6
THE SECRET WAR IN ITALY
|
The anti-Communism of the United States dominated the tragic history of Italy's First Republic (1945-1993). The evidence discovered during the last ten years reveals that the Gladio army of the Italian military secret service in alliance with right-wing terrorists was heavily involved in this secret and undeclared war. In the absence of a Soviet invasion the secret anti-Communist paramilitary unit set up by the CIA carried out domestic operations and manipulated the political framework. A parliamentary investigation of the Italian Senate into Gladio and a series of mysterious massacres concluded after the end of the Cold War that in Italy the 'CIA had enjoyed in times of peace maximum discretion' because Italy during the First Republic had lived 'in a difficult and at times tragic situation of frontier'. This Cold War frontier marked the dividing line between the contesting ideologies. On the left side of this frontier stood the exceptionally popular and strong PCI Communist Party, supported with secret funds by the Soviet Union, as well as 1 CIA and the Italian military secret service with its Gladio army and a number of 2 right-wing terrorists, politically supported by the conservative DCI. |
|
During the Second World War, Italy led by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini sided with Hitler. After the defeat of the Axis Powers, US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and leader of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin in February 1945 met in the Soviet town Jalta in order to discuss the future shape of Europe and, in a momentous decision for Italy, placed the peninsula under the sphere of influence of the United States. In order to limit the strength of the Italian Communists the CIA sided with the Mafia and right-wing extremists. 'The Mafia', CIA agent Victor Marchetti explained, 'because of its anti- 3 Communist nature is one of the elements which the CIA uses to control Italy'. Already during the Second World War, Earl Brennan, chief of the US wartime secret service OSS in Italy, had advised the US Justice Ministry to reduce the 50-year prison sentence of Mafia boss Charles 'Lucky' Luciano in order to strike a secret deal: In exchange for his liberation, Luciano provided the US army with lists of influential Sicilian Mafiosi who supported the United States when the US army landed in Sicily 4 the Sicilian Mafia' and 'in the name of combating Communism in Italy and |
63
|
perists today'. 5 |
|
The American troops that liberated the country and transformed the dictatorship into a fragile democracy were welcomed by the Italians with flags, bread and vine. Yet the Allies 'were becoming nervous about the conditions of Italian politics, and in particular about the danger of Communist influence growing beyond bounds and reproducing the situations of Greece and Yugoslavia'. Therefore a deliberate change of Allied policy was carried out when London and Washington stopped all supplies to the Communist-dominated Italian partisans who due to their heroic resistance to fascism enjoyed great respect among the Italian population. 'This change of policy was depressing' for American and British liaison officers who behind enemy lines had fought with the Communists against Mussolini and Hitler, 6 Communists witnessed how the United States even clandestinely recruited defeated fascists and right-wingers into the security apparatus of the state, 'since virulent anti-Communism, itself a key ingredient of the fascist appeal, was now becoming 7 popular'. |
|
'It's not unlikely that some right-wing groups were recruited and made to be stay-behinds because they would indeed have tipped us off if a war were going to begin', Ray Cline, Deputy Director of the CIA from 1962 to 1966, later confirmed in a Gladio documentary. 'So using right-wingers if you used them not 8 the Italian right to information-gathering tasks alone, they were given the keys of power. As a bulwark to Communism the United States founded the Christian Democratic Party DCI, 'riddled through with collaborators, monarchists and plain 9 and from 1945 to 1953 ruled in eight different cabinets. 'A serious purge never 10 occurred, thereby allowing much of the old Fascist bureaucracy to survive.' Prime Minister De Gasperi together with Interior Minister Mario Scelba personally oversaw 11 'the reinstatement of personnel seriously compromised with the fascist regime'. |
|
Prince Valerio Borghese, nicknamed 'The Black Prince', was among the most notorious fascists recruited by the United States. As the commander of a murderous anti-partisan campaign under Mussolini during the Salo Republic, Borghese with his Decima MAS (XMAS), a Special Forces corps of 4,000 men founded in 1941 and officially recognised by the Nazi High Command, had specialised in tracking down and killing hundreds of Italian Communists. At the end of the war the partisans captured Borghese and were about to hang him when on April 25, 1945 Admiral Ellery Stone, US Proconsul in occupied Italy and a close friend to the Borghese family, instructed OSS employee and later celebrated CIA agent James Angleton to rescue Borghese. Angleton dressed Borghese in the uniform of a US officer and escorted him to Rome where he had to stand trial for his war crimes. Due to the protection of the United States, Borghese was declared 'not guilty' at last 12 resort. CIA agent Angleton received the Legion of Merit from the US Army |
64
a career as chief of CIA counter-intelligence, becoming 'the key American figure
|
controlling all right wing and neo-fascist political and paramilitary groups in Italy 13 in the post-war period'. In a typical development of a Cold Warrior 'only the |
|
enemy changed for Jim Angleton' after the defeat of Mussolini and Hitler, as his 14 biographer notes. 'Now the hammer and the sickle replaced the crooked cross.' In 1947 in Washington the US NSC and the CIA were founded and Italy, due 'to continuous attack by a strong Communist Party', was unfortunate enough to be the first country in the world to be targeted by a silent and undeclared secret war of the CIA. The task of the CIA was straightforward: To prevent the Italian left from winning the first national elections after the Second World War on April 16, 1948. US President Harry Truman was greatly worried because the PCI, the largest Communist Party in Western Europe, and the Socialist PSI for the election had united forming the Popular Democratic Front (Fronte Democratico Popolare, FDP). Observers expected the FDP to gain the majority in the Italian parliament, as in municipal elections preceding the national vote the FDP had shown its muscle, assigning regularly the second rank to the US-supported DCI. Therefore the CIA covert action branch OPC, which under Frank Wisner had set up and directed the secret Gladio armies in Western Europe, pumped ten million CIA dollars into the DCI. At the same time Communists and Socialists were targeted with smear campaigns. Among other dirty tricks the CIA issued anonymous pamphlets which defamed PCI candidates' sex and personal lives, as well as smearing them with the Fascist and/or anti-Church brush. This tactic of targeting specific seats to give control to the DCI rather than going for a complete sweep was successful in all but two of the two hundred plus seats selected. In the final election the DCI with 48 per cent of the vote won 307 seats of the Italian parliament, while the leftist FDP coalition unexpectedly polled but 31 per cent, 15 answered with heavy-handed repression leading to a 'strikingly high number of 16 victims during demonstrations and land occupations'. |
|
US President Harry Truman was pleased and became a covert action enthusiast. In his much discussed 'Truman Doctrine' in March 1947 he had insisted that 'we shall refuse to recognize any government imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power', declaring that US foreign policy was based on 17 'righteousness and justice' with no 'compromise with evil'. 18 American military intervention should the Italian Communists win. Italian President Francesco Cossiga confirmed after the Gladio discoveries that during the elections of 1948 a paramilitary branch of the DCI had been ready to intervene in case of a Communist victory. Armed with a Stern machine gun, magazines and Yet had the Italian |
65
'various hand grenades', Cossiga had been personally part of the paramilitary
|
unit. 'I was armed to the teeth, and I wasn't the only one.' The DCI paramilitaries 19 had arms 'bought with funds put at the disposition of the party'. |
|
After the PCI had been successfully excluded from the government, Italy under the US-supported DCI party was allowed to join the newly created NATO on April 4, 1949 as a founding member. Only a few days earlier, on March 30, 1949, the first post-war military secret service had been created in Italy in close collaboration with the CIA. Placed within the Defence Ministry the clandestine unit was labelled SIFAR and General Giovanni Carlo was nominated to be its first Director. SIFAR during Italy's First Republic repeatedly manipulated Italian politics and through its branch 'Office R' ran and directed the anti-Communist Gladio 20 of an intelligence capability was more than mere coincidence', secret services expert Philipp Willan correctly observed, 'and gives an insight into the fundamental purpose of the post-war Italian secret service in the intentions of those who 21 sanctioned its rebirth'. |
|
The Secret Service SIFAR was from the very beginning 'regulated by a top-secret protocol imposed by the United States which constitutes a real and complete renunciation of the Italian sovereignty'. According to this protocol, which was coordinated with NATO planning, the obligations of SIFAR towards the CIA headquarters in the United States allegedly included the making available of all intelligence collected and the granting of supervision rights to the United States, above all concerning the choice of SIFAR personnel which at all times 22 was heavily influenced by the CIA. Or as Paulo Taviani, Italian Defence Minister from 1955 to 1958, during the Gladio investigation put it: The Italian secret services were bossed and financed by 'the boys in Via Veneto', i.e. the CIA in the US 23 dominance of the CIA and recorded that 'Gladio was established through an agreement between two secret services, a very important one, the US secret service, 24 and a much less important one, the Italian secret service.' |
|
In 1951 General Umberto Broccoli was made Director of SIFAR and as a member of a 'Secret Committee' regularly met with CIA representatives, the representative of the NATO Command for southern Europe, as well as the representatives of the 25 Italian Army, Navy and Air Force. SIFAR had to guarantee Italy's stability as |
66
from the United Stale. In 1953 the British realised that they had been fooled and
|
angrily reproached General Musco, successor of Broccole at the head of SIFAR, |
|
protesting that 'his service was delivering itself hook, line and sinker to the 26 Americans'. SIFAR regularly participated in the secret Gladio meetings of the NATO command centres ACC and CPC. Shortly before his resignation, Italian President Cossiga in a large television interview elaborated that 'concerned with what might happen to Europe if it were invaded', the secret Gladio army had allegedly been set up in Italy in 1951. 'It was agreed that three countries, the United States, Great Britain and France, would be permanent members, and the rest would be associate members that meant Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece and Turkey', Cossiga explained with reference to the NATO-linked Gladio command centre CPC. 'Italy was invited to become an associate member. Italy turned down this invitation and instead asked to become a permanent member but did not get an answer at the time. In 1956 Germany joined.' The President insisted that these operations were carried out under the strictest secrecy. 'It was standard policy of 27 NATO to deny the existence of anything that it had been agreed to keep secret.' |
|
In a top-secret document of the US National Security Council signed by Truman on April 21, 1950 the president insisted that 'Italy is a key country for American security' and hence the United States 'has to be prepared to use all their political, economic and, if necessary, military might' in order to stop the PCI. 'In case that the Communists successfully enter the government by legal means, and also in the case that the government should no longer show a strong opposition to both the domestic and foreign Communist threat, the United States have to be prepared to take counter measure', explicitly including an invasion if 'parts of Italy fall under Communist control after an armed insurrection'. US military planning for the upcoming Italian election envisaged that in phase one the 'US military presence in the Mediterranean' would be strengthened. In phase two, the 'alarm phase', US troops would invade Italy upon 'request of the Italian government and after consultation with Great Britain and the other NATO countries'. The troops were to be deployed 'into those zones of the peninsula which are controlled by the government as a demonstration of force'. Finally in 'phase three, red alarm', US 'armed forces in sufficient numbers' were to 'land in Sicily or Sardinia, or in both regions' in order 'to occupy the territory against the indigenous Communist 28 resistance'. |
|
The fears of Washington mounted when on election day in June 1953 despite CIA covert action operations the US-sponsored DCI with 40 per cent of the vote lost 43 seats in parliament compared to its 1948 result and was back to 261. The leftist coalition of Socialists and Communists increased their strength to 35 per cent of the vote and 218 seats. The CIA intensified its secret war for 'there was good reason to fear that if the voting trend between 1948 and 1953 were allowed to continue... the combined Communist and socialist vote would grow to become the largest political force in Italy', as William Colby, later to become Director of |
67
the CIA under Nixon, rightly analysed.
29
As a first step a more aggressive chief
|
of SIFAR had to be installed. In 1955 high-ranking CIA officer CarmeI Offie, a close collaborator of acting CIA chief Allen Dulles, came to Italy and at the US embassy together with CIA Chief of Station (COS) Gerry Miller instructed Claire Boothe Luce, the good-looking US ambassador in Rome, to pressure Italian Defence Minister Paolo Emilio Taviani to promote General Giovanni De Lorenzo. As of January 1956 General De Lorenzo, a solid anti-Communist asset of Washington, 30 directed SIFAR and its Gladio secret armies. |
|
With his moustache, the spectacles and the harsh military appearance, De Lorenzo represented the stereotype of a General of the old school. In a top-secret document dated November 26, 1956 and signed by De Lorenzo he confirmed 'former agreements' between the CIA and SIFAR and stressed that operation Gladio was 31 withheld from the Italian Senate investigation. "The agreement between SIFAR and the CIA of 1956 concerning the stay-behind organization can not, as of now, be made public as it is a bilateral agreement classified top-secret', acting SIFAR chief Admiral Fulvio Martini explained to the startled Italian Senators who had wrongly worked upon the assumption that SIFAR was answerable to the Italian legislative and not to the CIA. 'The declassification of the document, which I have already requested on December 13, 1990', Martini reasoned, 'is necessarily 32 subordinate to the agreement of the other party involved'. |
|
Among the most important projects of SIFAR Director De Lorenzo ranged the construction of a new headquarters for the secret army for which the CIA had provided 300 million Lira. SIFAR and CIA had agreed that for reasons of secrecy and functionality the Gladio centre should not be erected on the Italian mainland, but on one of the larger islands off the Italian west coast in the Mediterranean. Sardinia was chosen and land was bought. SIFAR Colonel Renzo Rocca, Chief of Office R that ran Gladio, was given the responsibility to supervise the construction of the new Gladio base where secret anti-Communist soldiers were equipped and 33 trained by experts of the American and the British Special Forces. The Gladio |
|
'I was at Capo Marragiu for the first time in 1959', Gladiator Ennio Colle testified after the discovery of the secret army. On November 27, 1990, Colle had received a letter of SISMI Director to inform him that 'the stay-behind structure has been dissolved'. Gladiator Colle testified that the members of the secret unit were kept in the dark on the larger international framework and had not even known where they were trained: 'I didn't know when I was because we were transported in planes with blacked out windows.' Decimo Garau, a Gladio instructor at CAG |
68
who had been trained in Great Britain confirmed to journalists that Italian Gladiators
were literally kept in the dark: 'They arrived in a disguised plane and were
transferred to a disguised coach. They were then dropped off in front of their
35 quarters. Then training would start.'
|
'My job, simply put, was to prevent Italy from being taken over by the Communists in the next 1958 elections', CIA agent William Colby revealed and in his memoirs. In autumn 1953 he came to Rome to serve under COS Gerry Miller. With the Gladio secret armies the CIA wanted to 'prevent the NATO military defences from being circumvented politically by a subversive fifth column, the Partito Communista Italiano (or PCI)' in what according to Colby was 'by far the CIA's largest covert political action program undertaken until then'. Next to the Communists the Italian Socialists were also attacked by the CIA with smear campaigns as Washington continued to fund the DCI. 'I had to agree that we will not turn from the Christian Democrat bird in the hand to the socialist birds in the bush.' Colby was successful and in 1958 the DCI gained strength with 42 per cent of the vote and 273 seats, while the Communists received 23 per cent and 140 seats 36 with the Socialists polling but 14 per cent and 84 seats. |
|
Colby much like US President Dwight Eisenhower was fascinated with covert action after the CIA together with the MI6 in 1953 had overthrown the Mossadegh government in Iran and in 1954 toppled Socialist Arbenz in Guatemala. In Italy the manipulation of the election and the secret funding of the DCI 'was so effective that often the Italian recipients of our aid themselves were not certain where the aid was coming from', Colby proudly related. 'CIA's Italian political operations, and several similar ones that were patterned after it in subsequent years, notably Chile, have come under scorching criticism', Colby said in retrospect. 'Now, there can be no denying that "interference" of this sort is illegal. Under the laws of most countries, as under American law, a foreign government is strictly prohibited from involving itself in that nation's internal political process.' However, the Cold Warrior reasoned, the 'assistance to democratic groups in Italy to enable them to meet the Soviet supported subversive campaign there can certainly be 37 accepted as a moral act'. |
|
Sharing in this assessment the Pentagon ordered in a top-secret directive that in 'Operation Demagnetize' the CIA together with the military secret services in Italy and in France start 'political, paramilitary and psychological operations' in order to weaken the Communists in the two countries. The directive of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff dated May 14,1952 insisted sensitively enough that 'The limi- tation of the strength of the Communists in Italy and France is a top priority objective. This objective has to be reached by the employment of all means' including by implication a secret war and terrorist operations. 'The Italian and French government may know nothing of the plan "Demagnetize", for it is clear 38 that the plan can interfere with their respective national sovereignty.' |
|
As Colby left Italy for the CIA station in Vietnam, SIFAR Director De Lorenzo in Italy continued his battle against the PCI and the PSI. Under the title 'The Special Forces of SIFAR and Operation Gladio' a top-secret document of the Italian |
69
Defence Department dated June 1, 1959 specified how NATO military planning for
unorthodox warfare and anti-Communist covert action operations was coordinated by the CPC directly linked to SHAPE. The document stressed that next to a Soviet
invasion, NATO feared 'internal subversion' and, in Italy, specifically an increase of power of the PCI. 'On the national level, the possibility of an emergency situation as above described has been and continues to be the reason for specific SIFAR activities. These special activities are carried out by the section SAD of the Ufficio R' the document explained with reference to the secret Gladio army. 'Parallel to this decision the chief of SIFAR decided, with the approval of the Defence Minister, to confirm the previous accords agreed upon by the Italian secret service and the American secret service with respect to the reciprocal co-operation in the context of the S/B operations (Stay Behind), in order to realize a joint operation.' De Lorenzo's Gladio document concluded that the agreement between CIA and SIFAR with date of November 26, 1956 'constitutes the basis
document of Operation "Gladio" (name given to the operations developed by the
39
two secret services)'.
When John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961 the policy of the United States towards Italy changed because Kennedy unlike his predecessors Truman and Eisenhower sympathised with the PSI. He agreed with a CIA analysis that in Italy the 'strength of the socialists, even without aid from outside, means
40
that left-wing sentiment looked forward to a democratic form of socialism'. Yet
Kennedy's plans for reform met with stiff resistance from both the US State Department and the CIA. Secretary of State Dean Rusk with horror related to Kennedy that for instance Riccardo Lombardi of the PSI had publicly asked for the recognition of Communist China, had asked for the withdrawal of the American military bases in Italy including the important naval NATO base in Naples and had declared that capitalism and imperialism must be fought. 'Should this be the
41 party with which the United States should deal?'
Ambassador Frederick Reinhardt at the US embassy in Rome together with COS Thomas Karamessines debated how Kennedy could be stopped. Vernon Walters advised them, a notorious CIA Cold Warrior 'who has been involved directly or indirectly in the overthrow of more governments man any other official of
42
the US government'.
Walters declared that if Kennedy allowed the PSI to win
the elections the US should invade the country. Karamessines, more subtly,
suggested that the forces within Italy that opposed the opening to the left should
43
be strengthened.
found himself up against the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA.'
On election day in April 1963 the CIA nightmare materialised: The Communists
gained strength while all other parties lost seats. The US-supported DCI fell to 38
per cent, its worst result since the party had been created after the war. The PCI
polled 25 per cent and together with the 14 per cent of the triumphant PSI secured
an overwhelming victory as for the first time in the First Republic the united
left dominated parliament. The supporters of the Italian left celebrated in
the streets the novelty that the Socialists were also given cabinet posts in the
'The absurd situation developed in which President Kennedy 44
Italian governmentunder Prime Minister Aldo Moro of the left-wing of the DCI.
|
President Kennedy was immensely pleased and in July 1963 decided to visit |
|
Rome to the great delight of many Italians. The airport was crowded and once again the Americans were greeted with flags and cheers. 'He is a wonderful person. |
|
He seems much younger than his real age. He invited me to visit the United |
|
States', Pietro Nenni, the leader ol the PSI with much enthusiasm declared. 45 |
|
Kennedy had allowed Italy to shift to the left. As the Socialists were given cabinet posts the Italian Communists, due to their performance at the polls, also demanded to be rewarded with posts in the cabinet and in May 1963 the large union of the construction workers demonstrated in Rome. The CIA was alarmed and members of the secret Gladio army disguised as police and civilians smashed the demon- 46 stration leaving more than 200 demonstrators injured. But for Italy the worst |
|
Code-named 'Piano Solo' the coup was directed by General Giovanni De Lorenzo whom Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti of the DCI had transferred from chief of SIFAR to chief of the Italian paramilitary police, the Carabinieri. In close cooperation with CIA secret warfare expert Vernon Walters, William Harvey, chief of the CIA station in Rome, and Renzo Rocca, Director of the Gladio units within the military secret service SID, De Lorenzo escalated the secret war. Rocca first used his secret Gladio army to bomb the offices of the DCI and the offices of a few daily newspapers and thereafter blamed the terror on the 47 left in order to discredit both Communists and Socialists. As the government was not shaken, De Lorenzo in Rome on March 25, 1964 instructed his secret soldiers that upon his signal they were to 'occupy government offices, the most important communication centres, the headquarters of the leftist parties and the seats of the newspapers closest to the left, as well as the radio and television centres. News- paper agencies were to be occupied strictly for the time only that it takes to destroy the printing machines and to generally make the publication of newspapers 48 'maximum energy and decisiveness, free of any doubts or indecisiveness' and, as 49 the Gladio investigation put it, made his men 'feverish and biting'. |
|
The Gladiators equipped with proscription lists naming several hundred persons had the explicit order to track down designated Socialists and Communists, arrest and deport them to the island of Sardinia where the secret Gladio centre was to serve as a prison. The document on 'The Special Forces of SIFAR and Operation Gladio' had specified that 'As for the operating headquarters, the Saboteur's Training CAG is being protected by a particularly sensitive security system and equipped with installations and equipment designed to be useful in case 50 ready to start the coup. Then, on June 14, 1964, De Lorenzo gave the go-ahead |
71
andwithhistroopsentered Rome with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, jeepsand
|
grenade launchers while NATO forces staged a large military manoeuvre in the area to intimidate the Italian government. Cunningly the General claimed that the show of muscle was taking place on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Carabinieri and, together with feverishly anti-Communist Italian President Antonio Segni of the right-wing of the DCI, saluted the troops with a smile. The Italian Socialists noted that somewhat unusually for a parade the tanks and grenade launchers were not withdrawn after the show but stayed in Rome 51 during May and most of June 1964. |
|
Prime Minister Aldo Moro was alarmed and secretly met with General De Lorenzo in Rome. It was of course a 'highly unusual meeting between a Prime Minister in the midst of a political crisis and a General planning to replace him with a sterner 52 regime'. After the meeting the Socialists silently abandoned their Ministerial posts and sent their most moderate Socialists for a second government under Moro. 'Suddenly the political parties realized that they could be replaced. In case of a power vacuum resulting from the failure of the Left, the only alternative would have been an emergency government', Pietro Nenni of the Socialist party recalled years later, this 'in the reality of this country would mean a right-wing 53 government'. 54 the interests followed by sectors of the administration of the United States', the Italian Gladio investigation was left to lament, while historian Bernard Cook 55 correctly labelled Piano Solo 'a carbon copy of Gladio'. Left coalition - perhaps the only genuine attempt at a reformist government in 56 the entire post-war period'. After the coup the Gladio traces were covered up. Several years Italian Gladio scholar |
|
Next to staging the coup, General De Lorenzo on the orders of COS Thomas Karamessines secretly monitored the entire Italian elite. Above all he gathered data on 'irregular behaviour', such as extramarital relationships, homosexual relationships and regular contacts with feminine and masculine prostitutes. In the slang of Langley this allowed the CIA and SIFAR to have the Italian elite 'by the balls', and the threatened exposure of compromising details in subsequent years helped to influence politicians, clerics, businessmen, union leaders, journalists and judges alike, De Lorenzo went as far as to install microphones in the Vatican and in the Palace of the Prime Minister in ante to allow the CIA to monitor and record top-level conversations in Italy. The discovery of the secret operation came as a massive shock to the Italian population as a parliamentary investigation into the SIFAR revealed that files containing text and pictures on the lives of over |
72
157,000 persons had been set up. Some files were enormous. The dossier on
|
professor Amintore Fanfani, a DCI Senator who had held numerous Ministerial posts including the one of Prime Minister, consisted of four volumes, each as fat as a dictionary. 'The persons were spied upon with cameras making close up pictures from afar, secret systems with which t h e i r c orrespondence was controlled, recordings of what they had said in then phone calls, documentation with pictures of their extramarital relationships or sexual habits.' The parliamentary commission under General Aldo Beolchini did not fail to notice that 'especially data, which could be 57 investigation De Lorenzo was forced to admit that the United States and NATO 58 had ordered him to set up the files. the principles of liberty and the equality of the citizens, and a constant menace for 59 the democratic balance of our country.' This confession met the fierce criticism of |
|
The silent war of the CIA, however, was beyond the control of the Italian parliamentarians. As the name of the discredited military secret service after the scandal was changed from SIFAR to SID and General Giovanni Allavena was appointed its new Director the parliamentarians ordered De Lorenzo to destroy all secret files. This he did, after he had given a copy both to COS Thomas Karamessines and to SID Director General Giovanni Allavena. It was a remarkable gift, which allowed its possessor to clandestinely control Italy from within. In |
|
1966, General Allavena was replaced as Director of SID by General Eugenio
Henke but remained active in the clandestine battle against the Italian left. In |
|
Years later it was revealed how much P2 Director Licio Gelli and the CIA had manipulated Italian politics in order to keep the Communists out of power. Gelli was born in 1919 and only partly educated - having been expelled from school at the age of 13 for striking the headmaster. He enrolled at 17 as a volunteer in the Black Shirts and went to fight for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War he was a Sergeant Major in the fascist German Hermann Goering division of the SS and only narrowly escaped the Italian left-wing partisans at the end of the war by fleeing to the US Army. Frank Gigliotti of the US Masonic Lodge personally recruited Gelli and instructed him to set up an anti-Communist parallel government in Italy in close cooperation with the CIA station in Rome. 'It was Ted Shackley, director of all covert actions of the CIA in Italy in the 1970s', an internal report of the Italian anti-terrorism unit confirmed, 'who presented the chief of the Masonic Lodge to Alexander Haig'. According to the document |
73
Nixon's Military adviser General Haig, who had commanded US troops in Vietnam
|
and thereafter from 1974 to 1979 served as NATO's SACEUR, and Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger 'authorized Gelli in the fall of 1969 60 contacts with the United States remained excellent throughout the Cold War. As a sign of trust and respect Gelli was invited in 1974 to the Presidential inauguration ceremonies of Gerald Ford and again in 1977 was present at the inauguration ceremony of President Carter. When Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 Gelli was proud to sit in the first row in Washington. He was Washington's man 61 in Italy and, as he saw, it saved the country from the left: 'I deserve a medal.' |
|
In April 1981, Milan magistrates in the context of a criminal investigation broke into the villa of Licio Gelli in Arezzo and discovered the files of the P2 the existence of which had been unknown. A parliamentary investigation under Tina Anselmi thereafter to the massive surprise of most Italians revealed that the secretive anti-Communist P2 member lists confiscated counted at least 962 members, with total membership estimated at 2,500. The available member list read like a 'Who is Who in Italy' and included not only the most conservative but also some of the most powerful members of the Italian society: 52 were high-ranking officers of the Carabinieri paramilitary police, 50 were high-ranking officers of the Italian Army, 37 were high-ranking officers of the Finance Police, 29 were high-ranking officers of the Italian Navy, 11 were Presidents of the police, 70 were influential and wealthy industrialists, 10 were Presidents of banks, 3 were acting Ministers, 2 were former Ministers, 1 was the President of a political party, 38 were members of parliament and 14 were high-ranking judges. Others on lower levels of the social hierarchy were mayors, Directors of hospitals, lawyers, notaries and journalists. The most prominent member was Silvio Berlusconi, who was elected Prime Minister of Italy in May 2001, by coincidence, almost exactly 20 years after the 62 discovery of the P2. |
|
'We have come to the definite conclusion that Italy is a country of limited sovereignty because of the interference of the American secret service and inter- national freemasonry', Communist member of the Anselmi commission, Antonio Bellocchio, later emphasised and lamented that at the time of the administration of Ronald Reagan the Italian parliamentarians had shied away from investigating the links of P2 to the USA. 'If the majority of the commission had been prepared to follow us in this analysis they would have had to admit that they are puppets of 63 investigation noted that while other Masonic Lodges exist in Germany, Spain, France, Argentina, Australia, Uruguay, Ireland, Greece, Indonesia and most other countries of the world, the headquarters of the Freemasons was in the United 64 States, counting around 5 million members. 'If democracy is a system of rules |
74
secrecy?', the parliamentarians asked the obvious question and sharply criticised
|
65 this 'dangerous side of extra parliamentary activity'. anti-Communist parallel army Gladio cooperated closely during Italy's First |
|
Republic. Licio Gelli, who alter the discovery of the P2 had escaped arrest and fled to South America, after the end of the Cold War was happy to confirm that the secret army was made up of staunch anti-Communists. 'Many came from the ranks of mercenaries who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and many came from the fascist republic of Salo. They chose individuals who were proven anti- Communists. I know it was a well-constructed organization. Had Communist strength grown in Italy, America would have assisted us, we would have unleashed another war and we would have been generously supplied with arms 66 of money on the network: 'The Americans paid them large sums of money, the equivalent of an excellent salary. And they guaranteed the financial support of 67 the families in case the Gladiator was killed.' Western Europe was to counter the invasion of the Red Army or the coming to power by coup d'etat of the Communist parties', Gelli stressed the twofold function of the secret network. 'That PCI, during all those years, has never come to power, although they have tried to do so repeatedly, is the merit of the Gladio organ- 68 massacres Italy had suffered from, asked Gelli: 'How far would you have gone in your campaign against Communism?' to which Gelli vaguely replied: 'Ah, number one enemy was Communism [silence] - We were an association of believers - We did not admit non believers - We wanted to stop Communism in its track, eliminate 69 Communism, fight Communism.' |
|
As after the death of Kennedy too, during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, the Italian Communists and Socialists remained very popular and upheld a strong performance during national elections, the Italian right together with the CIA continued its secret war. Following the success of the Piano Solo coup Gladio commander Renzo Rocca on me orders of the CIA and SIFAR in 1965 organized a public congress of the extreme right in Rome on the topic of 'Counter Revolutionary Warfare' and 'the defence of Italy from Communism by all means'. The Alberto Pollio Institute, a right-wing think tank, fronted for the SIFAR and the CIA as the conference was held at the luxurious Parco dei Principi hotel in Rome from May 3 to May 5, 1965. The right-wing extremists at the meeting endorsed the view that 'the Third World War is already under way, even if it is being fought at a low level of military intensity'. Amongst the speakers, right- winger Eggardo Beltrametti stressed that 'It is a struggle to the last drop of blood and our aim is to eliminate the Communist threat by whatever means. We would prefer non-violent methods but we must not refuse to consider other forms 70 that right-wingers during the now infamous Parco dei Principi conference had |
75
repeatedly referred to a mysterious armed parallel structure, only later discovered
71 to be Gladio.
|
Richard Nixon, who in January 1969 became president of the United States, as well as Richard Helms, who directed the CIA from June 1966 to February 1973 and during his time in office in a right-wing coup d'etat installed dictator Pinochet in Chile, shared the analysis of right-wing extremists in Italy. For in yet another nightmare for the CIA in the US embassy in Rome during the elections of 1968 the combined votes of the Socialists and the Communists had once again defeated the DCI while the anti-Vietnam War and anti-violence demonstration of the flower power movement dominated the streets. The backlash came when Junio Valerio Borghese, a leading Italian fascist saved by CIA agent James Angleton after the Second World War, in close collaboration with the CIA in Rome on the night of December 7, 1970 started the second right-wing Gladio coup d'etat in Italy. The secret operation was code-named 'Operation Tora Tora' after the Japanese attack on the US ships in Pearl Harbour which had led the United States to enter the Second World War on December 7, 1941. The plan of the coup in its final phase envisaged the involvement of US and NATO warships which were on alert in the Mediterranean. |
|
Exactly like Piano Solo in 1964 the operation called for the arrest of left-wing political and trade union leaders as well as leading journalists and political activists who were to be shipped away and locked up in the Gladio prison on Sardinia. Several hundred armed men under Borghese's commando spread across the country with elite units gathered in Rome. In the dark of the night under the command of notorious international right-wing extremist Stefano Delle Chiaie, one paramilitary unit succeeded in entering the Interior Ministry through the complicity of the police guards. The conspirators sized a consignment of 180 machine guns and sent them out from the ministry in a lorry for their associates. A second unit, as the parliamentary investigation into Gladio found, under right-winger and parachutist Sandro Saccucci had the task to arrest political functionaries. A third armed group, among them Carabinieri of Piano Solo fame, waited in a gym in Rome's Via Eleniana, ready for action. A clandestine unit under the command of General Casero was about to occupy the Defence Ministry in Rome. A squad of fully armed men under the command of General Berti equipped with hand cuffs was only a few hundred meters away from the radio and television headquarters. A group of conspirators under Colonel Amos Spiazzi that night was on its way to occupy Sesto San Giovanni, a working-class suburb of Milan and heartland of Communist electoral support where the CIA expected heavy 72 resistance. |
|
Italy was on the brink of a right-wing coup d'etat. But it did not come. Shortly before one o'clock in the dark morning hours of December 8, coup leader Borghese received a mysterious phone call and the Gladio coup was stopped. The conspirators returned to their barracks, and strategic posts already occupied were abandoned. In Chile and in Greece, right-wing governments were installed with a coup d'etat after the political left had significantly increased its power. Why had the |
76
right-wing coup been stopped in Italy? Members of the Italian Mafia, which the
|
CIA had recruited to support the conspirators, later testified on trial that Soviet |
|
intelligence had learned about the planned coup whereupon both Washington and NATO had noticed that numerous Soviet ships were cruising in the Mediterranean. |
|
'Nothing was done and the coup came to nothing, partly because there were a lot of Soviet ships cruising in the Mediterranean at the time', Mafia super grass 73 Tommaso Buscetta testified to anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in 1984. While Mafia super grass Luciano Liggio lamented: 'They told me that the secret services and the Americans were in favour. I told them to get lost and as a result 74 I was given life sentence at Bari.' |
|
According to the plan of the CIA and Borghese, Italy and the world would have woken up on December 8, 1970 to find a new right-wing conservative government installed in the peninsula. 'The political formula which has governed us for twenty-five years and brought us to the verge of economic and moral collapse has ceased to exist', Borghese planned to greet the population on that morning on television. 'The armed forces, the forces of order, the most competent and representative men in the nation are with us and we can assure you that the most dangerous enemies, to be clear, those who wanted to enslave the fatherland to the foreigner, have been rendered inoffensive.' After that Borghese and his conspirators had intended to implement their governmental program which envisaged: 'Maintenance of the present military and financial commitment to NATO and the preparation of a plan to increase Italy's contribution to the Atlantic Alliance', as well as the appointment of a special envoy to the United States to organise an 75 Italian military contribution to the Vietnam War! |
|
Who had made the mysterious phone call after midnight that had stopped the Gladio army? CIA Director William Colby implicitly suggested that it had been President Nixon himself. Colby in his memoirs confirmed that 'Certainly, in Track II in 1970 it [the CIA] sought a military coup, at the direct order of President 76 take over command and with few scruples at the time of the Tora Tora operation 77 Nixon, next to Vietnam, was also bombing neutral Cambodia killing thousands. The involvement of Nixon was also alleged in Italy by Remo Orlandini, a right- wing wealthy Italian businessman closely involved in the Tora Tora operation. At the headquarters of the SID in 1973 he discussed the coup in confidence with Captain Antonio Labruna. Labruna asked Orlandini about 'the support from abroad'. Orlandini's answer was short, but revealing: 'NATO. And [West] Germany. At the military level, because we don't trust the civilians'. Labruna insisted: 'You must tell me the names, everything, because I know a lot about the international scene', upon which Orlandini replied: 'Look, for America there's Nixon, as well as his entourage.' The signal to stop the Gladio coup had allegedly come from high-ranking NATO officials, Orlandini testified and to Labruna insisted: 'That's why I tell you 78 that you don't have the slightest idea of the scale and the seriousness of the thing.' |
|
Giovanni Tamburino, an investigative magistrate of the Italian city Padua, critically investigated the Tora Tora operation and to his massive surprise already at the time |
77
discovered the Involvement of a mysterious secret army, later discovered to be Gladio.
|
Thereafter he arrested Vito Miceli, the acting Director of the SID who before had directed NATO's Security Office in Brussels. Tamburino charged Miceli with 'promoting, setting up, and organizing, together with others, a secret association of military and civilians aimed at provoking an armed insurrection to bring about 79 an illegal change in the constitution of the state and the form of government'. His data suggested that a mysterious armed organisation existed within the SID, and as its real code name Gladio had not yet been discovered the structure during questionings was referred to as 'Super-SID'. On trial on November 17, 1974 an angry Miceli shouted: 'A Super SID on my orders? Of course! But I have not organized it myself to make a coup d'etat. This was the United States and NATO 80 elaborate: 'There has always been a certain top-secret organization, known to the top authorities of the state and operating in the domain of the secret services, involved in activities that have nothing to do with intelligence gathering... If 81 Andreotti revealed the Gladio secret in front of the Italian parliament, Miceli was 82 greatly annoyed and shortly before his death he shouted at Andreotti's revelation. |
|
Next to Miceli Colonel Amos Spiazzi was also locked up because on the night of the Borghese coup he had gathered his Gladiators in Milan to squash the Com- munist unions. 'The day of the Borghese Coup, on the evening of December 8, 1970, I received an order to carry out an exercise in the maintenance of public order, using reliable men', Spiazzi in a BBC documentary on Gladio recalled the coup. 'We were to guard certain predetermined locations which could be vulnerable in an uprising' he declared sitting in his home in front of a picture of himself in uniform with erected right hand making the Hitler salute. 'At the time I only knew of a structure made up of people which were certainly anti-Communists, but which could be activated only in the event of an invasion of the nation' the right-winger elaborated on the secret Gladio army. 'I was arrested in 1974 and found myself in an embarrassing situation. The judge was persistently interrogating me until I realized that this judge was probing into something what he thought was something revo- 83 lutionary or unconstitutional. To me it was an organization for national security.' Right-winger Spiazzi was confused. 'My superiors and the judge belonged to the same system. Could I tell the judge certain things? No, because of military secrecy.' Thus Spiazzi asked the judge to be allowed to talk to SID Director Vito Miceli who clumsily forbade Spiazzi to tell the truth on Gladio. 'He made signs not to say anything [Spiazzi moves his hand imitating the no signal Miceli made in court]. The Judge noticed it. So he was actually saying "yes" [to the existence of 84 charged with crimes, of which only 78 were actually brought to trial, of which again only 46 were convicted by a Roman court, only to be acquitted on appeal by a higher court. In what amounted to a massive juridical scandal all Gladiators walked free. |
|
To the distress of the CIA and the Nixon administration, the aborted Tora Tora coup d'etat did not stop the I t a l i a n left. In the national elections of 1972 the |
78
US-supported DCI with 39 per cent of the votes secured only a very slim advantage
|
85 |
|
despite the fact that on the orders of Nixon, US ambassador Graham Martin in 86 election financing over a previous 20 year period at some 65 million dollars.' As the Italian Communists and Socialists remained very strong at the polls and controlled large segments of the Italian parliament, it was obvious that they should have been included in the government. Yet it was equally clear that US President Nixon categorically opposed such an opening towards the left for he feared the exposure of NATO secrets. Following the Watergate scandal, covert action enthusiast Nixon was forced to resign on August 8, 1974 and Vice President Gerald Ford entered the White House the next day to declare 'Our long national 87 a new start and therefore acting Italian Foreign Minister Aldo Moro of the DCI together with Italian President Giovanni Leone in September 1974 flew to Washington to discuss the inclusion of the Italian left in the government. Their hopes were shattered. Ford pardoned Nixon for all crimes he had committed during his time in the White House and kept key players of the Nixon administration in office. In a heavy confrontation with Henry Kissinger who under Nixon had served as the President's National Security Advisor and now under Ford held the powerful position of Foreign Minister, the Italian representatives were told that under no circumstances must the Italian left be included in the Italian govern- ment. Italy had to remain firmly and strongly within NATO. The visit weighed heavily on Aldo Moro who had already lived through both the Piano Solo Gladio coup and the Tora Tora Gladio coup and hence had no illusions concerning the influence of the United States on Italy's First Republic. |
|
Upon his return to Italy, Moro was sick for days and contemplated his complete withdrawal from politics. 'It's one of the few occasions when my husband told me exactly what had been said to him, without telling me the name of the person concerned', Moro's wife Eleonora later testified. 'I will try and repeat it now: "You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration. Either you give this up or you will pay dearly 88 the polls, 34.4 per cent, and clearly defeated the DCI. Consequently, acting president of the DCI Aldo Moro found the courage to defeat the USA's veto. On March 16, 1978 he packed the documents of the 'historical compromise' (compromesso storico) into his suitcase and ordered his driver as well as his bodyguards to bring him to the palace of the Italian parliament in Rome where he was determined to present the plan to include the Italian Communists in the executive. Moro's car was approaching a crossroads, where Via Mario Fani meets Via Stresa in the residential suburb of Rome where he lived, when a white Fiat suddenly reversed |
79
around the corner and blocked the path. Moro's driver had to break abruptly and
|
the escort car following close behind rammed into the back of them. Two men form the white ear and a further four who had been waiting in the street opened fire on Moro's five bodyguards. Moro after his return from Washington had become uneasy and had asked for a bulletproof car, yet the request had been turned down. And thus the shots went through the car and his bodyguards were killed right away. One was able to return two shots but together with the two other bodyguards still alive was finished off at close range. Moro himself was captured and held hostage in central Rome for 55 days. Thereafter Moro's bullet ridden body was found in the boot of an abandoned car in central Rome symbolically parked halfway between the headquarters of the DCI and the headquarters of the PCI. |
|
Italy was in shock. The military secret service and acting Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti immediately blamed the left-wing terrorist organisation Red Brigades for the crime and cracked down on the left. 72,000 roadblocks were erected and 37,000 houses were searched. More than 6 million people were questioned in less than two months. While Moro was held captive his wife Eleonora spent the days in agony together with her closest family and friends and even asked the Pope Paul VI, a long-standing friend of her husband, for help. 'He told me he would 89 do everything possible and I know he tried, but he found a lot of opposition.' Captured Moro himself understood that he was the victim of a political crime in which the political right and the United States were instrumentalising the Red Brigades. In his last letter he requested that nobody of the corrupt DCI was to be present at his funeral. 'Kiss and caress everyone for me, face by face, eye by eye, hair by hair', he wrote to his wife and his children fully aware that he was going to die. 'To each I send an immense tenderness through your hands. Be strong, my sweet, in this absurd and incomprehensible trial. These are the ways of the Lord. Remember me to all our relatives and friends with immense affection, and to you and all of them I send the wannest embrace as the pledge of my eternal love. I would like to know, with my small, mortal eyes, how we will appear to one another 90 afterwards.' |
|
The Senate commission investigating Gladio and the massacres suspected the CIA and the Italian military secret service including its Gladio hit squads to have organised the Moro crime. It therefore reopened the case but found with much surprise that almost all files on the Moro kidnapping and murder had mysteriously disappeared from the archives of the Ministry of the Interior. The files contained all official logs of phone calls, letters which had been exchanged between Moro and the government, contacts with the security forces and minutes of meetings made during the 55 days of Moro's kidnapping. The Senate commission sharply criticised that 'the documents of the crisis committee of the Interior Ministry disappeared', highlighted that 'the reflection on the Moro affair must be seen inserted in an evaluation of a broader contest' as 'the phenomena must be considered in the historical reality of the period' and concluded that the Moro assassination was 'a criminal project in which the Red Brigades most probably were instruments of |
80
91
a larger political framework.' The Senate observed with criticism that in 1978
|
'the administration of the United States first refused to help at all in the investigations |
|
on the hostage taking, and later sent one single expert on hostage taking who 92 worked under the direction of the Interior Ministry.' The tragic history of Italy reached its climax when during Nixon's time in office the political right spread terrorism, blood and panic in Italy and brought the country to the brink of civil war. The terrorists planted bombs in public places and blamed them on the Italian Communists in order to weaken the Communists and the Socialists at the polls. 'The suggested link with the Bologna massacre is potentially the most serious of all the accusations levelled against Gladio', the British press headlined when in 1991 the Italian parliamentary commission inves- tigating Gladio and the massacres had received an anonymous memorandum 93 Gerardo Serravalle, who had commanded the Gladio units within the SID in Italy from 1971 to 1974, later confirmed with much regret that at times some Gladio members 'could pass from a defensive, post-invasion logic, to one of attack, of 94 civil war'. 95 down the Gladio operation.' When in a BBC interview he was asked why, given this manifest |
|
It was the CIA that controlled the Italian secret army and as General Serravalle raised his concerns regarding the domestic operations of the secret army, he met the fierce opposition of the Chief of the CIA station in Rome, Howard Stone, who stopped to send CIA supplies. 'When I took over command I noticed that the American financing, agreed in bilateral accords and in particular the shipping of material and armaments to us had stopped.' Serravalle was angered and asked Stone to come to the Gladio headquarters in Sardinia. The COS came with CIA officer Mike Sednaoui, and Serravalle according to his own testimony said to them: 'This is our training etc., you could help us achieve our full potential. So why cut your aid? If this is your government's position, we accept it. But you owe us an explanation.' Thereafter he realised 'that the CIA interests, as represented by these officials weren't really concerned with the level we had reached in training but rather on the subject of internal control. That is, our level of readiness to counter street disturbances, handling nation-wide strikes and above all any eventual rise of the Communist Party. Mr Stone stated, quite clearly, that the financial support of the CIA was wholly dependent on our willingness to put into action, to 96 program and plan these other - shall we call them - internal measures.' |
|
Tt emerges without the shadow of a doubt that elements of the CIA started in the second half of the 1960s a massive operation in order to counter by the use of all means the spreading of groups and movements of the left on a European level', the official Italian Senate investigation into Gladio and the massacres concluded in 1995 in its 370-pages strong final report. 'The final picture which emerges from the analysis is one of a country which for more than 40 years has lived through a difficult frontier situation. Obviously, the tensions which have characterised |
81
these 40 yean and which were the object of the analysis had also social and
therefore internal roots. However, such tensions would never have lasted so long, they would not have taken on such tragic dimensions as they did, and the path towards the truth would not have been blocked so many times, if the internal political situation would not have been conditioned and super vised by the inter-
97 national framework into which Italy was integrated.'
Due to the brutality of the history of Italy's First Republic - which according to official figures in the terror years between 1969 and 1987 had claimed the enormously high death toll of 491 civilians, while 1,181 were left injured and maimed - this was too weak a formulation for those Senators in the parliamentary Gladio committee belonging to the Italian left. Under the chairmanship of Senator Pellegrini they therefore continued to investigate, heard witnesses and evaluated documents. In June 2000 they presented their final report on 326 pages and concluded that 'those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more
98 recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.'
In order to support this far-reaching conclusion, the Gladio report 2000
included the testimonies of selected Gladiators. Secret soldier Giuseppe Tarullo,
who had entered the SIFAR in 1961, had testified to the Senators that next to the
invasion preparations it had been their task to control the Italian Communists:
'We among us also spoke of the internal task of Gladio. It was said that the struc-
ture and its foreign connections would also have been activated against a
domestic subversion by support of the Special Forces. By domestic subver-
sion we understood a change of government which did not respect the will of the
99
ruling authority.' Gladiator Giuseppe Andreotti to the Senators put it like that:
'The Gladio structure was the answer to an internal logic, in that sense, as I have
already said, that it had to react against the taking of power in Italy of regimes
100
hated by the population... thus dictatorships of the right or the left.'
Gladiator Manlio Capriata, who in the SIFAR in the rank of General had directed office R from February to June 1962, testified to the Senators: 'I confirm that the V section, thus the organisation S/B [stay-behind] and thus the CAG [Gladio centre Centro Addestramento Guastatori in Sardinia] had an anti-subversive
101
function for the case that the forces of the left should come to power.' By now
enough evidence had surfaced and member of the commission Senator Valter
Bielli drew the conclusion: 'I am convinced that the intervention of the Americans
in Italy is now a historically proven fact.' The Clinton administration in Washington
was embarrassed and in summer 2000 refused to comment while in Rome at the
US embassy a source which wished to remain unnamed declared: 'These are
allegations that have come up over the last 20 years and there is absolutely
102 nothing to them.'
Senator Bielli remained firm and made it clear that: 'They interfered to prevent the Communist party from achieving power by democratic means. The Communist threat no longer exists and it would be appropriate if the Americans themselves helped us to clarify what happened in the past.' As the Soviet Union opened its
archives the United States remained tight-lipped. 'During the Cold War the east
was under Communist domination, but the west too had become, in a certain sense, an American colony', Bielli lamented. Aldo Giannuli, a historian working as a consultant to the parliamentary commission on Gl a d i o and terrorism correctly stressed that the stay-behind now had to be investigated internationally based on
103 NATO documents: 'The real issue today is gaining access to NATO's archives.'
83
7
THE SECRET WAR IN FRANCE
No comments:
Post a Comment