Customer Reviews

NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Contemporary Security Studies)

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The author is a Swiss researcher who has nicely managed to document in one volume the modus operandi of a secret stay-behind army in Europe which operated since the end of WWII until the end of the Cold War. The book provides a complete documentation of the general patterns of this army across Europe that if taken in isolation would seem improbable. This super secret Army was operating in all Western European countries under different codenames and coordinated by the Allied Clandestine Committee and the Clandestine Planning Committee under the umbrella supervision of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) within the NATO and with the active supporting role of the Pentagon, CIA and the British MI6. The goal of this army was to operate behind enemy lines setting up resistance movements in case of a Soviet invasion of Europe. The secret army was clandestine and illegal in many countries and staffed by loyal anti-communist soldiers and rightwing activists recruited from various sectors, many with a past with the nazis or fascist armies during WWII. These armies have been employed also against the national communist (and in some case socialist) parties (Demagnetize Operation) under the complacence of domestic intelligence services with several suspect cases of assassinations and some documented cases of terrorist attacks against civilian targets, or in overturning democratically elected governments (Greece and Turkey) too dangerously left-leaning. Italy plays an important part in this story since Italy was theatre of several operations and last but not least, a former prime minister eventually admitted before Parliament in 1990, after the investigations of a judge, that a stay-behind army had operated since WWII, opening a Pandora's box of revelations. To each country are dedicated 18 specific chapters (UK, USA, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria) with specific documented episodes, that offers a clarifying picture of this super secret organization. Much remains to be discovered, but the merit of this book is to have put together scattered information in a well organized way. Recommended.

A book both enlightening in its academic post-mortem of recent Western European history and terrifying in its subtext of what might still be in store for the region. Ganser reveals the role of Nato (and specifically the United States) in right-wing terror attacks on European soil, and to some degree breaks through the wall of secrecy surrounding the Gladio units set up in the aftermath of World War II. Nato's Secret Armies is an essential guide to understanding post-war European politics and the powerful realpolitik of EU-US relations.

This path-breaking work by Daniele Ganser, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, exposes the secret anti-communist terrorist organisation set up across Europe by the US and British states after World War Two. They created the Gladio network in all 16 NATO member countries and in the neutral nations of Sweden, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. They recruited former SS members as part of Germany's network.

As Ganser writes, these networks "became activists in political causes as a rule and not as an exception." The US and British states used them "to manipulate and control the democracies of Western Europe from within, unknown to both European populations and parliaments. This strategy led to terror and fear, as well as to `humiliation and maltreatment of democratic institutions'." They created and manipulated a terrorist threat, developing a `strategy of tension' to strengthen Europe's ruling classes.

Ganser points out, "Sometimes these efforts involved violence, even terrorism, and sometimes the terrorists made use of the very equipment furnished to them for their Cold War function." He observes, "The secret armies ... were involved in a whole series of terrorist operations and human rights violations that they wrongly blamed on the Communists in order to discredit the left at the polls. The operations always aimed spreading maximum fear among the population and ranged from bomb massacres in trains and market squares (Italy), the use of systematic torture of opponents of the regime (Turkey), the support for right-wing coups d'etats (Greece and Turkey), to the smashing of opposition groups (Portugal and Spain)."

The Gladio terrorists massacred 38 people in Turkey in 1977, 491 people in Italy between 1969 and 1980, and 28 people in Belgium in 1983-85. They assisted coups in France in 1958 and 1961, in Greece in 1967 and in Turkey in 1960, 1971 and 1980. They carried out the assassinations of Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of Mozambique's national liberation movement, in 1969, and of Aldo Moro, who had been Prime Minister of Italy, in 1978.

The USA and Britain thus became state sponsors of terrorism. Ganser concludes, "Many of these state-sponsored terrorist operations, as the subsequent cover-ups and fake trials suggest, enjoyed the encouragement and protection of selected highly placed governmental and military officials in Europe and in the United States." As an Italian parliamentary commission reported in 2002, "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence."

The British state still uses the Gladio `strategy of tension', exploiting fundamentalist terrorists to increase state powers. For example, MI5 ran Abu Hamza: for ten years they let him recruit and train terrorists for use abroad. Inevitably, some, like the 7/7 London bombers, turned on their hosts. Even now the state protects Hamza, refusing to prosecute him on terrorism charges.

It does not require a great deal of reading between the lines of NATO's Secret Army to awaken to the grim reality that Americans must now reckon with. The author's description of the "strategy of tension" is chilling. Anyone claiming "disinformation" immediately identifies themselves as an "insider" that others must be wary of. Ultimately, perhaps the most important book of the 21st century.

D. Ganser's book is frightening. He shows how a secret stay-behind network (Gladio) that should only become effective after a Warschaw Pact invasion of Western Europe, became an all important factor in Western politics, after the wealthy and powerful understood that their real enemies were the strong communist parties in Western democracies and the political parties of the left.
As John Prados says in his excellent introduction: `in country after country, Gladio influenced, violently or not, political processes through fear and terrorism. Police and security services protected perpetrated crimes and antidemocratic `state sponsors' created terrorist networks.'

It was everything except a benign game of play. In Italy alone, the strategy of tension was responsible between 1969 and 1987, for 14591 (not less) acts of violence with political motivation. There and elsewhere, bombs exploded in Bologna, Munich and Istanbul leaving hundreds of dead and crippled.
Other dirty `tricks' were torture, coup d'états, election fraud, assassinations, disinformation, provocation and false flag operations. In one word, a destructive spiral of violence.

This warfare planning group was linked to NATO, the Pentagon and the CIA and operated completely outside democratic control from the nationally elected legislators. It made a joke of national sovereignty.

A must read for all those who try to understand the world we live in.

Many people have become interested in Operation Gladio, the Bologna train station bombing, and other creepy aspects of the "Stay Behind" operations in Europe because of their ominous resonances with 9-11 and the politics of the "Neo-cons." For such people, this book is an excellent resource. It is far and away the most detailed discussion of the "Stay Behinds" I have seen, with plenty of bibliographic references for further study.

Basically, Gladio in Italy was only the most infamous example of an incredibly sinister, U.S./NATO-sponsored, extreme-right underground terrorist network active throughout Western Europe, largely consisting of unrepentant ex-Nazis & Nazi collaborators. As the years passed and the Soviets failed to provide the invasion that was the terrorists' raison d'etre, they got wrestless and started cooking up some "excitement" of their own. This real explanation behind Bologna and other incidents was thoroughly suppressed, especially in the U.S.

When you're done with this book, you will be well-informed concerning a chilling 20th century reality that most Americans have never heard of (that many don't care to hear of). Others of us would rather know, especially now. It seems REAL history doesn't match up too good with what they show us on thuh tee-vee. How odd!

This book also has some problems, thus the four stars. I believe Ganser wrote it in another language, and it was translated. Or Ganser wrote the English himself, just not very fluently. Either way, the prose is not engaging and is sometimes clumsy / unclear / grammatically bizarre.

Also, I bought this book at the[...] price because I wanted it very much, but I was appalled by this price for a paperback. Now I see it's "only"[...]. To me, this ridiculous price suggests suppression of an important-but-unwelcome topic, reminescent of the "privishing" Gerard Colby describes in Kristina Borjesson's 'Into the Buzzsaw.'

A seminal work in which Danielle Ganser provides us with the coordinates to help us put things like the so-called War On Terror into their proper contexts. He shows that the majority (if not all) of the western European governments, supposedly democratic in nature, have engaged in activities which can only be described as undemocratic since the end of WWII. The necessity to "prevent the spread of Communism" is an invalid excuse when examined from the standpoint of the democratic will; for if the majority favour Communism then, theoretically, that is what democracy is all about. And there can be no question of degrees; democracy either exists or it does not. Like free speech, you cannot have democracy up to a point.

That there has since the 1990s been little public accountability (despite public acknowledgement that the activities did take place) raises crucially important questions about the validity of the War On Terror, British involvement in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and many other similar occupations and internal conflicts as well as many of the events which have been attributed to "terrorists" over the past decade or so. For not only do we not know that the countries involved actually dismantled the stay-behind armies in the 1990s, we don't know which countries ran stay-behind armies in each others' countries - and whether these were likewise dismantled. In fact, the main protagonists (the UK & USA) have so far refused to comment.

Whilst many would argue that this is essential to protect national security, this argument, when examined logically, is also groundless. For if we truly do live in democracies then no government should be above the law. And when supposedly-demoractic governments encourage - or turn a blind eye to - actions which are undeniably anti-democratic then it would seem to stand to reason that we actually don't live in democracies at all.

Danielle Ganser has added one more link into an ever-strengthening chain of evidence that democracy truly does not exist. A truly disturbing story, this is history that everyone should know.

Note: don't be put off by the price of the book; it is available at Amazon.co.uk at a slight reduction... ;-)

This book is now priced so unreasonably I cannot recommend it. Instead, search online for "NATO's Secret Armies" by Stephen Lendman, his very long article is both free and of very high quality.

A more reasonably priced book on CIA terrorism is Edward Lansdale's Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War). See also Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold and The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World.

On the factual basis of the book, there really was a covert program to establish stay behind armies of partisans in Europe following the Second World War. These stay behind armies were to be trained and equipped in order to jumpstart a guerrilla war campaign against an invasion and occupation by the Warsaw Pact. The Allies learned a very difficult lesson during the Second World War: it's much easier to prearrange this kind of operation when an invasion and occupation are anticipated than it is to start or assist one once the invasion and occupation has begun. The Soviet threat building up in East, the coup in Prague February 1948, the Soviet pressure on Finland and rumors of Soviet invasion plans in Scandinavia (very real at the time) all led NATO (or the nations that would sign the treaty as this began before NATO was formally established) to realize that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Unfortunately for Ganser and his readers he comes to the conclusion that the entire Stay Behind operation (Gladio was just the Italian component) was nothing more than a front for "right wing" extremists to carry out acts of terrorism against well intentioned and peace loving communist and leftists in order to maintain a state of fear against the Soviets and left wing political groups in general. To make his case, Ganser has to rely on some very unreliable and partisan sources to do so. A good deal of Ganser's material comes from partisan and political newspapers and journals. For example, "Land og Folk" a Danish Communist Party daily newspaper (that Ganser used a source) might be a good place to go for news on the Danish Communist Party, but it might not be a good source for information on the activities of a "secret" stay behind organization whose aim was to resist a Soviet occupation.

If sourcing was the only issue, the book might not be as poor a piece of research as it is, but Ganser goes on to blame nearly every act of political terrorism that took place between 1950 and 1990 on the "secret hand" of the stay behind armies. According to Ganser, the Red Brigades were infiltrated and controlled by the Italian branch, Gladio, and the CIA and they were really responsible for the murder of former Italian PM Aldo Moro and every other act of politically motivated violence in Italy. This, despite the post Soviet revelations that the Red Brigades were little more than a front group for several East Block intelligence organizations. The assassination of US diplomat Richard Welch in Athens, another "stay behind operation". The 1980 Oktoberfest bombing in Munich, which by all evidence was perpetrated by a lone neo Nazi wacko, was the work of the German stay behind army (and the CIA to be sure). The assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II by Agca was the work of the Turkish Stay behinds. In fact nearly every documented act of politically motivated violence in Europe during the cold war, regardless of the target or their politics, was nothing more than a collaborative effort between the stay behinds, free masons, NATO, the CIA, and various fascist groups .... or so Ganser's story goes.

But how does Ganser tie all this together, certainly he found some document or smoking gun linking the stay behinds with all this political violence? Ganser's smoking gun is a copy of the US Army Field Manual 30-31B supplement which purportedly describes to any "covert agent" it is issued to, a detailed roadmap of how to stir up trouble and blame leftist political organizations. This key document, or so Ganser says, ties all the disparate pieces of information together and provides that key, crucial link. 30-31B would indeed bolster Ganser's case, if it not for the fact that it was a KGB forgery. KGB defectors testified to as much in front of congress in the late 1970's and every Western intelligence agency that investigated it came to a similar conclusion. Ganser's refusal to even entertain the notion that this document is a forgery illustrates the lack of critical thinking and scholarship he put into this book.

The problem with the book is that it's a synthesis of fact (very little), questionable sources (many many) and outright fiction (quite a lot) all mixed together with creative speculation on how all the information intertwines. Ganser also mentions 9/11 conspiracies in his Gladio book (how 9/11 is related to Gladio is left as an exercise for the reader), but what else should one expect from another Academic for 9/11 Truth.

After reading that William Blum gave "Dr" Ganser the idea for this book I should have known better and not wasted 5 hours reading it.

I got this book convinced to read about the Stay Behind story, but there is not much about history, but a lot of trashing of NATO, the StayBehind network, Western Europe..
I have to admit I only read the introduction and the chapter related to Italy. The book does not say anything about SB in itself, except bringing a lot of accusations, smear and trash against SB.
I'm a very practical person and I follow facts, even if it is an allegation or accusation, we must bring some facts. According to the author SB was involved in every negative and tragic event in Italian history, even the Red Brigades. Sorry this is bovine scatology. I went to school in Italy in the 70's and every thing, just every thing that was related to the West, NATO or US was considerad bad, actually fascist. Seems that with this book I'm back in the 70's, every thing from the West is bad/negative. Sounds like the propaganda of the cold war era sponsored by the KGB or STASI
We all remember WW2, we know about the Partigiani, most of us know about British Security Coordination and the man called Intrepid, Sir Williams Stephenson.
So this is what generated the SB network.
Every NATO governement knew about it, SB was fully integrated in the military and political alliance. So remember, even the left wing politicians involved in government of NATO contries knew about it. If politicians like the former italian President Cossiga are praising SB, well this is self explanatory to me. The italian network was made of 622 individuals, loyal and honest citizen, criminalized by this book with allegations and no facts . Some judges tried and tried to hang criminal and terror acts on SB, even with a left wing government nothing was proved, except gossip. An italian parliament commission fully recognized the legality of this network, and his innocence from all the disgusting allegations of terror. Even the italian comunist senator Pellegrino, involved in the investigation against SB admittet the legality of it and no involvement in any illegal or anticonstitutional affairs.
So the book is just a lot of accusations, that are making every stalinist, anti NATO individual, very happy.
Do you want really to read about GLADIO, well get the books from his last CO, General Paolo Inzerilli.

My personal thanks and admiration to the italian Gladiators and I hope and wish to you all, that one day you will receive your life back and that your service will be recognized.