Talk:Operation Gladio/Archive 1

message: A response from the US Gov.
URL here ... http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2006/Jan/20-127177.html
"Swiss researcher Daniele Ganser, who works at Zurich’s Center for Security Studies, has also been fooled by the forgery [FM 30-31B].  Ganser treats the forgery as if it was a genuine document in his 2005 book on “stay behind” networks, Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe and includes it as a key document on his Web site on the book.  Ganser writes, “FM 30-31B is maybe the most important Pentagon document with regard to the stay-behind armies.”  He goes on to speculate that the bogus document may provide the blueprint for terrorist acts that occurred during the Cold War in Western Europe."
:Curiously, the claim to the authenticity of FM 30-31B is actually examined by Ganser and others, with answers (of course) in the affirmative.
:The history of FM 30-31B itself is remarkable. The Pentagon document first surfaced in Turkey in 1973 where the newspaper Baris in the midst of a whole range of mysterious acts of violence and brutality which shocked the Turkish society announced the publication of a secretive US document. Thereafter the Baris journalist who had come into the possession of FM 30-31B disappeared and was never heard of again. Despite the apparent danger Turkish Colonel Talat Turhan two years later published a Turkish translation of the top-secret FM 30-31 and revealed that in Turkey NATO’s secret stay-behind army was codenamed “Counter-Guerrilla” directed by the Special Warfare Department. From Turkey the document found its way to Spain where in 1976 the newspaper Triunfo, despite heavy pressures to prevent the publication, published excerpts of FM 30-31B upon the fall of the Franco dictatorship. In Italy on 27 October 1978 excerpts of FM 30-31B were published by the political magazine L'Europeo, whereupon the printed issues of the magazine were confiscated. The breakthrough for the document came arguably not in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, when in Italy the secret anticommunist P2 Freemason lodge of Licio Gelli was discovered. Among the documents seized by the Italian police ranged also FM 30-31B. The Italian parliamentary investigation into P2 decided to publish FM 30-31B in the appendix of the final public parliamentary report on P2 in 1987.
:http://cryptome.org/fm30-31b/FM30-31B.htm
:The State Department, OTOH, describes a completely different process of discovery having to do with an embassy in Bangkok.
:Wli 19:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: US Government response

message: gladio can be considered a fact. As a taxpayer I always wondered, what it is they do with my money ...
besides gladio there must be much more ...
:I concur, its not hard to believe that they would such a thing but then I remember Project MK Ultra and 9/11.
: Justify your claim.  Assertation is not truth.  Toby Douglass 11:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Taxpayment

message: Looks like the fauxlibertarians/federalists are at work on this thread as they are all over Wikpedia. 
This wikipedia article reads like it was written by the CIA or CorpGovMedia. GLADIO happened.
Here are some links for any true lefties who want to fight it out with the wikipedia fauxlibertarian clique, and get things a-right:
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/02/18/120.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,528099,00.html
http://hnn.us/articles/12253.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0714685003/qid%3D1120946097/sr%3D2-1/ref%3Dpd%5Fbbs%5Fb%5F2%5F1/002-2924233-2309609
:I hope anyone who works on the article keeps Wikipedia:Neutral point of view in mind. There is no Wikipedia article that should read like it was written solely by any one faction. --Dhartung | Talk 05:59, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: To the person providing us with the links to "... fight it out with the wikipedia fauxlibertarian clique ...": this an Encyclopedia, not a political forum. There are plenty other resources on the Internet for political discussion, let alone indoctrination. / Stemel 10:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I must agree. I don't think a conspiracy theory like this has anything to do with right/left alignment, no matter how you look at it. And what on earth is a 'fauxlibertarian'? A libertarian who isn't really a libertarian? Or, in the view of the self-labeled 'leftist' who made this comment; any libertarian who is not a libertarian socialist? :/ Joffeloff 12:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If I had to guess (and a guess is precisely what it is), it would be someone who calls themself a libertarian but does not adhere to traditional or commonly-accepted definitions of libertarianism.  In my own words, I tend to call such folks the "There-oughta-be-a-law!" libertarians.  An example would be someone who calls him/herself a libertarian but who supports such things as seat belt laws for adults (as opposed to children), so-called "blue laws", expansion of government programs or creation of entire new government agencies for purposes not clearly delineated by unambiguous national necessity (e.g. border defense, currency printing, etc).  Longshot14 16:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Looks like the rightwingers/fauxlibertarians at work here

message: The "translated" article on the bottom of the page is terrible: translate.google.com does a terrible job and I'd suggest to remove the link entirely, maybe somebody can translate is or something, but as it is now, it's useless. Lio 80.86.116.50 19:56, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Remove the translated article

message: I propose to remove these phrases and replace them with definite statements:
*it is widely believed 
*had strong ties
*is said to be
*also has been named
*has been accused
*may also have had something to do with 
*some have suspected
*it is also unclear
*linked to
*closely assocated with 
If it is true we should say so, and cite the source. If we can't cite a source, we should take it out entirely. Thoughts? Tom Harrison (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Permanent Committee for the control of intelligence services of Belgium (click on presentation->history) The comite I was created after a parliamentary investigation into operation Gladio. It's task is keep a watch on the intelligence agencies in Belgium after this scandal. More information can be found on the web site www.dekamer.be although those documents are in dutch or french. 81.165.163.101 21:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 00:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does this mean that now that banner can be removed that this article might be a hoax??81.165.163.101 09:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed. I don't know who put that there. No article with 40+ references could be called a hoax by anyone except a troll. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 12:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Just say it

message: Authoritative sources for this are all over the place. 3 European PM's, a Europarliament resolution, documents obtained via the FOIA (largely concerning the Gehlen Organization), apprehended agents of Operation Gladio (e.g. Vincenzo Vinciguerra) testifying, and so on.
1. This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a real, confirmed, corrupt government/NATO operation like MK-ULTRA. It didn't arise spontaneously. It was entirely unanticipated (apart from some notion of government-sponsored agents provocateur being involved in Red Brigades affairs largely isolated to Italy) until the PM of Italy broke the news.
2. It is confirmed. Declassified documents, participants confessing, 3 heads of state (France, Italy, Switzerland) confessing, the Europarliament passing resolutions on it, 3 countries investigating it (Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy) and so on are confirmation in the form of authoritative and supplementary sources. The dismantling of the stay-behind armies was a large public event in a number of countries. The stay-behind army in Finland (IIRC) is still in existence but no longer clandestine; it has some annual public ceremony.
If this article is going to stand as it is we absolutely need verification not just for the Italian operations but also for the other countries it is alleged to have occurred in. The entry on the UK does not, for example, makes no sense. It jumps from the creation of the SOE, which is characterised as a 'stay-behind' army (it wasn't - it operated in foreign territory for the most part) and then jumps to the alleged role of the same(?) organisation in assasinating dissidents without any evidence. DJ Clayworth 03:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: This is confirmed; why is it a "conspiracy theory" and/or "unconfirmed?"

message: I just wanted to congratulate the editors who've improved this article over the last several months. As much as a year ago, I looked at the original article (just titled Gladio then) and imagined re-organizing it with a separate article for stay-behind and breaking down by country all the stories that have come to light. Obviously Italy is a big issue, while Austria isn't, and the article now reflects that much better. At the time, though, it looked like a horrendously big task and I would have preferred working from print sources as opposed to dodgy POV web sources, so I didn't even start. I'm very pleased to see that it has come to resemble what I hoped it would. --Dhartung | Talk 08:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Good work.

message: It has been suggested that stay-behind should merged into Operation Gladio. Just for the record I'm against it. There were other types of stay-behind after WW2. There is some evidence of a stay-behind in Sweden, but I guess most of it is still classified. // Liftarn
:Stay-behind in Sweden was part of Gladio. Tazmaniacs 20:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's been alleged, but Sweden wasn't part of NATO, either. As much as NATO country stay-behinds were irregular and probably illegal, Sweden must be more so. In any case, the Iraq war appears to be largely conducted by a stay-behind operation. I think it's important to define the generic term in its own article so that this one can concentrate on the specific history of the NATO (and related) operation. --Dhartung | Talk 05:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree, the term "stay-behind" isn't just a Gladio concoction, there have been many stay-behind operations, I've heard the term mentioned somewhere, I don't know where though. --Saint-Paddy 21:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merging

message: Austria is not a NATO-country, but neutral as Finland or Switzerland. Therefore the chapter about Austria should be removed to the non-NATO-countries. --Rosa Lux 17:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Austria 

message: Do we have sources for CIA support to the Algiers putsch? David.Monniaux 18:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CIA support for the Algiers putsch? 

message: ΛΟΚ (Λόχος Ορεινών Καταδρομών = Mountain Commandos Batallion) is the name of the Greek Army Special Forces. It is not of the stay-behind force. While before 1974 only right of center people were allowed it never was or is a stay-behind force. A subset of former LOK members were the stay-behind forces following the Kokkini Provia (=Red Shipskeen) plan. Unfortunately attempting to change this part of the article will feel like vandalism. The true name of the Greek stay-behind force is unknown though more likely than not it is something like Λόχος Σκιά (Shadow Company).Ikokki 23:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's an example of something that's simply blatantly re-reported from Ganser's book, which is online. It's actually pretty close to being copyvio. I've previously suggested this article desperately needs to move from an assertive position to an NPOV position, citing sources and making sure that extraordinary claims are laid at the feet of their authors. As it is, someone seems to have gone beyond Ganser in this section; he doesn't even feel certain that LOK was involved in the coup, but our article does. Until there's a major revamp, this page is going to continue to have such problems. --Dhartung | Talk 00:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are several factual errors in the opeing paragraph concerning Greece:1. The LOK were not founded until 1946-47, well into the Greek Civil War, and were never secret. LOK remain to this day the main Special Forces units of the Army. 2.Papagos is mentioned as "LOK commander" in 1944. In 1944, Papagos was still in Dachau concentration camp, from where he would be released in May 1945, and furthermore did not assume command in the Armed Forces until 1949.3.The "Greek Mountain Brigade" referred to did exist, but was never a secret unit. It did play a role in the December of 1944 events though. If am therefore correcting these references. Cplakidas 12:31, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LOK 

message: I suggest renaming main country entries on "Gladio" to something along the lines of "Belgian stay-behind network" or "Italian stay-behind network," which are neutral names. "Gladio" is known under different names in different countries, using Gladio as name everywhere is just generalizing, and deminishes national differences. Intangible 04:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not a bad idea, if this is not an excuse for POV forking which would remove all the content from here. The content must be resumed, but this should remain the international page, as "Gladio" is the name under which it became known in the general public. Tazmaniacs 14:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  main articles on Gladio 

message: I really have no comment on whether or not it is too long - a cursory examination seems to indicate that the material presented is relevant and interesting, and is not written in a rambling manner. It is a very long article to plow through, and I am sure that some of these sections could become simply "See also" links; however, the introduction at the very beginning of the article and the Introduction section which follows it seem to summarize the topic quite nicely. The casual reader is given all the information he needs, and does not need to read the rest; but the rest is still there for those interested. LordAmeth 19:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my humble opinion, it should be split into multiple pieces before it becomes unmaintainable. The potential for further expansion is enormous. The article hasn't even begun to explore the connections to the Bavarian Illuminati and the Priory of Sion. --Shastra 15:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: WP:MilHist Assessment

message: it appears to me that a great deal of citation is still necessary in the entry. since previous attempts by other parties to label it as needing as much have failed, I won't go so far as to do that, but I will say that the article would be even more informative and convincing had it the proper citations. as it stands now, it seems like most of it is allegation. if so, it should be labelled as such. the topic is extremely intriguing as it stands. I would love to see it with all the right citations added. Spankmecold 18:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They are exactly 41 sources used in various occurences. Feel free to add a "citation needed" tag wherever you see a statement not supported by the source in question, as it can only improve the reliability of the article. Tazmaniacs 14:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The sources are quite unbalanced throughout this article, alas. Intangible 16:53, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put the TotallyDisputed tag to this article. The intro implies that CIA and NATO were responsible for the terrorist attacks, an assertion one cannot make to be factual. Intangible 15:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  fact check 

message: Golly! Does anyone but me read the Old Testament anymore? You ever meet any Dane, heck anyone at all named Absalom? The story of Absalom is in the Book of Samuel for Pete's sake. Is the rest of this article as screwed up as this? This really upsets me. Paul, in Saudi 16:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Shall we have revert war on this? Cplakidas reverted the reference to the Second Book of Samuel back to this Danish Archbishop. Can anyone cite such a person? Paul, in Saudi 16:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Do you guys mean Bishop Absalon of Lund (c. 1128–21 March 1201)?  Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 16:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Really? Imagine that! I shall have to grove over to Cplakidas' page before he reads my nasty remarks! (Who the heck would name their son Absolom?) Paul, in Saudi 16:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was traditional (and often still is) for people to change their names when they become a priest, bishop or pope (note that "John Paul II" is not a common name for a Pole. His real name was Karol Józef Wojtyła) Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 16:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, Paul, relax. Second, I didn't do anything with regards to that archbishop. Check the edit history again before becoming annoyed at people... Cplakidas 16:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That "the story of Absalom is in the Book of Samuel" is not disputed by anybody; the relevancy to this article here is. The reference to the Danish archbishop (which Absalom also was) is sourced. Tazmaniacs 23:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Danish Archbishop?

message: Starting at the top, going to the bottom, let me first try to fix spelling, wording and punctuation. If I get that done, I will then try to put the Italy stuff in the Italy section, or the Italy article. Then we can see what we got and try to make this read properly.Paul, in Saudi 08:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Daniele Ganser is over-sourced in this article. It would be better if at least two independent reputable sources are used for assertions in this article, instead of sourcing everything to Ganser alone. Intangible 09:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I Shall Start a ReWrite

message: Ireland seems to be the only country without a Gladio network. Anybody know why? Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 10:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No NATO member? Intangible 18:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Lots of non-Nato members had Gladio networks. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 18:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, CIA presence is ubiquitous. But I doubt a Soviet revolution could easily start in Ireland, which is still a deeply catholic country. Intangible 09:25, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The CIA were not so trusting in other countries - look at what they were up to in Latin America - also Catholic countries. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 11:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another reason might be because of the cozy relationship of the CIA with the Brits, which of course does not fall well with the Irish government. Intangible 22:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there might be something in this, Intangible. Possibly Ireland was considered MI6's turf. Its in the Irish papers today that MI6 has been active in Ireland, but there are few details. Another question is the relationship between Gladio and the IRA. It is well known that MI5 had extensively infiltrated all the terrorist groups in Northern Ireland and had a hand in some of the worst bombings as a way to discredit these organisations. Its an interesting bit of history, but we'll probably never know the details. Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 22:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ireland?