that day in Dallas?
What if you could wrestle back the hands of time?
Maybe somethin' could've been done in Memphis
We wouldn't be livin' in a dream that's died

Go on and tell yourself again there are no secrets
Go on and tell yourself that you don't want to know
It's best that you believe that you don't hear the footsteps
That follow you around no matter where you go
Maybe you were thinkin' that it didn't matter
Maybe you believed nobody else would care
But once you've added every little lie together
You finally find the truth was always waiting there

[Eloriel]

74. Just a couple more links

I had a bunch (and google would yield a goldmine, I'm sure), but these are all I have lately collected:

Remember the first Pope John Paul?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3412165#3413613

Seymour Hersh’s scoop about the Pentagon’s “Salvador Option,” /NATO
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3102100
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0210-22.htm

THE POPE, THE NAZIS, AND THE CIA:
Some notes on the Vatican's role in the destruction of Yugoslavia
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Lituchy.html

[Minstrel Boy]

78. Thanks for remembering those threads, Eloriel n/t

[Karenina]

86. Back to One!

:kick:

[bloom]

83. "Selling the Security of America and the World for 30 Pieces of Silver"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x66773

AMERICAN JUDAS
Selling the Security of America and the World for 30 Pieces of Silver
By
Robert Paulsen
Compiled From the Research by Posters on “The Plame Indictment Threads”
At democraticunderground.com
1st Edition

I figured I may as well link this here as well.

[LibertyorDeath]

85. I stumbled across this the other day related to the Bali bombings

If anyone has more info on this please add it.

Posted by Robert on <08 Jul 2005 | Friday> at 12:39 AM

I was the lead investigator and Senior Editor for The Jakarta Post on the Bali bombings. Shortly after my analysis was printed (signed off on by the Chief Editor and Publisher) I was sacked at the order of U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce for outing a CIA contract agent (Hermawan Sulystio) in connection with the bombing. The Ambassador REFUSED to answer my question - yes or no - as to U.S. involvement. My journalist visa was then cancelled and I was forced out of the country despite being married to an Indonesian national.

There it is. It is my firm belief that the CIA/MOSSAD was responsible for the bombings in London.

Let's hope that there are some good independent investiagtors on the ground in London.

Inquiries are welcome.

Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia News
[e-mail]
www.seanews.2truth.com

I did a search on him
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Robert+S.+Finnegan&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

[Minstrel Boy]

87. Does everyone know the name Michael Meiring?

Here's a headline you won't have seen in a US paper:

Extradition moves v. American in hotel blast

Meiring is a US citizen, a self-described "treasure hunter" linked to both the (Islamic) Moro National Liberation Front and the CIA. He lost a leg and nearly died when his bomb detonated prematurely in a Philippine hotel room, was spirited out of his hospital and the country by an FBI team from Hawaii three days after the blast as Meiring became an object of investigation.

He is suspected of conducting false-flag terror in the southern Philippines for the same reason as Gladio: to drive the people to turn to the state for greater security (and also to create a reason for an expanded US presence).

These aren't just the suspicions of "conspiracy theorists." They're shared by Davao City officials who seek his extradition.

How many have heard that the US is harbouring a terrorist?

The only mainstream coverage has been a local report by a Houston television station, which clearly had no idea what can of worms they;d opened. When they got Meiring on the phone he hissed: "If this harms me in any way, you will find my power then, and you'll find out who I am."

Find out who he is. I've written about Meiring on my blog several times:

Blast from the Past

Davao City Bomber Reported in Houston

"You will know my power then"

A Person of No Interest

[bloom]

92. "to drive the people to turn to the state for greater security"

EU: One Week After London Blasts, Europe Moves To Tighten Antiterror Laws

By Breffni O'Rourke

...The Madrid and London attacks are only the tip of the iceberg, according to Balzac. He noted police and security agencies on the European Continent and Britain claim to have foiled many attacks. London and Madrid were those which managed to slip through the net.

><There is also quicker-moving antiterror action at the European level. In Brussels, senior EU ministers met in an emergency session yesterday to discuss how to respond to the London bombings. The ministers agreed to speed up a package of antiterror measures on cutting off terrorists' finances and increasing cooperation between intelligence services in the EU.

><Human rights groups have expressed concern that EU action to create or strengthen antiterrorism laws could interfere with the civil rights of citizens. Britain has gone furthest with its laws, and Home Secretary Clarke yesterday called on the European Union to overcome civil liberties concerns and agree on new antiterrorism measures. Clarke told the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties that living without the fear of terrorist attacks should be a recognized human right.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini appeared to address these concerns yesterday when he spoke of the need for balance between rights and restrictions.

"Another important point is to balance, to keep a balanced approach between fundamental rights and liberties and the right to security that is in itself a fundamental right," Frattini said. "If I may say, it is a precondition to enjoying all fundamental liberties and rights."

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/7/9854EECC-9E22-47E0-8B57-0FE067F78D07.html

[Al-CIAda]

88. .

[gandalf]

90. Gladio in the NY Times

The NY Times has in the last 15 years 6 articles on Gladio. Here are some excerpts from the longest one:

EVOLUTION IN EUROPE
Italy Discloses Its Web Of Cold War Guerrillas, By CLYDE HABERMAN, Special to The New York Times, ROME, Nov. 15, 1990

In Europe's new order, they are the spies who never quite came in from the cold, foot soldiers in an underground guerrilla network with one stated mission: To fight an enemy that most Europeans believe no longer exists.

Theirs is a tale of secret arms caches and exotic code names, of military stratagems and political intrigues.

At best, their tale is no more than a curious footnote to the cold war. The question is if, at worst, it could be the key to unsolved terrorism dating back two decades. Nowhere do the darker suspicions burn more intensely than in this capital whose appetite for conspiracy theories is insatiable and whose Parliament today began an investigation into where reality may lie.

The focus of the inquiry is a clandestine operation code-named Gladio, created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. All this week, there have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries, including those that do not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
...
The Prime Minister said last week that Gladio later evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. Over the years, he says, 622 Italians belonged to the operation -- civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives and who had fought in World War II or served in the peacetime forces.
...

News reports in recent days assert that similar programs have also existed in Britain, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and even in neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden. The British newspaper The Guardian today quoted a former Commander in Chief of NATO forces in northern Europe as saying that the purpose was to have a secret organization in place for guerrilla warfare if Britain were overrun by Communist troops.
…

New "gladiators" are still recruited, and two members of Parliament say they visited a military base on the island of Sardinia where guerrilla training exercises were held last spring. But Admiral Martini told the investigating commission that nearly three-fourths of the 622 members were over the age of 50, or were dead.

Nevertheless, the network continues, and several officials reported that a supervisory committee of European secret services met in Brussels only a month ago.

...
Agreement With U.S. Agencies

There were other disturbing developments for Italian politicians and journalists, who as a group demonstrate a cultivated taste for intrigue and a slender faith in coincidence.

There was Mr. Andreotti's mention of the 1956 agreement with United States agencies, whose aim for decades was to make sure that the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West, never got a foothold in the Government. And there were long-reported links between Italian secret services and neo-Fascists.

And there is the fact that the major unsolved acts of terrorism that rocked Italy in the 1970's are all presumed to be the work of people on the far right. Left-wing terrorists like the moribund Red Brigades somehow were caught and imprisoned.

Swept up in the dispute is President Francesco Cossiga, who declared recently that it had been his "privilege" to help organize Gladio when he was in the Defense Ministry in the 1960's. ...Fact is, he said, "I admire the fact that we have kept the secret for 45 years."

(So much for the people who claim that conspiracies cannot work)

[Minstrel Boy]

91. A great thread, though maddening in a way.

90+ posts of a terrific data dump setting forth the precedents of false flag terror in Western Europe (and elsewhere - good morning, Mr Meiring), and not a peep from those who claim we have nothing but wild-eyed, unfounded speculation.

It's like arguing quantum theory to Newtonians. Their paradigm needs overturning to make sense of the true weirdness of the world.

Though of course, there's no argument, because they'd rather giggle about aliens triggering tsunamis than confront this material.

[gandalf]

97. Good point...

this thread seems to be ignored by the tinfoilhathaters.

[JohnyCanuck]

98. They'd rather giggle about aliens triggering tsunamis

than confront this material.

Damned straight.

[frictionlessO]

93. One of the best threads Ive evert seen on DU.. period!

Thanks for this all you contributors.

You are amazing and I stand in awe.

[Minstrel Boy]

94. I just hope it also has a lot of quiet lurkers

who have never heard of Gladio before and never seen this material, who will use it to inform their opinions and arrest their rush to judgement of so-called "conspiracy theory."

[KoKo]

95. A "Quiet Lurker" gives this a kick...and a bookmark

:kick: :D

[Minstrel Boy]

99. "Creating the Enemy"

London 7/7 Attack: Creating the Enemy
by Ghali Hassan

July 14, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

Instead of saying; it is too early to say who is responsible for the 7/7 London bombing, Tony Blair immediately accused Muslims and Islam of the crimes. No evidence, no names and no documentation were provided to support his accusations. This happened despite the fact that all Muslim nations have strongly condemned the attacks on innocent people. They do so, Blair said, because they "hate our way of life" and "our values". Why these "Muslim terrorists" chose Britain of Blair not Switzerland or Sweden? The word why has simply disappeared from the language of both politicians and the media.

...

Throughout the Cold War, which was a pretext for state of fear, Western secret agents and NATO collaborated in attacks against civilian targets, which they then blamed on left-wing groups in order to create panic and force the public to turn to governments for more security and protection. One of these right-wing groups, implicated in attacks on civilians, was code-name Gladio. The existence of this group only became known in Italy in the 1990s and the Italian Senate, amid public protests, had to close it down, because it 'was beyond democratic control'. In other words, the lies became too big to hide from the public. (Cited in 'Secret Warfare: Gladio', by Daniele Ganser). Criminals are not difficult to find to instil fear and panic in the population. (See Fear: A political tool)

It is not surprising that just before the 7/7 bombing, the pretexts for the war on Iraq and the Occupation have changed. In order to continue the Occupation of Iraq, and justify ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people, the Blair-Bush axis and their agents are fabricating new "packs of lies". Iraq is now the "focal point of terrorism" and "we have to stay the course", we are told. Nonetheless, the US aim remains the same: the colonisation of Iraq and the promotion of the US imperial agenda of dominating the world through control over energy resources.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAS20050714&articleId=696

[Al-CIAda]

101. .