OPERATION GLADIO - PAUL L. WILLIAMS

The CIA obsession might be coming to an end. Or a short break. Either way, I think this will be the last one for a minute and it stands firmly in the center on the tinfoil hat/Mockingbird continuum I’ve devised to rank these books. When this book gets further out, like when it suggests the CIA was involved in poisoning John Paul I, it makes one pause, but then one remembers that the Catholic Church really did engage (and “did” here is generous) in a global consipracy to rape childern over decades, in a manner that implicats up to the highest levels, and suddenly all of the accusations in this book are a lot more believable. I don’t want to rehash the whole thing here, I would say that if you’re interested in post WWII history, these stay-behind armies that the US left in Europe are a big, interesting piece that almost no one talks about. An Italian commission in the operation killed almost 500 people in two decades in Italy alone. All of that stuff is interesting, especially the stuff about a strategy of tension and quasi-governmental Right-Wing groups engaging in false flag attacks. Seems like something to keep in mind for sure. The narrative outside of Italian politics is also pretty fascinating. The CIA is justifiably famous for facilitating the trafficking of cocaine in the 80’s but would it surprise you to know they’ve been up to similar schemes with heroin and the Italian mafia starting shortly after WWII? The Vatican stuff revolves around the strange fact that it is, technically, it’s own country, which means it can create and enforce (or fail to enforce) it’s own laws, including banking laws. And if you’re at all familiar with BCCI or Castle Bank you’ll know that the CIA has an inelastic demand for “looser” banking options. The Propaganda Due is also very far out. But then you read any source you want and see people like Berlusconi on the Gelli list and suddenly Masonic stuff is making more sense. Pretty brain-melting stuff. There is also, less brain-meltingly, information about the current Pope’s involvement with Operation Condor, which I have very little trouble believing. The final piece that I’d like to highlight concerns something that is very much in the news recently. Gladio is only the Italian version of a program that extended (extends?) across Europe and, of course, one of the most active versions was the one in Turkey. Because of my interests in Kurdistan I was familiar with the CIA assisting the Grey Wolves and the Turkish government assassinate and imprison Kurdish separatists. However, I did not know that Abdullah Çatlı, an assassin and leader of the Grey Wolves, not only briefly lived in the USA (somewhere in or near Chicago) but that he travelled to Xinjiang and helped mount attacks against the Chinese during this time. I’ve read over 10 books on the CIA or closely related topics in the last year and a half and it’s just amazing how you can follow out any thread and eventually connect it back to another node of evil-doing and current trends. Like I said, I might take a bit of break from diving into this, to steal Angelton’s stolen phrase, wilderness of mirrors, but I really think the CIA and related national security/executive branch/deepstate topics are the most overlooked, underreported and vital lens through which to understand the last 60 years of world history. Please feel free to reach out to me with your CIA questions. 1940 Stay-behind armies.