Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Fascism

By Cynthia Chung for The Saker blog

You may be asking the question what on earth is “international fascism” and how could NATO be in support of such a thing?! Well, the ugly truth is that what took over world policy in our post-WWII era was in fact a continuation of a fascist outlook for a new world order. Fascism, contrary to what we were told, had not in fact been defeated but was given a brand new face for its public endeavours and went underground for some of its more unsavoury methods. The now official recognition of NATO’s Gladio networks, effectively made up of secret armies in service to NATO including a prominent membership of Nazis, trained to commit acts of terrorism and assassinations against Western citizens and their democratic governments is now acknowledged by historians, yet much of the Western populace remain uninformed about this decades long horrifying abuse of power which was used to support a transition towards far right-wing governments.

The thought behind International Fascism in a post-WWII world, was that it would be an alliance that would allow a superior form of organisation that would build up a new European world entity which would function as a model for what would in turn be used on the world stage under a League of Nations mandate.

It is for this reason why so many fascists who had dishonestly referred to themselves as “national socialists” happened to also be promoters of pan-Europeanism and pan-Americanism, and supported the continuation of the British Empire, for these three spheres would function as the three leading regionalisations under a new system of empire under the League of Nations construct. Africa was openly discussed amongst these imperialists and fascists as the necessary slave labour camp to support Europe’s needs.

It is for this reason that individuals such as Oswald Mosley, a leading British fascist who supported both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s reign, began advocating for a “united Europe” as a defense against the supposed communist threat immediately after the Second World War. A “united Europe” reunited with “former” fascists who had now become supposed “defenders of freedom” against the evil totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. Mosley complained in his Europe: Faith and Plan (published in 1958) that this resistance from some European quarters to ally themselves with the fascists against this communist threat was putting the free world in danger. He encouraged Europeans to forget the past abuses that were committed by the fascists, since they were ultimately doing what they thought best for Europe, and that they were not wrong in their outlook but perhaps too hasty and impatient in their execution of such a vision.

With the end of the Second World War, there appeared an almost instantaneous agreement among the Western European nations the need to defend their sovereignty against the rise of Soviet communism. Ironically the solution to this was the idea of a ‘New World Order’^[1] for Europe. The Fifth Column was sold as a communist one, and thus the need to work with ‘former’ Nazis and fascists was justified to secure the European civilization from the threatened invasion by the ‘Asiatic hordes.’ Of course, the common people were not notified of this decision to reunite with the fascists; that not even before the end of the Second World War, there were discussions of aligning with the fascists to secure what was to be the ‘New World Order’.

To ensure that Europe would stand strong, it seemed only logical that it should form a European unity, able to collectively use their resources and military in a coordinated defense against this looming “Asian threat”. It would be interesting, that many nations who treated the army of Hitler with seeming indifference up to the very moment of invasion, would now trumpet loudly the need to prepare for war on all fronts (economically, culturally, politically, militarily including paramilitary) against the Eastern barbarians, and Mosley had positioned himself at the forefront of this clarion call.

In his The World Alternative (1936) Mosley wrote: “We must return to the fundamental concept of a European Nation which animated the war generation of 1918.” In reference to the openly pro-fascist former British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s (1916-1922) War Cabinet. When the Axis began losing crucial battles in 1943, this only intensified Europeanism as the new order’s last line of defense that would be entrusted to the younger generation. On November 14^th, 1944 Mussolini proposed in the Verona programme “a European Community, with a federation of all nations and the development of Africa’s natural resources.”^[2]

Stephen Dorril writes in his book Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism:^[3]

“The Eastern Front was transformed into the ‘European Front’ as Europe’s defence became a supra-national moral obligation. The Waffen SS assumed the role of Europe’s army and its struggle to hold back the Bolsheviks from overrunning the West invoked an embryonic Europeanism, which became a central myth of post-war Fascism. Neo-Fascist thinker Maurice Bardeche wrote that ‘the Defense of the West has remained in the memory, and this is still the chief meaning of fascist ideas’.”

Churchill would also support such a direction with the United Europe Movement.^[4]

On October 1^st, 1947 Mosley published The Alternative, where he writes “Chaos looms and the people of Europe seek the alternative…Our creed was brought to dust because the Fascist outlook in each land was too national, we had no sense of European union.” A year later he wrote in The European Situation: The Third Force, that a united Europe will “insure that Europeans shall never be slaves either of West or East; either of finance or of bolshevism. We shall neither be bought by Wall Street nor conquered by the Kremlin.” However, the road to Europe’s salvation would not end there, according to Mosley, there would also be the need to secure labour from Africa to serve the needs of Europeans.

In 1948, the FBI, who were oddly stationed in London, had forwarded to J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence headquarters that Mosley was planning a Fascist International.^[5] The U.S. counterintelligence corps (CIC) also wrote a report noting that Mosley viewed “the national socialist elements in West Germany as the most suitable partners at the organising of a fascist concentration movement in Europe…[Mosley] was continuing the tradition of a Fascist International which Hitler was forced to abandon. He has hit on a stratagem which gives him the air of a progressive spirit.” The Austrian neo-Nazi paper Alpenruf wrote Dec 31^st, 1949 “the spiritual centre of a cleansed Fascism is today neither in Germany nor in Austria, but – strange though it may seem – in England.” In the Swedish Fascist paper Vaegen Framat, they “claimed the European underground movements were growing but needed to be brought together to preserve everything that had been valuable in the past. The war had weakened their position and co-operation was essential, even for racial policies. Nations were not strong enough to enforce the unity of Europe.” ^[6]

This was the new chosen direction towards a Fascist International and none of it would have been possible without Churchill’s announcement of the Iron Curtain, for it pushed the European countries into this very configuration and justified the need to partner with ‘former’ fascists. The fascists did not need to militarily win the war, for the Europeans had walked into the Fascist International out of their own accord.

From this standpoint, WWII was in fact never won, rather it has been continued in the form of a Cold War to this very day. During this over 76 year long Cold War, fascist cells grew and were dispersed globally, and have come only relatively recently to be acknowledged under the umbrella term Gladio due to newly declassified intelligence dossiers. Mosley would also be at the forefront of these post-WWII paramilitary fascist cells, along with Karl-Heinz Priester and the legendary Nazi Otto Skorzeny who was one of the primary masterminds behind the entire Gladio network.^[7]

The Gladio network was beholden to NATO, and thus it should not be surprising that the position of NATO Commander and Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe was a position that was filled SOLELY by ‘former’ Nazis for 16 YEARS STRAIGHT, from 1967-1983.

Mosley had concluded in his eerie introduction to his book Europe: Faith and Plan in support of a Pan-Europe:^[8]

“In the light of all Europe’s recent history it is disingenuous nonsense to pretend that Germany is the only guilty party. It is more, it is a deliberate lie circulated for the vile purpose of perpetuating the division of Europe and for promoting the ultimate victory of communism. In the meantime it serves also the squalid purpose of those who snatch financial gain from the decay and collapse of a dying system, rather than make the effort to benefit both themselves and all Europe by honestly carrying the far greater rewards of constructive tasks in building the new system.

… In all nature the pangs of birth are severe, particularly in political nature. No fully grown man should be blamed for the pain or even the blood that accompanied his birth. For the long memory to linger on these things is to create a complex which can be disastrous to the whole psyche of Europe. That is precisely why we are continually invited to think about them.

Things were done in haste and passion which should now be forgotten. All who were drawn to the new movement of European dynamism and renaissance were people in too much of a hurry. It was a fault on the right side, for the results of the succeeding inertia are now plain to see. We felt that something must be done, and done quickly, to release the new and beneficent forces of science^[9] and to wipe away unnecessary suffering from the face of humanity. We were impatient with the forces of inertia, reaction and anarchy which opposed the new European order of mind and will that we believed alone could do these things with the speed that was necessary.

…The catastrophe of this generation has destroyed the old landmarks of politics, and the modern mind should equally eliminate their memory. We have passed beyond Fascism and beyond many tenets of the old Democracy, because science has rendered them irrelevant in a world which confronts us with new facts. Not only are the facts of the post-war period new, but science is continually adding still newer facts.^[10] Old policies have no relevance to the present, and old memories of bitterness should have no place in it either.

One great lesson alone we can all derive from the past. We owe to Europe self-restraint in moments of passion, and kindness at all times to our kindred. These evil things which have occurred are not only wrong, they do not pay. In the end they destroy those who commit them. The time-honoured standards of the European alone can endure. In the events of a great age, honour, truth and manly restraint are not only as necessary as in the past but more than ever essential. The great qualities in man should grow in proportion to the age, not diminish. Let us remember the past only long enough to learn this. Then let us forget [the past].

Europe needs a great act of oblivion, before a new birth.”

Operation Gladio: NATO’s Dagger

With the Second World War ‘won’, the world was very much under the impression that we were to take the phrase ‘Never Again’ to heart. Unfortunately, those in charge of forming Western policy and geopolitical strategy post-WWII could not have disagreed more.

Operation Unthinkable is a prime example of the sort of thinking that was ruminating within Britain and the United States post-Roosevelt. Operation Unthinkable was the name given to two related possible future war plans by the British Chiefs of Staff against the Soviet Union in 1945. The creation of the plans was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff (Roosevelt passed away on April 12^th, 1945). One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to “impose the will of the Western Allies” on the Soviets. The second plan was a defensive scenario in which the British were to defend against a Soviet drive towards the North Sea and the Atlantic following the withdrawal of the American forces from the Continent.

Though the first plan of the operation would be shelved with the new government under Clement Attlee, this remained a predominantly governing mindset for British and American intelligence. However, contrary to what we are told today, the second plan of Operation Unthinkable was not shelved. It was in fact fully implemented under the initiation of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This plan would continue through every other British Prime Minister’s term that followed afterward, without the knowledge of most members of the British government.

During the Second World War, preparations were made in the case of a possible German victory and ‘stay-behind’ guerilla warfare units were stationed throughout Europe. The model was the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, a top-secret guerilla-commando force established in 1940. It was the brainchild of Winston Churchill and was called ‘Churchill’s secret army.’ This program would eventually be adopted into NATO. After the Allied victory, these ‘stay-behind’ units were not disbanded but rather were strengthened and expanded in almost every European country, with direct aid and encouragement from the United States.

Daniele Ganser, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland published NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe in 2005, which is regarded as an authoritative overview of NATO’s Operation Gladio networks and functions. This chapter will reference extensively Ganser’s pioneering work on this crucial history of Western clandestine warfare that was waged on Western civilians and their democratically elected governments for several decades under the guise of Soviet terrorism.

Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:^[11]

“The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister [Andreotti] was researched by judges, parliamentarians, academics and investigative journalists across Europe, is now understood to have been code-named ‘Gladio’ (the sword) in Italy., while in other countries the network operated under different names including ‘Absalon’ in Denmark, ‘ROC’ in Norway, ‘SDRA8’ in Belgium. In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defense Ministers, were involved in the conspiracy, while the ‘Allied Clandestine Committee’ (ACC), sometimes also euphemistically called the ‘Allied Co-ordination Committee’ and ‘Clandestine Planning Committee’ (CPC), less conspicuously at times also called ‘Coordination and Planning Committee’ of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the networks on the international level. The last confirmed secret meeting of ACC with representatives of European secret services took place on October 24, 1990 in Brussels.

…Leading officers of the secret network trained together with the U.S. Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England…In case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret Gladio soldiers under NATO command… [formed a] stay-behind network operating behind enemy lines.”

However, the expected Soviet invasion never occurred. And thus, these secret armies found another purpose. They were to be used against the people. The desire was that by staging false-flag operations that were blamed on communists, panic and revulsion would be invoked sending voters flocking to the welcoming arms to so-called ‘secure’ right-wing governments. Italy, which had the largest and most powerful communist party in Europe, would be first on the hit-list. The Communist Party of Italy, admired for leading the fight against Mussolini, was expected to win in Italy’s first post-war election in June 1946. This, of course, was considered intolerable under the Iron Curtain diktat.

Investigative journalist Christopher Simpson writes in his book Blowback, how a substantial part of the funding for the opposition to the Communist Party of Italy, which was the Christian Democratic Party, came from captured Nazi assets, largely held by the Americans. This intervention tipped the balance in favour of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, which hid thousands of fascists in its ranks. The Christian Democratic Party would be the dominating party in Italy for five decades until it was dissolved in 1994.

In March 2001, General Giandelio Maletti, former head of Italian counterintelligence, suggested that next to the Gladio secret army, the Italian secret service and a group of Italian right-wing terrorists, the massacres which had discredited the Italian communists had also been supported by the White House in Washington and the CIA. At a trial of right-wing extremists accused of having been involved in the Piazza Fontana massacre, General Maletti testified:

“The CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left, and, for this purpose, it may have made use of right-wing terrorism…The impression was that the Americans would do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left… Italy has been dealt with as a sort of protectorate [of the United States]…”^[12]

In order to ensure that no further communist support were to arise in Italy, Operation Gladio, with direction and support from the CIA and MI6, led a campaign of brutal violence against Italians that stretched into the better part of two decades known as the ‘years of lead,’ the anni di piombo.

Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:^[13]

“According to the findings of the Belgian parliamentary investigation into Gladio, a secret non-orthodox warfare even preceded the foundation of the alliance [NATO]. As of 1948, non-orthodox warfare was coordinated by the so-called ‘Clandestine Committee of the Western Union’ (CCWU).

…When in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, CCWU [Clandestine Committee of the Western Union] was secretly integrated into the new international military apparatus and as of 1951 operated under the new label CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee]. At the time European NATO headquarters were in France and also the CPC was located in Paris. Like the CCWU before it the CPC was concerned with the planning, preparation and direction of non-orthodox warfare carried out by the stay-behind armies and Special Forces. Only officers with the highest NATO security clearance were allowed to enter CPC headquarters…under the guidance of CIA and MI6 experts the chiefs of the Western European Secret Services met at regular intervals during the year in order to coordinate measures of non-orthodox warfare in Western Europe.”

In 1959, an internal NATO briefing minute, dated June 1^st, 1959, slipped into the hands of a British newspaper, which revealed that the task of the stay-behind units had been switched from confronting a Soviet invasion to confronting an “internal subversion”. The secret armies were henceforth to play a “determining role…not only on the general policy level of [domestic] warfare, but also on the politics of [domestic] emergency.”^[14] What this meant was that a secret army of stay-behind units, under the direction of NATO, in absence of a Soviet threat, were to direct their actions to internal matters which would include espionage and acts of terrorism on the citizens of Europe with the support and cover of those nations’ police units. This would be used to further centralise control within right-wing governments who supported the NATO apparatus.

Operation Gladio, which used the tactic Strategy of Tension, functioned on three basic levels. The first was a guerilla war to be fought primarily on the streets, in order to draw loyalties away from the Soviet Union. The second level was the political front and would involve NATO-inspired conspiracies, which typically accused certain governments of being in secret partnership with the USSR, in order to evict democratically elected governments unfriendly to the NATO state apparatus and replace them with puppet regimes. The third level was the assassination (hard and soft) of figures who were deemed obstructive to NATO’s aims. Examples of Gladio assassinations include Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 (known as Sweden’s JFK), Turkey’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in 1961 along with two cabinet colleagues, and U.S. President Kennedy in 1963. As well as the soft assassination (character assassination) of UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These assassinations would typically be followed by a NATO/U.S. supported putsch. Attempted assassinations from Operation Gladio included President de Gaulle (more on this shortly) and Pope John Paul II.^[15]

Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio

“He [Yves Guerin-Serac] was in thrall to his personal vision of a Christian-Fascist New World Order. He was also the intellectual mentor of Gladio terrorism. He wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”

– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart to Europe

Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:^[16]

“Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favouring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”

Guerin-Serac continues:^[17]

“Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…

This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”

Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state.

On the 27^th of February 1933, Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, shouted outside the burning of the Reichstag:

“This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up!”^[18]

It is quite incredible that people never seem to grow tired of these sort of theatrics as part of the popular narrative of what we are told shapes our history, no matter how many times we have heard it played before. The line of obvious patsies is also something that seems to never grow tiring. In the case of the Reichstag fire, now widely acknowledged as a false-flag, it was some befuddled Dutch Jew that was instantly accused.

The day after the fire, six days before the scheduled general election, Hitler persuaded the elderly and confused President von Hindenburg (the icon of the First World War) that the crisis was of such profound gravity it could only be met by complete abolition of all personal liberties. The Reichstag Fire Law conferred by Hindenburg gave Hitler many of the instruments that he required for a total seizure of power. Within two weeks, parliamentary democracy was also reduced to the smoking embers of history. It would not be the only false-flag to be orchestrated by Hitler.

Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe ^:[19]

“SS units forced a small group of concentration camp victims ‘released’ from Buchenwald and disguised in Polish uniforms, to stage a false flag mock attack on the main radio tower in the Nazi controlled free state of Danzig. Citing provocation by the Poles, the German invasion of Poland followed.”

Guerin-Serac spent his life dedicated to a new Black Empire^[20] which he dreamed would combine the universal divinity of the Roman church with the United States and Europe as successor to the Holy Roman Empire. This was Christian Fascism and Yves Guerin-Serac was its Crusader.^[21] He belonged to several old gangs, including the first generation of ‘former’ Nazis and fascists. He also belonged to a veteran clan of French officers blooded in the Indochinese and Korean struggles and was a member of the elite troop of the 11ème Demi-Brigade Parachutiste du Choc, which worked with the SDECE (French intelligence agency). His connection to French Intelligence would be key in his becoming a founding member of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), a French terrorist group, made up of disaffected French officers, based in Spain which fought against Algerian independence. Guerin-Serac would form an intricate paramilitary and terrorist network throughout Europe, as well as training facilities to service Operation Gladio, via the cover of Aginter Press.

Cottrell writes:^[22]

“Guerin-Serac arrived in Lisbon in 1966 with an inspirational blueprint for the next stage of the struggle against godless liberalism. He proposed…an organization that would act as nothing less than an international travel agency for terrorists. The principal funding was supplied by the CIA, according to the Pellegrino Commission established in 1995 by the Italian Senate to investigate the anni di piombo [years of lead]. Guido Salvini was the magistrate appointed to examine the 1969 bombing of the agricultural bank in Milan’s Piazza Fontana. He pinned the blame firmly on Guerin-Serac’s Aginter Press. Salvini told the senators that Aginter operatives were active in Italy from 1967 onwards, instructing local militant neo-fascist organisations in the use of explosives. From this nugget, the CIA is positively connected to the Gladio wave of terrorism sweeping Europe.”

Behind the plain business shopfront of Aginter Press lay an invisible network designed to shuttle terrorists around Europe, Latin America, and Africa providing false documents and passports for killers posing as reporters and photographers including Guerin-Serac.^[23]

Cottrell continues:^[24]

“Aginter… was a Gladio finishing school, where recruits to the secret armies from all over Europe were trained in the arts of bomb making, assassination, psychological operations, destabilisation and counter-insurgency. Much of this was borrowed from the textbooks of the U.S. Army’s centre for covert warfare at Fort Bragg. Guest instructors from time to time included members of Britain’s SAS, the Green Berets …Guerin-Serac was blithely summoned to next door Spain to organise the death squads crushing resistance to the Franco regime. Aginter activities have been traced to all those countries where the Strategy of Tension operated at peak volume: Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Germany and Belgium.”

Britain’s Betrayal of its Greek Brothers-in-Arms in Support of Fascism

Britain did not wait for the end of WWII before cooperating with Nazis. Under Mussolini’s direction, Italian troops attacked Greece during the Second World War in 1940 but were defeated by the massive resistance of the Greek population. Hitler, in turn, sent his German troops which conquered the country and placed it under the control of the Axis Powers in 1941. The Greeks once again organised a massive resistance operation and throughout the war the German army faced great difficulties keeping the country under control. As in Italy and France, Greece’s strongest resistance organisation to the fascist occupation was dominated by the communists. ELAS, the People’s Liberation Army, had been founded on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) some months after the German invasion. EAM, the political wing of the People’s Liberation Army was also dominated by the Greek communists. Out of a population of seven million up to two million Greeks were members of the EAM party, while 50,000 were actively fighting in the ranks of the ELAS army.^[25]

ELAS’s operations were supported by the British secret army SOE.^[26] Many personal friendships developed between the Greek ELAS resistance fighters and the British SOE liaison officers. However, this was abruptly severed in March 1943 when Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to halt all British support for ELAS, as he feared that Greece after the defeat of the Axis Powers could come under communist control. At that time, Greece was at the peak of fighting a war with the German Nazis.

In order to minimise the power of the Greek communists and socialists, London planned to reinstall the Greek conservative King George II, who had cooperated with the fascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas (Prime Minister of Greece from April 1936 – January 1941), to form a pro-fascist government. Metaxas had called for a fascist “new order” in Greece, argu1943,that the Great Depression proved the failure of democracy and that fascism was the solution.^[27] This fascist solution occurred in alignment with the restoring of the Greek monarchy.^[28] The crucial British Foreign Office directive of March 20^th, 1943 stated “SOE should always veer in the direction of groups willing to support the King and Government, and furthermore impress on such groups as may be anti-monarchical the fact that the King and Government enjoy the fullest support of His Majesty’s Government [of Britain].”^[29] King George II was less than popular among many Greeks after having cooperated with the fascist dictator Metaxas. Yet London pursued the conservative policy and in October 1943, the British Foreign Office even contemplated “a downright policy of attacking and weakening EAM by every means in our power.”^[30]

‘Former’ Nazi collaborators and right-wing special units such as the fascist X Bands, with British support started to hunt and kill ELAS fighters. However, these groups did not enjoy popular support and recruitment levels were only at around 600 men. Thus, Churchill decided to up the ante, and in late 1944 gave the order for a new Greek army unit, which came to be known variously as the Greek mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or LOK, its Greek acronym Lochos Oreinon Katadromon.^[31] As it was aimed against the communists and the socialists, the unit excluded “almost all men with views ranging from moderate conservative to left wing. Under British military supervision and at Churchill’s express order, the unit was filled with royalists and anti-republicans.”^[32]

Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:^[33]

“As ELAS fought against both the German Nazi occupiers and the British-sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force, Churchill feared a public relations disaster should it be revealed to the British public that London was secretly supporting the fascists against the Communists in Greece. In August 1944 he therefore instructed the BBC to eliminate ‘any credit of any kind’ to ELAS when reporting on the liberation of Greece. But only weeks later ELAS secured victory over the German occupiers and Hitler was forced to withdraw his soldiers also from Greece. Churchill immediately demanded that the resistance should disarm, an order which ELAS was willing to obey if it was equally applied to their only remaining enemy on the field, the British sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force.”

Britain refused to disband the secret right-wing army and thus large Greek demonstrations against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy took place on December 3^rd, 1944, a mere six weeks after Hitler’s forces had been defeated and pushed out of the country. A small group of 200-600 peaceful protestors, men, women and children, gathered at the Syntagma Square in Athens, the main square in front of the Greek parliament. A much larger group of 60,000 protestors were delayed by police blockades. British troops and police with machine guns were positioned on the rooftops.^[34] Suddenly, and without warning, the peaceful demonstration was turned into a massacre as the command was given: “Shoot the bastards.” Shortly after the bloodbath, the main group of protestors arrived in the square. In a display of remarkable restraint, these 60,000 protestors held a peaceful demonstration against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy, while among the dead bodies of their recently slain comrades.

In London, Churchill faced an angry House of Commons which demanded an explanation for the barbarity. While admitting that it had been a “shocking thing,” Churchill stressed that it was equally stupid to bring large numbers of unarmed children to a demonstration, while the city was full of armed men. The role of the secret right-wing army in the Syntagma massacre was never investigated.^[35]

After the demonstration of force, the British reinstalled King George II and a succession of weak British puppet governments with right-wing leanings followed. A Greek resistance faction rearmed and took to the hills and in the fall of 1946 started a civil war against the British and the local right. An exhausted Britain asked in early 1947 for the United States’ support. Truman with his famous ‘Truman Doctrine’ in March 1947 was able to convince Congress to openly intervene in Greece. Greece was the first country to be invaded by the United States during the Cold War.^[36] In the following decades, Washington put forward the argument used in Greece to justify its open or covert invasions of Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Panama and several other countries.^[37]

The United States secretly started Operation Torch and used chemical warfare to defeat the Greek resistance by dropping thousands of gallons of Napalm on Greece.^[38] By late 1948, the Greek resistance which had defeated the Italian fascists, the German Nazis and the British troops, finally collapsed after years of heroic fighting. A hollowed out Greece joined NATO in 1952 and by that time “had been moulded into a supremely reliable ally-client of the United States. It was staunchly anti-Communist and well integrated into the NATO system.”^[39]

Peter Murtagh writes in The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance:^[40]

“The [Hellenic] Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled from NATO headquarters in Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee…The Greek branch of the network was…known as Operation Sheepskin.”

Is this what Kalergi was referring to as his “Crusade for Pan-Europe”; a “clandestine pan-European guerilla network” to ‘defend’ Europe?

Ganser writes:^[41]

“The Greek junta consolidated its power through a regime of imprisonment and torture…Communists, Socialists, artists, academics, journalists, students, politically active women, priests, including their friends and families were [horrifically] tortured…’We are all democrats here’ Inspector Basil Lambro, the chief of the secret police of Athens, was fond of stressing. ‘Everybody who comes here talks. You’re not spoiling our record.’ The sadist torturer made it clear to his victims: ‘We are the government, you are nothing. The government isn’t alone. Behind the government are the Americans.’ If in the mood Basil also offered his analysis of world politics: ‘The whole world is in two parts, the Russians and the Americans. We are the Americans. Be grateful we’ve only tortured you a little. In Russia, they’d kill you’.”

[For more on the British Gladio see Chapters 1, 2, 10 & 11 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set’.]

The American Gladio Arm

The National Security Act of 1947, a Trojan horse, was a part of the new breed of legislation post-Roosevelt and led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), placing it under the direction of the National Security Council (NSC). Although it did not explicitly authorize the CIA to conduct covert operations, Section 102 was sufficiently vague to permit abuse. By December 1947, less than four months after the creation of the CIA, the perceived necessity to “stem the flow of communism” in Western Europe—particularly Italy—by overt and covert “psychological warfare” forced the issue and NSC 4-A^[42] was born. NSC 4-A would be replaced by NSC 10/2^[43] less than one year later, approved by President Truman on June 18^th, 1948, creating the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). NSC 10/2 was the first presidential document which specified a mechanism to approve and manage covert operations, and also the first in which the term “covert operations” was defined.

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the U.S. parliament investigated the CIA and the NSC via the Frank Church Senate Committee Hearings^[44] and found that:

“The national elections in Europe in 1948 had been a primary motivation in the establishment of the OPC…By channeling funds to centre parties and developing media assets, OPC attempted to influence the election results – with considerable success…These activities formed the basis for covert political action for the next twenty years. By 1952 approximately forty different covert action projects were under way in one central European country alone…Until 1950 OPC’s paramilitary activities (also referred to as preventive action) were limited to plans and preparations for stay-behind nets in the event of future war. Requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, these projected OPC operations focused, once again, on Western Europe and were designed to support NATO forces against Soviet attack.”^[45]

George F. Kennan selected Frank Wisner as the first commander of the CIA covert action unit OPC. Wisner and other U.S. OPC officers “tended to be white Anglo-Saxon patricians from old families with old money…and they somewhat inherited traditional British attitudes toward the coloured races of the world.”^[46] Wisner became the chief architect of the network of secret armies in Western Europe. From 1948-1950 the OPC was a renegade operation run by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In 1950 the OPC was renamed the Directorate of Plans and continued under the direct commandership of Frank Wisner. George F. Kennan, OPC overseer at the time, would strongly support the passing of NSC 10/2 and CIA covert actions in Italy and beyond.

Ganser writes:^[47]

“…next to the Pentagon the U.S. Special Forces were also directly involved in the secret war against the Communists in Western Europe, as together with the SAS they trained the members of the stay-behind network. After the U.S. wartime secret service OSS had been disbanded after the end of the war the U.S. Special Forces were reborn with headquarters at Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1952. General McClure established a Psychological Warfare Centre in Fort Bragg and in the summer of 1952 the first Special Forces unit, somewhat misleadingly called the 10^th Special Forces Group was organised according to the OSS experience during the Second World War, and directly inherited the latter’s mission to carry out, like the British SAS, sabotage missions and to recruit, equip and train guerillas in order to exploit the resistance potential in both Eastern and Western Europe.

…At all times the U.S. Special Forces were set up in Fort Bragg in 1952 the name of the CIA covert action branch changed from ‘OPC’ to ‘Directorate of Plans’ (DP), and Wisner was promoted Deputy Director of Plans. Together with CIA Director Allen Dulles he intensified U.S. covert action operations on a global scale. Dulles authorised CIA assassination attempts on Castro and Lumumba as well as the CIA’s LSD experiments with unwitting subjects…”

Edward Lansdale who was chief of the Saigon Military Mission and a protégé of General Lemnitzer; who wanted to send a submarine to the shore outside Havana where it would create an “inferno of light.” At the same time, according to Lansdale’s plan, Cuba-based agents would warn the religious natives of the second coming of Christ and the Savior’s distaste for Fidel Castro. The plan was called ‘Elimination by Illumination,’ but was ultimately shelved.^[48] It would be funny if such plans stayed on paper, but these men were responsible for the torture and deaths of countless individuals for the plans that made it into reality.

As soon as General Lemnitzer became Army Chief of Staff in 1959, he installed Lansdale at a desk in Deputy Defense Secretary Gilpatric’s office in the Pentagon. Lansdale was put in charge of Operation Mongoose under direct patronage of Lemnitzer with the main object to eliminate Castro in direct defiance of federal law prohibiting political assassinations. Operation Mongoose was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and covert operations carried out by the CIA and was run out of JM/Wave in Miami. Lansdale would participate in many covert operations including raids and bombings in Cuba and other targets all over Latin America.

In March 1962, General Lemnitzer, not taking a hint as to what happened to Dulles, Bissell and Cabell, decided it would be a good idea to propose Operation Northwoods to President Kennedy for approval. Operation Northwoods was a proposed false-flag operation against American citizens, which called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets and subsequently blame the Cuban government in order to justify a war against Cuba. The plan was drafted by General Lemnitzer specifically and had a striking similarity with NATO’s Operation Gladio. The logic of Northwoods was the stripe of Gladio. The general staff inclined towards prefabricated violence because they believed benefits gained by the state count more than injustice against individuals. The only important criterion was reaching the objective and the objective was ultra right-wing government.

There was not a single item in the Northwoods manual that did not amount to a blatant act of treason, yet the U.S. military establishment dispatched Top Secret – Justification for U.S. military Intervention in Cuba straight to the desk of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for onward transmission to President Kennedy. Needless to say, President Kennedy rejected the proposal and a few months later General Lemnitzer’s term was not renewed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having served from October 1^st 1960 to September 30^th 1962.

Operation Northwoods memorandum March 13, 1962. Source: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/doc1.pdf.

However, NATO lost no time, and in November 1962 Lemnitzer was appointed commander of U.S. European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO, the latter to which he served from January 1^st, 1963 to July 1^st, 1969.

Lemnitzer was a perfect fit to oversee the cross-continental Gladio operations in Europe. He had been a prime motivating force in setting up the Special Forces Group in 1952 at Fort Bragg, where commandos were trained in the arts of guerilla insurgency in the events of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Before long the men who proudly wore distinctive green berets were cooperating discreetly with the armed forces of a string of European countries and participating in direct military operations some of them extremely sensitive and highly illegal if not downright treasonous.

One of these operations was the NATO/CIA coalition which had sponsored at least two attempts to assassinate President de Gaulle.^[49] In response to this, de Gaulle had kicked NATO’s headquarters out of France, removed France from NATO and had given Lemnitzer a summary order to quit NATO. If President de Gaulle’s orders had been denied, he would have been prepared to go to war, and thus there was a bit of reshuffling, but essentially the game continued intact.

[For more on the American Gladio Arm see Chapters 4, 7, 8, 9 & 13 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set’.]

De Gaulle vs. NATO

“France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty.”

– President of France Charles de Gaulle

It was thought by many of the pro-fascist imperialist persuasion that de Gaulle was ultimately going to play ball. That though he may have had his criticisms of fascism, he was at the end of the day an anti-communist and an imperialist and thus, it was inevitable that he would eventually ‘see the light’. This was something that the pro-fascists thought they could work with in the ‘restructuring’ of Europe amidst a Cold War.

Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies^[50]:

“On the initiative of the U.S. and the British Special Forces SAS, a secret army was set up in France under the cover name ‘Plan Bleu’ (Blue Plan) whose task was to secretly prevent the powerful PCF [Communist Party of France] from coming to power. The Blue Plan, in other words, aimed to prevent France from turning red…The SAS, specialised in secret warfare, contacted the newly created French secret service Direction Generale des Etudes et Recherche (DGER) and agreed with them to set up a secret army in northern France across the Channel in the Bretagne.”

One month after having ousted the communists from the government, the French socialists attacked the military right and the CIA and exposed the Plan Bleu secret army. On June 30^th, 1947, French socialist Minister of the Interior Edouard Depreux exposed that a secret right-wing army had been erected in France behind the back of politicians with the task to destabilize the French government. “Towards the end of 1946 we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network, made up of resistance fighters of the extreme-right, Vichy collaborators and [pro] monarchists…They had a secret attack plan called ‘Plan Bleu’, which should have come into action towards the end of July, or on August 6 [1947].”^[51]

Ganser continues^[52]:

“The secret war against the Communists did not end when Plan Bleu was exposed and closed down in 1947. Much to the contrary, French Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier saw to it that his trusted chiefs within the military secret service were not removed by the scandal. When the storm had passed he ordered Henri Ribiere, Chief of SDECE, and Pierre Fourcand, deputy Director of the SDECE, in late 1947 to erect a new anti-Communist secret army under the code name ‘Rose des Vents’ (Rose of the Winds, i.e. Compass Rose), the star-shaped official symbol of the NATO. The code name was well chosen, for when NATO was created in 1949 with headquarters in Paris, the SDECE coordinated its anti-Communist secret war closely with the miliary alliance. The secret soldiers understood that within its maritime original context the compass rose is the card pattern below the compass needle according to which the course is set, and according to which corrections are undertaken if the ship is in danger of steering off course.”

(left) NATO’s symbol, (right) ‘Rose des Vents (Rose of the Winds i.e. Compass Rose) name of a French anti-communist secret army established in 1947. NATO’s first headquarters was established in France in 1949.

However, there was one very large mistake that was made in establishing NATO’s base in France. De Gaulle was not going to play ball after all…

After the Second World War there was increasing pressure for European nations to commit to the NATO diktat. President of France Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969) disagreed with this orientation. One of the major points of this disagreement was over the force de frappe (nuclear striking force), which de Gaulle believed should be kept firmly outside of NATO’s control. He refused the prospect of France getting automatically dragged into a shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. De Gaulle’s relentless pursuit of French nationalism and independence in foreign and military policies was clearly incompatible with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s charter. When de Gaulle began talk of delivering Algeria her independence, it was decided by former allies, and members of his own military and police that de Gaulle had to go.

On April 21^st, 1961, a plot to overthrow President de Gaulle, organised by the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète, the French terrorist group run by Yves Guerin-Serac) swung into action. On that day, four disaffected generals known as the ‘ultra group’ staged a coup in Algiers. The civil caucus in Washington, Pentagon and NATO headquarters in France were all implicated in the plot to eliminate the French president and secure Algeria for the West. The coup leader, air force general Maurice Challe, was formerly commander of NATO’s forces in Central Europe.

The first outlines of the coup were agreed in the summer of 1960, when the former governor of Algeria, Jacques Soustelle, had a secret tête-à-tête with Richard M. Bissell. Bissell, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans (formerly called the OPC), the covert operations wing of the CIA, and close associate of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In the same year, Challe stage-managed his resignation from NATO. In January 1961 the main plotters assembled, the chief item on the agenda was to form the OAS as an alternative government that would replace de Gaulle’s government once he had been toppled. Key figures in Plan Bleu were all present.^[53] Challe’s forces in Algeria were secretly funded using channels closely connected to the French Gladio.^[54] On the eve of the coup, Bissell, had an undisclosed meeting with Challe in Algiers. Challe was told that if he could get the country under control inside 48 hours, then the U.S. government would formally recognise his regime.^[55] The putsch ultimately failed.

Ganser writes:^[56]

“When NATO was founded in 1949, its headquarters, including the SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe], were built in France. France was thereafter particularly vulnerable to NATO and CIA secret warfare as de Gaulle lamented – for together with NATO also the secret Gladio command centre CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee] was located in Paris as the Italian document ‘The special forces of SIFAR [Italian intelligence] and Operation Gladio’ of June 1959 revealed. ‘On the level of NATO the following activities must be mentioned: 1. The activity of the CPC of Paris…attached to SHAPE.’”

What this meant was that the Gladio command centre, the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) was located in Paris to directly coordinate with NATO’s headquarters. In other words, Gladio was working directly for the NATO command centre.

Ganser continues:

“Furthermore also the secret Gladio command centre ACC [ Allied Clandestine Committee] repeatedly met in Paris. It came as a massive shock to the White House in Washington when de Gaulle in February 1966 – due to a number of strategic and personnel motives that historians still struggle to explain – decided to challenge the United States head-on, and ordered NATO and the United States either to place their military bases in France under French control, or to dismantle them. The United States and NATO did not react to the ultimatum whereupon in a spectacular decision de Gaulle took France out of NATO’s military command on March 7, 1966 and expelled the entire NATO organisation together with its covert action agents from French territory. To the anger of Washington and the Pentagon the European headquarters of NATO had to move to Belgium. In Brussels, Mons and Casteau, new European NATO headquarters were being erected where they have remained until today. The Belgium parliamentary investigation into Gladio and secret warfare later confirmed that ‘in 1968 the Chair of CPC moved to Brussels.’ [in order to be with NATO] Research in Belgium furthermore revealed that the ACC secret warfare centre held a meeting with international participation in Brussels as late as October 23 and 24, 1990.

Belgium Gladio author Jan Willems drew attention to the sensitive fact that when de Gaulle withdrew the French army from the military-integrated command of NATO, some of the secret agreements between France and the United States were cancelled. ‘On this occasion it was revealed that secret protocols existed concerning the fight against Communist subversion, signed bilaterally by the United States and its NATO allies. De Gaulle denounced the protocols as an infringement of national sovereignty. Similar secret clauses were also revealed in other NATO states. In Italy Giuseppe de Lutiis revealed that when becoming a NATO member Italy in 1949 had signed not only the Atlantic Pact, but also secret protocols that provided for the creation of an unofficial organisation ‘charged with guaranteeing Italy’s internal alignment with the Western Block by any means, even if the electorate were to show a different inclination.’ And also in the initial NATO agreement in 1949 required that before a nation could join, it must have already established a national security authority to fight Communism through clandestine citizen cadres’.”

Not only was de Gaulle not going to go along with the secret armies of NATO, but he was going to actively intervene to ensure the sovereignty of Europe’s nations against the fascist imperialist end-goal of NATO and its secret Gladio arms. It was a full all-out-war in the underground world of intelligence and clandestine warfare, and de Gaulle was one of the very few that was fully equipped to play the game.

There would subsequently be over 30 assassination attempts on de Gaulle’s life during his presidency. After 43 years, in 2009, France would finally rejoin NATO, a decision made by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has had “an interesting record of winning elections with dramatic perfectly timed post-terror interventions…”^[57] It should be noted that there has been a great deal of effort to either flatly deny or downplay France’s role in Gladio, and the involvement of NATO, however, these are demonstrably false. When Italy’s Operation Gladio was finally revealed to the world in the early 1990s (more on this shortly), there was a media frenzy inquiring into whether other governments within Europe were also implicated.

The French along with the British denied that their governments had any involvement in the Gladio networks. Italian Prime Minister Andreotti, not wanting to be the only boat sunk, mercilessly shattered the French cover-up when on November 10^th, 1990 he declared that France also had taken part in the very recent meeting of the Gladio directing body ACC (Allied Clandestine Committee) in Belgium on October 23^rd, 1990. It was only with Andreotti’s accusation that France changed its tune and acknowledged its role in Gladio, with French Defence Minister Jean Pierre Chevènement claiming that the French secret army was “completely passive…”^[58]

In the Quiet of a Small Town

“Sex trafficking, industrial paedophilia, the reports of snuff movies made for political and financial blackmail, or just for profit, were all entangled in a black cobweb of spies, officially connived drug running, the secret paramilitary network, and the constant meddling of NATO’s high command in the internal affairs of the country.”

– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe

Belgium is made up of a Flemish and French ethnic population. During WWII, many Flemings either openly or symbolically sided with the Germans, in hopes of Flemish nationhood – even within a Nazi commonwealth – doing away with Belgium altogether.

Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe:^[59]

“A residue from wartime fraternisation with the Germans led to Nazi-style paganistic symbolism and mystical blood bonding ceremonies within the Belgian stay-behind network and elements of the national armed forces, which in any event inclined to the Right. This mystical streak was set for a chilling significance in shaping many of the perversion yet to be wrought on Belgium.”

Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:^[60]

“According to Belgian Gladio author Jan Willems, the creation of WUCC [Western Union Clandestine Committee] in spring 1948 had been a direct consequence of a public speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin held in London on January 22, 1948. In front of the British parliament Bevin had elaborated on his plan for a ‘Union Occidental’, an international organisation designed to counter what he perceived to be the Soviet threat in Europe…”

Ernest Bevin (Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs July 1945-March 1951) aided in the creation of NATO and was instrumental in the founding of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, specialised in pro-colonial, anti-communist, disinformation propaganda, including black propaganda.^[61] His commitment to the West European security system, made him eager to sign the Treaty of Brussels in 1948. It drew Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg into an arrangement for collective security, opening the way for the formation of NATO in 1949.^[62] Bevin also played a role in Parliament misinforming MPs and failing to extradite the Mufti of Jerusalem, while in French custody, who had been installed and funded by the British government in Palestine and had worked closely with the Nazis during the Second World War.^[63]

Little Belgium soon after NATO’s move to Brussels, had the second most powerful and intrusive crime cartels in Western Europe. In a very short time, Europe’s cockpit was also its chief narcotics and illegal arms hub, with a sideline of sex trafficking. According to investigative journalist Richard Cottrell,^[64] the CIA had recruited Belgian Nazis – mostly, but not exclusively, Flemish – as soon as the war ended, and selected them for high offices at state and provincial levels. Such ‘former’ Belgian Nazi figures were protected from justice and released from prison under the protection of the CIA. NATO’s machinations along with General Lemnitzer’s imported experts in counterinsurgency^[65] were responsible for the formation of the Belgian Gladio operations; divided into SDRA-8 (French) and STC/Mob (Flemish) divisions.^[66]

Cottrell writes:^[67]

“According to journalist Manuel Abramowitz – a leading investigator of the far Right in Belgium – neo-Nazis were egged on to infiltrate all the mechanisms of the state, with special attention reserved for the police and the army. By the 1980s, this level of penetration had become so deep – thanks to fascist fronts such as the neo-Nazi militia Westland New Post and its French speaking counterpart, Front de la Jeunesse – that Belgium’s military forces could be said to have fallen almost entirely under extremist control. Not once in the wake of the many false-flag operations over the coming decades, did convincing proof ever appear of a credible coordinated Left-wing subversive force operating on Belgian soil, while seditious organisations of the Far Right flourished openly.”

Senator Hugo Coveliers chairman of the special investigating committee probing gangsterism and terrorism in Belgium (1988-1990) tracked the presence of incriminating materials to a special unit called the ‘judicial police’. Here is what Coveliers said on what became known as the ‘scandal of the X-Dossiers’:

“Imagine, everywhere you hear that story about a blackmail dossier in which organisations of the extreme right are in the possession of pictures and videos on which a number of prominent people in and around Brussels have sex with young girls; minors it is said. The existence of this dossier has always been vehemently denied. Until it was proven that testimonies and videos of this affair indeed were in the possession of the police services.

The at first non-existing dossier turns out to exist. The videos without substance then turn out to be interesting enough after all to be handed over to the examining magistrate tasked with the investigation into the Gang of Nivelles [held responsible for some of the shop massacres]. But this person is subsequently afraid to testify about that! What do you think is going on here!”^[68]

Cottrell, who is a former European Parliament MP and has conducted formal investigations ordered by the European Parliament, explores these avenues in greater detail in his book. He concludes that these sex-trafficking rings within Belgium, involving the abuse and murder of children, are encouraged among public officials for two reasons. The first is to produce incriminating blackmail making political retreat impossible. The second reason is that some of these activities that were recorded and retained in top secret files, were part of cultist initiation ceremonies.

Cottrell writes:^[69]

“It was alleged these involved paganistic neo-Nazi traits such as blood rituals, practised by elements within the state’s secret forces, as well as the orthodox military structure.”

In the context of this, NATO’s twitter scandal posting the Black Sun Nazi occult symbol^[70] for international women’s day in 2022, might not have been a slip-up after all…

The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/.

1. Among the plethora of books H.G. Wells wrote, was “The New World Order,” (1940). It appears that Wells was among the very first to pioneer the now infamous term. ↑
2. Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 560-561. ↑
3. Ibid, pg. 561. ↑
4. Chung, Cynthia. (2022) The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy. See Chapter 2. ↑
5. Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 577. ↑
6. Ibid, pg. 585. ↑
7. For more on Otto Skorzeny see Chapters 6, 8 & 11 of my book “The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.” ↑
8. Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 15-16 ↑
9. Mosley wrote to Wells to congratulate him on a speech supporting ‘Liberal Fascism’. Mosley included a copy of his book The Greater Britain, and wrote “I am afraid the word ‘Liberal’ has not much relation in my book, but it certainly is an attempt to create a scientific Fascism which is free from the excess and repressions of the Continent…like most prophets, you will probably have the unpleasant experience of recognising many of your own teachings of the past reproduced and reshaped by less capable hands.” From Stephen Dorril’s book ‘Blackshirt.’ ↑
10. Refer to Chapter 1 of my book “The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set” for Mosley’s concept of a “scientific dictatorship” which was almost entirely influenced by H.G. Wells. ↑
11. Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 1. ↑
12. Willan, Philip. (March 26, 2001) Terrorists ‘helped by CIA’ to stop rise of left in Italy. The Guardian. https://web.archive.org/web/20220721212738/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/26/terrorism. ↑
13. Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 28 ↑
14. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
15. For more details around the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II see Richard Cottrell’s book Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. ↑
16. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 115-121. ↑
17. Ibid ↑
18. William L. Shirer. (1959) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, pg. 192. ↑
19. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, Nato’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
20. Black Empire is in reference to a Fascist Empire. ↑
21. Recall from Chapter 2 Kalergi’s Catholic Crusade for a Pan-Europe. ↑
22. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
23. Recall in Chapter 1, that Mosley and his son were working for a Spanish travel agency that was organising Otto Skorzeny’s travel itinerary, which was likely connected to Aginter Press. ↑
24. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
25. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 212. ↑
26. Ibid, pg. 212. ↑
27. Cliadakis, Harry. (January 1979). The Political and Diplomatic Background to the Metaxas Dictatorship, 1935-36. Journal of Contemporary History. 14 (1): pg. 117–138. ↑
28. Ibid ↑
29. Mackenzie, W.J.M. (May 2002) The Secret History of SOE Special Operations Executive 1940-1945. Little, Brown Group Limited, pg. 703. ↑
30. Mackenzie, W.J.M. (May 2002) The Secret History of SOE Special Operations Executive 1940-1945. Little, Brown Group Limited, pg. 722-723. ↑
31. Murtagh, Peter. (January 1994) The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance. Simon & Schuster Canada, pg. 29. ↑
32. Ibid ↑
33. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 213. ↑
34. Ibid, pg. 213-215. ↑
35. Ibid, pg. 213-215. ↑
36. Ibid, pg. 213-215. ↑
37. Ibid, pg. 215. ↑
38. Ibid, pg. 215. ↑
39. Blum, William. (October 2008) Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, Maine, pg. 36. ↑
40. Murtagh, Peter. (January 1994) The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance. Simon & Schuster Canada, pg. 41. ↑
41. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 219. ↑
42. National Security Council. (Dec. 9, 1947) Memorandum from the Executive Secretary NSC 4. https://web.archive.org/web/20220816000135/https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-4.htm. ↑
43. National Security Council. (June 18, 1948) Directive on Office of Special Projects NSC 10/2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220815203120/https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d292. ↑
44. For more on the Frank Church Senate Committee Hearings see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee. Retrieved October, 2022. ↑
45. The United States Senate. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence activities. Book IV: Supplementary detailed staff reports on foreign and military intelligence, pg. 36. ↑
46. Powers, Thomas. (January 1979) The man who kept the secrets: Richard helms and the CIA. Alfred A. Knopf, pg. 37. ↑
47. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 57. ↑
48. Kruger, Henrik. (1980) The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism. South End Press, pg. 143. ↑
49. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
50. Ibid, pg. 87. ↑
51. Faligot, Roger; Pascal, Krop. (May 1985) La piscine: Les services secrets francais 1944-1984. Seuil, pg. 85. ↑
52. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 90. ↑
53. Blum, William. (October 2008) Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, Maine, pg. 149. ↑
54. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
55. Blum, William. (October 2008) Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, Maine, pg. 149. ↑
56. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 98-99. ↑
57. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
58. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 17. ↑
59. Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
60. Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 128. ↑
61. Burke, Jason (14 May 2022). Secret British ‘black propaganda’ campaign targeted cold war enemies. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british-black-propaganda-campaign-targeted-cold-war-enemies-information-research-department. Retrieved October 14, 2022. ↑
62. Baylis, John (1982). Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty: The Origins of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies. 5 (2): pg. 236–47. ↑
63. See Chapter 11 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
64. Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
65. See Chapter 8 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
66. Richard Cottrell. (2015) Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. Progressive Press. ↑
67. Ibid. ↑
68. Ibid. ↑
69. Ibid. ↑
70. https://mobile.twitter.com/RT_com/status/1501611271631695873. Retrieved September 12, 2022. ↑