By Theodore Shoebat
France recently pulled out its ambassador from Italy as a response to the Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio meeting with Yellow Vesters who, as shoebat.com has shown, are full of nationalists who fantasize about beheading politicians and support attacking police officers and journalists. Paris said that criticisms coming from Italy its relationship with France appear questionable, as the French foreign ministry said:
“For several months, France has been the target of repeated criticism, baseless attacks and outrageous declarations that everyone knows about … This is unprecedented since the end of the war. To have disagreements is one thing, to exploit the relationship for electoral aims is another.”
The French foreign ministry also said that the criticisms coming from France “create a serious situation that questions the intentions of the Italian government with regards to its relationship to France.” The same statement referred to the meeting between the Italian official and Yellow Vesters as a provocation: “This latest provocation is unacceptable between neighbors and EU partners,” adding that di Maio “must be careful not to undermine our bilateral relationship through repeated acts of interference.”
Tensions between France and Italy sparked after French President Emmanuel Macron warned that populism was “spreading like leprosy.” Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini reacted by calling Macron a “very bad president” and blamed him for the Yellow Vest scenario. Di Maio not only met with Yellow Vesters but openly backed the movement, an action that has provoked France to pull its ambassador out of Rome and accuse the Italian government of verbal attacks “without precedent since World War II.” These tensions reveal, in the words of Simon Toubeau, “that behind this crisis lies a deeper rift over Europe.”
The Yellow Vest movement is a major nationalist and populist movement that has been lasting for weeks and has led to attacks on journalists and police. It is a nationalism that that Italy wants to see (being under a nationalist government itself), just as Frederic II and Joseph II wanted to see the rise of the nationalist and socialist uprisings in France and Bohemia in the 18th century. What makes this story fascinating is that Italy wants to see nationalism rise, and Italy was the major hotbed for the Gladio operations during the peak of the Cold War, in which intelligence agencies within NATO wanted to see nationalism rise in Europe.
Since it was the mission of NATO to spark nationalism in Western Europe, it is not far-fetched to suspect that the Yellow Vest movement would be to the aims of the conspirators.
From 1948 to the year 1990, the CIA, alongside the secret services of European countries, recruited and trained neo-Nazis, even former members of the Nazi Party, to form secret armies to fight the Soviets. It was taking place throughout Europe; in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France and even Turkey. The name given to this project was “Operation Gladio.” It was directed from the NATO headquarters in Brussels, the same city of the EU parliament. But the hotbed of Gladio terrorism was at its worst in Italy.
For example, in 1969, a brutal bombing was done in the Piazza Fontana in Milan, in which 16 people were killed and 80 injured. Most of the victims were farmers who, after selling their produce in the local market, were depositing their earnings in the Farmer’s Bank. At first the bombing was blamed on the Left. There were numerous other terrorist attacks in Italy in the late 60s to the 80s, the worst of which was the bombing of a waiting room at the Bologna railway station in 1980, in which 85 people were slaughtered and 200 injured.
The conspiracy for the Bologna Massacre was rooted right in US involvement.
Intelligence agencies within NATO worked with Nazi paramilitaries to coordinate terrorist attacks in Europe and blame them on the Soviet Union in order to spark nationalism. Within the Gladio operation, NATO worked with Guido Giannettini, an Italian secret service agent who himself was a nationalist (being a member of Young Italy). Giannettini was involved in the Bologna Massacre in 1969 in which dozens of people were slaughtered in a massive bombing attack (See Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies, ch. 9, p. 120). Giannettini worked closely with NATO and in 1961 even gave a lecture in the United States at the Naval War College entitled, “Techniques and Possibilities of a Coup d’Etat in Europe.” As Italian researchers Calvi and Laurent write:
“In November 1961, at the invitation of General Delvalle, commander of the Annapolis Marine School, in the United States, to hold a seminar of three days ‘on the techniques and possibilities of a coup d’état in Europe’, involving representatives of the Pentagon and of the CIA.”
These terrorist attacks were done as a way to make propaganda against the Communists, and also to scare people away from voting Left-wing. Neo-Fascist terrorists were involved, including a prominent member of the Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge, which has been involved in a variety of crimes including the murder of journalists. The CIA documented on the Right-wing terrorists and pointed out that there were indeed Masonic elements running these violent organizations, stated:
“In general, neo-fascism in Northern Italy is directed by former officer operating under the name of ‘Colonel M.’ The movement which includes in its ranks General Mario Caracciolo appears to be closely linked with certain Free Mason elements through Generals Navarra Viggiani and Alessandro Piazzoni.”
In a 1993 report published on the Independent, journalist Fiona Leney wrote:
“Those convicted in the original trial included four young neo-fascists, given life sentences for planting the bomb, two secret service officers and Licio Gelli, grand-master of the banned P2 Masonic Lodge.”
The same report documents how the bombings were part of a plan devised by government forces, that is, NATO’s Operation Gladio, in which Right-wing terrorists were recruited for the purpose of creating a secret army. The terrorist attacks were planned out and allowed in order to shift political climate:
“The attacks, usually bombings aimed at slaughtering as many civilians as possible, were initially blamed on the extreme left. Now it is accepted that they were part of a ‘Strategy of Tension’ intended to scare voters away from western Europe’s most popular communist party and into the arms of the Christian Democrats. … In 1984 a convicted neo-fascist, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was questioned by Bologna investigators. He testified that he had been recruited for an earlier car bomb attack near Venice by Gladio, a shadow army set up by the Italian secret services in the 1950s as part of a Nato plan to create guerrilla resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion or communist takeover in Nato countries. By the time Vinciguerra carried out his attack, in 1972, Gladio was considering pre-emptive action against the increasingly popular Communist Party, according to General Gerardo Serravalle, the secret service chief in charge of the Gladio network.
Forensic reports demonstrated conclusively that explosive from one Gladio arms dump had been used in the Venice car bombing. In Bologna, says Mr Trombetti, experts concluded that the blast, which demolished one wing of the station, was caused by ‘retrieved military explosive’. He is reluctant to be more specific but says one can draw one’s own conclusions.”
Vincenzo Vinciguerra is currently serving a life sentence for terrorism. He did a car bomb and murdered three members of the Right-wing Carabinieri. The objective of the killings was to make it seem that it was the Left who murdered them.
In 1985, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), wrote a report, which was archived by the CIA, on how American intelligence agents were working and collaborating with Nazis to counter the Soviets. In one part of the document it reads:
“Lacking an intelligence network targeted against its former ally, the Soviet Union, U.S. intelligence units turned to European anti-Communist resources to fill information gaps. These resources included former German and East European intelligence operatives and East European emigre political groups. Among them were Nazis (including Gestapo and SS members) and members of East European Fascist organizations. They were considered invaluable as informants. For example, GAO [Government Accountability Office] was told that in order to learn more about German communists, U.S. intelligence officers decided to question former Gestapo and SS members who had worked against such Communists.”
People may ask, ‘Why would the Italian government recruit terrorists for the purpose of causing terrorist attacks, and then put these same recruits in prison?” The answer is that it was not the entire Italian government who was involved, but an inner circle. There is a CIA within the CIA, an FBI within the FBI, a secret service agency within the secret service agency. There are agents who really believe that they are doing a mission for their country, unbeknownst of the schemes being devised by the inner circle of agents higher in the hierarchy.
This deliberate lack of transparency between agents and government officials was revealed by the resolution issued by the EU in 1990, which spoke of “operational bodies which are not subject to any form of democratic control and are of a completely clandestine nature at a time when greater Community cooperation in the field of security is a constant subject of discussion.” It also spoke of how “these organisations operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control and frequently those holding the highest government and constitutional posts are kept in the dark as to these matters”. Gladio was reflective of the reality of a government within a government, or an outside government manipulating the political climate of nations.
A report published by the Guardian in 2001 revealed that the CIA had supported neo-Fascist terrorists and that they had received their explosives from Germany:
“US intelligence services instigated and abetted rightwing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s, a former Italian secret service general has claimed.
The allegation was made by General Gianadelio Maletti, a former head of military counter-intelligence, at the trial last week of rightwing extremists accused of killing 16 people in the bombing of a Milan bank in 1969 – the first time such a charge has been made in a court of law by a senior Italian intelligence figure.
Gen Maletti, comannder of the counter-intelligence section of the military intelligence service from 1971 to 1975, said his men had discovered that a rightwing terrorist cell in the Venice region had been supplied with military explosives from Germany.”
General Gianadelio Maletti revealed that an objective of the CIA was to increase nationalist sentiment in Italy:
“The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism… I believe this is what happened in other countries as well.”
Maletti said that the Nixon administration superintended the operation:
“Don’t forget that [former US president Richard] Nixon was in charge and Nixon was a strange man, a very intelligent politician but a man of rather unorthodox initiatives.”
Nixon’s administration was involved in Operation Gladio and gave full authority to the CIA to direct and conduct covert operations for the US government. In 1970, Nixon signed the National Security Decision Memorandum 40, that stated:
“By covert action operations I mean those activities which, although designed to further official U.S. programs and policies abroad, are so planned and executed that the hand of the U.S. Government is not apparent to unauthorized persons.
The covert actions of the U.S. Government abroad shall be subject to coordination and control by the Director of Central Intelligence. All such covert action operations, unless otherwise specifically assigned by the President, shall be carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Nixon’s administration worked directly with a Nazi of the Third Reich, named Laszlo Pasztor, a member of the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross, which was responsible for the extermination of ten to fifteen thousand Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and others, and for deporting 80,000 people to death camps in Austria. Pasztor was commissioned by the US government to recruit neo-Nazis in Eastern Europe. This operation was in accordance to Gladio, which was to recruit Nazis and far-Right activists and militants. Pasztor would eventually work with Paul Weyrich, the founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, and in the early 2000s, Weyrich would work directly with none other than Robert Spencer, one of the figures invited to the 2007 Counterjihad Summit in Brussels, the headquarters of both the EU and NATO, and from where Operation Gladio was directed.
Italy is pushing for the nationalist surge in France, just as Italy was a center point for the conspiracy for European nationalism during the Gladio operation. Prepare for the Euro spring.