NATO's Secret Armies (2009)

 

 

 

Als vervolg op de BBC documentaire Gladio die ik gisteren heb gepost, vandaag NATO's Secret Armies  uit 2009. Beschrijving en video zijn in het Engels.

 

Throughout the late 60s, 70s and 80s a wave of brutal terror attacks swept through Western Europe killing hundreds of innocent civilians in cities across the continent. At the time the attacks were thought to be the work of radical extremists but now, thirty years on, a different, far more disturbing story is starting to come out.

In 1990 Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed the existence of a secret NATO army code named Gladio whose mission was to defend Italy in the event of a Soviet occupation. He confessed that it was part of a much wider network of underground "stay-behind" armies that had been established by NATO throughout Europe during the Cold War. It transpired that Britain and the US had secretly recruited and trained civilians and military men in twenty European countries, setting up armed military networks unaccountable to any national parliament.

For many years it was believed that the role of the NATO secret armies was purely defensive but from the testimony of right wing extremists implicated in some of Europe's most horrific bombing campaigns and the prosecutor hired to investigate them, a different and far more disquieting picture has begun to emerge. They claim that the Gladio network manipulated and controlled a string of extremist groups in a bid to unleash a wave of terror across the continent. The attacks formed part of a project which came to be known as the "strategy of tension". The aim was to prevent a political slide to the left and ensure a return to centrist government in the European countries crucial to the US defence strategy.

Nato's Secret Armies examines three major terror attacks: The Brabant massacre in Belgium, the Oktoberfest bombing in Germany and the Piazza Fontana killings in Italy. Through the testimony of former terrorists, Gladio, ex CIA agents, diplomats, prosecutors and police investigators; the film pieces together the disturbing trail of influence behind each of the attacks and considers whether hundreds may have died at the hands of state sponsored terrorism. More chillingly, it asks whether the strategy of tension might still be in use today.