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The Shadow Dossier — The Secret Army Buried in NATO's Basement · The Shadow Dossier

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  the shadow dossier act i a plan for occupation
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  through much of the cold war western european
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  governments prepared for a scenario they hoped
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  would never happen a soviet invasion that overran
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  their armies and placed their countries under
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  occupation drawing on the memory of resistance
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  movements that had fought nazi occupation only
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  a few years earlier NATO countries and their
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  intelligence services, coordinated in part by
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  the CIA and Britain's secret intelligence service,
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  built something meant to survive a conventional
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  defeat. Clandestine stay -behind networks, trained
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  and equipped in advance to conduct sabotage,
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  escape lines, and intelligence gathering behind
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  enemy lines if the Soviets ever cross the border.
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  These networks were built quietly in every NATO
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  member country and several that remained neutral,
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  with caches of weapons, explosives, and radio
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  equipment buried in fields and hidden in barns,
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  ready to be dug up by trained personnel who,
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  in most cases, didn't know the identities of
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  anyone else in their own network, let alone in
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  neighboring countries. a secret that outlasted
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  its purpose. The networks were meant for a war
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  that never came, at least not the conventional
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  invasion they were built to resist. But the infrastructure
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  didn't disappear once the immediate post -war
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  fear of a Red Army advance across Western Europe
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  faded. It stayed in place, largely unsupervised
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  by ordinary democratic oversight. for decades,
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  known to a small circle within each country's
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  military and intelligence establishment and largely
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  unknown to the elected governments notionally
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  in charge of them. In Italy specifically, the
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  network came to be known by its codename, Gladio,
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  the Italian word for a short sword used by Roman
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  soldiers. That name eventually became the informal
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  label historians and journalists apply to the
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  entire pan -European stay -behind system, even
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  though most countries used other code names for
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  their own versions. The secret came apart in
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  Italy in 1990. Magistrates investigating a 1972
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  car bombing that had killed three police officers
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  near the town of Pitano uncovered evidence pointing
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  toward the hidden network and its weapons caches.
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  Pressed by the investigation, Italian Prime Minister
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  Giulio Andriotti confirmed to Parliament in October
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  1990 that Gladio had existed, describing it as
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  a legitimate defensive structure coordinated
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  with NATO. built to resist a foreign occupation
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  that had, fortunately, never come. The confirmation
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  triggered a wave of parallel disclosures and
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  parliamentary inquiries across Western Europe,
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  as other governments acknowledged that they,
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  too, had maintained similar stay -behind networks
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  under their own code names, largely hidden from
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  public and even parliamentary knowledge for the
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  better part of four decades. What happened next
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  is where the historical record becomes genuinely
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  contested. Italy in the 1970s and into the 1980s
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  suffered a period known as the Years of Lead,
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  marked by bombings and political violence for
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  both far -left and far -right groups. Some investigators...
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  Journalists and later parliamentary commissions
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  allege that elements connected to the stay -behind
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  network were involved in a so -called strategy
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  of tension, in which bombings attributed publicly
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  to the far left were allegedly encouraged or
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  tolerated by parts of the security state to discredit
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  left -wing politics and justify harder -line
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  governance. It's important to be precise about
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  what is established. and what remains disputed.
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  That the stay -behind networks existed, were
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  coordinated with NATO, and were kept secret from
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  ordinary democratic oversight for decades is
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  documented fact, confirmed by multiple governments.
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  That specific individuals connected to those
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  networks participated in specific acts of domestic
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  terrorism is a claim that has been pursued through
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  numerous Italian court cases and parliamentary
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  inquiries. with mixed and sometimes contradictory
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  results, and it remains a matter of genuine historical
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  dispute rather than settled record. What isn't
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  disputed is the unease the revelation left behind,
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  an acknowledgment that for nearly half a century,
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  Armed clandestine structures had operated across
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  an entire continent's democracies, answerable
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  to almost no one outside a narrow chain of military
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  and intelligence officials, waiting for a war
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  that never arrived in the form anyone had planned
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  for. This concludes declassified file number
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  0053 of the Shadow Dossier, the secret army buried
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  in NATO's basement. What dangerous secrets await
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  in our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
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  Spotify, RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss
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  an official declassification. This is the Shadow
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  Dossier. Thank you for listening.