“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, unknown
people far from any political game. The reason was quite simple - force the
people to turn to the state for greater security.”
- Vincenzio Vinciguerra, former member of the neo-Fascist group Ordine
Nuovo.
Today,
December 12th is the 50th anniversary of the bomb attack at the headquarters of
Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana,
Italy.
This act of
terror, which killed 17 people and wounded 88, is seen as the inauguration of
what is referred to as the Anni di Piombo
(“Years of Lead”): a time of bullets and bombs during which violence between
the extreme Left and extreme Right was rife. It was also the beginning of what
came to be known as La Strategia della
Tensione (Strategy of Tension”). This was a Cold War-era policy engineered
by NATO and components of Italian military intelligence and the secret service
who aided neo-Fascist terrorists in murdering innocents with the intention of
blaming and discrediting the political Left. The idea was that the people would
turn to Right-wing authoritarian governments.
This was the
intention behind the bombings in Milan (1969), Peteano (1972) and Bologna (1980).
The kidnapping and murder in 1978 of Aldo Moro, a former Italian Prime Minister
by the Left-wing Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) is perceived by many to have been
actually orchestrated by the Italian “Deep State”, as it was consistent with
the objective of preventing a grand coalition among Italy’s political parties
which would have brought the Italian Communist Party into a national government
of unity -something the United States and Right-wing forces in Italy including
Propaganda Due (P2), the pseudo-masocnic lodge led by Lucio Gelli which
effectively functioned as a state within a state.
A key element
driving the Strategy of Tension was a then unknown military organisation tied
to NATO. NATO’s stay-behind militias, which were developed to fight as guerrillas
in the event of Western Europe being overrun by the armies of the Warsaw Pact,
morphed into something sinister. These stay-behinds went by different names in
many Western European countries, including a number who were not NATO-members.
For instance, in Greece it was known as Lochoi
Oreinon Katadromon (LOK) and in Turkey as Counter-Guerrilla. But the
generic name by which they are often referred to is derived from the Italian
version of the stay-behind network: Gladio.
Over the
years, Operation Gladio facilitated a range of terror attacks, assassinations
and military coups.
When Italian
Prime Minister Guillio Andreotti revealed the existence of the network of
stay-behind secret armies, he only did so under pressure from the Italian
Senate enquiring into the possible hand of state agencies on fomenting
terrorism during the Anni di Piombo.
Italy, Belgium and Switzerland are the only countries who mounted parliamentary
investigations into the existence of these secret armies.
The Years of
Lead endured until the mid-1980s. But the scars remain as does the modus
operandi of the “False Flag” operation which is designed to manipulate public
emotions so as to justify military interventions and the implementation of laws
that give more power to the state.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2019)
Adeyinka
Makinde has an interest in intelligence and secret warfare.
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