Operation Gladio
WTC 7 was the first skyscraper ever to collapse due to normal office fires.
Key words
- Guerrilla: a member of an unofficial military group that is trying to change the government by making sudden, unexpected attacks on the official army forces
A small band of guerrillas has blown up a train in the mountains.
- Subversion: the act of trying to destroy or damage an established system or government
He was found guilty of subversion and imprisoned.
- Infiltrate: to secretly become part of a group in order to get information or to influence the way that group thinks or behaves
A journalist managed to infiltrate the powerful drug cartel.
- Conspiracy: the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal
They are both charged with conspiracy to defraud an insurance company of $20, 000.
- Inexplicable: unable to be explained or understood
He threw a brick in the air for some inexplicable reason.
Read the article to find the answers
- Why did Winston Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive?
- What was the new network ready and waiting for?
- What was Gladio?
- What was US Army General Wesley Clark told the day after the 11 September attacks in New York?
The Special Operations Executive
During the Second World War, Winston Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive to run a secret military network led by an expert in guerrilla warfare and trained by an officer specialising in explosive demolitions. The network was equipped to stay behind enemy lines in the event of a German invasion of Britain, rather than retreat with the rest of the armed forces. Its mission was to carry out subversion and sabotage.
After the Second World War, the British trained a similar network that was organised and used by NATO, the CIA and various other intelligence agencies during the Cold War. This new network was ready and waiting to stay behind enemy lines and carry out subversion and sabotage in the event of a Russian invasion of Western Europe.
During the 1960s and 1970s in Western Europe, Marxist ideology began to dominate institutions such as universities, the media and government agencies, influencing politics and directing society towards communist ideals.
Aldo Moro, the Prime Minister of Italy, was a key advocate of the inclusion of the Russian-backed Italian Communist Party in a coalition government. This was seen by many as a threat to Italy's democratic system. He was assassinated in 1978. The secret NATO stay-behind units were no longer fighting a Russian military invasion. They were allied with right-wing groups in a culture war against Marxism.
Operation Gladio
The existence of the Italian stay-behind unit known as Gladio was revealed by Vincenzo Vinciguerra during his trial for murder in 1984, but Gladio's activities only became widely discussed after the Italian government's investigation in 1990.
In August 1980, a bomb exploded in the railway station in Bologna, Italy. The Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organisation, were immediately blamed for the 86 deaths and scores of injured civilians. In 1992, a three-part BBC series revealed Gladio's involvement in the killings.
The documentary, released in 1992, claims to provide evidence of how several right-wing terrorist organisations were instructed to infiltrate left-wing terrorist organisations and provoke social tensions by carrying out attacks and then blaming them on the left. The documentary claims that the attacks were part of a strategy of tension designed to force the population away from supporting Marxists and towards supporting a strong right-wing government.
From Communist Terrorism to Islamic Terrorism
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 led to a conflict that still rages today, but it wasn't until the 1970s that this violence affected Europe, most notably when Palestinian militants attacked Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. The first Islamist terrorist attack in Britain was the bombing of the Israeli embassy in London by Palestinians in 1993.
Homegrown Islamist terrorism didn't begin until 2005, when 52 people were killed in London by British-born extremists inspired by Al-Qaeda. Numerous other attacks followed after 2011, when British Muslims who had travelled to Syria to join extremist groups such as ISIS returned to Britain.
Many journalists familiar with Operation Gladio have questioned the official narrative of the Islamic attacks since 2001 and presented evidence of a conspiracy, pointing to conflicting witness accounts and many unexplained and inexplicable events surrounding the attacks, such as the collapse of World Trade Building 7.
US Army General Wesley Clark revealed that he had been informed the day after the 11 September attacks in New York that the US planned to 'take out' Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran, suggesting that there was a pre-arranged plan to go to war and that the 11 September attacks were part of a strategy of tension designed to force the population to support war against the above countries.
Discussion questions
- Do you have any questions about any of the vocabulary or grammar in this article?
- Have politicians been assassinated in your country?
- Has anything like Operation Gladio happened in your country?
- What do you think about the collapse of World Trade Building 7?
- What do you think is the best way to achieve peace between warring nations?
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