Europe's "Stay Behind" Units
Italy was not alone in having covert "stay behind" units in operation. The operation encompassed all of western Europe. In France the unit was called "Glaive" - again named after a Gladiatorial sword. Austria's unit was named "Schwert," also meaning sword. In Turkey the unit was named "Red Sheepskin" and in Greece "Sheepskin." Sweden's unit was called "Sveaborg." In Switzerland it went by the title P26. Other units in Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Holland remain unnamed. Not least, the United Kingdom's unit was simply known as "Stay Behind."
Origins of the Stay Behind Network
Information that surfaced in recent years suggests that the "Stay Behind" concept first arose in Britain. Senior military sources told the Guardian newspaper in December 1990, that a British guerrilla network was already in place following the fall of France in 1940. Numerous arm "caches" were buried for later use by a special forces ski battalion of the Scots Guards under the leadership of Brigadier "Mad Mike" Calvert. After the war, the decision was taken to create new units throughout Europe. The plan was conceived by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and spearheaded by the newly formed CIA.
Covert Political Destablisation in Britain
Britain's "Stay Behind" unit was modified after the war, for a "secondary use." This was to combat "the takeover of civil government by militant leftwing groups." The network was operated by Britain's intelligence services and selected members of the armed forces. Rumours persist that Harold Wilson's Labour government was the target of a Gladio type campaign not dissimilar to that of Italy. Wilson's surprise resignation has been credited to a dirty tricks campaign operated by British intelligence at the behest of the US. Known as operation "Clockwork Orange" Army psyops personnel began "fabricating" evidence that showed that senior members of the Wilson Cabinet, including the Prime Minister himself, were Soviet dupes. Waiting in the wings were senior military and other rightwing figures alleged to be planning a military style "Coup D'Etat" in the event that the Labour government won the forthcoming election
Licio Gelli and Propaganda Due
"The doors of all bank vaults open to the right." The words were spoken by Licio Gelli, the Venerable Master of Propaganda Due (P2), an Italian Masonic lodge with extreme right wing affiliations. P2 was a "covered" lodge, a term that denoted it was secret and operated outside of normal Masonic control. Numbered amongst its 1000 plus members were senior individuals from Italy's ruling elite. These included members of the armed services, the security and intelligence services, parliamentarians, civil servants, members of the judiciary and prominent figures from finance, industry, publishing and other sectors.
Born in Tuscany in 1919, Gelli was a fascist who saw service in a Black Shirts Battalion in the Spanish civil war. During WW11 he became a liaison officer in the SS Hermann Goering Division. This background leapfrogged him to the attention of the Italian Secret Service and later to the British and Soviet secret services. Thereafter he was to assume a shadowy and powerful role as a broker of influence in the CIA and NATO sponsored "Operation Gladio" - a covert operation that created turmoil throughout Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. Gelli's power arose from the most sensitive files gathered by the Italian secret service that were handed to him in 1967. Armed with this inside information he was able to blackmail and coerce his way across the spectrum of Italy's ruling elite, for which he was dubbed "The Puppet Master."
| QUOTE |
Gladio has been accused of trying to influence policies through the means of "false flag" operations: a 2000 Italian Parliamentary Commission report from the Olive Tree left-wing coalition concluded that the strategy of tension used by Gladio had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Italian Communist Party) , and to a certain degree also the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), from reaching executive power in the country".
Propaganda Due (aka P2), a quasi-freemasonic organization, whose existence was discovered in 1981, was closely linked to Gladio. According to a November 18, 1990 article by The Observer, quoted by Statewatch, "Declassified secret service papers reveal that Ted Shackleton, deputy chief of the CIA station in Rome in the 1970s introduced Licio Gelli – head of the neofascist P2 Masonic lodge and for years a fugitive in Argentina – to General Alexander Haig, then Nixon's chief of staff, and later, from 1974 to 1979, NATO Supreme Commander. P2 was a right-wing shadow government, ready to take over Italy, that included four Cabinet Ministers, all three intelligence chiefs, 48 members of parliament, 160 military officers, bankers, industrialists, top diplomats and the Army Chief of Staff. After meetings between Gelli, Italian military officers and CIA men in the embassy, Gladio was given renewed blessing – and more money – by Haig and the head of the National Security Council, Henry Kissinger. Just how those and later funds were spent is a key point in the Casson investigations." |