Operation Gladio Read online

  ENI—Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi—Italy's National Hydrocarbons Authority

  ESMA—Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada—Argentina's Navy Petty Officers’ School of Mechanics; used as a detention center

  FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation

  FBN—Federal Bureau of Narcotics

  FN—Fronte Nazionale—National Front—Italian right-wing terror group

  FOIA—Freedom of Information Act

  IGS—Chilean Institute for General Studies—Opus Dei think tank.

  IOR—Istituto per le Opere di Religione—Institute for the Works of Religion—The Vatican Bank

  IRA—Irish Republican Army

  ISI—Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence

  KGB—Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti—Soviet intelligence service

  KMT—Kuomintang—National Chinese Army

  MAR—Movimento d'Azione Rivoluzionaria—Revolutionary Action Movement—Italian right-wing terror group

  MIT—Milli Istihbarat Teskilati—Turkey's National Intelligence Organization

  MPM—Movimiento Peronista Montonero—Argentine leftist urban guerrilla group

  MSI—Movimento Sociale Italiano—Italy's National Socialist Movement

  NAR—Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari—Armed Revolutionary Nuclei—right-wing terror group

  NATO—North Atlantic Treaty Organization

  NSC—National Security Council

  ON—Ordine Nuovo—New Order

  ONI—Office of Naval Intelligence

  OSS—US Office of Strategic Services

  P2—Propaganda Massonica Due—Licio Gelli's Masonic lodge

  PCI—Partito Comunista Italiano—Italian Communist Party

  PKK—Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan—Kurdistan Workers’ Party

  PLO—Palestine Liberation Organization

  RICO—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

  SCI—Secret Counterintelligence—a unit of the OSS.

  SDECE—Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage—France's External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service

  SID—Servizio Informazioni Difesa—Information Defense Service—Italian intelligence agency, later split into SISDE and SISMI

  SIFAR—Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate—Italy's Armed Forces Information Service

  SISDE—Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica—Italy's domestic intelligence service

  SISMI—Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare—Italy's Military Information and Security Service

  SMOM—Sovereign Military Order of Malta

  SS—Schutzstaffel—“Protection Squadron” of the Third Reich

  SSU—Strategic Services Unit—American intelligence agency existing between the OSS and CIA

  TD-BDJ—Technischer Dienst des Bundes Deutscher Jugend—Technical Service Branch of the League of German Youth

  TIR—Transport Internationaux Routiers—International Road Transport

  UBS—Union Bank of Switzerland

  WCC—World Commerce Corporation—a CIA arms-for-drugs front

  The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, six million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an “American Holocaust.” The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington's dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation's desire to stay out of the Cold War.

  Steve Kangas, “A Timeline of CIA Atrocities,” 1994

  “We're fighting the wrong enemy.”

  Allen Dulles, the Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services (the OSS), came to this conclusion at the close of 1942, when the German infantry remained mired in the mud and snow of the Russian steppes. He had received word via Vatican messengers from Schutzstaffel (SS) chief Heinrich Himmler and Walter Schellenberg, head of the Sichterheitsdienst (the SS foreign intelligence service), that the Nazi government wished to establish a separate peace with the United States. Such reconciliation would enable the Third Reich to turn its undivided attention to pulverizing the Soviets. When Dulles expressed his openness to discuss the proposal, the German High Command sent Prince Max von Hohenlohe, a Prussian aristocrat and businessman, to meet with him in Bern.1 Hohenlohe was surprised to learn that Dulles not only endorsed the Nazi proposal, but also maintained that a strong Germany was necessary as a bulwark against Bolshevism, the Leninist branch of the Communist Party that had seized control of Russia in 1917.2

  SEEING RED

  In a series of communiqués with William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, the OSS chief in Washington, Dulles expressed his eagerness to pursue the peace negotiations, believing that the Soviets posed a far greater threat to the United States and to the stability of the Western world than the Nazis.3 The Soviets, Dulles maintained, committed acts of genocide that far surpassed the pogroms of the Third Reich. They endorsed a godless ideology that called for world revolution and the collapse of capitalism. They believed that human history was governed by the process of dialectical materialism, the idea that any current economic order would always give rise to its opposite, a process that would terminate in the creation of a “stateless state”—built on the common ownership of goods and property. Dulles had problems with the Nazis—their goal of a thousand-year Reich and their division of mankind into übermenschen and untermenschen. But the Nazis were Christians; they retained a Hegelian sense of history, which explained the rise and fall of governments in terms of a spiritual process; and they shared with Americans a common Western heritage. Even more importantly, the Nazis believed in capitalism and the right of private property. They even had minted the word reprivatisierung (reprivatizing) for their policy of restoring to their former owners the properties that had been seized by the government, a policy that went against the leftist trends that were spreading throughout Europe.

  THE GREAT SEDUCER

  A scion of the Eastern Establishment in the United States, Dulles came from a distinguished family of political dignitaries. John W. Foster, his maternal grandfather, had served as secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison, and Robert Lansing, his uncle by marriage, had been Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. A tweedy, pipe-smoking corporate lawyer, Dulles, with his snake-like charm and Machiavellian ambition, had been credited with seducing over one hundred women, including Claire Booth Luce, the wife of Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life; and Queen Frederika of Greece.4

  Dulles entered the diplomatic service in 1916 and was stationed in Vienna and later Bern. From 1922 to 1926, he served as the chief of the Near East Division of the US State Department. He left this post to join the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, where his brother John Foster Dulles was a partner. Sullivan and Cromwell floated bonds for Krupp AG, the German arms manufacturer, and managed the finances of IG Farben, the German chemical conglomerate that manufactured Zyklon B, the gas that would be used to murder millions of Jews.5

  In addition to his law practice, Allen Dulles was elected in 1927 as the first president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an organization of high-ranking government officials, wealthy industrialists, and prominent bankers. The purpose of the CFR was to engineer a US foreign policy of interventionism in order to “make the world safe for democracy.”6 His ties to this organization would have a profound effect on the undertakings of Operation Gladio.

  GEHLEN'S GUERRILLAS

  Having established contact with Hitler's High Command, Dulles conducted meetings in Bern with Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the head of German military intelligence. Gehlen was a stiff, unassuming man with sparse blond hair, a toothbrush mustache, and ears th
at stuck out of his head like radar antennas. Knowing that the defeat of the Third Reich was inevitable, he had concocted the idea of forming clandestine guerrilla squads composed of Hitler youth and die-hard fascist fanatics, as “stay-behind units” These units, Gehlen informed Dulles, would serve as a police force to ward off a postwar Soviet invasion.7 The Nazi general referred to the members of his secret army as “werewolves”—individuals who would function as ordinary citizens by day and Communist-killers by night. Each werewolf unit, Gehlen said, had access to buried depots of food, radio equipment, weapons, and explosives.8

  Believing the Soviets planned a takeover of Germany and Western Europe at the conclusion of the war, Dulles became convinced that the OSS must reach out to these stay-behind armies in order to supply them with tactical and strategic assistance. This task, he informed Donovan and the OSS top brass in Washington, could be accomplished through Gehlen and SS General Karl Wolff, another Nazi Dulles had become friends with.

  THE ARYAN IDEAL

  Wolff conformed to the Aryan ideal: six feet tall, blond hair, blue eyes, and a high forehead. He was commissioned as an SS-Sturmführer in February 1932. Five years later, he was third in command of the entire SS. His principal assignment was the arrangement of transportation of Jews to concentration camps. Wolff excelled at this task to such a degree that he was later charged with complicity in the murder of three hundred thousand men, women, and children. In 1942, as a reward for his service, Wolff was appointed by Hitler to serve as the SS adjutant to Mussolini and the Italian government.9

  Along with securing and fortifying the werewolves, Dulles busied himself with arranging the separate peace with the Nazis that would exclude the Soviet Union. This undertaking became known as Operation Sunrise. The separate peace should be signed without delay, Dulles informed Donovan, since it would allow the Wehrmacht (the combined armed forces of Nazi Germany) to deploy three divisions from northern Italy to the eastern front, where they could combat the Red Army.10 When Stalin became aware that such negotiations were underway, he went ballistic, accusing his US allies of bad faith and betrayal. President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded that such accusations were “vile misrepresentations” of actuality.11

  THE FORT HUNT CONFERENCE

  The worst fears of Allen Dulles for the postwar period began to materialize in February 1945, when the leaders of the Big Three—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—met at Yalta on the Black Sea to redraw the map of Europe. The eastern border of Germany was moved westward to the Oder and Neisse Rivers and parts of eastern Poland were handed over to the Soviets. What remained of Germany was to be divided into four zones of occupation, which would be administered by a council of military generals, including the French.12

  As soon as the ink dried on the Yalta agreement, Dulles transported Gehlen and his top representatives to Fort Hunt, Virginia, where they were wined and dined by Donovan and other US officials. An agreement was reached. Gehlen would return to Germany under US protection to establish the Gehlen Organization, which would receive full funding from US Army G-2 (intelligence unit) resources. The primary purpose of this organization would be the maintenance of the existing stay-behind armies and the recruitment of new guerrilla soldiers from the ranks of Third Reich veterans with staunch anti-Communist credentials.13 These soldiers would no longer be known as werewolves. They were to be known as “gladiators,” and they would be commissioned to ward off Communist invaders in the great theater of postwar Europe. The operation in which they were engaged was to be known as Gladio, after the short swords Roman gladiators used to kill their opponents.

  POETRY AND PARANOIA

  Dulles was not the only OSS officials involved in establishing stay-behind units. He was aided by James Jesus Angleton, one of the strangest spooks to emerge from the shadow world of the US intelligence community. A tall figure of spectral thinness, with owlish glasses, Angleton was a rabid anti-Communist, an ardent Anglophile, and a devout Roman Catholic. He bred orchids, wore a black homburg, and drank bourbon for breakfast. A graduate of Yale, Angleton possessed a gift for poetry and had established close friendships with Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, and T. S. Eliot. Fluent in several languages, including German and Italian, he arrived in Rome as the commander of the Secret Counterintelligence (SCI) unit of the OSS. Few were more qualified for the position. Unfortunately, Angleton was not only brilliant but also dangerously paranoid, seeing the world as a “wilderness of mirrors.” In these mirrors, he saw reflections of spies and counterspies (many of whom he felt compelled to eliminate) and the unfolding succession of conspiracy upon conspiracy—all of which required immediate and, at times, murderous resolution.14

  Angleton's father, Hugh, also served the OSS. Before the war, Hugh had been the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy and the owner of the Milan branch of the National Cash Register Company. The elder Angleton, who was outspokenly pro-Hitler and pro-Mussolini, had developed extensive contacts throughout Italy that were of great use to his son. One such contact was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, a member of the Catholic Black Nobility, the Italian aristocrats who had remained loyal to the Holy See after the rise of Garibaldi in the nineteenth century.15

  BLACK XMAS

  Borghese was the leader of Decima Flottiglia MAS (10th Light Flotilla), also known as X MAS, an Italian naval commando unit. After Italy signed an armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943, Borghese and his commandos opted to fight for the so-called “Solo Republic” that had been set up by the Nazis in northern Italy. His unit was given the task of attacking the Italian partisan bands that had sprouted up throughout Italy. The partisans were sponsored by the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI). And, thanks to X MAS, thousands were found hanging from street lights and flag poles by the end of the war.16

  On April 13, 1945, Borghese met with General Wolff and Angleton at a villa on Garda Lake, where they discussed the possibility of extending their war efforts beyond any peace treaty with the Soviets, redeploying X MAS under the covert direction of the OSS. Borghese was amenable to the terms, especially since his cooperation would save him from an Italian firing squad.17

  THE SECRET GOVERNMENT

  On May 15, 1945, when Borghese was arrested and charged with war crimes, Angleton managed to secure his release into US Army custody. The Black Prince was dressed in an American uniform and transported from Milan to Rome. Angleton needed Borghese and the 10,267 fascists who fought under his command to help establish the stay-behind units that would ward off any Soviet aggression.18

  For a while, Angleton and other OSS officials, including Donovan, toyed with the idea of making Borghese the new king of Italy. But soon they came to their senses and realized that the X MAS commander would be of greater use as the leader of a shadow government, with a secret army that could manipulate Italian affairs throughout the coming decades.19 To create this government, the US State Department issued a mandate by which the “operational resources” of the Italian police, the Italian military intelligence, and the Italian secret service were placed at the disposal of Angleton and the SCI.20

  Under Borghese, the Gladio forces in Italy were divided into forty main groups: ten specialized in sabotage; six each in espionage, propaganda, and escape tactics; and twelve in guerrilla activities. A special training camp for members of the stay-behind units was set up in Sardinia, off Italy's western coast. The camp, thanks to the efforts of Gehlen and Wolff, was soon swarming with new gladiators from Germany, France, and Austria. By 1946, when the OSS morphed into the Central Intelligence Group (the precursor of the CIA), hundreds of Gladio units were in place throughout Western Europe.21

  THE MONEY SUPPLY

  But there was still a problem that seemed insurmountable. Gladio was a covert operation and had not been initiated by an act of Congress or a mandate from the Pentagon. Few federal officials knew of its existence. The $200 million in original funding came from the Rockefeller and Mellon foundations.22 But a n
ew and steady stream of revenue had to be created almost overnight, or the world would not be safe for democracy. The future of Gladio would come to reside within America's ghettos.

  What cannot now be denied is that US intelligence agencies arranged for the release from prison of the world's preeminent drug lord, allowed him to rebuild his narcotics empire, watched the flow of drugs into the largely black ghettoes of New York and Washington, DC, escalate and then lied about what they had done. This founding saga of the relationship between American spies and gangsters set patterns that would be replicated from Laos and Burma to Marseilles and Panama.

  Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair,

  Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press

  Col. Paul E. Helliwell had one hell of an idea.

  It came to him in China, where he was serving as Chief of Special Intelligence for the OSS.

  Helliwell's idea would result in a union between the US intelligence community and organized crime that would result in conflicts, wars, rebellions, financial upheavals, and an epidemic that would forever alter the flow of world history.

  Mainstream books about the CIA, like Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, make no mention of Helliwell, his relationship with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, his creation of the Castle Bank in the Bahamas, and his grand experiment on the black community of Harlem. In the flood of CIA documents released since 1992, one does not find Helliwell's name in the archival indices of the National Archive, the National Security Archive, or the Federation of American Scientists. In the million declassified pages stored and indexed on the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Helliwell's name appears only once—on a list of documents withheld from inspection during the CIA's 1974 search for records concerning Watergate. This silence about the principal architect of the postwar CIA-drug connection exceeds all standards of eloquence.1

  Within Kunming, a town within the South China province of Yunnan, Helliwell observed that General Chaing Kai-shek's, leader of the Kuomintang (KMT—the Chinese National Army), sold opium to Chinese addicts in order to raise funds for his army's planned war against the Communist forces of Mao Zedong.2 Since Helliwell's task was to provide covert assistance to the KMT, what better help could he provide than steady shipments of opiates for the good general?