30 Years ago today Aldo Moro was kidnapped.

[formercia]

Although officially blamed on the Red Brigades, it is generally regarded as having been a false-flag operation carried out by Mafia operatives working under the umbrella organization known as Operation Gladio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Moro

One of the most important leaders of Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy, DC), Moro was considered an intellectual and an incredibly patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party. He was kidnapped on March 16, 1978, by the Red Brigades (BR), who killed Moro after 54 days of captivity.

--snip--

For more background on Gladio

http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/ocbpt_14.htm

[MaryCeleste]

1. Generally regard by who?

[lpbk2713]

9. It's "by whom".

The direct object is following the preposition "by".

Here

[troubleinwinter]

10. The meaning of the query was clear. Your admonishment is rude. This is not grammar class.

Would you have people reluctant to post their ideas and questions for fear that they may be admonished by an self-appointed grammar cop? I generally assume that COURTESY supersedes grammar.

Gads. Some DUers are just assholes. You could keep your trap shut sometimes out of courtesy and we'd have a little less proof of it.

[pop goes the weasel]

2. oh, hush

We're supposed to forget all about that. And certainly we aren't supposed to have ever noticed the possibility of US involvement.

[Octafish]

3. Gladio: The Secret U.S. War to Subvert Italian Democracy

History has a way of putting current events in context.

All this "Stay-Behind" stuff. What else is it good for?

GLADIO: THE SECRET U.S. WAR TO SUBVERT ITALIAN DEMOCRACY

by Arthur E. Rowse
Covert Action Information Bulletin
(Octafish records this as No. 49 -- Summer 1994)

EXCERPT...

THE STRATEGY OF TENSION

Despite the failure of Plan Solo, the CIA and the Italian right had largely succeeded in creating the clandestine structures envisioned in Operation Demagnetize. Now the plotters turned their attention to a renewed offensive against the left.

To win intellectual support, the secret services set up a conference in Rome at the luxurious Parco dei Principi hotel in May 1965, for a ``study'' of ``revolutionary war.'' The choice of words was inadvertently revealing, since the conveners and invited participants were planning a real revolution, not just warning of an imaginary communist takeover. The meeting was essentially a reunion of fascists, right-wing journalists, and military personnel. ``The strategy of tension'' that emerged was designed to disrupt normality with terror attacks in order to create chaos and provoke a frightened public into accepting still more authoritarian government. 20

Several ``graduates'' of this exercise had long records of anticommunist actions and would later be implicated in some of Italy's worst massacres. One was journalist and secret agent Guido Giannettini. Four years earlier, he had conducted a seminar at the U.S. Naval Academy on ``The Techniques and Prospects of a Coup d'Etat in Europe.'' Another was notorious fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie, who had reportedly been recruited as a secret agent in 1960. He had organized his own armed band known as Avanguardia Nationale (AN), whose members had begun training in terror tactics in preparation for Plan Solo. 21

General De Lorenzo, whose SIFAR had now become SID, soon enlisted these and other confidants in a new Gladio project. They planned to create a secret parallel force alongside sensitive government offices to neutralize subversive elements not yet ``purified.'' Known as the Parallel SID, its tentacles reached into nearly every key institution of the Italian state. Gen.Vito Miceli, who later headed SID, said he set up the separate structure ``at the request of the Americans and NATO.'' 22

CONTINUED...

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/gladio.html

Thank you for reminding us of this terrible anniversary, formercia.

Our world's "Overlords" are really something else. Satanic, for starters.

[formercia]

4. It's the same people destroying the US today.

Gladio was chump-change compared to what's going on now.

[Octafish]

5. People go, 'Huh?' when PAPERCLIP is mentioned.

They sure as shooting know what Obama's pastor said. Meanwhile, looter of America Wall Street is itself looted. Irony of ironies.

Those interested in learning about the subject might want to Google "Richard Helms" and "Reinhard Gehlen" for starters. Readers will find Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush soon creep into the story.

[formercia]

6. The boys thought they were controlling the music.

then someone tripped over the plug. When the music stopped, they looked around and there wasn't an empty chair in sight.


Would you like another helping of schadenfreude?

[Octafish]

7. Current example of schadenfreude: The CIA and Riggs Bank

Thank you. Please. More more more...

Capital's Invisible Army at work:

The CIA and Riggs Bank

A Wall Street Journal story that the press gang should chase.

By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, at 4:10 PM ET

"Follow the money" could be Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn R. Simpson's motto. His sophisticated dispatches from the banking/terrorism/money-laundering/organized crime nexus routinely advance well-covered subjects.

On the last day of 2004, Simpson published a Journal story about the Justice Department's investigation of purported money-laundering at Riggs Bank, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Previous news reports had connected Riggs to the dubious financial machinations of Saudi diplomats and despots from Africa and South America, including Chile's former maximum leader, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Banking regulators fined Riggs $25 million last year for its violations, the institution put itself up for sale, and a Justice Department investigation was started.

Simpson's Dec. 31 piece—inexplicably appearing on Page A-4 instead of A-1—locates what may be the common denominator shared by Riggs, the Saudis, the Africans, and the South Americans: the Central Intelligence Agency.

Citing unnamed U.S. government officials and people familiar with Riggs operations, Simpson reports that the bank has enjoyed a "relationship" with the CIA for some time. "That relationship, which included top current and former Riggs executives receiving U.S. government security clearances, could complicate any prosecution of the bank's officials, according to private lawyers and former prosecutors," he writes. By "complicate" one can safely assume that Simpson means "make impossible." He writes:

The relationship with the CIA could prove problematic because it could cast a different light on the bank's dealings with two U.S. foreign-policy allies, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to Washington.

CONTINUED...

http://www.slate.com/id/2112015/

They spend the money they lifted so wisely.

Why the sheep don't see they're being fleeced is another story muffled by the Mighty Wurlitzer.

[formercia]

11. A scary thought

What if this a planned controlled demolition of the World financial system and the boys walk with the loot?

[Octafish]

12. That's what Krugman wrote.

Which contracted the heck out of many an orifice in this office:

The B Word

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 17, 2008

O.K., here it comes: The unthinkable is about to become the inevitable.

Last week, Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, and John Lipsky, a top official at the International Monetary Fund, both suggested that public funds might be needed to rescue the U.S. financial system. Mr. Lipsky insisted that he wasn’t talking about a bailout. But he was.

It’s true that Henry Paulson, the current Treasury secretary, still says that any proposal to use taxpayers’ money to help resolve the crisis is a “non-starter.” But that’s about as credible as all of his previous pronouncements on the financial situation.

So here’s the question we really should be asking: When the feds do bail out the financial system, what will they do to ensure that they aren’t also bailing out the people who got us into this mess?

Let’s talk about why a bailout is inevitable.

SNIP...

According to late reports on Sunday, JPMorgan Chase will buy Bear for a pittance. That’s an O.K. resolution for this case — but not a model for the much bigger bailout to come. Looking ahead, we probably need something similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took over bankrupt savings and loan institutions and sold off their assets to reimburse taxpayers. And we need it quickly: things are falling apart as you read this.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Krugman says the "B" word is "Bailout."

Anyone who knows the Bush Crime Family knows their "B" word is "Bust-out."

These guys are moving to Paraguay for a reason.

[formercia]

14. There needs to be some serious auditing done

to follow the money and securities to make sure the shareholders and taxpayers don't end up stuffing organized crime coffers.

[reprehensor]

8. Cossiga, P2, Moro, 9/11 and certain revelations.

Recently, the Interior Minister who was in charge of finding Moro, (who eventually became President of Italy), came out proclaiming that "everybody knows" that 9/11 was a CIA/MOSSAD job. This is Francesco Cossiga. At the same time, he claimed that Berlusconi's Mediaset company produced the last Osama tape, and thus is a fabrication.

A whole bunch of websites have been claiming that Cossiga is a heroic whistleblower for exposing GLADIO, but this is not really the case;

There is a common thread tying Cossiga, Berlusconi and the paper that printed Cossiga's allegations; Propaganda Due, P2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due

Cossiga’s main focus in his allegations was actually his revelation that a major Italian media outlet was set to expose the latest Bin Laden video as a fabrication. A fabrication by Sivio Berlusconi’s “Mediaset”. Berlusconi was a member of P2. (This "exposure" never happened.)

Corriere, (the “Evening Courier”), the paper that published Cossiga’s allegations, had deep links to P2

During the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Italian Premier Aldo Moro, Cossiga was neck deep in P2 connections and CIA henchmen;

"Behind the facade, however, lies one of the most sinister episodes of the Italian Republic, an episode in which the entire secret state was fully involved. The Secret Services, which were supposed to find Moro’s prison, spectacularly bungled their search, together with the police and the Carabinieri; the P2 Masonic lodge, whose members happened to be put in charge of the investigations, deliberately messed up the search; Interior minister Francesco Cossiga surrounded himself with P2 members and CIA officers; the Mafia offered its services to free Moro, only to be told in no uncertain terms that Moro was wanted dead not alive. At the time, public opinion knew nothing of all this; the existence of the Masonic lodge P2 only became known three years later, in 1981…

It was only with the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War that the enormity of the effects of such war upon Italy and the Italian political system began to emerge. The Gladio scandal, in the early 1990s, brought to light the existence of a whole secret network of anti-Communist organisations throughout Western Europe, whose official aim was to fight in the event of a Soviet invasion, but which also had the all-important unofficial aim of fighting against the internal communist threat in those countries considered most at risk. At the time of the Gladio scandal Francesco Cossiga was President of the Italian Republic. He publicly defended Gladio as a legitimate organisation against a young judge, Felice Casson, who proclaimed its illegitimacy. It was in those days that Cossiga and Casson expressed openly and clearly their allegiances to two contrasting states and principles of legitimation. Referring to P2 leader Licio Gelli, Cossiga declared ‘He is a patriot’. With reference to the same man, Casson stated ‘He is a traitor’. Never before, I believe, had the dual identity of the Italian Republic been so crudely exposed. By patriot, Cossiga referred to Gelli’s loyalty to the secret anti-Communist state. By traitor Casson referred to Gelli’s betrayal of the antifascist legitimating principle of the official state…"

http://www.bath.ac.uk /
http://www.bath.ac.uk/eri/pdf/op-annabull.pdf

——————————————————————————————————

The true GLADIO whistleblower was the current Prime Minister at the time of the scandal, Giulio Andreotti. AFTER Andreotti went public, Cossiga admitted it was true;

“In Italy, on 3 August 1990, then-prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the existence of a secret army code-named “Gladio” – the Latin word for “sword” – within the state. His testimony before the Senate subcommittee investigating terrorism in Italy sent shockwaves through the Italian parliament and the public, as speculation arose that the secret army had possibly manipulated Italian politics through acts of terrorism.

Andreotti revealed that the secret Gladio army had been hidden within the Defense Ministry as a subsection of the military secret service, SISMI. General Vito Miceli, a former director of the Italian military secret service, could hardly believe that Andreotti had lifted the secret, and protested:

“I have gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization. And now Andreotti comes along and tells it to parliament!” According to a document compiled by the Italian military secret service in 1959, the secret armies had a two-fold strategic purpose: firstly, to operate as a so-called “stay-behind” group in the case of a Soviet invasion and to carry out a guerrilla war in occupied territories; secondly, to carry out domestic operations in case of “emergency situations”.

The military secret services’ perceptions of what constituted an “emergency” was well defined in Cold War Italy and focused on the increasing strength of the Italian Communist and the Socialist parties, both of which were tasked with weakening NATO “from within”. Felice Casson, an Italian judge who during his investigations into right-wing terrorism had first discovered the secret Gladio army and had forced Andreotti to take a stand, found that the secret army had linked up with right-wing terrorists in order to confront “emergency situations”. The terrorists, supplied by the secret army, carried out bomb attacks in public places, blamed them on the Italian left, and were thereafter protected from prosecution by the military secret service. “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,” right-wing terrorist Vincezo Vinciguerra explained the so-called “strategy of tension” to Casson.

“The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.”

——————————————————————————————-

Cossiga was proud of GLADIO, the evil operation that it secretly was, and defended it, he even threatened to kill the investigations that the Italian public was clamoring for after he confirmed that GLADIO was real;

“Only Francesco Cossiga, Italian President since 1985, confirmed what Andreotti had revealed and explained that he was even “proud and happy” for his part in setting up Gladio as junior Defence Minister of the Christian Democratic Party. During an official visit to Scotland, the President declared to journalists that all Gladiators were good patriots, adding: “I consider it a great privilege and an act of trust that … I was chosen for this delicate task … I have to say that I’m proud of the fact that we have kept the secret for 45 years.” Back in Italy, the President found himself in the midst of a political storm, and requests were made across parties for his immediate resignation or impeachment for high treason. Judge Casson wanted the head of state to testify in front of the investigating Senate committee. The President refused and even threatened to shut down the entire parliamentary investigation: “I’ll send the law extending its mandate back to Parliament and, should they re-approve it, I will have to examine the text anew to see if the conditions exist for the extreme recourse to an absolute refusal to promulgate.” The attack was completely without any constitutional grounds and critics in the press started to question the President’s sanity. As the Gladio scandal culminated, the Italian President only narrowly escaped his impeachment by stepping down in April 1992, three months before his term expired.”

http://www.psa.ac.uk/journals/pdf/5/2005/Ganser.pdf

—————————————————————————

This man is damaged goods.

[MonkeyFunk]

13. That means I went to Italy 30 years ago

I think it was in April, '78 on a school trip.

The airport was full of soldiers with machine guns - our bus was stopped and checked out by armed soldiers searching for Moro.