The “Deep State” and the Unspoken Crimes of the U.S. Empire, Operation Gladio
The key institutions of Western societies have lost their
credibility. They fail to merit either the respect or loyalty of the
domestic populations they purport to serve.
Testing the validity of this assertion requires examination of
Western institutions from a holistic rather than fragmentary
perspective. This is easier said than done.
There exists a massive amount of near real-time web based
information available for us to process daily if we are attempting to
keep abreast of world events. This often leaves us diligently
evaluating recent events, while lacking the opportunity to step back and
assemble these discrete events into a more comprehensible whole.
The assassinations of the entire elite level of progressive leadership
in the United States during the 1960s (JFK, Malcolm X (image right),
MLK & RFK within a 5 year period). In Europe this includes the
later assassinations of Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme.
Following is but a partial list of the crimes of the U.S. empire
(with the routine complicity of many Western European governments) over
the decades since the end of WWII. It is important to briefly review
them as the intersection of these orchestrated criminal actions casts
light on the lack of legitimacy of Western governments and institutions:
Operation Condor , the Phoenix program and ongoing material aid and military training support for dictators, torture and death squads in numerous non-Western nations,
The extensive history of CIA and Western involvement in global narcotics trafficking including importation of drugs into the United States
US government criminalization of drug use by the poor in conjunction with CIA importation to create the apartheid-like prison-industrial system
Covert and overt U.S. foreign policy operations involving the destabilization, overthrow and/or assassination of many dozens of foreign leaders of former colonies with assistance from Western European intelligence and/or military
U.S. corporate financial support for the Nazi regime before and during WWII (trading
with the enemy), followed by post-war recruitment and incorporation of
Nazi war criminals by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies
The failed plot to overthrow FDR by U.S. oligarchs prior to WWII
CIA & FBI programs to undermine and destroy progressive social and political change within the U.S. such as COINTELPRO, MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird and Operation Chaos
Creation of the Mujahideen and continued logistical support, training and arming of related evolving jihadist forces (i.e. al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra), used by the West in ongoing efforts to destabilize secular nations in the Middle East
The instalment of former Nazis, Nazi collaborators and fascists into governing and institutional positions of power across Western Europe following WWII
The continuing failure to abide by the stipulations of a single legal treaty entered into with Native American tribal nations
Many decades of maintaining an institutionally based apartheid system restricting access by African Americans to housing, voting, job opportunities and access to basic public services such as equal education
Many dozens of U.S. led/or sponsored outright military invasions of sovereign nations in violation of both domestic and international law
The U.S. manipulation and rigging of ostensibly democratic election processes in Europe and throughout Latin America since WWII
The publicly state justification of the use of sanctions to bring about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children framed as an acceptable policy decision
The routine outright police murders of unarmed minority American civilians and the mentally ill
The utilization of both NATO and the United Nations to sanction, destabilize and/or militarily intervene in nations that remain independent of Western control
Ongoing Western looting of the natural resources of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East facilitated by the IMF, World Bank and related Western financial and military institutional structures
The proposed murder of U.S. citizens in the Northwoods document, and the actual murder of European citizens under NATO/CIA run Operation Gladio
This litany of institutionally based criminality has taken place in
service to the larger foreign and domestic policy agendas of the U.S.
and allied Western European governments. The United States has played
the primary coordinating and leadership role among Western nations and
intersecting institutions since the end of WWII.
This is of course but a very partial list of the crimes of the U.S.
empire and Western Europe since the end of WWII. However, it is clear
by the breadth of this subject matter that any one, or even several
subject areas, will provide only a partial view of the larger puzzle
that depicts the institutional structures and behaviors by which the
West dominates and controls the entire planet.
We are fortunate to have a global community which includes
researchers who have focused in great depth on the various
aforementioned crimes sponsored by Western governments and their
institutions. Many such individuals have sacrificed a great deal
personally to do so. Some have given their lives in the pursuit of
truths that powerful violent institutions prefer be kept hidden from
public view. Their efforts provide exhaustive detail regarding
particular historical actions and policies of Western institutions.
However, it is critical that we assemble these discreet puzzle pieces
into a discernible image that can unify and shed light upon the whole.
Let us return to the assertion that Western governments and
institutions by simple objective evaluation of this history currently
lack all legitimacy.
While
the intersection of institutionalized Western criminality and war
crimes cited in our partial list should be enough to persuade an
impartial observer, one particular example from our list can stand
alone. Operation Gladio is
an individual puzzle piece that helps unite and shed light upon many
other disparate pieces. This is precisely why it is seldom
acknowledged, much less discussed in Western MSM or academia. Even a
cursory examination of Operation Gladio offers us a much more
comprehensible image of the essentially illegal and amoral nature of
many important Western institutions.
Gladio offers us a rather frightening glimpse into the thought
processes and ethics of the assemblage of oligarchic Western elites and
institutions that continue to literally rule our world. These powerful
Western hierarchical institutional structures evolved over many
centuries.
They evolved from control situated in earlier periods under the auspices of popes and feudal monarchies.
They evolved through various forms of parliamentary and dictatorial rule.
Their current manifestation today is one in which massive global corporations rule in tandem with entrenched Western military, intelligence and economic institutions,
all of which function beyond any practical popular input much less
control. Oligarchic rule, carried out through these institutional
structures is the reality, in spite of the West’s much publicized
devotion to liberal democracy. Examination of Operation Gladio exposes
the rot at the very core of the structures of Western rule.
Operating
under the aegis of NATO with CIA input/supervision, Operation Gladio
utilized false flag terrorism, mainly bombings but also shootings, in
service to what it defined as the “strategy of tension.”
This “strategy” was seen as a way to manipulate European public
perception, thought, opinion and voting behavior away from progressive
political parties and leadership, and toward the conservative pole of
the political spectrum. Some Gladio operatives have testified that the
intent was to force the public to seek a stronger more authoritarian
police and State presence in order to protect citizens from political
violence.
Critically important is the fact that the violence carried out by
Operation Gladio operatives was routinely blamed on the left, on
communist or socialist political parties, and/or on groups advocating
progressive or revolutionary change. However, the many decades of
violence were in actuality carried out by right wing cells within NATO’s Gladio stay-behind army units.
Thus Operation Gladio was by definition orchestrated false flag
terrorism carried out not by “leftists,” but rather by a multiplicity of
Western institutional structures in Europe in coordination with the
CIA.
The Gladio units were originally organized under the supervision of
the CIA and NATO, ostensibly as a way to respond in guerrilla warfare
fashion to a possible future Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
However, lacking cooperative Soviet troops to kill and terrorize the
population of Western Europe, the CIA and NATO took up the task of doing the killing and terrorizing themselves.
Gladio’s terrorism was conducted in order to shape the minds of the
European public, and thus manipulate the political landscape in favor of
the goals of U.S. and European elites. This is the reality of
Operation Gladio, and it is also why knowledge of its actions is
critical to our understanding of present day terrorism.
In the process of authorizing and conducting false flag bombing
attacks, Western elites and institutions intentionally killed, maimed
and/or psychologically terrorized thousands of European citizens. This
violence was carried out with the top-secret collusion of select members
of Western European governments, as well as through loyal right-wing
cadres within their intelligence agencies, judicial branches, and
various police services. Operation Gladio was of course hidden from the
public, since it constitutes both treason as well as murder conducted
by the very Western government institutional structures sworn by law to
protect their citizenry from such crimes.
Although its false flag violence was based in Western Europe,
Operation Gladio offered a domestic propaganda benefit to CIA operations
in the United States. Mass protests and progressive groups in the
United States were tarred in the public mind through guilt by
association with the Gladio terror events in Europe. The false reality
created by Gladio intentionally portrayed leftists in Europe as “violent
murderers of innocent civilians.” This narrative was endlessly
amplified by corporate media in the U.S. where it meshed rather
seamlessly with both the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities and the CIA’s
Operation Chaos program on the domestic front.
The critical conclusion we arrive at from reviewing the history of Operation Gladio is that
Western elites used a great many institutions of State to intentionally
target and kill their own citizens for political purposes, and
then conspired to hide that fact. The importance of this reality
cannot be overstated. Failing to widely publicly expose and discuss the
history of Operation Gladio has left all citizens of Western nations
vulnerable to the continued use of State sponsored false flag terrorism
in new and varied manifestations.
When we examine Operation Gladio from a more macro perspective we
must remain cognizant of both past and ongoing U.S. and Western European
assaults on Third World governments. That people of color around the
globe have been the targets of Western imperial violence for over 500
years is simple historical reality. What Operation Gladio demonstrates
decisively is that Western elites saw the cold blooded murder of their
own citizens as no more an obstacle to their plans for global control
than the murder of countless residents of the many Third World nations
which were still struggling to free themselves from Western domination.
Consider that Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Northwoods document requested
authorization to conduct false flag terror operations in the U.S. in
order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Only JFK’s fateful refusal to
comply stopped those proposed Gladio-style false flag operations from
occurring on U.S. soil.
Historical knowledge of both Operation Gladio and the Northwoods
document should be at the forefront as we attempt to analyze the
numerous false flag terror events in Western Europe and the United
States that have occurred since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Official narratives often leave us with rather disturbing questions
regarding the true nature of such attacks. With the loss of the Soviet
Union as a military danger and its replacement by Islamic terrorism, the
identity of the official enemy changed. However, we would be remiss if
do not question whether the dynamic of false flag terrorism might
continue as a tool to manipulate the public mind.
The perceptions, thinking and consciousness of the citizens of
Western Europe and the US have been powerfully shaped by the new
narratives emanating from events of 9/11, and from subsequent terror
attacks. Although these events are routinely blamed upon Islamic
jihadist groups, knowledgeable observers find that numerous questions
remain unanswered regarding the true identity of the perpetrators, often
including the nature of their connections to Western intelligence
structures.
Yet in spite of the historical reality of Gladio never has NATO been
subjected to legal action and criminal prosecution for conducting the
false flag bombings and murders of civilians in Western Europe.
Unaccountable and unpunished, with its Gladio units still possibly in
place, NATO instead offers possible cover for the continuing conduct of
false flag terrorism in Europe. On the US domestic front the CIA also
has never been subjected to legal action and criminal prosecution for
its role in advising/coordinating Operation Gladio bombings and
terrorism. Nor has the Northwoods document been treated to widespread
public discussion and analysis.
The total impunity enjoyed by NATO, the CIA and all the
interconnected Western institutional structures of police, military,
politicians and judiciary exists for a very specific reason.
In the words of convicted Operation Gladio bomber Vincente Vinciguerra, the reason is simple:
” . . . because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.”
This is because, as Vinciguerra openly acknowledges, it was the
institutions of the State itself who were responsible for the Gladio
bombings and for hiding the truth of those bombings.
For the State to investigate, prosecute and punish itself for
terrorism is of course unimaginable. To do so would be an admission
that Western institutions have in fact been for many decades morally and
legally bankrupt, and have been operating to systematically murder
their own citizens while engaging in a cover-up. Such an admission
would validate my contention that the institutions of the West currently
lack all moral and legal legitimacy, therefore such an admission cannot
occur.
It is clear from this history that what is required to move toward
the restoration of any semblance of legitimacy to Western institutions
would be the investigation and criminal prosecution on charges of
murder, treason and cover-up for all parties, individual and
institutional, involved in Operation Gladio. This would need to take
place in every country in which it operated in Europe, and would need to
also address the organizational and operational support of the CIA.
This is not about some obscure ancient history from the 1970’s and
1980’s. The link between Operation Gladio and present day terrorism is
as disturbing as it is clear. Today NATO, multiple Western European
governments and the government of the U.S. are suspected by increasing
numbers of the world’s citizens of continuing to use false flag
terrorism in order to validate their ongoing “war on terror.”
This war is at least in part designed to destroy the remaining
secular governments of the Middle East while manipulating the control of
petroleum the resources of the region. In the course of pursuing such
policies Western governments and institutions have now maneuvered the
entire planet to the brink of nuclear war between the West and Russia.
Yet in spite of the danger posed to all of humanity the U.S. continues a
publicly stated quest to achieve full spectrum dominance.
Given post-WWII history and our current state of affairs Western
governments and institutions clearly exist as criminal entities which
function outside the rule of all recognized morality and law, domestic
and international.
Even the limited amount we know of the history of Operation Gladio
should destroy in the mind of any thinking person the utter and complete
fantasy that Western leaders would “never harm their own people” to
achieve their larger strategic goals. Western elites in fact did so for
many decades. They systematically killed their own citizens and they
lied about it. There is a great deal of evidence that they continue to
do both while hiding behind the mask of false flag terrorism.
Our failure to adequately investigate and prosecute Operation Gladio
paved the way for our current wave of false flag events used to
manipulate Western public perception and behavior in support of endless
war in the Middle East.
From the U.S. government’s official account of 9/11, which requires belief in the temporary suspension of the laws of physics in
conjunction with the magical suspension of fighter jet intercept
protocols, 9/11 can be seen as a logical continuation of Operation
Gladio’s “strategy of tension.” 9/11 is false flag State terrorism writ
large. It is by definition the “big lie.” It makes both the Reichstag fire, and Operation Himmler look
like the work of small time amateurs. It is perhaps more than simply
ironic that so many former Nazis made their way into U.S. intelligence
services after WWII, given the many decades of politically useful false
flag events in the West that have followed.
The State kills its own citizens and blames a foreign or domestic
enemy. The population looks to the state for protection and surrenders
their democratic rights to an ever more militaristic, invasive and
repressive State. State power increases along with corporate profits in
many sectors of the permanent wartime economy of the U.S. The
bewildered populace lives in fear and is psychologically vulnerable to
the next false flag terror event which in truth the government, rather
than “terrorists,” actually control. In the instance of the 9/11
attacks it is the State itself that is the terrorist entity. The
official Islamic enemies exist very simply as Oswald explained his own
role, that of the designated “patsy.”
Since we have mentioned Oswald, the puzzle piece that is the JFK assassination, carried out by our deep state,
fits quite well alongside the later false flag operations of Operation
Gladio and 9/11, as well as intersecting the assassinations of European
leaders such as Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme.
These assassinations all appear to be activities of the unaccountable
deep state institutional structures which exist outside of view, law and
morality, and which serve to connect elites in Western Europe and the
United States.
One cannot admit this information into one’s consciousness, without
reaching the logical conclusion that Western governments and
institutions have become quite literally massive criminal enterprises
which routinely violate the very laws, international and domestic, they
ostensibly exist to enforce. Given this state of affairs, it is rather
difficult to view electoral politics as the way forward if justice,
meaningful institutional change and a planet not rendered uninhabitable
by nuclear war are our goals. Our institutional structures have shown
themselves to be irredeemably corrupt.
The recent election cycle in the United States has writ this large
into the consciousness of anyone with a pulse. If the two nominees of
this past election are the “best candidates” with the “best platforms”
the two major political parties can field, it is without doubt an
absolutely definitive indictment regarding the deadly gangrenous
condition of our electoral charade. Cognitively amoral and behaviorally
psychopathic elite policies are hardly a new phenomenon.
For centuries such behavior has typified Western elites regardless of
how polished their public personas. Such are the political scoundrels
we peasants are graciously allowed to choose between every four years.
There does appear to be a silver lining to the recent Donald Trump
versus Hillary Clinton carnival of the absurd. It would appear that for
growing numbers of Americans of all persuasions the ability to continue
to believe in the fairy tale that is the U.S. electoral process has
finally been shattered beyond repair.
Before closing let us step back for a moment and imagine a world that might have been.
A world in which progressive leaders in the U.S. and abroad had not
been assassinated or overthrown in favor of fascists; dictators hadn’t
been armed, taught torture techniques and supported against the
interests of their own people decade after decade; and the CIA prevented
rather than facilitated the international drug trade.
Imagine a world in which corporations and oligarchs weren’t allowed to own the mass media and so were not allowed to weaponize the
news, reducing it to simplistic pro-war mass culture propaganda, all
while buying the services of the political candidates who will support
their ongoing war profiteering. Imagine a world that could have been in
which the political organizing of the masses wasn’t systematically
infiltrated, disrupted and shut down by the institutions of State; Third
World nations were allowed to develop independently of Western
subversion and control; and the massive amounts of Western taxpayer
money spent on war and violence went instead toward the public good.
This is the world that has been stolen from humanity by violent
unaccountable oligarchic interests ruling through long discredited and
massively corrupt Western institutional structures.
The history of Operation Gladio, including the failure of Western
institutions to publicize and prosecute its murderous activities,
unmasks our elites as capable of “doing literally anything” in their
quest for power and domination. However, we are ourselves complicit. A
public that can find any legitimacy whatsoever in economic and
political institutions that systematically engage in and profit from
endless war, while the 8 richest people possess as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire earth’s population, one fears, can make themselves “believe literally anything.”
Gary Weglarz recently retired from
practice as a clinical social worker. He worked with, and learned from,
Alaskan Native peoples who were attempting to heal the damage inflicted
by the collective intergenerational trauma of colonization. Currently
he is engaged in research and writing regarding the relationship between
past mass trauma in Western societies, and the subsequent colonial
violence that has characterized Europe and her colonies.
He was actively involved in Central American solidarity efforts
throughout the 1990’s, traveling with human rights delegations to
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia. He currently lives in France.
Amazing how badly the Taliban was affected. Oh wait I forgot they don’t watch TV And believe everything they see on it.