Just as a point of interest, as there seems to be a lot said on here about the conspiracy theorists and what they believe (i.e. queens a lizard etc.).
Are there any historical conspiracy theories that actually were proven true in the course of time? and for what reason, whistle blower (as seems to be the common thought on human nature etc.).
Id genuinely be interested to know, not ever really having delved into conspiracy theories before.
Operation Gladio
Operation Gladio was perhaps the most important covert project of the Cold War period. It grew out of the stay-behind armies and resistance movements used against Nazi Germany in WW2. When the war ended a lot of the fascists were spirited out of Europe via
Project Paperclip, and most of the allied troops went back to their home countries. In both cases some men stayed behind and between them they formed the early incarnations of the Gladio secret armies – highly trained and well equipped parallel military units who would respond to any Soviet invasion with an instant violent resistance.
In the absence of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, sometime in the 1950s the mission for these secret armies changed. No longer were they a reactive contingency force, the new mission was much more pro-active. Their new job was to counter the rise in democratic support for Communist and Socialist policies and parties through a threefold method:
1) Infiltrate radical leftist groups and steer/provoke them into violent acts, turning public opinion against them.
2) Carry out false flag attacks to be blamed on Communists, often with patsies ready-to-go provided by the first method.
3) Assassinate or destabilise any political leader – such as Aldo Moro, Harold Wilson and Olaf Palme (and possibly JFK) – who doesn’t ‘get with the program’.
There were several reasons for this shift in strategy. The death of Stalin in 1953 heralded a less aggressive Soviet strategy based more on subversion than overt military engagement. The success of the pseudo-gang tactic used by US secret forces in the Philippines and their British equivalents in Kenya provided a basis for trying the same tactics here in the West, in what the international Gladio network called ‘Host Countries’. Also, by the 60s most of the WW2 operatives had got old and been replaced by a new generation who were thirsty for action. Thus the new, more aggressive Gladio strategy was born.
One of the results of the new approach was an upsurge in urban terrorism across Western Europe, the like of which had not been seen since the
decade of regicide, when anarchists killed more heads of state of major countries than at any other time in history. Italy’s ‘years of lead’ began in the 1960s and spanned three decades; the Irish war on terror began in earnest at the same time; many other European countries saw much more terroristic violence in the 60s, 70s and 80s than ever before – this is not a coincidence.
Number of terrorist attacks in Western Europe, 1950-2004 (
source)
Suspicions raged throughout this period that this wasn’t an organic phenomenon, and that the violence was the result of secret state policy. Initial evidence surfaced in the form of
FM 30-31B, a Gladio training document published by several publications, including CovertAction Quarterly – the magazine founded by CIA whistleblower Philip Agee. He had seen the extended version of Gladio operating in Latin America during his time with the agency. While the exact origins of this document are uncertain (it may well be a Soviet forgery), it subsequently turned up in the house of Licio Gelli – a high ranking Gladio operative in Italy and the head of the P2 masonic lodge. When asked where he got it from, he replied ‘a friend in the CIA gave it to me’. Further versions have been discovered in other countries during investigations into Gladio, showing that whatever its origin, it was being used by Gladio operatives as part of their methodology.
Gladio A Exposed
In the 1980s the dam started to break – Italian investigators were responsible for many of the early breakthroughs. The trial in 1984 of Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a neo-fascist terrorist and lower-level Gladio operative in Italy, began a process that would lead to parliamentary investigations in several European countries. Meanwhile the British military-intelligence manipulation of the war in Northern Ireland was gradually coming to light. In 1992 Brian Nelson went on trial for over 20 charges, including several of conspiracy to murder. Nelson was the surveillance and intelligence chief for the Loyalist paramilitary group the UDA and simultaneously an agent for British military intelligence. He eventually pleaded guilty and became a supergrass, receiving a 10 year prison sentence but then disappearing, presumably into some kind of witness protection. He died in 2003, taking the full story of his role in the local British chapter of Gladio to the grave with him. However, like Vinciguerra, he helped spark off a series of official investigations, all of which concluded that there had been large-scale collusion between British security agencies and Irish terrorists.
Even the BBC, for all their many faults, aired a three-part documentary series in 1992 explaining in some detail what had happened, featuring numerous interviews with Gladio operatives. Over a period of more than 10 years the tale of Gladio’s secret very dirty wars hit the mainstream media and gained a serious degree of public attention. But like everything in our 60-second microwave popcorn media cycle, it got forgotten. When academics like
Daniele Ganser and
Nafeez Ahmed tried to draw attention to Gladio as a possible framework for understanding 9/11 and the new war on terror in the early years of the 9/11 truth movement, the mainstream media pretended not to remember what it had previously published. Fortunately, people seeking information via the internet and through meet-up groups were listening.
http://www.spyculture.com/deep-fiction-sibel-edmonds-the-lone-gladio/