I’d only recently learned of it, and quite accidentally. Now most of us are familiar with Operation Gladio. This is the most concise version of Operation Gladio I was able to find, essentially: ‘part of a post-World War II program set up by the CIA and NATO [as well as MI-6] supposedly to thwart future Soviet/communist invasions or influence in Italy and Western Europe. In the absence of Soviet invasion, it seems to have been to discredit left-wing groups and politicians through the use of “the strategy of tension,” including false-flag terrorism. Think most recently: violent provocateurs Venezuela, same for Nicaragua, now Haiti again (with police snipers), where else in Our Backyard just in the past year or two?
From ‘Wikispooks’ (not kidding) online encyclopedia (As it’s all creative commons, I’ll borrow at will.):
‘Operation Gladio B’ (also referred to as Gladio 2) is a codename the FBI used since 1997 for ongoing relations between the US intelligence community, the US military and Al Qaeda. This was revealed by whistleblower Sibel Edmonds (whose information Daniel Ellsberg rates as “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers. The original Operation Gladio was the European network of fascist “stay-behind” cells that NATO/CIA/MI6 trained to carry out bombings and assassinations in the event of a Soviet invasion. Gladio B substituted Muslims for fascists, and continues to carry out false flag attacks in Europe and maybe elsewhere.
Apart from Alan Francovich‘s remarkable 1992 film which was broadcast on the BBC, the original Operation Gladio has received minimal attention by commercially-controlled media, considering that it killed maybe 2000 people, was discussed in the European Parliament and later officially investigated by at least 5 national governments. Coverage has been fragmented and shied away from asking obvious and important questions such as “Why did NATO order terrorist attacks inside NATO countries?… Why have most national governments not followed the EU’s resolution and attempted to investigate it?… Do we have any evidence that this program has been discontinued?” Gladio/B is even less well known. Corporate media have treated the topic as a third rail. Two anonymous Sunday Times journalists report that senior Pentagon and MI6 sources confirmed her story, but it was inexplicably dropped under the pressure of undisclosed “interest groups”, which they suggest were associated with the U.S. State Department.
In short, as of 2017, no official narrative exists on Gladio/B. Wikipedia, to its credit, has a redirect page to Sibel Edmonds where it provides a summary mention her allegations.
[Sibel Edmonds has been an energetic independent journalist, attempting to raise awareness about the deep state and the corruption she saw evidence of while working for the FBI. In August 2004, she set up the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. She later started a website, Boiling Frogs Post and even later, NewsBud.]
Sibel Edmonds summarizes the objective of Gladio B as “projecting U.S. power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking.
In a February 2013 video, James Corbett says that revelations about Gladio B have come almost exclusively from Sibel Edmonds, who stated that US “counter-terrorist” agencies have in fact been working very closely with leaders of the same “terrorists” they are officially opposing. This substantiates other claims that the rise of ISIS was a “willful decision” of the US government, such as those of Michael T. Flynn and Paul Williams. Gladio’s extreme secrecy may explain his apparent failure to understand this decision; although Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he may well not have been aware of the Operation Gladio/B operation.
[Ack, 55 mins. these are apparently more of the Cliffs Notes]:
No operations of Operation Gladio/B have been officially admitted.
US cooperation with Al Qaeda
Sibel Edmonds revealed that senior US intelligence agents were regularly meeting Ayman al-Zawahiri (then leader of Al Qaeda) at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan and Baku, starting in 1997 and continuing right up to the 9/11 attacks. They were also meeting members of the bin Laden family (including Osama Bin Laden) and other mujahideen who were transported by NATO aircraft to Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in false flag “destabilization operations”. Other people were also flown, on US Intelligence orders, to Turkey, a major base of the operations where agents were trained and prepared to participate in these operations. Edmonds specifically reported that some of the 9/11 hijackers were being trained there. This fits with Michael Springmann‘s testimony that his visa denials to the majority of the 19 hijackers were regularly overruled by the US State Department.
September 11 Attacks
Edmonds has stated that 9-1 was a Gladio/B Operation and that Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri worked with the key U.S. government officials for 3 months after 9/11 to coordinate false flag destabilization operations in the Caucus region.
[Then several examples of Gladio B operations and false flags…]
Edmonds points to the international drugs trade as a key role in funding black ops such as Operation Gladio/B. She notes that in 2001, without providing any evidence that the country was in any way involved, the US invaded the world’s largest producer of opium, Afghanistan. She claims that the main areas of Gladio B money laundering are Cyprus, Malta and Dubai.
A huge upswing in opium production after the unprovoked US invasion of the country following 9/11.
Opium production has greatly increased since the US lead invasion. As with Gary Webb‘s well documented case that the CIA was heavily involved in cocaine trafficking, the commercially-controlled media has refused to show much interest in the evidence.
Nuclear Black Market
Sibel Edmonds reported a Turkish and Israeli run network which paid top intelligence officials to steal nuclear weapon secrets that were sold on the international black market to countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These and other allegations were confirmed by the Sunday Times after speaking to Pentagon and MI6 sources, and by obtaining a document signed by an FBI official confirming the operation’s existence. However, apparently due to pressure from political intelligence committees, the document itself was never published.
Edmonds told Washington’s Blog:
“For the past 11 years I have been emphasizing that my State Secrets Privilege & Gag Orders had to do with the FBI files (covering period 1996-2002 February) on covert-terrorist operations in Caucasus and Central Asia backed, managed and armed by US actors. These US-NATO directed operations in the region involved Bin-Laden and mainly Zawahiri ….. The FBI documents contained damning evidence (audio and written) collected between 1996-2002 tying these terror operations directly to the U.S. persons in the State Department/CIA and Pentagon. Also, how the State Department got Congress to grant huge amounts of funds to “front“ NGOs and businesses (mainly Turkish companies in US-listed/members of ATC) to funnel money to the terrorist cells in this region.”
The Wikispooks entry has a lot more about Sibel Edmunds’ journalism and claims being ‘untouchable’ by mainstream media, including a 2008 quote by ex-CIA agent Phillip Geraldi in which he notes “She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’ account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed… and a similar quote by Daniel Ellsberg on her writings and theories being embargoed.
There are several operational examples, although the Ukraine example doesn’t fit with the central thesis: muslims not communists. But of course you may be pinging the false flag gas attacks, etc. by the award-winning stars of stage and screen The White Helmets. But I’ll paste in a portion of the long entry following, much of which will ring a bell:
ISIS/ISIL
The Islamic State (ISIL)(ISIS)(Daesh) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP). A large number of ISIL mercenaries are convicted criminals, death row inmates released from Saudi prisons on condition they join ISIL. ISIS/ISIL are involved in the CIA-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad.
A Jordanian official reported ISIS leaders being trained by U.S. Intelligence at a CIA base in Jordan which were then used for [false flag] destabilization operations in Syria and later in Iraq. Nabil Na’eem, the founder of the Islamic Democratic Jihad Party and former top al-Qaeda commander, told the Beirut-based pan-Arab TV station al-Maydeen all current al-Qaeda affiliates, including ISIS, work for the CIA. Investigative journalist William Engdahl wrote on RT that “key members of ISIS it now emerges were trained by US CIA and Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, according to informed Jordanian officials.”
In May 2015, government documents were obtained by Judicial Watch via FOIA. The document from 2012, outlines the situation in Syria. It read:
“The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey Support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran Support the Regime”
This debunks the corporate media lie that Washington’s support is only for “moderate rebels”.
Under ‘related links’ at the bottom is ‘Gladio B: The Origins of NATO’s Secret Islamic Terrorist Proxies’, webpage by Tom Secker.
The US State Department calls belief in both Operation Gladio and Gladio B ‘conspiracy theories, and while I’m a tad unsure on the B, Gladio might be called instead by William Blum ‘a coincidence theory’. That said, as night follows day, B might follow the original Gladio A, so I’m not discounting it.
This is spyculture.com on Edmunds’ research, embargoed publications rewritten as fiction, featuring both Operation Gladio and Gladio B.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
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café babylon 
“the Ukraine example doesn’t fit with the central thesis: muslims not communists.”: The new Gladio in Ukraine
Gladio evolves, comrade. There it’s toxic; Nazis are the front, WTF does that say about the provocateurs?
i read it, although if i catch your drift as to why it fits the thesis, palestinians are most often arabs, but in the gaza strip, most are sunni muslims, i surprisingly discovered just now. so yeah, tangentially it fits. but only tangentially.
well, it means for one thing that the US funds neo-nazis, exports spooks and their false flags to ukraine. but a things are heating up there, i’ve saved a hella lot of links thinking to write them up.
haven’t have time to check your latest comments, but one i saw had nothing to do with the OP as far as i can tell. not every diary is an Open Menu.
[drift off]
Jah, I am confirming that “Gladio B” does not describe all newer “Gladio” operations. Discrediting commies (Gladio A”), then muslims (“Gladio B”) is definite benefit for covert ops; Nazi cover is already discredited but still good cover for close combat.
You often miss my “drift”, comrade. “[T]he primary purpose of the expression [“if you catch my drift”] is to alert the hearer to consider what’s being said more carefully than he might otherwise, so he will understand.”
[drift back on]
i agree i often miss your drift, comrade, especially when you type so many ha ha’s in CAPS. but thanks for amplifying a bit.
i’d finlly remembered that i could bingle ‘wikileaks and gladio b’, and that kicked up this: ‘WikiLeaks, Hillary-Gulen Intimate Ties & How the Clintons Gave Birth to Mullah Gulen’s Terrorist Network‘, newsbud.com., s. edmunds, aug. 12, 2016 (with video):
“In this episode of Spotlight with Sibel and Spiro we discuss the notorious USA-based Mullah Fethullah Gulen and Operation Gladio B in light of Wikileaks’ recent announcement that they plan to release a new batch of e-mails exposing the intimate ties between Hillary Clinton and Gulen’s 25+ Billion shady network. Sibel Edmonds explains how Fethullah Gulen was brought into the United States during the Clinton Administration, and how Bill Clinton’s White House, the State Department and the Justice Department’s Janet Reno provided the infamous mullah and his terrorism-heroin operations with blanket immunity and protection. We also take a look at Clinton’s hand-picked handlers, Graham Fuller and Mark Grossman, selected to manage and direct Gulen’s cells in the U.S. and abroad.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3YhOxmKDSs
No to war in distant places, No to war in false faces.
amen. dave said it right.
tonight’s fitting closing lullaby comes from the brilliant bruce cockburn:
As US covert ops proliferate, it becomes more credible that US only pretends not to do something that it does. Discrediting their cover (commies, islamies) becomes less effective. Likewise, when US backs those it can’t publicly ally with, it becomes more incredible denying the support: US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists
In the use of this covert close combat it grows less covert until it is apparent the capitalists are the Ur-terrorists. Then, there is no surprise they are behind some “Gladio” operation; there is only the formal denial.
i’d thought the title looked familiar; here’s the whitney webb version from nov. 9:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/251687-2/251687/
IOW, comrade, the Ur-terrorists will proliferate close combat and civil war. Gladio will be everywhere and the Ur-terrorists will be so proud that they will little deny involvement.
Comrades, unite!
i’m not sure the world has hit peak oil, but that’s a longer discussion. but from this sentence onward, i agree in spades.
“[… The resulting] catabolic capitalism is a self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be fed by devouring the society that sustains it.
michael hudson calls it ‘killing the host’. dunno what ‘ur-terrorrists’ signifies.
over yonder, the four commenters wanted to focus on the twin towers, and i finally found ‘criticisms of the 9/11 commission has its own wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_9/11_Commission
henry kissinger?? i’d pasted in swathes of the ‘conflicts of interest’ and so on, but some of the criticism was from:
‘The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, consisting of former FBI, NSA and other federal intelligence experts, claim the 9/11 Commission report was fundamentally flawed because the Commission refused to hear, ignored, or censored testimony about the many pre–September 11 warnings given to the FBI and US intelligence agencies. These federal whistleblowers claim that in an effort to avoid having to hold any individual accountable, the 9/11 Commission turned a blind eye on FBI agent-provided evidence before September 11 regarding the 9/11 plot.’
footnote went to sibel edmonds and bill weaver. quite a list.
http://www.nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/NSWBC-911Comm.htm
Gladio is a form of counterinsurgency. In fact, the discrediting of a cover (commies, islamies) is less strategic than the amplification of the Ur-terrorists role in the theater. Thus, the specific shock of an Ur-terrorist mercenary posing as one of their enemies may be forever tied to the term “Gladio”, the Gladio technique shares much more with the Ur-terrorists counter-revolution technology. The essence of the capitalists is becoming ubiquitous and manifest.https://player.vimeo.com/video/276448833#t=5m49s
Streitraum: Konterrevolution – Amerika im Krieg gegen die eigenen Bürger? from Streitraum on Vimeo.
as astonishing as all this really is, it’s equally astonishing how many people would absolutely refuse to believe in Gladio version 1 or 2.0, no matter what kind of evidence was presented. what we learned from the Nazis was, to quote Shylock’s famous speech on Jews & revenge, how to “better the instruction.” just try getting people to put these two facts together: 1) the Taliban had practically eliminated opium production 2) Afghanistan now supplies what? 90-95% of global opium? the best possible spin one could put on this is that in the chaos & blah blah blah of war (caused by who please?) shit happens. but even if this were the case, the lesson to be learned is still: more troops, more bombs, more humanitarian rhetoric.
despite the busy business of empire, you know, killing Yemeni children and such, are there not signs of desperation everywhere? the incessant, hysterical lying & fearmongering, (“China is building shit in Africa!!!! ZOMG!!!” reports the NYT breathlessly today), the renewed strike activity globally, etc., there are many signs of the “feet of clay” this empire rests upon, including the abysmal health of its own population. the latter being one among many signs, incl the “drug war,” that the US bourgeoisie is being forced to hyper-exploit, hyper-super-duper exploit, its own populace in order to offset losses & setbacks on the international stage. (plus the fact that what we learn to do in, e.g., prisons on Iraq or Gaza or Kabul, we quickly learn to do in Pelican Bay & Angola. if it’s ok to do something we do all the time in Baghdad, namely shoot lots of children, it’s surely ok to do it on “our” border.) I mean, is the psy-op of Russia interfering w/all our facebooks a sign of social health or some serious disease and weakness?
there are now approx. 100k more homeless people in the US, due to CA wildfires, than there were a week ago. this society has *nothing* to offer these people. the homeless pop round here is booming and the most studied, measured response of the city is to put up fences around open public spaces, like unused parking lots. and pay private security to beef up the street-sweeping capacity of the cops. more armed thugs to kick a schizophrenic in the teeth for daring to sleep on the sidewalk. force people camping in the woods on to federal land and punt the problem to someone else (boy there’s lots of that. local gov’ts n WA have lots of one way bus tickets to Olympia. dump the problem on the state gov’t.)
when federal leaders, Bernie Sanders or whoever, talk about “confronting China” they are directly talking about killing off more of the US pop thru austerity programs and the like. When, in more rarefied, more camera-shy airs, some less political types admit that terrorism is BS and the real game is “great power conflict”, they are talking about taking more of the energy & resources of a desperately sick population & converting it into more war-making capacity. it’s just a very short matter of time before all the fences going up reveal their true nature: death camps. B/c of the glories of automation, we will skip the labor camp stage, the “concentration camp”, & go straight to death camps.
good times ahead.
thanks, j of oly. depressing stuff, if just so. it’s not really possible for me to zone in one theme here, save extrapolating to ‘there’s always money for moar war, especially unwinnable wars, which is of course the whole point, isn’t it? because there are bad guys out there and we need the cia and the nsa to protect us! (ed snowden) ‘the nsa helps guide bombs to their target in afghanistan!’
by the by, sibel edmond’s boiling frog link (pre-newsbud) has several noteworthy exposés of, and Qs for both greenwald and snowden.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Boiling_Frogs_Post
this un gets to the nub of it.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Green-Light_for_Greenwald:_Government_Duplicity_or_Government_Duality%3F
no one over really wanted GG’s feet of clay(as well as the vile intercept’s) demonstrated on my last wikileaks catch up piece.
glad to know you’re alive and kickin’; i was getting concerned again by your absence in my inbox. time to put up three tweets by my favorite tankie. as with the wsws, he and red kahina are disgusted by how she’s tarnishing the ‘socialist’ brand, although the latter are close to obsessed by calling out her poseur bullshit.
Isn’t Judicial Watch a right-wing site dedicated to preventing anyone to the left of Dick Cheney from becoming a judge?
It’s too bad that Julian Assange turned out to be a racist (read his attacks on Antifa and defense of the Charlottesville neo-Nazis). He did reveal some important stuff.