File:Italian_Military_Secret_Service_(SIFAR)_report_on_Operation_Gladio.pdf · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Operational scope
- Covert operations
- Location
- Western Europe
- Planned
- 1952–1990
- Planned by
- Western intelligence agencies
- Objective
- Counter an invasion of Europe by the Warsaw Pact (claimed by US Government)
- Date
- 1 January 1952 ( 1952-01-01 )
- Executed by
- Western Union Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe ( NATO ) United States CIA FBI United Kingdom MI6 France West Germany Italy Belgium Netherlands Luxembourg Greece Turkey Norway Denmark Canada Portugal Spain Others/Western states: Austria Sweden Finland Switzerland
- Outcome
- Continued operations into the 1990s, exposure and disclosure
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- stay-behind
- Founded by
- Antonio Segni
- Headquarters
- Rome
- Operator
- NATO
- Location
- Western Bloc
- Image
- Italian Military Secret Service (SIFAR) report on Operation Gladio.pdf
- Significant event
- Bologna massacre
- Participant
- Italy
Show 12 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Operation Gladio
- inception
- 1956-11-26
- dissolved, abolished or demolished date
- 1990-00-00
- different from
- Special Warfare Department
- Commons category
- Operation Gladio
- uses
- false flag
- present in work
- Valley of the Wolves: Gladio
- facet of
- Cold War
- influenced by
- Special Operations Executive
- significant person
- Mario Scelba
- described at URL
- wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio
- time period
- Cold War
Sources (6)
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU; founded in 1948), and subsequently by NATO (formed in 1949), and by the CIA (established in 1947), in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War. 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. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and in some neutral countries.
According to several Western European researchers, the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries and to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism who tortured communists and assassinated them, such as Mozambican resistance leader Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. The United States Department of State rejected the view that they supported terrorists and maintains that the operation served only to resist a potential invasion of Western European countries by the Soviet Union.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Operation Gladio” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.