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The Italian ‘Stay-Behind’Network – The Origins of

Operation ‘Gladio’

LEOPOLDO NUTI

University of Roma Tre

ABSTRACT This essay is based on an analysis of the official documentation madeavailable to the Italian Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry on the origins anddevelopment of the stay-behind network in Italy. It tries to use these materialsand integrate them with those of historical research on some related subjects inorder to sketch out a tentative outline of the chronology and of the reasons forthe creation of ‘Gladio’, as the stay-behind network was officially denominated.The article concludes that the documents released to the ParliamentaryCommittees do not permit the assumption that Operation ‘Gladio’ was involvedin any illegal activities connected with the terrorism of the late 1960s and of the1970s. The documents, in other words, do not help solving any of the mysterieswhich beleaguered Italian post-war history for more than a decade. On the otherhand, the parliamentary reports tell a story which fits very well with the results ofhistorical research on Italy’s foreign and security policy after World War II, andconfirm some of its key assumptions.

KEY WORDS: Stay-behind, Italy, Cold War, Terrorism

In August 1990, during a parliamentary debate on terrorism, the ItalianPrime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the rumours about theexistence of a secret network run by the Italian intelligence servicesduring the Cold War, and promised to disclose all the available in-formation about it in the immediate future. The network, saidAndreotti, had been set up at the height of the Cold War along thepattern of similar North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)structures in other countries, with the purpose of conducting all sortsof ‘stay-behind’ operations in case of an invasion by the forces of theWarsaw Pact.1 The secret had been well preserved for almost 40 years,

1Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause dellamancata individuazione delle stragi, ‘Prerelazione sull’inchiesta condotta dallaCommissione in ordine alle vicende connesse con l’operazione Gladio, con annessi

The Journal of Strategic StudiesVol. 30, No. 6, 955 – 980, December 2007

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/07/060955-26 � 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390701676501

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Andreotti proudly declared later, but now, with the passing of time andthe fading away of the Soviet threat, such an archetypal Cold Warstructure no longer had a reason to exist and might be disbanded.

Speculations about Andreotti’s move could be the subject of anotheressay, if not of a whole book. Suffice it to say here that therepercussions of his declarations and of the following revelations wereformidable. After his initial promise, on 18 October 1990 the PrimeMinister delivered to the House Committee on Terrorism a classifiedreport on the secret network drafted by the Defence Staff. Far fromending the matter there, however, the document unleashed a furiousdebate which led to further parliamentary inquiries. Coming as they didfrom one of the foremost politicians of post-war Italy, but also one whohad often been rumoured to be involved in shady deals and who wasoften named by conspiracy theorists as the quintessential mastermindof the most obscure and devious plots in the history of the Republic, therevelations caused a veritable political storm. For weeks the Italianmedia delved into the subject with gusto, bringing forth new ‘surprises’every day while political forces sharpened their knives trying to figureout how the news could be used to fit their own agendas and settle oldscores.

The impact of the story, moreover, reverberated well beyond Italy’sborders, as its details were picked up by journalists all across Europe aswell as on the other side of the Atlantic: NATO itself had to release anofficial statement on the subject, while one after the other most WesternEuropean governments half-heartedly admitted that similar organiza-tions had been set up in their own countries as well.2

Eventually the matter was partially clarified by the results of theofficial investigations conducted by the Italian Parliament. The HouseInvestigative Committee on Terrorism in Italy published a preliminaryand a final report, while a third, similar document was drafted by theJoint Parliamentary Committee for Intelligence.3 To this day, these

gli natti del dibattito svoltosi sul documento stesso’, 9 July 1991, in Atti Parlamentari,X Legislatura, doc. XXIII, n. 36. (Hereafter cited as Prerelazione).2At some time or the other, similar stay-behind organizations existed in Austria(Schwert), Belgium (SDR-8), Denmark, France (Glaive), West Germany, Greece(Operation ‘Sheepskin’), Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden (Sveaborg),Switzerland (P26), and Turkey. Most, but not all, of these units had some link toeach other, but some only had bilateral liaisons with the UK or the US. Operation‘Gladio’, in 5http://users.westnet.gr/*cgian/gladio.htm4. According to the latercomments of one of the generals who headed the Italian SB, the Italian revelationsunleashed some very sharp reactions from some of the foreign partners: Paolo Inzerilli,Gladio: La verita negata (Bologna: Edizioni Analisi 1995), 67.3For the pre-report, see footnote 1. The two final reports are ‘Relazione del ComitatoParlamentare per i servizi di informazione e di sicurezza e per il segreto di stato sulla

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lengthy documents and their appendices provide the most importantprimary sources for the story of the stay-behind network in Italy. Theypresent some obvious gaps in their narrative, the original records theycite are reproduced only partially, and there is even the suspicion thatthey may have been manipulated, or perhaps just incidentallymishandled.4 And yet they are one of the few sources available toshed some light on the history of post-war Italian intelligence activities,a subject on which there is an almost total dearth of sources and ofscholarly investigation.

This essay, therefore, will try to use these materials and integratethem with those of historical research on some related subjects in orderto sketch out a tentative outline of the chronology and of the reasonsfor the creation of ‘Gladio’, as the stay-behind network was officiallydenominated. To this purpose, a first section will discuss some of themany covert networks operating in Italy at the end of World War II,which created a fertile soil for the establishment of ‘Gladio’. A secondsection tries to define the controversial beginning of the official,government-sponsored, stay-behind operation, whose exact start is stilla matter of controversy. The central part of the essay focuses on theformal US–Italian agreements of the mid-1950s and describes thestructure they created, its budget, and its connection to NATO. A finalparagraph briefly discusses the rumours about the possible degenera-tion of the structure, its alleged use for counter-insurgency purposes inthe late 1960s, and its possible connections with the terrorist activitiesthat systematically wreaked havoc upon the country from the late1960s to the early 1980s.

Covert Networks in Italy at the End of World War II

At the end of World War II Italy was replete with secret networks andunderground organizations of all sorts. Far from sparing the countryfrom the horrors of war, the armistice of 8 September 1943, turned the

‘‘Operazione Gladio’’’, 4 March 1992, in Atti Parlamentari, X Legislatura, Doc.XLVIII, n.1 (hereafter, REPORT 1) and ‘Relazione sull’inchiesta condotta sulle vicendeconnesse all’operazione Gladio dalla Commissione Parlamentare d’inchiesta sulterrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili dellestragi’, 22 April 1992, in Atti Parlamentari, X Legislatura, doc. XXIII, n.51 (hereafter,REPORT 2).4For a rather critical assessment of the quality of the way the original records have beenfiled and handed over to the parliamentary committees, see Comitato Parlamentare peri servizi di informazione e di sicurezza, ‘Primo rapporto sul sistema di informazione e disicurezza’, Per Aspera ad Veritatem 2 (May–Aug. 1995), Ch.4, ‘Quattordici casiemblematici di deviazione del servizio segreto militare’.

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whole of Italy into a battleground for the next 20 months as the Alliedforces battled their way up north against a stiff German resistance, andit also unleashed a cruel civil conflict between the anti-Fascist partisansand Mussolini’s last supporters of the Salo Republic. Then, once thefighting was over, an uncertain truce settled in while the institutionalfuture of the country remained subject to much controversy: not onlywas the monarchy discredited for its cooperation with Fascism andlikely to be replaced by a Republic, but many partisans also talkedopenly of a ‘second phase’ and of the impending social revolution thatwould complete the defeat of Fascism by radically transforming theItalian political system once and forever. Expectations for a majorpolitical renovation were high. The perspective of an impending con-frontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers loomedover the horizon and added a sense of further uncertainty.5

In this tense political climate many covert networks sprung up duringthe last period of the war or in its immediate aftermath. The partisans,the Royalist armed forces and the Fascists all had developed their ownintelligence organizations and built up a remarkable experience inunderground activities; double, if not triple, dealings were normal, andlike in a game of Chinese boxes some intelligence agencies had built aninner core unbeknownst to the other services fighting on the same side:the Italian Navy, for instance, was supposed to have ‘established aclandestine inner service that was protected from German liaison’ evenbefore the signature of the 1943 armistice.6

It was somewhat inevitable that some of these webs continued toexist after the end of the hostilities, albeit to be used for differentpolitical purposes. Inside the armed forces, for instance, several officerswere rumoured to be conspiring for the preservation of the monarchy,and at some time they seem to have developed a paramilitary group –the Volontari della corona (Volunteers of the Crown) willing to resortto force in order to resist a change of regime.7 One Monarchist officer,the former Resistance hero Edgardo Sogno, has written in his memoirs

5For a powerful, if somewhat emphatic, description of the situation in the immediatepost-war period, see ‘Future policy towards Italy’, by Chief Commissioner RearAdmiral Ellery Stone, 23 June 1945, in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), Vol. 1, 688–94.6Timothy J. Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton: The United States and Italian Intelligence’, paperpresented at the March 1998 conference on ‘Italy and the US 50 Years after theMarshall Plan’, Roma, Centro Studi Americani. For a general, and often biased, surveyof some of these clandestine networks, see the collection of documents in NicolaTranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica: La Mafia, il Vaticano e il neofascismoneidocumenti americani e italiani, 1943–1947 (Milano: Bompiani 2004).7Virgilio Ilari, Storia militare della prima repubblica, 1943–1993 (Ancona: Casaeditrice Nuove Ricerche 1994), 524–25.

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that he tried to persuade the King to use force to stop what he regardednot as a change of regime but as an illegal coup.8 Yet another hotbed ofconspiracies was Sicily, where in the immediate post-war years a self-proclaimed Army of Volunteers for the Independence of Sicily (EVIS,Esercito Volontario per l’Indipendenza della Sicilia) staged a semi-guerrilla warfare hardly distinguishable from the initiatives oforganized crime, and rumoured to be linked to all sorts of secretnetworks.9

From the point of view of the origins of ‘Gladio’, more importantthan these somewhat haphazard groups was the first attempt to build areal stay-behind organization in the north-eastern part of Italy in orderto resist a possible Yugoslav takeover. As is well known, all the VeneziaGiulia region was hotly contested between Italy and Yugoslavia afterthe end of the war, and Italian partisans volunteered to maintain asecret network to be activated in case of Yugoslav occupation. Allpartisan formations in the region were officially disbanded on 24 June1945, but tensions remained high between the pro-Yugoslav commu-nist groups and the other resistance groups of a non-communistorientation.10 In November 1945, therefore, the former Committee ofNational Liberation of the city of Gorizia set up a clandestine group ofabout 1,200 partisans, to be activated against any forcible annexationof the city by Yugoslavia.11

Shortly afterwards, in January 1946, the three Army officers that hadled the resistance group ‘Osoppo’ during the war decided to reactivatethe unit, and applied for formal recognition by the Army Staff. In April1946, when the tension with Yugoslavia was reaching a critical point,the Chief of the Army Staff, General Raffaele Cadorna, officiallysanctioned the reconstitution of the ‘Osoppo’ group: a special liaisonunit was set up in the Headquarters of the Army’s 5th TerritorialCommand, and after the signature of the peace treaty in February 1947the unit was officially renamed ‘38 Corpo Volontari della Liberta’, witha strength of about 4,500. The unit played a relevant role in thefollowing years: during the political elections of April 1948, forinstance, it was secretly deployed all along the north-eastern landborder to prevent possible Yugoslav infiltrations in support of a

8Luciano Garibaldi, L’altro italiano. Edgardo Sogno: sessant’anni di antifascismo e dianticomunismo (Milano: Edizioni Ares 1992), 177–78.9Tranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica, 178–88 and 204–10.10Pre-report, 32. The tension between the partisan groups was already high even in thefinal months of the war, and in Feb. 1945 a non-communist formation was ambushedand massacred by a communist one in the notorious Porzus incident.11Virgilio Ilari, Il generale col monocolo: Giovanni De Lorenzo, 1907–1973 (Ancona:Casa Editrice Nuove Ricerche 1994), 68.

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communist coup, and it seems to have also been involved in at least oneserious clash on Yugoslav territory.12

In 1950 the unit changed its nature once again. It became a sort ofparamilitary organization of cadres which, in case of war, shouldactivate a total of 20 battalions of 360 men each, for a grand total ofabout 6,500 men. Codenamed ‘O’ (probably after ‘Osoppo’), the unitwas given the task of securing communications and protecting civil andmilitary installations, as well as conducting guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations, gathering intelligence, and reporting on theenemy’s activities. According to one of the parliamentary reports, theunit’s weapons were stored in the depot of the 8th Alpine Regiment inUdine. It remained active until 1956, when it was officially disbanded,and until then it seems to have been involved in several kinds ofactivities, mostly related to the tensions with Yugoslavia and the futureof the city of Trieste.13 The importance of the ‘Osoppo’ for thedevelopment of our story should not be underestimated. It provided apossible pattern for the future organization and it helped the Army gaina direct experience in the management of an underground network tobe activated in case of need: in short, it can be regarded as a small-scaleexperiment in running a stay-behind network, which would turn out tobe useful later on.

While the Army was setting up its stay-behind unit in the north-east,other secret networks remained active throughout the country.According to a report drafted by a US intelligence operative in June1947, the Army was also in touch with a mysterious anti-communistmovement, the ECA (Esercito Clandestino Anticomunista), whosemain goal seems to have been to react to a possible communistrevolutionary attempt.14 Several secret neo-Fascist organizations werealso signalled as actively scheming, while all along the PartitoComunista Italiano (PCI) maintained its own covert network as well.A large number of communist partisans refused to hand over theirweapons at the end of the war, and the Italian security forces continuedto find large caches of arms for quite a number of years after the end ofthe hostilities. Relying on the underground experience of the resistance,the PCI had built a secret structure – often referred to as the apparato –whose purpose can in turn be regarded as offensive or defensive.

12For the creation of the unit and its deployment in 1948, see Pre-report, 33. The storyof the clash is told by Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 69. The tension with Yugoslaviain the spring of 1946 is described in Leopoldo Nuti, L’esercito italiano nel secondodopoguerra. La sua ricostruzione e l’assistenza militare alleata, 1945–1950 (Rome:Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore Esercito, 1989).13Pre-report, pp.33 and 36.14Tranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica, 69, footnote 62.

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Italian security forces provided some rather inflated estimates about itsstrength, armaments and capabilities: in a document drafted in thetense spring of 1948 and transmitted to the US, the apparato wasdescribed as a clandestine structure of almost 200,000, with quite asubstantial range of weapons available. The report regarded it as fullycapable to implement a revolutionary coup, possibly with someexternal assistance from Yugoslavia, and to create a serious challengefor Italian security forces. It seems likely that this pessimisticassessment was partly conceived to impress its American recipientsand persuade them of the importance of providing the Italian Armywith some military assistance. Nevertheless, the Italian security forcesdid believe in a possible communist coup: the techniques employed byPCI members during the insurrectional outbursts that followed theattempted murder of the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti in July 1948, forinstance, convinced them of the soundness of this assessment, and ofthe seriousness of the threat posed by the apparato.15

According to other interpretations, however, the apparato did existbut was a defensive and not an offensive structure: its clandestinenetwork was conceived to help the Party survive in case of a reactionarycoup and a breakdown of democracy. From this perspective, itsprimary task was to ensure the survival of a core structure of the Partyand above all to help secure the physical survival of its leaders bysecretly smuggling them out of the country.

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that as the confrontation betweenthe Communist Party and the pro-Western democratic forcesgained momentum and reached its climax in the spring and summerof 1948, as both sides were gearing up and preparing for the worst bybuilding up their own security forces. From this perspective, bothdevelopments – the evolution of the ‘Osoppo’ group and thestrengthening of the PCI apparato – can be seen as part of a broaderprocess, namely the gradual transformation of the Italian politicallandscape by the Cold War.

Finally, one should also keep in mind that to a large extent allthese events were closely monitored by foreign intelligence services.During the war both the US and the UK had built extensive contactswith the Resistance movement through the Office of Strategic Services(OSS) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) respectively. Then,in the last phase of the conflict, the US had also begun to develop apervasive effort to monitor and penetrate what was left – or was beingrebuilt – of the security and intelligence services of the Italian

15Leopoldo Nuti, ‘Security and Threat Perceptions in Italy in the Early Cold WarYears, 1945–1953’, in Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (eds.), The Soviet Union andEurope in the Cold War, 1945–1953 (London: Macmillan 1996), 412–29.

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government. As the work of Timothy Naftali has shown, the head ofUS counter-intelligence in Italy, James J. Angleton, was crucial to thisendeavour. Through his wide connections in Italy, between 1944 and1947 Angleton was able to establish some close relations that wouldremain active for many years during the Cold War.16 Rather thanrecalling the details of Angleton’s penetration of the reborn Italiansecurity and intelligence services, what is important here is to underlinetwo key features of his modus operandi which might have had animpact – direct or indirect – on the further development of the ‘Gladio’story. In the first place, Angleton followed the standard intelligencepractice of building separate connections with different parts of theItalian services, in order to establish a system which would allow him toevaluate and check the information that was made available to him byhis informants.17 While some of them might have acted with the fullapproval of their services, some other ones probably cultivated theirrelationship with Angleton unbeknownst to their superiors. Such aprocedure enabled the head of US counter-intelligence in Italy not onlyto monitor the activities of Italian intelligence with great efficiency, butalso to exert a growing influence on its future development.

This capacity was enhanced by the second key feature of Angleton’sactivities, namely his tendency to build up unorthodox channels ofinformation and to handle some of them semi-privately, outside of thebureaucratized structures of the proper intelligence channels. From1947 to 1953, Angleton ran from Washington a veritable parallelintelligence station in Rome through the work of his former deputy,Raymond Rocca, who built upon Angleton’s former contacts todevelop a separate network – with little, if any, control from the CIAstation or the US Embassy. The system was terminated when WilliamColby was appointed to Rome in 1953 and persuaded his Head ofStation, Gerald Miller, to call this unorthodox procedure to an end.18

Until then, however, Rocca’s activities provided Angleton with anunprecedented freedom of manoeuvre to control the rebirth of theItalian intelligence system – and, as we will see in a moment, to surveythe establishment of the stay-behind initiative.

16Timothy J. Naftali, ‘ARTIFICE: James Angleton and X-2 Operations in Italy’, inGeorge C. Chalou (ed.), The Secrets’ War. The Office of Strategic Services in WorldWar II (Washington DC: NARA 1992); Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’.17According to Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’, the two key connections that Angleton builtearly on were with the Pubblica Sicurezza (i.e. with the Police forces of the Ministry ofthe Interior) and with the Naval Intelligence Service.18For Colby’s own version of this episode, see William Colby, Honorable Men: My Lifein the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster 1978), Ch. 3, ‘Covert Politics in Italy’.

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Origins of the Official Stay-Behind Operation

On 8 October 1951, the Head of Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR,Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate), General Umberto Broccoli, wrotea note to the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Efisio Marras, on thesubject of intelligence operations under enemy occupation. In his note,titled ‘Intelligence and operational organization in the nationalterritory susceptible to enemy occupation’, General Broccoli advocatedthe creation of a network capable of conducting stay-behind, to assistthose forces that remained behind the lines during an invasion, and ingeneral to provide intelligence on the areas occupied by the enemy.Similar projects, he claimed, were already being carried out by some ofthe other NATO powers. SIFAR was also aware that the US wasplanning the creation of some clandestine groups in north-east Italy forthe same purpose. To create such a network, wrote Broccoli, required acomplex, costly and lengthy procedure. It was therefore all the morenecessary to act quickly, if Italy wanted to anticipate the Americanintervention and keep the future organization under national control.

Broccoli told Marras that for some time he had been discussing thematter with the directors of the intelligence services (SIOS, ServiziInformazione Operative e Sicurezza) of the three armed forces. He nowasked the Chief of Defence Staff for the authorization to send sevenofficers to attend a special training course in Great Britain, at theTraining Division of the Secret Intelligence Service. The course wouldlast from November 1951 to February 1952. Such cooperation with theBritish, however, was to be conceived as a sort of temporary, stopgapmeasure, as in the long run it was important to establish a stable andmore robust connection with the US.19 It is unclear, from thedocumentation cited in the parliamentary reports, whether SIFAR’srequest was actually implemented. It seems that the cooperation withthe British Intelligence Service was stillborn, but that planning for thecreation of the organization went ahead. Air Force Colonel FeliceSantini was selected as general coordinator of the future organization,while six other officers were to be placed in charge of its variousbranches, namely intelligence, stay-behind, propaganda, communica-tions, cipher, and exfiltration (‘evasion and escape’). Each one of themwas to be given responsibility to recruit his own local agents, up to atotal of 200, with the goal of being operational by the beginning of1953.

19Promemoria trasmesso l’8 ottobre 1951 dal generale Broccoli al Capo di StatoMaggiore della difesa, Generale Marras, sotto il titolo di ‘Organizzazione informativa-operativa nel territorio nazionale suscettibile di occupazione nemica’, cited asattachment 1 in REPORT 2, 14–15.

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In the meantime there had been several attempts to coordinate thevarious special operations and intelligence organizations of the WesternEuropean allies. In 1949 a special trilateral body, the Western UnionClandestine Committee, had been set up by Benelux, Britain and Franceinside the Western European Union, and by April 1951 it transferred itstasks to the newly formed Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC),which was meant to cooperate closely with the Supreme AlliedCommander Europe (SACEUR). As for Italy, SIFAR was invited toattend a meeting in Paris to coordinate its activities with the new bodyin May 1952. The Italian reply shows to some extent the Italianmilitary’s irritation with the creation of any implicit or explicithierarchy within the Alliance: General Marras authorized SIFAR tosend a representative to the meeting but not to formally recognize abody vis-a-vis which Italy was to be placed in a condition of inferiority.Rather than this multilateral initiative, SIFAR and the Defence Staffseemed to prefer the building up of a close, exclusive connection withthe US – as had already been hinted by General Broccoli in his note toMarras of October 1951.

Thus in the following years SIFAR continued to work on the creationof the stay-behind organization on a bilateral, US–Italian basis. In 1953a large area was purchased in a remote part of Sardinia, at CapoMarrargiu, to set up a special training camp for the future members ofthe organization (CAG, or Centro Addestramento Guastatori, Sabo-teurs’ Training Centre). According to one of the parliamentary reports,work on the camp began in 1954 and was subsidized by the CIA, on thebasis of a special bilateral agreement between the US and the Italianintelligence services.20 Another report lists these initial contributions asa total of 350 million lire for purchasing the terrain and constructingthe camp, another 135 million for the setting up of a radio centre, andadditional equipment in kind, including some aircraft.21

The pro-American inclination of the Italian military described by theparliamentary reports fits quite well with the general mood of theItalian armed forces at the time. Over the years the preservation of asound relationship with the US had become one of the key tenets of theItalian military, who regarded Washington as the country’s strongestand most reliable partner, while the connection with the otherEuropean allies was still somewhat strained by the ill feelings developedduring the war.22

20REPORT 2, 15–16.21REPORT 1, 83–4.22On the military relations between the US and Italy see Leopoldo Nuti, ‘Appunti peruna storia della politica di difesa italiana nella prima meta degli anni 050’, in Ennio DiNolfo, Romain Rainero, Brunello Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la politica di potenza in

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To this general interpretive framework one should also add a morespecific detail which exemplifies the extent of US–Italian cooperation inmilitary matters during these early Cold War years. According to one ofthe parliamentary reports, the officer to be put in charge of the futurestay-behind organization was the Air Force Colonel Felice Santini, whoalso accompanied General Broccoli to Paris for his meeting with theCPC in May 1952, and who was later given the task of supervising theconstruction of the base at Capo Marrargiu. Santini was a formermember of the Resistance, who during the Nazi occupation of Romehad directed a radio centre connecting the partisan network inside thecity with the Allies and the Badoglio government in southern Italy, andwho was later appointed Head of the Air Force intelligence service(SIOS-aeronautica).23 In this later context he had developed a closeworking relationship with Raymond Rocca, Angleton’s deputy inRome, and was cooperating with him by providing him with aerialreconnaissance photographs of Venezia Giulia.24 In other words, theofficer selected to set up the whole stay-behind structure was one thatenjoyed the full confidence of the US, and his appointment to thisextremely delicate and politically sensitive task should be probablyregarded as confirming the intimacy of the cooperation between SIFARand CIA in these years.

The Birth of ‘Gladio’

A Chronology

The structure of the stay-behind network seems to have been completedby late 1956. By late September the Head of SIFAR, General GiovanniDe Lorenzo, authorized the creation of a training branch (SAD: SezioneAddestramento) inside the ‘R’ office (Ricerche all’estero, ForeignIntelligence) of the Intelligence Service.25 The new body, activated by1 October, included a head of section and two groups, tasked with (1)general organization and support for two large guerrilla units (code-named Stella Alpina and Stella Marina); (2) permanent secretarial workand activation of the operational branches (intelligence, stay-behind,propaganda, escape and guerrilla) and of some smaller units kept in ahigh state of readiness. Between 1959 and 1964 two more groups were

Europa negli anni 050 (Milan: Marzorati 1992), 625–70; idem, ‘US Forces in Italy,1955–1963’, in Wolfgang Krieger (ed.), US Forces in Europe: The Early Years(Boulder, CO: Westview 1994), 251–72.23Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 72.24Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’, 20.25Pre-report, 28.

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added, namely one for air activities, both logistical and operational, inconnection with the creation of a light aircraft section (SAL, SezioneAerei Leggeri, added in 1958–59); and one for communications, bothlong and short range. SAD also supervised the training and ex-perimental activities of the CAG, which was defined as the operationaland training base for the whole operation.26 Between 1964 and 1971 anew group was added to maintain a liaison with the other stay-behindoperations in other NATO countries and with the Alliance’s structuresin charge of clandestine warfare.27

Shortly afterwards, on 18 October 1956, the establishment of a jointUS–Italian organization was discussed at a meeting between two USand two Italian intelligence officers, namely Colonel Giulio Fettarappa-Sandri (Head of SAD) and Major Mario Accasto (Head of CAG) forSIFAR and Robert Porter and John Edwards for the CIA. It was the firsttime that the codename ‘Gladio’ (a reference to the Roman legions’famous short sword, the gladius) officially appeared in a document toindicate the stay-behind organization. The text of the agreements wasdiscussed and approved, together with a number of proceduraldecisions.28 According to all the parliamentary reports, the agreementwas formally exchanged on 26 November 1956, with the title ‘ARestatement of agreements between the US and Italian IntelligenceServices relative to the Organization and Operation of the ItalianClandestine Stay-Behind Effort’.

The document included three sections. In the first the two servicesagreed to cooperate in order to organize, train and manage theoperational activities of a stay-behind network to be activated in case ofenemy occupation of Italian territory. In a second section it was statedthat the operational base of the organization would be located inSardinia and that the Italian Staff would do its utmost to retain controlof the island in case of war. A third section listed all the commitmentsof the two signatories. In a meeting that took place on the followingday the Italian representatives declared that the draft text had been

26This description of the structure of SAD comes from a later document, StatoMaggiore della Difesa, SIFAR – Ufficio ‘R’, Sezione SAD, 1 June 1959, ‘Le ForzeSpeciali del SIFAR e l’operazione Gladio’, reproduced in Mario Coglitore and SandroScarso, La notte dei gladiator: Omissioni e silenzi della repubblica (Padua: Caluscaedizioni 1992). The book offers an extremely biased interpretation of the creation ofGladio, but it also includes the complete reproduction of this important record. Thesequence of the creation of the various groups is described in REPORT 1, 63–5,according to which the groups had slightly different tasks.27REPORT 1, 65.28Ibid., 6–7.

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officially approved by their service.29 Defence Minister Paolo Tavianihas repeatedly stated that he personally approved the signature of theagreement and that he informed the main authorities of the governmentof the time, namely the President of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi,Prime Minister Antonio Segni, Deputy Prime Minister GiuseppeSaragat, and Foreign Minister Antonio Martino. According to Taviani,they all approved the decision. They also discussed whether theParliament should be informed, but given the nature of the agreement(and the fact that a similar procedure had been followed in GreatBritain and France) it was decided to keep the matter as secret aspossible.30

Between 1956 and 1958 the tasks and the framework of the newnetwork were further defined by a joint US–Italian body named‘Gladio’ Committee, composed of eight Italian representatives andthree American ones. In the committee meetings, initial priority seemsto have been given to the creation of the two centres, the training one atCapo Marrargiu and the radio one at Olmedo. There also seems tohave been a certain difference of opinions between the CIA and theSIFAR as to what should be done next. SIFAR insisted that it wasnecessary to accelerate the integration in the new ‘Gladio’ network ofthe large guerrilla units already existing in the north-east, rather thanproceed with the recruiting of the personnel for the smaller units, muchto the dismay of the CIA members of the committee who seem to havepreferred the opposite course of action. According to the parliamentaryreports it was SIFAR which got it its own way, since the old ‘Osoppo’group was incorporated almost immediately in the new ‘Gladio’operation and basically became the new ‘Stella Alpina’ guerrilla unit,even retaining its old leader, Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Specogna.Recruiting the personnel for the new, smaller units did not begin beforethe end of 1958. Until then, the only step that was taken to prepare thenew clandestine structure was the training of six members of SAD inthe US between October and November 1957.31

The main immediate consequence of the formal creation of the newstructure seems to have been to bring to an end the previous stay-behind structure built around the old ‘Osoppo’ partisan group, whichwas officially terminated at the beginning of October 1956, shortlyafter the birth of SAD. In several interviews as well as in his memoirs,

29Ibid., 5–7. The title of the Italian copy of the agreement does not include the word‘Restatement’, and this difference had led to much speculation about the real beginningof the operation.30REPORT 1, 104. See also Paolo Emilio Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo(Bologna: Il Mulino 2002), 408.31REPORT 1, 16–17.

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Paolo Emilio Taviani, who was Minister of Defence at the time, haspresented the creation of the new structure as more or less a‘rationalization’ of the previous ‘makeshift’ efforts, and has made clearthat he regards himself as bearing chief responsibility for this initiative.His intention, he stated, was to make the whole operation moreefficient at the critical juncture of the Suez crisis and the invasion ofHungary, when all of a sudden a large number of Soviet forces wereredeployed at a very short distance from Italy.32 Taviani’s commentsclearly contain an element of truth, but one wonders whether they donot tell only a part of the story. It seems unlikely that the agreementwas concluded in all haste under the pressure of the dual crisis ofOctober/November 1956, since as we have seen SIFAR and the CIAhad been working on it for quite some time. The agreement wastherefore the natural conclusion of a process that was underway sincethe early 1950s, and its conclusion might have been accelerated by theSoviet intervention in Budapest, but not entirely determined by it.

Besides, one should also note that the conclusion of the negotiationmarked one more step in an almost uninterrupted series of agreementsestablishing a very close level of military cooperation between Italy andthe US. Beginning in November 1955, when the Italian Parliamentratified the NATO status of forces agreement (which implicitlyrecognized the exchange of notes that authorized the deployment ofthe SETAF – Southern European Task Force – in Italian territory). Thiscooperation continued well into the late 1950s, reaching perhaps itshighest peak when the two countries agreed in March 1959 to jointlydeploy the new US Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles insouthern Italy. Taviani’s argument that the Hungarian crisis wasresponsible for the conclusion of the agreement, however, can beindirectly confirmed by the fact that by the end of 1956 and early 1957there was indeed a serious effort by the Italian Minister of Defence toinvolve more closely the US in the security of the country. In January1957, for instance, Taviani wrote a letter to his American counterpart,Charles Wilson, asking that the US deploy more troops in Italy (heasked for two divisions) and that a new NATO command beestablished in or around the city of Venice.33 The formal creation of‘Gladio’ and the request to deploy more troops in the north-east may

32Taviani’s statements are fully reported in REPORT 1, 12–13, as well as in P. E.Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo, 406–7.33Foreign Service dispatch No. 996, ‘Request by Minister of Defence for Increase in USforces Stationed in Italy’, 21 Jan. 1957, in NAW, RG 59, Central Decimal Files, box3620, f. 765.5-MSP/1-257, 765.5-MSP/1-257. See also a later document, ItalianMinister of Defence (Taviani) to the US Secretary of State (Wilson), 11 Jan.1957, inNAW, RG 59, Central Decimal Files 1955–1959, box 2539, TAB A to 611.65/2–1457.

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therefore have been part of a broader effort spurred by the presence of anumber of new Soviet divisions deployed in Hungary, but it was alsopart of a general trend of close military cooperation that was already apermanent feature of Italian security policy.

Finally, one should also keep in mind the very tense domesticpolitical situation Italy was facing in the summer and autumn of 1956,when the pro-Western orientation of its foreign policy was beingchallenged by a series of internal developments that had begun with theelection of the quasi-neutralist figure Giovanni Gronchi to thePresidency of the Republic the previous year. In the autumn of 1956this trend seemed to undergo yet another sudden acceleration when thehitherto pro-communist Italian Socialist Party (PSI) started a series oftalks with the pro-Western Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI) todiscuss a possible reunification – perhaps to be achieved at the price ofthe PSDI’s strong anti-communist stance.34 It seems quite plausible,therefore, that the pro-Western forces in the Italian government mayhave tried to strengthen the Western orientation of the country andprevent any future slip into a more neutralist position by enteringsome binding military agreements which would firmly anchor Italy toNATO and to the US. While the ‘Gladio’ accord clearly did not haveany public impact like the establishment of the two additional divisionsdemanded by Taviani in January 1957 would have had, it does seem tofit into the same political pattern that had shaped US–Italian militaryrelations for the past year and a half and that would continue for quitesome time.

The Structure

The state of the new structure is spelled out in detail in a report draftedby the SAD section of SIFAR in June 1959. By then, it was clear that theresearch and the selection of the personnel for the stay-behind networkwas fully under way, even if the organization was still a long way frombeing fully manned. Only the two large guerrilla units (Stella Alpinaand Stella Marina), which clearly benefited from being the heirs of theprevious clandestine structures, were well on the way to becoming fullyoperational.

The Report listed as the main lines along which the operation wasbeing developed: (1) completing the establishment of the centraldirectorate (SAD) and developing the overall plan of operations; (2)completing the creation of the training centre (CAG), and establishingan operational doctrine; (3) fully establishing the communication

34On this subject see Leopoldo Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra: Importanza elimiti della presenza americana in Italia (Roma: Laterza 1999), Ch.1.

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centre, both for long-range contacts with the stay-behind units and forjamming enemy broadcasting; (4) planning such key features of theoperation as security, personnel selection, training, organization andintelligence; (5) carrying out special training courses either in the US orunder joint American and Italian instructors in Italy; (6) activating the40 special nuclei – the ‘operational branches’ - that would operatebehind the enemy lines and that should already be pre-constituted inpeacetime, rather than trying to infiltrate them behind enemy lines in anemergency; (7) creating additional guerrilla units; (8) preparing anddeploying secret equipment and arms caches; these would be specialmaterials and radio equipment for the 40 nuclei, and arms andammunition for the larger guerrilla units; (9) training the cadres; (10)conducting aerial and terrestrial recognition of the areas where theunits would operate; (11) collecting photographic documentation andpublications on special operations; (12) conducting experimentalactivities (air, sea and land).

The whole structure was to be organized on two levels. There were40 small nuclei (30 of which were activated by 1961) would include2–3 members and 2 radio operators and carry out such tasks asintelligence (6 nuclei ‘I’), stay-behind (10 ‘S’), propaganda (6 ‘P’),evasion and escape (6 ‘E’), guerrilla (12 ‘G’): they would be based on agrand total of about 172 men, under the leadership of about 32‘organizers’. Then there would be five large guerrilla units in a highstate of readiness (UPI, Unita di Pronto Impiego), namely the StellaAlpina (which already numbered a force of about 600, but whichshould be brought up to a total of a 1,000 and be capable of mobilizinganother 1,000 men), the Stella Marina (another 200 men), theRododendro, Ginestra and Azalea, each numbering between 100 and200 men. All together, the five larger units should total a maximum ofabout 1,500 men, with an additional 1,500 to be mobilized ifnecessary.

According to the original documents on which the parliamentaryreports have been based, however, these estimates turned out to be toohigh: the list of external personnel recruited for the stay-behindoperation (i.e. not including the SIFAR personnel acting as instructors,planners, etc.) never amounted to more than 622 members, of whichabout half were selected between 1958 and 1967 and the rest in theperiod between 1967 and 1990.35 These figures were later confirmed asmore realistic than the original ones of 1,500/2,000 by the Head of thenew Intelligence Service (SISMI), General. Inzerilli, during a hearing infront of one of the parliamentary committees.36

35REPORT 1, 79.36Ibid., 81.

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The organizational plan focused mostly on northern Italy (defined asZones I and II) but, as a second stage, it also conceived as possible anextension of the operations to the central and southern parts of thecountry (Zones III and IV). The report also made clear that the unitswere being prepared to operate either in case of occupation by theenemy or, in case of internal subversion, in order to spur the localpopulation to resist and to maintain the continuity of the presence ofthe state.

One of the most controversial aspects of the whole operation hasbeen the deployment of the arms caches (NASCO) throughout thepossible zones of operation, since some of these weapons may havebeen used for very different purposes than those originally planned for.Between 1959 and 1960 most of this material was provided by the CIAand stored in Naples before being sent to the CAG at Capo Marrargiu.By the early 1960s there were already enough supplies to equip 30 outof the 40 nuclei which should eventually be set up: according to theparliamentary reports, they included explosives, weapons, ammunition,rifles, hand grenades, daggers, mortars, light machine guns, pistols,rocket launchers, radios, binoculars, and various other devices.37

Deployment in the ‘peripheral areas’ began in 1961 with the firstNASCO, and continued in the following years: another one in 1962, 32in 1963 and 74 in 1964. When the matter was investigated in 1990, theItalian secret service provided the parliamentary committees with a listof 139 NASCOs. The weapons were usually stored underground andtheir deployment was done at night, in order to keep the wholeoperation absolutely secret. Nevertheless, two of them were acciden-tally found, one by some workers in 1966 and a second one in 1968 bya Carabinieri patrol which obviously ignored the nature of what theyhad found. This led to the decision to withdraw the whole set of armscaches in 1972, an operation which was completed by June 1973. Allthe equipment was recovered, with the exception of two caches of lightarms, whose final destiny has never been cleared up.38

Financially, the stay-behind operation already had at its disposal anoverall amount of installations and equipment with a value of about1,500,000,000 Italian lire, and could count on an annual budget ofanother 225 million lire.39 According to one of the Parliamentaryreports, the operation also received a total CIA contribution of

37REPORT 1, 88, footnote 121.38Actually 10 of the original 139 caches were not retrieved in 1973 but in 1990, as theyhad been hidden in places where their retrieval would require some complex demolitionwork. REPORT 1, 91–8.39Stato Maggiore della Difesa, SIFAR – Ufficio ‘R’, Sezione SAD, 1 June 1959, ‘LeForze Speciali del SIFAR e l’operazione Gladio’, reproduced in Coglitore and Scarso,

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451 million lire from 1957 to 1967, and of another 62.5 million lirefrom 1968 to 1972. A second, special CIA contribution for procure-ment of operational material was estimated at about 287 million lirefor the first ten years, and then a mere trickle for the following years.All together, if one takes into account the initial funding provided bythe CIA for the purchase of the area at Capo Marrargiu and the settingup of the training centre, the total US contribution to Operation‘Gladio’ can be calculated to around 1.3 billion lire.40

According to his memoirs, Defence Minister Taviani personallymade a point of discussing the establishment of ‘Gladio’ with theSACEUR, General Alfred M. Gruenther, whom he regarded as a closepersonal friend.41 He managed to have Italy formally invited to becomea member of the Alliance’s Coordination and Planning Committee on 2March 1959, and in May of that same year a SIFAR representative, theHead of SAD Colonel Fettarappa Sandri, took part in a meeting of theCPC as a member. Later on, in April 1964, Italy became a member of amore restricted group, the Allied Coordinating Committee (ACC),which included only the US, the UK, France, West Germany and theBenelux countries.42 In a few years after its creation, therefore, theItalian stay-behind organization was included in NATO and began amultilateral cooperation with its Western European counterparts.

Afterwards

The story so far contains few, if any, elements capable of raising anysuspicions about the possible involvements of the stay-behind structurein any illegal activities. While largely incomplete, the documentationprovided to the parliamentary committees and abundantly cited in theirreports shows that until the early 1960s Operation ‘Gladio’ wasnothing else than the joint establishment by the SIFAR and the CIA of aclandestine network charged with conducting all sorts of stay-behindactivities in case a portion of Italian territory was occupied by enemyforces or fell prey to internal subversion. The documentary record hintsat a certain divergence of opinion between the two intelligence agencies

La notte dei gladiatori. Inzerilli in his memoirs gives more or less the same figure, 220million lire: Inzerilli, Gladio, 72.40REPORT 1, 84–5.41Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo, 408 and 427–8 for his personal relationshipwith Gruenther.42While the CPC was a NATO structure, having being set up by the Alliance in 1952and being strictly linked to SACEUR, the ACC was a sort of liaison agency betweenthose NATO countries which had a stay-behind network and was created mainly withthe purpose of standardizing them. REPORT 1, 104–5. See also Inzerilli, Gladio, 61–4.

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as to the order of their respective priorities, reveals a certainsluggishness in developing the project, and shows the substantialfinancial support provided by the US for its implementation. Someadditional glimpses on ‘Gladio’s’ activities come from the memoirs ofGeneral Paolo Inzerilli, who was head of the organization from 1974 to1986: writing in retrospect about the situation he found when hebecame its leader, Inzerilli states that in its first 20 years of life thenetwork had mostly focused on building up its structure by recruitingand training its members, to the detriment of operational planningwhich, he found, had been sorely neglected.43 And yet even from thesesparse comments it is difficult to grasp anything particularly sensitive orcontentious.

Why, then, was the revelation of this operation such a controversialmatter? The main reason can be found in the suspicion that what is toldin this narrative reconstruction of the origins of the project may nothave been the full story; that the ‘Gladio’ structure may later have beeninvolved in other activities, and in particular that it may have beensomewhat related to the so-called ‘Strategy of tension’, the wave ofterrorist attacks that jeopardized Italian democracy and shocked Italiansociety for more than a decade between the end of the 1960s and theearly 1980s.44 The parliamentary committees have acquired some laterdocumentation that shows a certain ambiguity on this subject, and it isnecessary therefore to give it a rather cursory look in order to round offthis essay.

According to two notes drafted by the SAD in the autumn of 1963(basically two versions of the same document, one drafted in Octoberand the second in November), there had been some gradual evolutionof the original principles according to which the project should operate.Given the very peculiar nature of the situation in which some of thelarger guerrilla units were going to operate (i.e., near the Yugoslavborder), some of these units had been gradually given the task to keepunder control, and if necessary neutralize, subversive activitiesconducted in peacetime (my emphasis) in their area of competence.The first note then proceeded to mention the fact that the US

43Inzerilli, Gladio, 27–8.44In his book, Daniele Ganser repeatedly tries to demonstrate, for instance, that‘Gladio’ was behind the 1964 coup manque organized by Gen. De Lorenzo, ademonstration of force that was probably conceived by the General and President Segnito illegally influence the course of Italian politics and steer the Italian centre-leftgovernment towards the right: and yet Ganser offers no primary sources to support histhesis, nor does he succeed in doing so in the following pages of his chapter on Italy.Daniel Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in WesternEurope (London: Frank Cass 2005), 70–2.

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representatives in the ‘Gladio’ committee had expressed their cleardesire to intensify the activities of the operation. In particular, they hadsuggested that (1) the SAD and the CAG should adjust some of theirprogrammes to the principles of the counter-insurgency doctrine, whichwas then being promoted by the US military with great encouragementby the Kennedy administration; (2) that the Italian base might be usedfor external activities, unrelated to ‘Gladio’, such as counter-insurgencytraining courses for foreign elements (in particular from Africancountries); (3) the utilization of Italian instructors outside of Italy forthe same purpose; (4) the formation of a highly qualified group ofcounter-insurgency instructors; (5) the activation of some members of‘Gladio’ on Italian territory with roles of propaganda and counter-propaganda – a project which the CIA was willing to support with thenecessary equipment and perhaps financially as well.

According to the note, the Italian side was ready to accept part ofthese proposals, in particular the formation of a highly specialized coreof officers and the implementation of counter-insurgency courses,which could be attended by some selected officers as well as by somemembers of the ‘Gladio’ organization. In particular, both the Octoberversion of this note as well as the later one mention the fact that theStella Alpina group was in direct contact with the infiltration andexpansion attempts of the ‘anti-national Slav trend’ and that it wasalready partially active with propaganda and counter-propagandameasures.45 That there was a certain pressure from the US to adapt thestructure of Operation ‘Gladio’ to new, initially unforeseen, tasks isalso reflected by a document from January 1966, related to a meeting ofthe US–Italian ‘Gladio’ committee. On that occasion one of the USrepresentatives seems to have suggested that while it was important tomaintain the level of efficiency that the structure had achieved, it shouldalso redirect its activities according to a programme which mightenable it to produce some results even in peacetime – in particular, inrelation to the doctrines of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Italianofficers, for instance, could attend some courses on this subject at theUS Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.46

The records provided to the parliamentary committees do notcontain any information about the possible Italian replies to thesesuggestions. The fact that they were reiterated in 1966, however, seemsto suggest that the Italian side did not show the same amount of interestas their American counterparts in the doctrines of counter-insurgency.The only reference to a concrete application of the new theories by SADand some elements of the Stella Marina unit is the documentation

45REPORT 1, 41–2.46REPORT 2, 19.

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related to a ‘counterinsurgency exercise’ codenamed ‘Delfino’ (Dol-phin), in the Trieste area, between 15 and 24 April 1966. The structureof the exercise, fully described in a report dated May 1966, shows ascenario in which an insurgency is gradually being promoted in the areaclose to Yugoslavia but without any clear violation of the borders,leading to a substantial takeover of the city of Trieste, to which the‘Gladio’ members should respond adequately with all means at theirdisposal.47 Aside from this exercise, there seems to have been little – ifany – emphasis on counter-insurgency in ‘Gladio’. Later documentsseem to confirm that ‘Delfino’ was an isolated exercise and, above all,that the Italian side continued to regard with some scepticism theAmerican proposals to use ‘Gladio’ to face internal subversion as wellas external threats.

In autumn 1972, in particular, the US seemed to have conditionedthe continuation of their financial support for the operation on anadequate adaptation of ‘Gladio’ to meet the threat of a large-scaleinternal insurrection. Even in this case, however, the matter seems tohave been dropped.48 An indirect confirmation of this comes from thememoirs of General Inzerilli, who states that it was in that year that theinitial agreement with the CIA had been replaced by a ‘mini-agreement’valid for the next two years. According to Inzerilli, the new agreementsubstantially cut the financial support from the US service and reducedthe material dependence of the Italian network.49

These documents provide the only link to a possible degeneration of‘Gladio’ from its original purposes to an internal counter-insurgencyone. They seem to confirm, however, that while the US probably putsome pressure on the Italians for a long period of time to expand theactivities of the operation, there was a clear resistance from the Italianside to do so.50 Even the fact that the only counter-insurgency exercise

47Ibid., 42–6. Inzerilli mentions a similar large-scale exercise, still carried out in Triestebut by the Carabinieri, in 1965, under the codename ‘Aquila Bianca’: Inzerilli,Gladio, 38.48REPORT 1, 46–8.49Inzerilli, Gladio, 66.50For a long list of possible links between US intelligence operatives and Italianterrorists, see for instance the work of Judge Salvini, one of the legal authorities whoinvestigated the strategy of tension: Sentenza - ordinanza del Giudice Istruttore presso ilTribunale Civile e Penale di Milano, dr. Guido Salvini, nel procedimento penale neiconfronti di ROGNONI Giancarlo ed altri, in 5www.strano.net/stragi/tstragi/salvini/index.html4. Salvini, however, takes for real the (in) famous document ‘Supplement B’of the US Army Field Manual (FM) 30–31, demonstrated to be a Soviet forgery since1976. On the influence of counterinsurgency theories in the US, and on the Kennedyadministration in particular, there is an ample literature: Douglas S. Blaufarb, TheCounterinsurgency Era: US Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present

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took place in Trieste seems to confirm this reluctance, because it wasbased on a scenario in which the external threat was as relevant andcrucial to the exercise as the internal upheaval which should have beenthe core of the exercise. Besides, even if ‘Gladio’ had been adaptedaccording to the American suggestions, there seems to be only a vagueconceptual link between the counter-insurgency doctrine – whichemphasized psychological, political and welfare methods to counter-insurgency propaganda techniques – with the wave of politicalterrorism that hit Italy from 1969.

Other possible rumours related to ‘Gladio’ regard its possible use tocounter the independence movement that unleashed a series ofbombings in South Tyrol/Alto Adige in the early and mid-1960s. ThatSIFAR itself was involved in the repression of these attacks seemsunquestionable, but the doubt has been advanced that perhaps somemembers of ‘Gladio’ itself might have been activated and involved insome of the counter-terrorist activities. The only confirmation of thispossibility so far has been found in the testimony of two members ofthe CAG (but not of the ‘Gladio’ structure itself), who in 1991admitted having been asked to draft some plans for reprisals to beconducted on Austrian territory should the terrorist attacks continueunabated.51

Finally, the most pervasive doubts regarding the whole operation hasalways been that the documentation provided to the parliamentarycommittees might have been just the top of an iceberg. Rumours aboutsuper-secret structures, parallel ‘Gladios’, and other similar clandestineorganizations that would be responsible for enacting the ‘strategy oftension’ have continued to surface in the media. In a country that hasknown the shock of the secret para-Masonic lodge P2, a large networkthat included a vast section of Italy’s nomenklatura, it is perhapsnormal to nurture this kind of suspicions. Nevertheless, while there arestill some gaps to be filled in the reconstruction of the Italian stay-behind operation, what has been made clear so far tells a differentstory.

(New York: Free Press c1977); Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development ofAmerican Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (NY UP 1986); MichaelMcClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, andCounter-Terrorism, 1940–1990 (New York: Pantheon Books 1992); ArthurM. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books1979), 495–503; Theodore Shackley, The Third Option: An American View ofCounterinsurgency Operations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).51Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 77–82. Inzerilli hints that one of his men had been intouch with general surveillance against terrorist attacks in Alto Adige: Inzerilli,Gladio, 16.

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Conclusions

The documents released to the parliamentary committees, therefore, donot allow us to conclude that Operation ‘Gladio’ was involved in anyillegal activities connected with the terrorism of the late 1960s and ofthe 1970s. They do not help solving, in other words, any of themysteries which beleaguered Italian post-war history for more than adecade. For clarifying that dramatic and shady period of Italian history,much more documentation is needed than is currently available.

If they cannot be used to look for an answer to these questions,however, the parliamentary reports provide a very useful source foradding several important elements to the history of Italy’s foreign andsecurity policy. First of all, they confirm the conceptual andpsychological heritage of World War II: the profound fear of enemyoccupation, the importance attributed to the results that a well-organized clandestine resistance might achieve, the concern withkeeping alive in the occupied part of the country even a meresimulacrum of the state’s legitimacy – they all testify to the powerfulimpact, indeed the shock, of the traumatic experience of the division ofItaly after September 1943, when the country was split asunder andtwo governments vied with each other for the heart and soul of theItalians. Since in case of war it was quite likely that a part of thecountry might be occupied, Italy could not be caught unprepared onceagain.

The documents also confirm that the key tenet of Italy’s security inthe immediate aftermath of the war was the defence of the Trieste areaand the north-east. It was here that the two main threats to the countryintertwined with each other and created a serious potential menace fordisrupting the new socio-political pattern established after the war aswell as for Italy’s territorial integrity. The external pressure comingfrom Yugoslavia remained for many years the core of Italy’s defencecalculations, and until the schism between Stalin and Tito in June 1948it was regarded as a likely possibility that Belgrade might support andhelp organize an internal revolutionary uprising led by the CommunistParty. The ‘Gladio’ documents confirm, therefore, that the borderregion with Yugoslavia was seen as the most dangerous trouble spot forItaly and that much of the attention of the security establishment wasfocused on its problems.

From a broader perspective, the reports also show some of the mainfeatures of Italy’s foreign policy. The episode of the refusal toparticipate in NATO’s CPC when the invitation was first issued in1952, for instance, confirms the somewhat exaggerated importanceattached to status and prestige by the foreign policy-making elite. Paritywith the superpowers was immediately discarded as an option after the

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end of the war, but non-discrimination vis-a-vis the other Europeanpowers remained a constant goal of post-war Italian diplomacy.

Finally, one should note the remarkable pro-Americanism thatcharacterised the making of some crucial decisions for the country’ssecurity. It was to Washington, rather than London or Paris, that theItalian military were looking when the matter came to a head and thedecision to set up the stay-behind network was taken. It may well bepossible to read between the lines of the parliamentary reports and assome interpretations have suggested, maintain that the decision wasinitially taken to prevent the US from setting up its own clandestinestay-behind network in Italy. Nevertheless, the documentation showsan unprecedented degree of intimacy and confidence between thesecurity and intelligence organizations of the two countries, which isalso confirmed by the results of other research in several related fields.The US provided the financial support, the material, and much of thetraining for the establishment of the stay-behind network; perhaps itdid not provide the initial input, but certainly it was there all the timeand played a crucial role throughout the various steps of its creation.The memoirs of General Inzerilli also testify to an unprecedenteddegree of intimacy between the two services.52 The reports alsoconfirm, however, that such a relationship was far from being a one-way street: whenever the Italian security service was not willing tofollow the US advice it insisted on having its own way, and – as far onecan see on the basis of this limited evidence – it often succeeded indoing so.

In short, the parliamentary reports tell a story which fits very wellwith the results of historical research on Italy’s foreign and securitypolicy after World War II, and confirm some of its key assumptions. Itwould be extremely interesting to have access to the completedocumentation of the ‘Gladio’ operation and explore these matters inmore depth, but even in its current, limited state these records providean important additional link in our knowledge of a tense phase of theCold War.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marilena Gala, Maria Eleonora Guasconi, PaulKoedijk and Olav Riste for their comments on a previous version of thispaper; and Tim Naftali for allowing me to cite extensively from hisunpublished paper ‘Villa Angleton: The United States and ItalianIntelligence’.

52Inzerilli, Gladio, 38 and 66.

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