“[Operation Gladio] is riveting, incredibly well researched, and horrifying in its implications; it should be mandatory study in universities and government.”
—IQ al Rassooli, member of the Advisory Council for the Intelligence Summit and author of Lifting the Veil: The True Faces of Muhammad and Islam
“The people and their misdeeds exposed in Paul Williams’s Operation Gladio will cause the reader to question what person of authority and leadership can be trusted, especially since these foul acts are not confined solely to the dusty pages of history.”
—Sgt. Thomas Juby, retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police Forensic Crime Scene Investigator and member of the Advisory Council for the Intelligence Summit
“The Court of Public Opinion is finally in session. We, the Jury, will read aloud this critical verdict to the world: ‘These Emperor Caesars definitely have no clothes!’ Vicious felons have been hiding in plain sight. Williams’s book is not just a book but a blatant indictment against these exposed, treacherous, and ruthless tyrants!”
—Brent M. P. Beleskey, producer for The Intelligence Summit: International Educational Forum, former consultant for the Ontario Gang Investigators Association, member of Drug Watch International, and investigative researcher for Paul Palango’s Dispersing the Fog: Inside the Secret World of Ottawa and the RCMP
“For decades the CIA has been conducting covert wars without the knowledge or consent of the United States Congress or the American people. The CIA has funneled billions of dollars into dark operations, funding gun running, criminal figures, and attempted coup operations that resulted in the deaths of scores of people—all under the guise of ‘national security.’ Paul Williams exposes one such operation—Gladio—and courageously reveals the shadowy connections between US intelligence, the secret Vatican bank, and the global Mafia. Williams demonstrates a level of courage I have seen in few authors today.”
—Kevin M. Shipp, former CIA operative and author of From the Company of Shadows
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Apologia
I know what you’re thinking.
The author of this book must be a Baptist.
It’s a common assumption.
Most Welsh people are Baptists and Williams is a Welsh name.
But names are deceptive.
I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. My parish was St. John the Baptist Church in West Scranton, where I learned by rote the Baltimore Catechism and sang “Panis Angelicus” with the choir. I wrote “JMJ” (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) on the right hand corner of my composition papers, went to confession every Saturday afternoon, and received Holy Communion at Sunday Mass. I participated in all the rites and rituals—the Forty Hour Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the recitation of the litanies to the saints, and the yearly novenas at St. Ann’s Basilica.
In those Tridentine days, the liturgy was in Latin, which gave the Mass a sense of timelessness and the assurance that the teachings of Holy Mother Church were semper eadem—“always the same”—binding the generations in one system of belief.
I had my throat blessed on the feast of St. Blaise and my forehead anointed with ashes on the first day of Lent. I wore a St. Christopher’s medal and a scapular. I fasted and abstained on the days appointed and received all the sacraments, save Holy Orders and Extreme Unction.
As a graduate student at Drew University, my mentor was Fr. Gabriel Coless, an Augustinian monk, who provided rigorous instruction in the Patristics and Medieval Latin. After receiving my doctorate, I taught religion and the humanities at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit institution, and served as the editor of the annual proceedings of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. I also penned a number of articles on Vatican II and the effects of aggiornamento for National Review, where I met William Buckley, the celebrated CIA spook.
I encountered the wrath of Rome while writing Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Catholic Church for Doubleday. Doubleday, at that time, was a publishing outlet for the Catholic Church through its imprint, Image Books, and an imprimatur was considered a prerequisite for publication. My clerical overseers found no fault with my handling of the evolution of doctrine and the matter of the pontiffs who later were decried as heretics. The problem arose with the subject of the Church’s “temporalities.” I was told to expunge all references to the Vatican Bank, including the donation of Mussolini, the Ambrosiano affair, and the P2 scandal. These topics had garnered headlines throughout the world and to exclude them from a book with a tell-all title would be an act of obsequiousness that bordered on cowardice. I refused to make the suggested cuts and was supported in my decision by Patricia Kossman, my intrepid editor. In 1990, the work was published by Doubleday without a nihil obstat—the declaration that nothing about the work is contrary to the faith—despite the fact that it contained no canonical errata.
In subsequent years, I probed deeper into the affairs of Vatican, Inc., during my tenure as the editor and publisher of the Metro, and as a consultant (CI-9) for the FBI. My findings, including the ties between the Vatican and Gambino crime family, constituted the core of The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder and the Mafia, which was published by Prometheus in 2001.
For the past fourteen years, I have been engaged in combing all available government records regarding the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia. The task has been grueling, since most of the files—even the files of Pope Paul VI, Michele Sindona, Roberto Calvi, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus and other individuals long dead—remain classified; any disclosure of their contents would represent a threat to “national security.” Fortunately, enough information has come to light in recent years that readers can obtain a complete account of the unholy alliance of Gladio.
Am I still a Catholic?
Suffice it to say, anyone who attempts to come to terms with the facts presented in these pages will have his faith in Holy Mother Church compromised, if not shattered.
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