Gladio: Nato's shadow state (III): against communism by any means necessary

The third article[es] of Daniele Ganser on the Gladio affair (French version) is most interesting for the present time, especially as communist forces like SYRIZA in Greece (or maybe others in the near future or at sub-state level, as may be the Basque case) aspire to reach to power by purely electoral means.

Some, very naively, expect the state apparatus to obey them as soon as they reach power but the reality is quite the opposite and the increased Nazi penetration in the Greek police forces is the proverbial tip of the iceberg that evidences that the deep state of the Balcanic country is getting ready to counter such an eventuality by all means. 

Gladio investigations established that NATO is not merely a defensive alliance but first and foremost an anti-communist organization of global reach. They also evidence that the real command is in Washington and not Brussels, with Europeans being relegated to a secondary role as auxiliary forces of the American Empire. Role that nevertheless many exert enthusiastically. 

A key organism is the hyper-secret Security Bureau, created in 1949 and whose declared mission is to coordinate, oversee and implement NATO's security policies. It's top officer is the Security Director, main councilor of NATO's Secretary General and President of the Security Committee of NATO. This committee gathers the chiefs of security services of NATO member states and discusses matters such as espionage, terrorism, subversion and other threats, including communism. 

In other words: it coordinates all NATO secret services. However some such services seem to have acted independently from their governments with full blessing by NATO. According to Portuguese newspaper Expresso (1990):

It seems evident that NATO applies a criterion of restricted trust. Under such doctrine some governments are not active enough in the struggle against communism, so it is not useful to inform them about the activities of the NATO's secret army. 

In a closed doors meeting, whose details were revealed by Portuguese media, Manfred Wörner, then NATO's Secretary General, explained that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) coordinates the activities of the Gladio network through the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created in 1952. 

This network was first created in Italy as early as 1947 (the same year in which the CIA was organized) and then extended to the rest of Europe: France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Greece.

Former NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns declared to the press that he had no knowledge of the network. Luns implied that every secret operation was part of NATO, emphasizing that NATO is controlled by the USA and that the Commander General of the organization (SACEUR) is always a US-American appointed by Washington (the Deputy SACEUR has been mostly British but, since 1980, also occasionally German).

Thomas Polgar, retired CIA officer, acknowledged that there exists "a sort of group in charge of planning non-conventional war". He also emphasized US control of this department. 

According to the Belgian parliamentary committee, this organization was founded even before NATO itself with the name of Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), which coordinated the allied secret services. This seems to be the same as the Security Bureau, as it's known nowadays, but was known for long as Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC). 

The first public evidence of the existence of secret anti-communist protocols was revealed in 1966, soon after De Gaulle retired France from the NATO structure (not the alliance itself) and expelled NATO headquarters from French soil. It was De Gaulle himself who denounced such protocols as a violation of national sovereignty.

According to US journalist Arthur Rowse (1994):

A secret clause of the original NATO treaty stipulated that every country candidate to adhesion must have established first a National Security authority in charge of directing the fight against Communism through clandestine citizen groups. 

Italian journalist Giuseppe de Lutiis found that in 1949, in the event of joining NATO, Italy had to sign a protocol establishing an unofficial organization in charge of guaranteeing the alignment of Italy's internal policies with those of the Western bloc by all means necessary, even in the event that the population would manifest a divergent inclination.

NATO officers have confirmed on condition of anonymity that such protocols explicitly protect far right members considered useful in the fight against communists. Even West Germany signed such protocols, in which it explicitly agreed to abstain from prosecuting notorious Nazi activists (Searchlight 1991).

The CPC was all the time directed by Washington, with a secondary role for London and Paris (before De Gaulle's walk out). In all CPC meetings there were CIA officers. A parallel structure is the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created by order of the fourth SACEUR, Lauris Norstadt, in 1952. It's more relaxed and horizontal ambient allowed Gladio commanders to share their networks more effectively.

To this day NATO still denies the existence of either the CPC or the ACC. But even former CIA officers like Thomas Polgar have acknowledged them as very real. However no public debate has ever existed in the North American federation on these matters. Just a few journalists have attempted to inquire on these matters but had no or very limited success. 

Britain must also be mentioned. In 1991 the BBC reported that the role of Great Britain in the creation of these "stay behind" networks was central. This should surprise nobody considering that London was deeply implicated in the ascent of European fascisms in the 1920s and 1930s, including that of Hitler, naturally (just that he got off the leash by threatening to invade Russia single-handedly, which would have given Berlin too much power if successful). British democracy is a mere facade, serving as cover for terribly secret entities like the MI6, whose very existence was only revealed to the public in 1994.

Almost nothing of the British dirty war is known to this day. Nobody in Westminster seems concerned: the regime has 100% of the seats or almost.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Gladio: Por qué la OTAN, la CIA y el MI6 siguen negando" (also in French). 

Previous entries: I, II.