This documentary shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II.
These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture.
Codenamed 'Gladio' ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990).
Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.
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Stay-behind
Stay-behind är vad man kallar det NATO-kontrollerade nätverk av paramilitära grupper som skapades i Västeuropa under det kalla kriget för att underlätta gerillakrigföring och motstånd efter en eventuell sovjetisk invasion. Dessa paramilitära grupper mottog stöd från säkerhetstjänsten i respektive land och medlemmarna i grupperna rekryterades till största delen från den civila befolkningen. Det finns exempel på att ex-fascister rekryterades till medlemsskaran och man i dessa fall brydde sig mindre om vad de hade haft för sig under andra världskriget och mer om deras antikommunistiska åsikter.
I Sverige organiserades 1946 eller 1947 ett Stay-behind-nätverk av den hemliga underrättelseorganisationen Grupp B, som var en föregångare till IB. De två ledande personerna från politiskt håll var dåvarande statsminister Tage Erlander och inrikesminister Eije Mossberg.
Nätverket var mest aktivt under 1950- och 1960-talen och omfattade 3-4 000 personer, främst på landsbygden. De rekryterade personerna kontrollerades av SÄPO och många fick utbildning i gerillakrigföring i England och USA. Dagens Nyheter publicerade artiklar om nätverket under 1990 och TV4-programmet Kalla Fakta har sänt intervjuer med medlemmar i nätverket.
Den svenske direktören Alvar Lindencrona fick år 1949 tillsammans med bland annat Televerkets generaldirektör Håkan Sterky i uppdrag att bilda ett nätverk. År 1954 hade rörelsen fått en tydligare form med representanter för arbetarrörelsen, bondekretsar, Televerket, polisväsendet och Krigsmakten. Man var emellertid mycket angelägen om att hålla nätverket under civil och inte militär kontroll, detta för att förhindra att information om nätverket skulle läcka ut. De värnpliktigas utbildning i det "fria kriget" var en avläggare av detta. Stay-behind kom till allmänhetens kännedom 1990 genom en artikel i Dagens Nyheter av Bjarne Stenquist.
Efter att ha ingått i en kommission som granskade Palmeutredningen krävde Inga-Britt Ahlenius 2013 att Riksdagen och Regeringen skulle kartlägga rörelsen.
Operation Gladio
Operation Gladio (Italian: Operazione Gladio) is the codename for a clandestine North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) "stay-behind" operation in Italy during the Cold War. Its purpose was to continue armed resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. The name Gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries.
The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and any relationship to terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960s to early 1980s) is the subject of debate. Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.
In 1951, CIA agent William Colby, based at the CIA station in Stockholm, supported the training of stay-behind armies in neutral Sweden and Finland and in the NATO members Norway and Denmark. In 1953, the police arrested right winger Otto Hallberg and discovered the preparations for the Swedish stay-behind army. Hallberg was set free and charges against him were dropped.