Article 20918 of alt.conspiracy:
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa,soc.rights.human
From: jad@hopper.ACS.Virginia.EDU (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part 1,  Did the CIA Bomb the World Trade Center?
Message-ID: <1993Mar1.144242.3430@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Followup-To:  alt.conspiracy
Keywords: Did the CIA Bomb the World Trade Center?
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: UVA. FREE Public Access UNIX! 
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 14:42:42 GMT
Lines: 155


        The following transcript is of a tape-recorded broadcast  
        by NO-commercials, NO-corporate-influences, listener-funded,
        beacon-of-truth Pacifica Radio Network station of the People: 
                   WBAI-FM (99.5)
                   505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                   New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
ROBERT KNIGHT:
Today on UNDERCURRENTS: the secret society of "GLADIO". 

In a number of countries around the World, the so-called concept of
terrorism -- as a tool of political control and, in fact, sometimes
as a provocation for elements of political control -- is pretty 
much part and parcel of operations around the World. And now that
the so-called era of "glasnost" and the relaxation of some elements
of the Cold War is taking place, we find that just such a pattern 
of clandestine terrorism, on behalf of conservative or right-tending
institutions, has also been very much a part of European politics.

Our guest is Martin Lee, author of ACID DREAMS and yet another book
on the Media about detecting bias inside the Media.  UNRELIABLE
SOURCES is the title of that one. Martin has also spent quite a bit
of time researching a clandestine set of organizations known
collectively as "GLADIO".  What, precisely, is GLADIO?

MARTIN LEE:
GLADIO is the Italian component of a NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] operation that spanned forty years, beginning in the
early 1950s, that covered all of Western and Northern Europe like a
spider web. GLADIO was ostensibly an operation set up by NATO and
the CIA to organize what they called "stay-behind units",
paramilitary forces that would stay behind, forces that would be
ready, in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, to
undertake resistance operations or sabotage activities against the
Soviet troops. They would stay behind the lines and do this. That's
where it got it's name. "Operation Stay-Behind" was the name of 
the entire European operation.                              

In Italy, it was called "GLADIO". And it was discovered when an
Italian magistrate named Felige Cassone[sp] was investigating a
terrorist incident in Patano[sp]. And he found that the Italian
Secret Service had laid a false trail which led investigators to
seek the culprits among the left-wing terrorist milieu in Italy,
when it turned out that neo-fascist terrorists had actually
perpetrated the deed in which a number of policemen were killed. 
And what he further uncovered was that the neo-fascist terrorists
had used arms that they had gotten from a NATO arms depot in Italy.
And that led him to investigate the question: How did these
neo-fascist terrorists get access to NATO arms? And that's what led
him to uncover this NATO operation that was going on in Italy which
was explicity linked to terrorism.

What is significant about it is that the cover story was that it
[GLADIO] was just simply a plan, a contingency plan, set up in CASE
of a Soviet invasion -- a plan that was ultimately never used.
That's the cover story. In fact, in a number of European countries,
these so-called "gladiators" or stay-behind units were engaged in
terrorism and other kinds of political subversion, ostensibly
against allies of the United States.

ROBERT KNIGHT:
The organization had quite a bit of resources in the various 
Western European and NATO countries. Where were these people
recruited from in places like Italy, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere?

MARTIN LEE:
Well, in a number of the countries -- not all of them -- but in a
number of them, the recruits for these stay-behind units or GLADIO
units were from fascist or Nazi organizations. In Germany, the
stay-behind unit there was composed largely of SS officers. 
In Great Britain, some of the stay-behind units were drawn from a
clandestine group called "Column 88". The name was taken from the
fact the the eighth letter of the English alphabet is "H". 
"88" is the code for "HH", meaning "Heil Hitler".  That is where 
they got their name.  In Greece, some of the GLADIO personnel were
later involved in the coup d'etat in 1967 that succeeded in putting
that country under the control of the fascist military junta. 
In Turkey, human rights activists have now linked the GLADIO unit
there to the Gray Wolves, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization.
In Italy, the gladiators were composed largely of former members  
of Mussolini's Secret Police, and so forth.

There were OTHER countries ....  This NATO operation was, in fact,
active in countries that were NOT EVEN part of NATO, countries like
Sweden, Austria and so forth. In some of these countries, the 
GLADIO units were composed of people who were anti-communist in
their orientation. They weren't explicitly or validly neo-Nazis.

But, nonetheless, it is a scandal in its own right. When this story
came out about the neo-Nazi connections to these stay-behind units,
it invoked headlines throughout Western Europe. And yet, it was 
ostensibly a story that was just not covered in the United States.

ROBERT KNIGHT:
The German wing of this network was formed from former members of
the so-called "Gehlen Operation", an ex-Nazi intelligence  network
that was very instrumental in the formation of the CIA, which would
later link up again with the CIA.  Is that correct?

MARTIN LEE:
Yes. What happened was that after the Second World War, the United
States saw that it lacked an intelligence capability directed
against the Soviet Union because it was our wartime ally, obviously.
So the CIA incorporated into its ranks a lot of Nazi intelligence
officers. The main person among them was General Reinhard Gehlen
who was Hitler's chief intelligence officer directed towards the
Soviet Union to the East.  The Gehlen Organization ostensibly 
became the CIA's eyes and ears in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet
Union.  And again, that is A MAJOR SCANDAL in its own right!
So, it was from within the ranks of the Gehlen Organization that
some of these stay-behind personnel were recruited for West Germany,
which played a very important role, along with Britain, in running
the operation.

This was a CIA operation that was run through NATO. It was
CIA-funded and CIA-directed. THAT is important to emphasize!

ROBERT KNIGHT:
In the contingency for creating disturbances in the event of this
scenario of Soviet tanks rolling into Western Europe or taking over
NATO countries, the organization was, by no means, latent. Was it?
What kind of activities did it use its resources for during its
period of existence?
                       (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

     This is one of countless stories unveiling the subverted, corrupt     
     and fascistic state of our theoretically democratic Government.
     This story makes it disgustingly obvious that true patriotism is not  
     the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the mindless
     supporting of our Government, just because it happens to be ours. 
     You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it. 
     True patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
     in order that they may unite to conquer this anti-democratic cancer
     that is gradually destroying ours and our children's freedom.
     So please post the installments of this ongoing series to  
     computer bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,  
     both on and off campus.  That would be a truly patriotic deed.

           John DiNardo

The episodes of this and other series can be retrieved 
via anonymous ftp from the site:
    red.css.itd.umich.edu     
Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your e-mail address 
as the password.  The files are kept in the directory 
/pub/Politics/Essays/Conspiracy

Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the
user is on. On a UNIX machine, at the command prompt, type the following:
ftp red.css.itd.umich.edu    This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems.
        Archivist: Paul Southworth,  pauls@css.itd.umich.edu