http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italyArchived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.
Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.
Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."
Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.
SNIP
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italyHoare continued the support after being told by Mussolini of his plans for organizing the black shirts, and was later outed himself as a fascist "appeaser" (or sympathizer?) in 1935, when he brokered the deal that legitimated Fascist Italy's bloody invasion of Ethiopia.
Am I posting this to imply fascism was a British false-flag operation? Nope. So the conspiracy panickers can relax.
Rather, I think this is yet another paradigmatic story about secret power. If you empower agencies who act covertly, need give no accounts to the public, are told they can break the law and deal with villains at their own discretion on behalf of vaguely-defined "national interests," then this is the sort of thing that will happen. It's why the history of the CIA is one, not just of failure, but of an active attack on anything that can be properly defined as an interest of the American people.