Krystel von Kumberg, "Prince Valerio Borghese and the Two Ita(Lies): Operation Gladio and the Years of Lead."

Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti exposed Gladio on October 24, 1990. He was the first to formally reveal the European-wide network of Stay Behind groups involved in internal subversion. The CIA and SIFAR (Italian Military Intelligence) sketched a plan in November 1956, codenamed Gladio, to form an army capable of guerrilla warfare and espionage to prepare for a Soviet invasion. When the expected war never came, these elements, mainly composed of neofascists and elements of the far-right, engaged in covert operations and what came to be known as the strategy of tension (1969-80) which aimed to manipulate and control public opinion using fear, psychological warfare, and false flag terrorism. Gladio has been labelled a parallel structure of the Interior Ministry, trained to fight against an internal threat: that of the communist and radical leftist extremists known as the Fifth Column (Quinta Colonna) or Red Gladio (Gladio Rossa). The violence that…