Terror and Public Opinion - Democratic Underground

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Wed Jan-24-07 03:21 PM
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Terror and Public Opinion

If you are a student of covert operations, or rather, publicly available information about covert operations, then you should know about the research of Swiss historian, Daniele Ganser.

If you happen to reside in a Democratic Republic that has a significant intelligence structure with tendrils that span the globe, then you should know about the research of Ganser as well. This is valuable information to ponder for a nascent Democratic Congress with legislative power.

His research revolves around secret networks of military and intelligence agents colluding with politicians in various countries in Western Europe during the Cold War;

As the Cold War ended, following juridical investigations into mysterious acts of terrorism in Italy, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti was forced to confirm in August 1990 that a secret army existed in Italy and other countries across Western Europe that were part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Coordinated by the unorthodox warfare section of NATO, the secret army had been set up by the US secret service Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 or SIS) after the end of the Second World War to fight Communism in Western Europe. The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister 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 and 'SDRA8' in Belgium. In each country the military secret service operated the anti-Communist army within the state in close collaboration with the CIA or the MI6 unknown to parliaments and populations. In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defence Ministers, were involved in the conspiracy, while the 'Allied Clandestine Committee' (ACC), sometimes also euphemistically called the 'Allied Co-ordination Committee' and the '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.

As the details of the operation emerged, the press concluded that the 'story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller'. The secret armies were equipped by the CIA and the MI6 with machine guns, explosives, munitions and high-tech communication equipment hidden in arms caches in forests, meadows and underground bunkers across Western Europe. Leading officers of the secret network trained together with the US Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England. Recruited among strictly anti-Communist segments of the society the secret Gladio soldiers included moderate conservatives as well as right-wing extremists such as notorious right-wing terrorists Stefano delle Chiale and Yves Guerain Serac. In its strategic design the secret army was a direct copy of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which during the Second World War had pararachuted into enemy-held territory and fought a secret war behind enemy lines.

In case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret Gladio soldiers under NATO command would have formed a so-called stay-behind network operating behind enemy lines, strengthening and setting up local resistance movements in enemy-held territory, evacuating shot-down pilots and sabotaging the supply lines and production centres of the occupation forces with explosives. Yet the Soviet invasion never came. The real and present danger in the eyes of the secret war strategists in Washington and London were the at-times numerically strong Communist parties in the democracies of Western Europe. Hence the network in the total absence of a Soviet invasion took up arms in numerous countries and fought a secret war against the political forces of the left. The secret armies, as the secondary sources now available suggest, 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 at 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 coup d'etats (Greece and Turkey), to the smashing of opposition groups (Portugal and Spain). As the secret armies were discovered, NATO as well as the governments of the United States and Great Britain refused to take a stand on what by then was alleged by the press to be 'the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II'. (1)

Following the popularity of the paperback edition of Ganser's book "NATO's Secret Armies" among researchers in 2005, the State Dept. dedicated a web-page to shooting down one of the documents that Ganser uses as evidence in his book, an infamous memo referred to as FM30-31B. If Ganser's book hinged entirely on one document, then this would be devastating. However, this is not the case.

NATO's Secret Armies was preceded by a BBC documentary in 1992 called GLADIO, that focused on the Italian stay-behind network. The documentary raises many questions, and features key interviews with a variety of people who had first-hand experience with the Gladio network. The documentary is certainly not a Soviet forgery.

The Gladio network seems to have been part of a "Strategy of Tension";

It is probably fair to say that of the roughly six billion people who live on our planet today, far less than one percent has ever heard of the “strategy of tension.” And only a very few of these could illustrate the strategy with specific historical examples. It is indeed a strategy of a shadow world, known only to a few military and intelligence officers (and some criminals) who have carried it out, a few police officers and judges who fought against it, and a handful of journalists and academics who have written about it.

In its essence, the strategy of tension targets the emotions of human beings and aims to spread maximum fear among the target group. “Tension” refers to emotional distress and psychological fear, whereas “strategy” refers to the technique of bringing about such distress and fear. A terrorist attack in a public place, such as a railway station, a market place, or a school bus, is the typical technique through which the strategy of tension is implemented. After the attack—and this is a crucial element—the secret agents who carried out the crime blame it on a political opponent by removing and planting evidence.

It must be noted that the targets of the strategy of tension are not the dead and the wounded of the terrorist attacks, as many might assume. The targets are the political opponents, who are discredited through the attack, and those who remain unharmed but learn of the attack, thereby coming to fear for their lives and those of their loved ones. Since the aims of the strategy are to discredit opponents and to create fear, the real targets are not the people who were killed, whether they number in the dozens or even thousands, but the millions of people who survive physically unharmed but emotionally distressed.

The strategy of tension forms part of what is called “psychological warfare” or PSYWAR. As the term indicates, this form of warfare does not attack human bodies, tanks, planes, ships, satellites, and houses in order to destroy them, but human psyches, human minds. Leaving aside the fact that philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, and theologians have never been able fully to agree on exactly what “the mind” is, we can for our purposes here define it simply as our human ability to think and feel. If a group can get access to our thinking and our feeling without our noticing, it can exercise great power over us. Once we notice that our psyches are being manipulated through psychological warfare, the technique loses some of its effect. (2)

It's hard to believe that these networks would conduct operations against their fellow citizens, but this is seemingly the case, specifically in Italy. Examining the individuals who were involved with the network helps to explain how they could conduct such monstrous acts. In Italy, the notorious P2 Lodge or Propaganda Due, was involved with Gladio. In Germany, the CIA used "former" Nazis to organize stay-behind networks. Somehow, I don't find it difficult to visualize former SS officers engaged in acts of terror against... well... anyone, really;

Between 1949 and 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency organized stay-behind networks of German agents in southwestern Germany and Berlin. The programs, known as Pastime (Berlin) and Kibitz (Southwestern Germany) were designed to provide a source of intelligence from behind enemy lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany...

...The Kibitz operation involved at least two former members of the SS--Staff Sergeant Heinrich Hoffman, Lt. Colonel Walkter Kopp, whom the CIA referred to as an "unreconstructed Nazi". (3)

The bulk of documentation regarding the stay-behind networks remains hidden, coyly denied, and kept from academics under the aegis of "national security". Ganser concludes in one article;

“Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?” the international press pointedly asked when the secret stay-behind armies of NATO were discovered across Western Europe in late 1990. After more than ten years of research, the answer is now clear: both. The overview above shows that based on the experiences of World War Two, all countries of Western Europe, with the support of NATO, the CIA, and MI6, had set up stay-behind armies as what was felt was a prudent precaution against a potential Soviet invasion. While the safety networks and the integrity of the majority of the secret soldiers should not be criticized in hindsight after the collapse of the Soviet Union, very disturbing questions do arise with respect to reported links to terrorism.

There exist large differences among the European countries, and each case must be analyzed individually in further detail. As of now, the evidence available suggests the secret armies in the seven countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, focused exclusively on their stay-behind safety function and were thus not linked to any acts of terrorism. However, links to terrorism have been either confirmed or claimed in the eight countries, Italy, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Sweden, demanding further investigation.

In this age of global concern about terrorism, in which secret services are thought of as part of the solution and not as part of the problem, it is greatly upsetting to discover that Western Europe and the United States collaborated in establishing secret armed networks which in the majority of countries are suspected of having had links to acts of terrorism. In the United States, such nations have been called rogue states and are the object of hostility and sanction. Can it be that the United States itself, potentially in alliance with Great Britain and other NATO members, should be on the list of states sponsoring terrorism, together with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran? Or, alternatively, is it plausible to assume the secret NATO armies operated for years beyond the control of legitimate political authorities?

Today on both sides of the Atlantic, scientists and concerned citizens wonder what must be done in both the United States and the EU to prevent the future abuse of power and the continued manipulation of societies with terror. The data on NATO’s secret armies indicates some of the complexities involved in such questions. Future research will not only depend on an intensified global debate on fear, brutality, and manipulation, but also on courageous individuals who earlier in their life participated in such operations but now step out of the shadows, live up to their highest principles, and for the historical record before their unavoidable own death report their side of the story. (4)

To understand the historical use of terror as a tactic for influencing public opinion is one way to be armed when it is used against you.

NOTES

1. Ganser, Daniele. NATO's Secret Armies, Frank Cass, London, Great Britain. (Introduction)

2. Ganser, Daniele. The "Strategy of Tension" in the Cold War Period, a chapter in "9/11 and American Empire, Vol. 1, Intellectuals Speak Out", Olive Branch Press, Northhampton, USA. pp. 82-83.

3. Naftali, Timothy. New Information on Cold War CIA Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and on the Adolf Eichmann Case, University of Virginia, pp. 1-2. http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/naftali.pdf

4. Ganser, Daniele. Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Secret Stay-Behind Armies, in "The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations", John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, South Orange. (Conclusion)

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Ganser has made many of his articles free to download at his website;
http://www.danieleganser.ch/e/fachzeitschriften/index.htm

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BBC's "GLADIO"

From Google.video.co.uk

Part 1: (The Ringmasters)
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4900756773650110959

Part 2: (The Puppeteers)
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=430206682910394510

Part 3: (The Foot Soldiers)
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3409375633223151728