Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO’s Secret Stay-Behind Armies by Daniele Ganser INTRODUCTION Recent research has revealed secret armies have existed across Western Europe during the Cold War. 1 Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), they were run by the European military secret services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also MI6). Trained together with US Green Berets and British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers, armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of communist parties. The clandestine international network covered the European NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland. 2 The existence of these clandestine NATO armies remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. It was code-named “Gladio,” the Latin word for a short double-edged sword. While the press claimed the NATO secret armies were “the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II,” the Italian government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret army. 3 Italy insisted identical clandestine armies had also existed in all other countries of Western Europe. This allegation proved correct and subsequent research found that in Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BDJ, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC, in Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Counter-Guerrilla, and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the secret armies in France, Finland, Spain, and Sweden remain unknown. physics911.net/pdf/DanieleGanser_Terrorism_in_Western_Europe-1.pdf
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:26:55 +0000