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The Italian 'Stay-Behind' network - The origins of
operation 'Gladio'
Leopoldo Nuti a
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University of Roma Tre,

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2007

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origins of operation 'Gladio'', Journal of Strategic Studies, 30:6, 955 - 980
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 The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 30, No. 6, 955 – 980, December 2007

The Italian ‘Stay-Behind’

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Network – The Origins of

Operation ‘Gladio’

LEOPOLDO NUTI
University of Roma Tre

ABSTRACT This essay is based on an analysis of the official documentation made

available to the Italian Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry on the origins and
development of the stay-behind network in Italy. It tries to use these materials
and integrate them with those of historical research on some related subjects in
order to sketch out a tentative outline of the chronology and of the reasons for
the creation of ‘Gladio’, as the stay-behind network was officially denominated.
The article concludes that the documents released to the Parliamentary
Committees do not permit the assumption that Operation ‘Gladio’ was involved
in any illegal activities connected with the terrorism of the late 1960s and of the
1970s. The documents, in other words, do not help solving any of the mysteries
which beleaguered Italian post-war history for more than a decade. On the other
hand, the parliamentary reports tell a story which fits very well with the results of
historical research on Italy’s foreign and security policy after World War II, and
confirm some of its key assumptions.

KEY WORDS: Stay-behind, Italy, Cold War, Terrorism

In August 1990, during a parliamentary debate on terrorism, the Italian

Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the rumours about the
existence of a secret network run by the Italian intelligence services
during the Cold War, and promised to disclose all the available in-
formation about it in the immediate future. The network, said
Andreotti, had been set up at the height of the Cold War along the
pattern of similar North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
structures in other countries, with the purpose of conducting all sorts
of ‘stay-behind’ operations in case of an invasion by the forces of the
Warsaw Pact.1 The secret had been well preserved for almost 40 years,

1
Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della
mancata individuazione delle stragi, ‘Prerelazione sull’inchiesta condotta dalla
Commissione in ordine alle vicende connesse con l’operazione Gladio, con annessi

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/07/060955-26 Ó 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390701676501
 956 Leopoldo Nuti

Andreotti proudly declared later, but now, with the passing of time and
the fading away of the Soviet threat, such an archetypal Cold War
structure no longer had a reason to exist and might be disbanded.
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Speculations about Andreotti’s move could be the subject of another

essay, if not of a whole book. Suffice it to say here that the
repercussions of his declarations and of the following revelations were
formidable. After his initial promise, on 18 October 1990 the Prime
Minister delivered to the House Committee on Terrorism a classified
report on the secret network drafted by the Defence Staff. Far from
ending the matter there, however, the document unleashed a furious
debate which led to further parliamentary inquiries. Coming as they did
from one of the foremost politicians of post-war Italy, but also one who
had often been rumoured to be involved in shady deals and who was
often named by conspiracy theorists as the quintessential mastermind
of the most obscure and devious plots in the history of the Republic, the
revelations caused a veritable political storm. For weeks the Italian
media delved into the subject with gusto, bringing forth new ‘surprises’
every day while political forces sharpened their knives trying to figure
out how the news could be used to fit their own agendas and settle old
scores.
The impact of the story, moreover, reverberated well beyond Italy’s
borders, as its details were picked up by journalists all across Europe as
well as on the other side of the Atlantic: NATO itself had to release an
official statement on the subject, while one after the other most Western
European governments half-heartedly admitted that similar organiza-
tions had been set up in their own countries as well.2
Eventually the matter was partially clarified by the results of the
official investigations conducted by the Italian Parliament. The House
Investigative Committee on Terrorism in Italy published a preliminary
and a final report, while a third, similar document was drafted by the
Joint Parliamentary Committee for Intelligence.3 To this day, these

gli natti del dibattito svoltosi sul documento stesso’, 9 July 1991, in Atti Parlamentari,
X Legislatura, doc. XXIII, n. 36. (Hereafter cited as Prerelazione).
2
At some time or the other, similar stay-behind organizations existed in Austria
(Schwert), Belgium (SDR-8), Denmark, France (Glaive), West Germany, Greece
(Operation ‘Sheepskin’), Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden (Sveaborg),
Switzerland (P26), and Turkey. Most, but not all, of these units had some link to
each other, but some only had bilateral liaisons with the UK or the US. Operation
‘Gladio’, in 5http://users.westnet.gr/*cgian/gladio.htm4. According to the later
comments of one of the generals who headed the Italian SB, the Italian revelations
unleashed some very sharp reactions from some of the foreign partners: Paolo Inzerilli,
Gladio: La verità negata (Bologna: Edizioni Analisi 1995), 67.
3
For the pre-report, see footnote 1. The two final reports are ‘Relazione del Comitato
Parlamentare per i servizi di informazione e di sicurezza e per il segreto di stato sulla
 Italy 957

lengthy documents and their appendices provide the most important

primary sources for the story of the stay-behind network in Italy. They
present some obvious gaps in their narrative, the original records they
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cite are reproduced only partially, and there is even the suspicion that
they may have been manipulated, or perhaps just incidentally
mishandled.4 And yet they are one of the few sources available to
shed some light on the history of post-war Italian intelligence activities,
a subject on which there is an almost total dearth of sources and of
scholarly investigation.
This essay, therefore, will try to use these materials and integrate
them with those of historical research on some related subjects in order
to sketch out a tentative outline of the chronology and of the reasons
for the creation of ‘Gladio’, as the stay-behind network was officially
denominated. To this purpose, a first section will discuss some of the
many covert networks operating in Italy at the end of World War II,
which created a fertile soil for the establishment of ‘Gladio’. A second
section tries to define the controversial beginning of the official,
government-sponsored, stay-behind operation, whose exact start is still
a matter of controversy. The central part of the essay focuses on the
formal US–Italian agreements of the mid-1950s and describes the
structure they created, its budget, and its connection to NATO. A final
paragraph briefly discusses the rumours about the possible degenera-
tion of the structure, its alleged use for counter-insurgency purposes in
the late 1960s, and its possible connections with the terrorist activities
that systematically wreaked havoc upon the country from the late
1960s to the early 1980s.

Covert Networks in Italy at the End of World War II

At the end of World War II Italy was replete with secret networks and
underground organizations of all sorts. Far from sparing the country
from the horrors of war, the armistice of 8 September 1943, turned the

‘‘Operazione Gladio’’’, 4 March 1992, in Atti Parlamentari, X Legislatura, Doc.

XLVIII, n.1 (hereafter, REPORT 1) and ‘Relazione sull’inchiesta condotta sulle vicende
connesse all’operazione Gladio dalla Commissione Parlamentare d’inchiesta sul
terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle
stragi’, 22 April 1992, in Atti Parlamentari, X Legislatura, doc. XXIII, n.51 (hereafter,
REPORT 2).
4
For a rather critical assessment of the quality of the way the original records have been
filed and handed over to the parliamentary committees, see Comitato Parlamentare per
i servizi di informazione e di sicurezza, ‘Primo rapporto sul sistema di informazione e di
sicurezza’, Per Aspera ad Veritatem 2 (May–Aug. 1995), Ch.4, ‘Quattordici casi
emblematici di deviazione del servizio segreto militare’.
 958 Leopoldo Nuti

whole of Italy into a battleground for the next 20 months as the Allied
forces battled their way up north against a stiff German resistance, and
it also unleashed a cruel civil conflict between the anti-Fascist partisans
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and Mussolini’s last supporters of the Salò Republic. Then, once the
fighting was over, an uncertain truce settled in while the institutional
future of the country remained subject to much controversy: not only
was the monarchy discredited for its cooperation with Fascism and
likely to be replaced by a Republic, but many partisans also talked
openly of a ‘second phase’ and of the impending social revolution that
would complete the defeat of Fascism by radically transforming the
Italian political system once and forever. Expectations for a major
political renovation were high. The perspective of an impending con-
frontation between the Soviet Union and the Western powers loomed
over the horizon and added a sense of further uncertainty.5
In this tense political climate many covert networks sprung up during
the last period of the war or in its immediate aftermath. The partisans,
the Royalist armed forces and the Fascists all had developed their own
intelligence organizations and built up a remarkable experience in
underground activities; double, if not triple, dealings were normal, and
like in a game of Chinese boxes some intelligence agencies had built an
inner core unbeknownst to the other services fighting on the same side:
the Italian Navy, for instance, was supposed to have ‘established a
clandestine inner service that was protected from German liaison’ even
before the signature of the 1943 armistice.6
It was somewhat inevitable that some of these webs continued to
exist after the end of the hostilities, albeit to be used for different
political purposes. Inside the armed forces, for instance, several officers
were rumoured to be conspiring for the preservation of the monarchy,
and at some time they seem to have developed a paramilitary group –
the Volontari della corona (Volunteers of the Crown) willing to resort
to force in order to resist a change of regime.7 One Monarchist officer,
the former Resistance hero Edgardo Sogno, has written in his memoirs
5
For a powerful, if somewhat emphatic, description of the situation in the immediate
post-war period, see ‘Future policy towards Italy’, by Chief Commissioner Rear
Admiral Ellery Stone, 23 June 1945, in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), Vol. 1, 688–94.
6
Timothy J. Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton: The United States and Italian Intelligence’, paper
presented at the March 1998 conference on ‘Italy and the US 50 Years after the
Marshall Plan’, Roma, Centro Studi Americani. For a general, and often biased, survey
of some of these clandestine networks, see the collection of documents in Nicola
Tranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica: La Mafia, il Vaticano e il neofascismonei
documenti americani e italiani, 1943–1947 (Milano: Bompiani 2004).
7
Virgilio Ilari, Storia militare della prima repubblica, 1943–1993 (Ancona: Casa
editrice Nuove Ricerche 1994), 524–25.
 Italy 959

that he tried to persuade the King to use force to stop what he regarded
not as a change of regime but as an illegal coup.8 Yet another hotbed of
conspiracies was Sicily, where in the immediate post-war years a self-
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proclaimed Army of Volunteers for the Independence of Sicily (EVIS,

Esercito Volontario per l’Indipendenza della Sicilia) staged a semi-
guerrilla warfare hardly distinguishable from the initiatives of
organized crime, and rumoured to be linked to all sorts of secret
networks.9
From the point of view of the origins of ‘Gladio’, more important
than these somewhat haphazard groups was the first attempt to build a
real stay-behind organization in the north-eastern part of Italy in order
to resist a possible Yugoslav takeover. As is well known, all the Venezia
Giulia region was hotly contested between Italy and Yugoslavia after
the end of the war, and Italian partisans volunteered to maintain a
secret network to be activated in case of Yugoslav occupation. All
partisan formations in the region were officially disbanded on 24 June
1945, but tensions remained high between the pro-Yugoslav commu-
nist groups and the other resistance groups of a non-communist
orientation.10 In November 1945, therefore, the former Committee of
National Liberation of the city of Gorizia set up a clandestine group of
about 1,200 partisans, to be activated against any forcible annexation
of the city by Yugoslavia.11
Shortly afterwards, in January 1946, the three Army officers that had
led the resistance group ‘Osoppo’ during the war decided to reactivate
the unit, and applied for formal recognition by the Army Staff. In April
1946, when the tension with Yugoslavia was reaching a critical point,
the Chief of the Army Staff, General Raffaele Cadorna, officially
sanctioned the reconstitution of the ‘Osoppo’ group: a special liaison
unit was set up in the Headquarters of the Army’s 5th Territorial
Command, and after the signature of the peace treaty in February 1947
the unit was officially renamed ‘38 Corpo Volontari della Libertà’, with
a strength of about 4,500. The unit played a relevant role in the
following years: during the political elections of April 1948, for
instance, it was secretly deployed all along the north-eastern land
border to prevent possible Yugoslav infiltrations in support of a

8
Luciano Garibaldi, L’altro italiano. Edgardo Sogno: sessant’anni di antifascismo e di
anticomunismo (Milano: Edizioni Ares 1992), 177–78.
9
Tranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica, 178–88 and 204–10.
10
Pre-report, 32. The tension between the partisan groups was already high even in the
final months of the war, and in Feb. 1945 a non-communist formation was ambushed
and massacred by a communist one in the notorious Porzus incident.
11
Virgilio Ilari, Il generale col monocolo: Giovanni De Lorenzo, 1907–1973 (Ancona:
Casa Editrice Nuove Ricerche 1994), 68.
 960 Leopoldo Nuti

communist coup, and it seems to have also been involved in at least one
serious clash on Yugoslav territory.12
In 1950 the unit changed its nature once again. It became a sort of
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paramilitary organization of cadres which, in case of war, should

activate a total of 20 battalions of 360 men each, for a grand total of
about 6,500 men. Codenamed ‘O’ (probably after ‘Osoppo’), the unit
was given the task of securing communications and protecting civil and
military installations, as well as conducting guerrilla and counter-
guerrilla operations, gathering intelligence, and reporting on the
enemy’s activities. According to one of the parliamentary reports, the
unit’s weapons were stored in the depot of the 8th Alpine Regiment in
Udine. It remained active until 1956, when it was officially disbanded,
and until then it seems to have been involved in several kinds of
activities, mostly related to the tensions with Yugoslavia and the future
of the city of Trieste.13 The importance of the ‘Osoppo’ for the
development of our story should not be underestimated. It provided a
possible pattern for the future organization and it helped the Army gain
a direct experience in the management of an underground network to
be activated in case of need: in short, it can be regarded as a small-scale
experiment in running a stay-behind network, which would turn out to
be useful later on.
While the Army was setting up its stay-behind unit in the north-east,
other secret networks remained active throughout the country.
According to a report drafted by a US intelligence operative in June
1947, the Army was also in touch with a mysterious anti-communist
movement, the ECA (Esercito Clandestino Anticomunista), whose
main goal seems to have been to react to a possible communist
revolutionary attempt.14 Several secret neo-Fascist organizations were
also signalled as actively scheming, while all along the Partito
Comunista Italiano (PCI) maintained its own covert network as well.
A large number of communist partisans refused to hand over their
weapons at the end of the war, and the Italian security forces continued
to find large caches of arms for quite a number of years after the end of
the hostilities. Relying on the underground experience of the resistance,
the PCI had built a secret structure – often referred to as the apparato –
whose purpose can in turn be regarded as offensive or defensive.

12
For the creation of the unit and its deployment in 1948, see Pre-report, 33. The story
of the clash is told by Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 69. The tension with Yugoslavia
in the spring of 1946 is described in Leopoldo Nuti, L’esercito italiano nel secondo
dopoguerra. La sua ricostruzione e l’assistenza militare alleata, 1945–1950 (Rome:
Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore Esercito, 1989).
13
Pre-report, pp.33 and 36.
14
Tranfaglia, Come nasce la repubblica, 69, footnote 62.
 Italy 961

Italian security forces provided some rather inflated estimates about its
strength, armaments and capabilities: in a document drafted in the
tense spring of 1948 and transmitted to the US, the apparato was
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described as a clandestine structure of almost 200,000, with quite a

substantial range of weapons available. The report regarded it as fully
capable to implement a revolutionary coup, possibly with some
external assistance from Yugoslavia, and to create a serious challenge
for Italian security forces. It seems likely that this pessimistic
assessment was partly conceived to impress its American recipients
and persuade them of the importance of providing the Italian Army
with some military assistance. Nevertheless, the Italian security forces
did believe in a possible communist coup: the techniques employed by
PCI members during the insurrectional outbursts that followed the
attempted murder of the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti in July 1948, for
instance, convinced them of the soundness of this assessment, and of
the seriousness of the threat posed by the apparato.15
According to other interpretations, however, the apparato did exist
but was a defensive and not an offensive structure: its clandestine
network was conceived to help the Party survive in case of a reactionary
coup and a breakdown of democracy. From this perspective, its
primary task was to ensure the survival of a core structure of the Party
and above all to help secure the physical survival of its leaders by
secretly smuggling them out of the country.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that as the confrontation between
the Communist Party and the pro-Western democratic forces
gained momentum and reached its climax in the spring and summer
of 1948, as both sides were gearing up and preparing for the worst by
building up their own security forces. From this perspective, both
developments – the evolution of the ‘Osoppo’ group and the
strengthening of the PCI apparato – can be seen as part of a broader
process, namely the gradual transformation of the Italian political
landscape by the Cold War.
Finally, one should also keep in mind that to a large extent all
these events were closely monitored by foreign intelligence services.
During the war both the US and the UK had built extensive contacts
with the Resistance movement through the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) respectively. Then,
in the last phase of the conflict, the US had also begun to develop a
pervasive effort to monitor and penetrate what was left – or was being
rebuilt – of the security and intelligence services of the Italian

15
Leopoldo Nuti, ‘Security and Threat Perceptions in Italy in the Early Cold War
Years, 1945–1953’, in Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (eds.), The Soviet Union and
Europe in the Cold War, 1945–1953 (London: Macmillan 1996), 412–29.
 962 Leopoldo Nuti

government. As the work of Timothy Naftali has shown, the head of

US counter-intelligence in Italy, James J. Angleton, was crucial to this
endeavour. Through his wide connections in Italy, between 1944 and
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1947 Angleton was able to establish some close relations that would
remain active for many years during the Cold War.16 Rather than
recalling the details of Angleton’s penetration of the reborn Italian
security and intelligence services, what is important here is to underline
two key features of his modus operandi which might have had an
impact – direct or indirect – on the further development of the ‘Gladio’
story. In the first place, Angleton followed the standard intelligence
practice of building separate connections with different parts of the
Italian services, in order to establish a system which would allow him to
evaluate and check the information that was made available to him by
his informants.17 While some of them might have acted with the full
approval of their services, some other ones probably cultivated their
relationship with Angleton unbeknownst to their superiors. Such a
procedure enabled the head of US counter-intelligence in Italy not only
to monitor the activities of Italian intelligence with great efficiency, but
also to exert a growing influence on its future development.
This capacity was enhanced by the second key feature of Angleton’s
activities, namely his tendency to build up unorthodox channels of
information and to handle some of them semi-privately, outside of the
bureaucratized structures of the proper intelligence channels. From
1947 to 1953, Angleton ran from Washington a veritable parallel
intelligence station in Rome through the work of his former deputy,
Raymond Rocca, who built upon Angleton’s former contacts to
develop a separate network – with little, if any, control from the CIA
station or the US Embassy. The system was terminated when William
Colby was appointed to Rome in 1953 and persuaded his Head of
Station, Gerald Miller, to call this unorthodox procedure to an end.18
Until then, however, Rocca’s activities provided Angleton with an
unprecedented freedom of manoeuvre to control the rebirth of the
Italian intelligence system – and, as we will see in a moment, to survey
the establishment of the stay-behind initiative.

16
Timothy J. Naftali, ‘ARTIFICE: James Angleton and X-2 Operations in Italy’, in
George C. Chalou (ed.), The Secrets’ War. The Office of Strategic Services in World
War II (Washington DC: NARA 1992); Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’.
17
According to Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’, the two key connections that Angleton built
early on were with the Pubblica Sicurezza (i.e. with the Police forces of the Ministry of
the Interior) and with the Naval Intelligence Service.
18
For Colby’s own version of this episode, see William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life
in the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster 1978), Ch. 3, ‘Covert Politics in Italy’.
 Italy 963

Origins of the Official Stay-Behind Operation

On 8 October 1951, the Head of Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR,
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Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate), General Umberto Broccoli, wrote

a note to the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Efisio Marras, on the
subject of intelligence operations under enemy occupation. In his note,
titled ‘Intelligence and operational organization in the national
territory susceptible to enemy occupation’, General Broccoli advocated
the creation of a network capable of conducting stay-behind, to assist
those forces that remained behind the lines during an invasion, and in
general to provide intelligence on the areas occupied by the enemy.
Similar projects, he claimed, were already being carried out by some of
the other NATO powers. SIFAR was also aware that the US was
planning the creation of some clandestine groups in north-east Italy for
the same purpose. To create such a network, wrote Broccoli, required a
complex, costly and lengthy procedure. It was therefore all the more
necessary to act quickly, if Italy wanted to anticipate the American
intervention and keep the future organization under national control.
Broccoli told Marras that for some time he had been discussing the
matter with the directors of the intelligence services (SIOS, Servizi
Informazione Operative e Sicurezza) of the three armed forces. He now
asked the Chief of Defence Staff for the authorization to send seven
officers to attend a special training course in Great Britain, at the
Training Division of the Secret Intelligence Service. The course would
last from November 1951 to February 1952. Such cooperation with the
British, however, was to be conceived as a sort of temporary, stopgap
measure, as in the long run it was important to establish a stable and
more robust connection with the US.19 It is unclear, from the
documentation cited in the parliamentary reports, whether SIFAR’s
request was actually implemented. It seems that the cooperation with
the British Intelligence Service was stillborn, but that planning for the
creation of the organization went ahead. Air Force Colonel Felice
Santini was selected as general coordinator of the future organization,
while six other officers were to be placed in charge of its various
branches, namely intelligence, stay-behind, propaganda, communica-
tions, cipher, and exfiltration (‘evasion and escape’). Each one of them
was to be given responsibility to recruit his own local agents, up to a
total of 200, with the goal of being operational by the beginning of
1953.

19
Promemoria trasmesso l’8 ottobre 1951 dal generale Broccoli al Capo di Stato
Maggiore della difesa, Generale Marras, sotto il titolo di ‘Organizzazione informativa-
operativa nel territorio nazionale suscettibile di occupazione nemica’, cited as
attachment 1 in REPORT 2, 14–15.
 964 Leopoldo Nuti

In the meantime there had been several attempts to coordinate the

various special operations and intelligence organizations of the Western
European allies. In 1949 a special trilateral body, the Western Union
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Clandestine Committee, had been set up by Benelux, Britain and France

inside the Western European Union, and by April 1951 it transferred its
tasks to the newly formed Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC),
which was meant to cooperate closely with the Supreme Allied
Commander Europe (SACEUR). As for Italy, SIFAR was invited to
attend a meeting in Paris to coordinate its activities with the new body
in May 1952. The Italian reply shows to some extent the Italian
military’s irritation with the creation of any implicit or explicit
hierarchy within the Alliance: General Marras authorized SIFAR to
send a representative to the meeting but not to formally recognize a
body vis-à-vis which Italy was to be placed in a condition of inferiority.
Rather than this multilateral initiative, SIFAR and the Defence Staff
seemed to prefer the building up of a close, exclusive connection with
the US – as had already been hinted by General Broccoli in his note to
Marras of October 1951.
Thus in the following years SIFAR continued to work on the creation
of the stay-behind organization on a bilateral, US–Italian basis. In 1953
a large area was purchased in a remote part of Sardinia, at Capo
Marrargiu, to set up a special training camp for the future members of
the organization (CAG, or Centro Addestramento Guastatori, Sabo-
teurs’ Training Centre). According to one of the parliamentary reports,
work on the camp began in 1954 and was subsidized by the CIA, on the
basis of a special bilateral agreement between the US and the Italian
intelligence services.20 Another report lists these initial contributions as
a total of 350 million lire for purchasing the terrain and constructing
the camp, another 135 million for the setting up of a radio centre, and
additional equipment in kind, including some aircraft.21
The pro-American inclination of the Italian military described by the
parliamentary reports fits quite well with the general mood of the
Italian armed forces at the time. Over the years the preservation of a
sound relationship with the US had become one of the key tenets of the
Italian military, who regarded Washington as the country’s strongest
and most reliable partner, while the connection with the other
European allies was still somewhat strained by the ill feelings developed
during the war.22

20
REPORT 2, 15–16.
21
REPORT 1, 83–4.
22
On the military relations between the US and Italy see Leopoldo Nuti, ‘Appunti per
una storia della politica di difesa italiana nella prima metà degli anni 0 50’, in Ennio Di
Nolfo, Romain Rainero, Brunello Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la politica di potenza in
 Italy 965

To this general interpretive framework one should also add a more

specific detail which exemplifies the extent of US–Italian cooperation in
military matters during these early Cold War years. According to one of
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the parliamentary reports, the officer to be put in charge of the future

stay-behind organization was the Air Force Colonel Felice Santini, who
also accompanied General Broccoli to Paris for his meeting with the
CPC in May 1952, and who was later given the task of supervising the
construction of the base at Capo Marrargiu. Santini was a former
member of the Resistance, who during the Nazi occupation of Rome
had directed a radio centre connecting the partisan network inside the
city with the Allies and the Badoglio government in southern Italy, and
who was later appointed Head of the Air Force intelligence service
(SIOS-aeronautica).23 In this later context he had developed a close
working relationship with Raymond Rocca, Angleton’s deputy in
Rome, and was cooperating with him by providing him with aerial
reconnaissance photographs of Venezia Giulia.24 In other words, the
officer selected to set up the whole stay-behind structure was one that
enjoyed the full confidence of the US, and his appointment to this
extremely delicate and politically sensitive task should be probably
regarded as confirming the intimacy of the cooperation between SIFAR
and CIA in these years.

The Birth of ‘Gladio’

A Chronology
The structure of the stay-behind network seems to have been completed
by late 1956. By late September the Head of SIFAR, General Giovanni
De Lorenzo, authorized the creation of a training branch (SAD: Sezione
Addestramento) inside the ‘R’ office (Ricerche all’estero, Foreign
Intelligence) of the Intelligence Service.25 The new body, activated by
1 October, included a head of section and two groups, tasked with (1)
general organization and support for two large guerrilla units (code-
named Stella Alpina and Stella Marina); (2) permanent secretarial work
and activation of the operational branches (intelligence, stay-behind,
propaganda, escape and guerrilla) and of some smaller units kept in a
high state of readiness. Between 1959 and 1964 two more groups were

Europa negli anni 0 50 (Milan: Marzorati 1992), 625–70; idem, ‘US Forces in Italy,
1955–1963’, in Wolfgang Krieger (ed.), US Forces in Europe: The Early Years
(Boulder, CO: Westview 1994), 251–72.
23
Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 72.
24
Naftali, ‘Villa Angleton’, 20.
25
Pre-report, 28.
 966 Leopoldo Nuti

added, namely one for air activities, both logistical and operational, in
connection with the creation of a light aircraft section (SAL, Sezione
Aerei Leggeri, added in 1958–59); and one for communications, both
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long and short range. SAD also supervised the training and ex-
perimental activities of the CAG, which was defined as the operational
and training base for the whole operation.26 Between 1964 and 1971 a
new group was added to maintain a liaison with the other stay-behind
operations in other NATO countries and with the Alliance’s structures
in charge of clandestine warfare.27
Shortly afterwards, on 18 October 1956, the establishment of a joint
US–Italian organization was discussed at a meeting between two US
and two Italian intelligence officers, namely Colonel Giulio Fettarappa-
Sandri (Head of SAD) and Major Mario Accasto (Head of CAG) for
SIFAR and Robert Porter and John Edwards for the CIA. It was the first
time that the codename ‘Gladio’ (a reference to the Roman legions’
famous short sword, the gladius) officially appeared in a document to
indicate the stay-behind organization. The text of the agreements was
discussed and approved, together with a number of procedural
decisions.28 According to all the parliamentary reports, the agreement
was formally exchanged on 26 November 1956, with the title ‘A
Restatement of agreements between the US and Italian Intelligence
Services relative to the Organization and Operation of the Italian
Clandestine Stay-Behind Effort’.
The document included three sections. In the first the two services
agreed to cooperate in order to organize, train and manage the
operational activities of a stay-behind network to be activated in case of
enemy occupation of Italian territory. In a second section it was stated
that the operational base of the organization would be located in
Sardinia and that the Italian Staff would do its utmost to retain control
of the island in case of war. A third section listed all the commitments
of the two signatories. In a meeting that took place on the following
day the Italian representatives declared that the draft text had been

26
This description of the structure of SAD comes from a later document, Stato
Maggiore della Difesa, SIFAR – Ufficio ‘R’, Sezione SAD, 1 June 1959, ‘Le Forze
Speciali del SIFAR e l’operazione Gladio’, reproduced in Mario Coglitore and Sandro
Scarso, La notte dei gladiator: Omissioni e silenzi della repubblica (Padua: Calusca
edizioni 1992). The book offers an extremely biased interpretation of the creation of
Gladio, but it also includes the complete reproduction of this important record. The
sequence of the creation of the various groups is described in REPORT 1, 63–5,
according to which the groups had slightly different tasks.
27
REPORT 1, 65.
28
Ibid., 6–7.
 Italy 967

officially approved by their service.29 Defence Minister Paolo Taviani

has repeatedly stated that he personally approved the signature of the
agreement and that he informed the main authorities of the government
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of the time, namely the President of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi,

Prime Minister Antonio Segni, Deputy Prime Minister Giuseppe
Saragat, and Foreign Minister Antonio Martino. According to Taviani,
they all approved the decision. They also discussed whether the
Parliament should be informed, but given the nature of the agreement
(and the fact that a similar procedure had been followed in Great
Britain and France) it was decided to keep the matter as secret as
possible.30
Between 1956 and 1958 the tasks and the framework of the new
network were further defined by a joint US–Italian body named
‘Gladio’ Committee, composed of eight Italian representatives and
three American ones. In the committee meetings, initial priority seems
to have been given to the creation of the two centres, the training one at
Capo Marrargiu and the radio one at Olmedo. There also seems to
have been a certain difference of opinions between the CIA and the
SIFAR as to what should be done next. SIFAR insisted that it was
necessary to accelerate the integration in the new ‘Gladio’ network of
the large guerrilla units already existing in the north-east, rather than
proceed with the recruiting of the personnel for the smaller units, much
to the dismay of the CIA members of the committee who seem to have
preferred the opposite course of action. According to the parliamentary
reports it was SIFAR which got it its own way, since the old ‘Osoppo’
group was incorporated almost immediately in the new ‘Gladio’
operation and basically became the new ‘Stella Alpina’ guerrilla unit,
even retaining its old leader, Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Specogna.
Recruiting the personnel for the new, smaller units did not begin before
the end of 1958. Until then, the only step that was taken to prepare the
new clandestine structure was the training of six members of SAD in
the US between October and November 1957.31
The main immediate consequence of the formal creation of the new
structure seems to have been to bring to an end the previous stay-
behind structure built around the old ‘Osoppo’ partisan group, which
was officially terminated at the beginning of October 1956, shortly
after the birth of SAD. In several interviews as well as in his memoirs,

29
Ibid., 5–7. The title of the Italian copy of the agreement does not include the word
‘Restatement’, and this difference had led to much speculation about the real beginning
of the operation.
30
REPORT 1, 104. See also Paolo Emilio Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo
(Bologna: Il Mulino 2002), 408.
31
REPORT 1, 16–17.
 968 Leopoldo Nuti

Paolo Emilio Taviani, who was Minister of Defence at the time, has
presented the creation of the new structure as more or less a
‘rationalization’ of the previous ‘makeshift’ efforts, and has made clear
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that he regards himself as bearing chief responsibility for this initiative.

His intention, he stated, was to make the whole operation more
efficient at the critical juncture of the Suez crisis and the invasion of
Hungary, when all of a sudden a large number of Soviet forces were
redeployed at a very short distance from Italy.32 Taviani’s comments
clearly contain an element of truth, but one wonders whether they do
not tell only a part of the story. It seems unlikely that the agreement
was concluded in all haste under the pressure of the dual crisis of
October/November 1956, since as we have seen SIFAR and the CIA
had been working on it for quite some time. The agreement was
therefore the natural conclusion of a process that was underway since
the early 1950s, and its conclusion might have been accelerated by the
Soviet intervention in Budapest, but not entirely determined by it.
Besides, one should also note that the conclusion of the negotiation
marked one more step in an almost uninterrupted series of agreements
establishing a very close level of military cooperation between Italy and
the US. Beginning in November 1955, when the Italian Parliament
ratified the NATO status of forces agreement (which implicitly
recognized the exchange of notes that authorized the deployment of
the SETAF – Southern European Task Force – in Italian territory). This
cooperation continued well into the late 1950s, reaching perhaps its
highest peak when the two countries agreed in March 1959 to jointly
deploy the new US Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles in
southern Italy. Taviani’s argument that the Hungarian crisis was
responsible for the conclusion of the agreement, however, can be
indirectly confirmed by the fact that by the end of 1956 and early 1957
there was indeed a serious effort by the Italian Minister of Defence to
involve more closely the US in the security of the country. In January
1957, for instance, Taviani wrote a letter to his American counterpart,
Charles Wilson, asking that the US deploy more troops in Italy (he
asked for two divisions) and that a new NATO command be
established in or around the city of Venice.33 The formal creation of
‘Gladio’ and the request to deploy more troops in the north-east may

32
Taviani’s statements are fully reported in REPORT 1, 12–13, as well as in P. E.
Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo, 406–7.
33
Foreign Service dispatch No. 996, ‘Request by Minister of Defence for Increase in US
forces Stationed in Italy’, 21 Jan. 1957, in NAW, RG 59, Central Decimal Files, box
3620, f. 765.5-MSP/1-257, 765.5-MSP/1-257. See also a later document, Italian
Minister of Defence (Taviani) to the US Secretary of State (Wilson), 11 Jan.1957, in
NAW, RG 59, Central Decimal Files 1955–1959, box 2539, TAB A to 611.65/2–1457.
 Italy 969

therefore have been part of a broader effort spurred by the presence of a

number of new Soviet divisions deployed in Hungary, but it was also
part of a general trend of close military cooperation that was already a
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permanent feature of Italian security policy.

Finally, one should also keep in mind the very tense domestic
political situation Italy was facing in the summer and autumn of 1956,
when the pro-Western orientation of its foreign policy was being
challenged by a series of internal developments that had begun with the
election of the quasi-neutralist figure Giovanni Gronchi to the
Presidency of the Republic the previous year. In the autumn of 1956
this trend seemed to undergo yet another sudden acceleration when the
hitherto pro-communist Italian Socialist Party (PSI) started a series of
talks with the pro-Western Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI) to
discuss a possible reunification – perhaps to be achieved at the price of
the PSDI’s strong anti-communist stance.34 It seems quite plausible,
therefore, that the pro-Western forces in the Italian government may
have tried to strengthen the Western orientation of the country and
prevent any future slip into a more neutralist position by entering
some binding military agreements which would firmly anchor Italy to
NATO and to the US. While the ‘Gladio’ accord clearly did not have
any public impact like the establishment of the two additional divisions
demanded by Taviani in January 1957 would have had, it does seem to
fit into the same political pattern that had shaped US–Italian military
relations for the past year and a half and that would continue for quite
some time.

The Structure
The state of the new structure is spelled out in detail in a report drafted
by the SAD section of SIFAR in June 1959. By then, it was clear that the
research and the selection of the personnel for the stay-behind network
was fully under way, even if the organization was still a long way from
being fully manned. Only the two large guerrilla units (Stella Alpina
and Stella Marina), which clearly benefited from being the heirs of the
previous clandestine structures, were well on the way to becoming fully
operational.
The Report listed as the main lines along which the operation was
being developed: (1) completing the establishment of the central
directorate (SAD) and developing the overall plan of operations; (2)
completing the creation of the training centre (CAG), and establishing
an operational doctrine; (3) fully establishing the communication
34
On this subject see Leopoldo Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra: Importanza e
limiti della presenza americana in Italia (Roma: Laterza 1999), Ch.1.
 970 Leopoldo Nuti

centre, both for long-range contacts with the stay-behind units and for
jamming enemy broadcasting; (4) planning such key features of the
operation as security, personnel selection, training, organization and
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intelligence; (5) carrying out special training courses either in the US or

under joint American and Italian instructors in Italy; (6) activating the
40 special nuclei – the ‘operational branches’ - that would operate
behind the enemy lines and that should already be pre-constituted in
peacetime, rather than trying to infiltrate them behind enemy lines in an
emergency; (7) creating additional guerrilla units; (8) preparing and
deploying secret equipment and arms caches; these would be special
materials and radio equipment for the 40 nuclei, and arms and
ammunition for the larger guerrilla units; (9) training the cadres; (10)
conducting aerial and terrestrial recognition of the areas where the
units would operate; (11) collecting photographic documentation and
publications on special operations; (12) conducting experimental
activities (air, sea and land).
The whole structure was to be organized on two levels. There were
40 small nuclei (30 of which were activated by 1961) would include
2–3 members and 2 radio operators and carry out such tasks as
intelligence (6 nuclei ‘I’), stay-behind (10 ‘S’), propaganda (6 ‘P’),
evasion and escape (6 ‘E’), guerrilla (12 ‘G’): they would be based on a
grand total of about 172 men, under the leadership of about 32
‘organizers’. Then there would be five large guerrilla units in a high
state of readiness (UPI, Unità di Pronto Impiego), namely the Stella
Alpina (which already numbered a force of about 600, but which
should be brought up to a total of a 1,000 and be capable of mobilizing
another 1,000 men), the Stella Marina (another 200 men), the
Rododendro, Ginestra and Azalea, each numbering between 100 and
200 men. All together, the five larger units should total a maximum of
about 1,500 men, with an additional 1,500 to be mobilized if
necessary.
According to the original documents on which the parliamentary
reports have been based, however, these estimates turned out to be too
high: the list of external personnel recruited for the stay-behind
operation (i.e. not including the SIFAR personnel acting as instructors,
planners, etc.) never amounted to more than 622 members, of which
about half were selected between 1958 and 1967 and the rest in the
period between 1967 and 1990.35 These figures were later confirmed as
more realistic than the original ones of 1,500/2,000 by the Head of the
new Intelligence Service (SISMI), General. Inzerilli, during a hearing in
front of one of the parliamentary committees.36
35
REPORT 1, 79.
36
Ibid., 81.
 Italy 971

The organizational plan focused mostly on northern Italy (defined as

Zones I and II) but, as a second stage, it also conceived as possible an
extension of the operations to the central and southern parts of the
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country (Zones III and IV). The report also made clear that the units
were being prepared to operate either in case of occupation by the
enemy or, in case of internal subversion, in order to spur the local
population to resist and to maintain the continuity of the presence of
the state.
One of the most controversial aspects of the whole operation has
been the deployment of the arms caches (NASCO) throughout the
possible zones of operation, since some of these weapons may have
been used for very different purposes than those originally planned for.
Between 1959 and 1960 most of this material was provided by the CIA
and stored in Naples before being sent to the CAG at Capo Marrargiu.
By the early 1960s there were already enough supplies to equip 30 out
of the 40 nuclei which should eventually be set up: according to the
parliamentary reports, they included explosives, weapons, ammunition,
rifles, hand grenades, daggers, mortars, light machine guns, pistols,
rocket launchers, radios, binoculars, and various other devices.37
Deployment in the ‘peripheral areas’ began in 1961 with the first
NASCO, and continued in the following years: another one in 1962, 32
in 1963 and 74 in 1964. When the matter was investigated in 1990, the
Italian secret service provided the parliamentary committees with a list
of 139 NASCOs. The weapons were usually stored underground and
their deployment was done at night, in order to keep the whole
operation absolutely secret. Nevertheless, two of them were acciden-
tally found, one by some workers in 1966 and a second one in 1968 by
a Carabinieri patrol which obviously ignored the nature of what they
had found. This led to the decision to withdraw the whole set of arms
caches in 1972, an operation which was completed by June 1973. All
the equipment was recovered, with the exception of two caches of light
arms, whose final destiny has never been cleared up.38
Financially, the stay-behind operation already had at its disposal an
overall amount of installations and equipment with a value of about
1,500,000,000 Italian lire, and could count on an annual budget of
another 225 million lire.39 According to one of the Parliamentary
reports, the operation also received a total CIA contribution of

37
REPORT 1, 88, footnote 121.
38
Actually 10 of the original 139 caches were not retrieved in 1973 but in 1990, as they
had been hidden in places where their retrieval would require some complex demolition
work. REPORT 1, 91–8.
39
Stato Maggiore della Difesa, SIFAR – Ufficio ‘R’, Sezione SAD, 1 June 1959, ‘Le
Forze Speciali del SIFAR e l’operazione Gladio’, reproduced in Coglitore and Scarso,
 972 Leopoldo Nuti

451 million lire from 1957 to 1967, and of another 62.5 million lire
from 1968 to 1972. A second, special CIA contribution for procure-
ment of operational material was estimated at about 287 million lire
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for the first ten years, and then a mere trickle for the following years.
All together, if one takes into account the initial funding provided by
the CIA for the purchase of the area at Capo Marrargiu and the setting
up of the training centre, the total US contribution to Operation
‘Gladio’ can be calculated to around 1.3 billion lire.40
According to his memoirs, Defence Minister Taviani personally
made a point of discussing the establishment of ‘Gladio’ with the
SACEUR, General Alfred M. Gruenther, whom he regarded as a close
personal friend.41 He managed to have Italy formally invited to become
a member of the Alliance’s Coordination and Planning Committee on 2
March 1959, and in May of that same year a SIFAR representative, the
Head of SAD Colonel Fettarappa Sandri, took part in a meeting of the
CPC as a member. Later on, in April 1964, Italy became a member of a
more restricted group, the Allied Coordinating Committee (ACC),
which included only the US, the UK, France, West Germany and the
Benelux countries.42 In a few years after its creation, therefore, the
Italian stay-behind organization was included in NATO and began a
multilateral cooperation with its Western European counterparts.

Afterwards
The story so far contains few, if any, elements capable of raising any
suspicions about the possible involvements of the stay-behind structure
in any illegal activities. While largely incomplete, the documentation
provided to the parliamentary committees and abundantly cited in their
reports shows that until the early 1960s Operation ‘Gladio’ was
nothing else than the joint establishment by the SIFAR and the CIA of a
clandestine network charged with conducting all sorts of stay-behind
activities in case a portion of Italian territory was occupied by enemy
forces or fell prey to internal subversion. The documentary record hints
at a certain divergence of opinion between the two intelligence agencies

La notte dei gladiatori. Inzerilli in his memoirs gives more or less the same figure, 220
million lire: Inzerilli, Gladio, 72.
40
REPORT 1, 84–5.
41
Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo, 408 and 427–8 for his personal relationship
with Gruenther.
42
While the CPC was a NATO structure, having being set up by the Alliance in 1952
and being strictly linked to SACEUR, the ACC was a sort of liaison agency between
those NATO countries which had a stay-behind network and was created mainly with
the purpose of standardizing them. REPORT 1, 104–5. See also Inzerilli, Gladio, 61–4.
 Italy 973

as to the order of their respective priorities, reveals a certain

sluggishness in developing the project, and shows the substantial
financial support provided by the US for its implementation. Some
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additional glimpses on ‘Gladio’s’ activities come from the memoirs of

General Paolo Inzerilli, who was head of the organization from 1974 to
1986: writing in retrospect about the situation he found when he
became its leader, Inzerilli states that in its first 20 years of life the
network had mostly focused on building up its structure by recruiting
and training its members, to the detriment of operational planning
which, he found, had been sorely neglected.43 And yet even from these
sparse comments it is difficult to grasp anything particularly sensitive or
contentious.
Why, then, was the revelation of this operation such a controversial
matter? The main reason can be found in the suspicion that what is told
in this narrative reconstruction of the origins of the project may not
have been the full story; that the ‘Gladio’ structure may later have been
involved in other activities, and in particular that it may have been
somewhat related to the so-called ‘Strategy of tension’, the wave of
terrorist attacks that jeopardized Italian democracy and shocked Italian
society for more than a decade between the end of the 1960s and the
early 1980s.44 The parliamentary committees have acquired some later
documentation that shows a certain ambiguity on this subject, and it is
necessary therefore to give it a rather cursory look in order to round off
this essay.
According to two notes drafted by the SAD in the autumn of 1963
(basically two versions of the same document, one drafted in October
and the second in November), there had been some gradual evolution
of the original principles according to which the project should operate.
Given the very peculiar nature of the situation in which some of the
larger guerrilla units were going to operate (i.e., near the Yugoslav
border), some of these units had been gradually given the task to keep
under control, and if necessary neutralize, subversive activities
conducted in peacetime (my emphasis) in their area of competence.
The first note then proceeded to mention the fact that the US

43
Inzerilli, Gladio, 27–8.
44
In his book, Daniele Ganser repeatedly tries to demonstrate, for instance, that
‘Gladio’ was behind the 1964 coup manqué organized by Gen. De Lorenzo, a
demonstration of force that was probably conceived by the General and President Segni
to illegally influence the course of Italian politics and steer the Italian centre-left
government towards the right: and yet Ganser offers no primary sources to support his
thesis, nor does he succeed in doing so in the following pages of his chapter on Italy.
Daniel Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western
Europe (London: Frank Cass 2005), 70–2.
 974 Leopoldo Nuti

representatives in the ‘Gladio’ committee had expressed their clear

desire to intensify the activities of the operation. In particular, they had
suggested that (1) the SAD and the CAG should adjust some of their
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programmes to the principles of the counter-insurgency doctrine, which

was then being promoted by the US military with great encouragement
by the Kennedy administration; (2) that the Italian base might be used
for external activities, unrelated to ‘Gladio’, such as counter-insurgency
training courses for foreign elements (in particular from African
countries); (3) the utilization of Italian instructors outside of Italy for
the same purpose; (4) the formation of a highly qualified group of
counter-insurgency instructors; (5) the activation of some members of
‘Gladio’ on Italian territory with roles of propaganda and counter-
propaganda – a project which the CIA was willing to support with the
necessary equipment and perhaps financially as well.
According to the note, the Italian side was ready to accept part of
these proposals, in particular the formation of a highly specialized core
of officers and the implementation of counter-insurgency courses,
which could be attended by some selected officers as well as by some
members of the ‘Gladio’ organization. In particular, both the October
version of this note as well as the later one mention the fact that the
Stella Alpina group was in direct contact with the infiltration and
expansion attempts of the ‘anti-national Slav trend’ and that it was
already partially active with propaganda and counter-propaganda
measures.45 That there was a certain pressure from the US to adapt the
structure of Operation ‘Gladio’ to new, initially unforeseen, tasks is
also reflected by a document from January 1966, related to a meeting of
the US–Italian ‘Gladio’ committee. On that occasion one of the US
representatives seems to have suggested that while it was important to
maintain the level of efficiency that the structure had achieved, it should
also redirect its activities according to a programme which might
enable it to produce some results even in peacetime – in particular, in
relation to the doctrines of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Italian
officers, for instance, could attend some courses on this subject at the
US Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.46
The records provided to the parliamentary committees do not
contain any information about the possible Italian replies to these
suggestions. The fact that they were reiterated in 1966, however, seems
to suggest that the Italian side did not show the same amount of interest
as their American counterparts in the doctrines of counter-insurgency.
The only reference to a concrete application of the new theories by SAD
and some elements of the Stella Marina unit is the documentation
45
REPORT 1, 41–2.
46
REPORT 2, 19.
 Italy 975

related to a ‘counterinsurgency exercise’ codenamed ‘Delfino’ (Dol-

phin), in the Trieste area, between 15 and 24 April 1966. The structure
of the exercise, fully described in a report dated May 1966, shows a
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scenario in which an insurgency is gradually being promoted in the area

close to Yugoslavia but without any clear violation of the borders,
leading to a substantial takeover of the city of Trieste, to which the
‘Gladio’ members should respond adequately with all means at their
disposal.47 Aside from this exercise, there seems to have been little – if
any – emphasis on counter-insurgency in ‘Gladio’. Later documents
seem to confirm that ‘Delfino’ was an isolated exercise and, above all,
that the Italian side continued to regard with some scepticism the
American proposals to use ‘Gladio’ to face internal subversion as well
as external threats.
In autumn 1972, in particular, the US seemed to have conditioned
the continuation of their financial support for the operation on an
adequate adaptation of ‘Gladio’ to meet the threat of a large-scale
internal insurrection. Even in this case, however, the matter seems to
have been dropped.48 An indirect confirmation of this comes from the
memoirs of General Inzerilli, who states that it was in that year that the
initial agreement with the CIA had been replaced by a ‘mini-agreement’
valid for the next two years. According to Inzerilli, the new agreement
substantially cut the financial support from the US service and reduced
the material dependence of the Italian network.49
These documents provide the only link to a possible degeneration of
‘Gladio’ from its original purposes to an internal counter-insurgency
one. They seem to confirm, however, that while the US probably put
some pressure on the Italians for a long period of time to expand the
activities of the operation, there was a clear resistance from the Italian
side to do so.50 Even the fact that the only counter-insurgency exercise

47
Ibid., 42–6. Inzerilli mentions a similar large-scale exercise, still carried out in Trieste
but by the Carabinieri, in 1965, under the codename ‘Aquila Bianca’: Inzerilli,
Gladio, 38.
48
REPORT 1, 46–8.
49
Inzerilli, Gladio, 66.
50
For a long list of possible links between US intelligence operatives and Italian
terrorists, see for instance the work of Judge Salvini, one of the legal authorities who
investigated the strategy of tension: Sentenza - ordinanza del Giudice Istruttore presso il
Tribunale Civile e Penale di Milano, dr. Guido Salvini, nel procedimento penale nei
confronti di ROGNONI Giancarlo ed altri, in 5www.strano.net/stragi/tstragi/salvini/
index.html4. Salvini, however, takes for real the (in) famous document ‘Supplement B’
of the US Army Field Manual (FM) 30–31, demonstrated to be a Soviet forgery since
1976. On the influence of counterinsurgency theories in the US, and on the Kennedy
administration in particular, there is an ample literature: Douglas S. Blaufarb, The
Counterinsurgency Era: US Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present
 976 Leopoldo Nuti

took place in Trieste seems to confirm this reluctance, because it was

based on a scenario in which the external threat was as relevant and
crucial to the exercise as the internal upheaval which should have been
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the core of the exercise. Besides, even if ‘Gladio’ had been adapted
according to the American suggestions, there seems to be only a vague
conceptual link between the counter-insurgency doctrine – which
emphasized psychological, political and welfare methods to counter-
insurgency propaganda techniques – with the wave of political
terrorism that hit Italy from 1969.
Other possible rumours related to ‘Gladio’ regard its possible use to
counter the independence movement that unleashed a series of
bombings in South Tyrol/Alto Adige in the early and mid-1960s. That
SIFAR itself was involved in the repression of these attacks seems
unquestionable, but the doubt has been advanced that perhaps some
members of ‘Gladio’ itself might have been activated and involved in
some of the counter-terrorist activities. The only confirmation of this
possibility so far has been found in the testimony of two members of
the CAG (but not of the ‘Gladio’ structure itself), who in 1991
admitted having been asked to draft some plans for reprisals to be
conducted on Austrian territory should the terrorist attacks continue
unabated.51
Finally, the most pervasive doubts regarding the whole operation has
always been that the documentation provided to the parliamentary
committees might have been just the top of an iceberg. Rumours about
super-secret structures, parallel ‘Gladios’, and other similar clandestine
organizations that would be responsible for enacting the ‘strategy of
tension’ have continued to surface in the media. In a country that has
known the shock of the secret para-Masonic lodge P2, a large network
that included a vast section of Italy’s nomenklatura, it is perhaps
normal to nurture this kind of suspicions. Nevertheless, while there are
still some gaps to be filled in the reconstruction of the Italian stay-
behind operation, what has been made clear so far tells a different
story.

(New York: Free Press c1977); Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of
American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (NY UP 1986); Michael
McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and
Counter-Terrorism, 1940–1990 (New York: Pantheon Books 1992); Arthur
M. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books
1979), 495–503; Theodore Shackley, The Third Option: An American View of
Counterinsurgency Operations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).
51
Ilari, Il generale col monocolo, 77–82. Inzerilli hints that one of his men had been in
touch with general surveillance against terrorist attacks in Alto Adige: Inzerilli,
Gladio, 16.
 Italy 977

Conclusions
The documents released to the parliamentary committees, therefore, do
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not allow us to conclude that Operation ‘Gladio’ was involved in any

illegal activities connected with the terrorism of the late 1960s and of
the 1970s. They do not help solving, in other words, any of the
mysteries which beleaguered Italian post-war history for more than a
decade. For clarifying that dramatic and shady period of Italian history,
much more documentation is needed than is currently available.
If they cannot be used to look for an answer to these questions,
however, the parliamentary reports provide a very useful source for
adding several important elements to the history of Italy’s foreign and
security policy. First of all, they confirm the conceptual and
psychological heritage of World War II: the profound fear of enemy
occupation, the importance attributed to the results that a well-
organized clandestine resistance might achieve, the concern with
keeping alive in the occupied part of the country even a mere
simulacrum of the state’s legitimacy – they all testify to the powerful
impact, indeed the shock, of the traumatic experience of the division of
Italy after September 1943, when the country was split asunder and
two governments vied with each other for the heart and soul of the
Italians. Since in case of war it was quite likely that a part of the
country might be occupied, Italy could not be caught unprepared once
again.
The documents also confirm that the key tenet of Italy’s security in
the immediate aftermath of the war was the defence of the Trieste area
and the north-east. It was here that the two main threats to the country
intertwined with each other and created a serious potential menace for
disrupting the new socio-political pattern established after the war as
well as for Italy’s territorial integrity. The external pressure coming
from Yugoslavia remained for many years the core of Italy’s defence
calculations, and until the schism between Stalin and Tito in June 1948
it was regarded as a likely possibility that Belgrade might support and
help organize an internal revolutionary uprising led by the Communist
Party. The ‘Gladio’ documents confirm, therefore, that the border
region with Yugoslavia was seen as the most dangerous trouble spot for
Italy and that much of the attention of the security establishment was
focused on its problems.
From a broader perspective, the reports also show some of the main
features of Italy’s foreign policy. The episode of the refusal to
participate in NATO’s CPC when the invitation was first issued in
1952, for instance, confirms the somewhat exaggerated importance
attached to status and prestige by the foreign policy-making elite. Parity
with the superpowers was immediately discarded as an option after the
 978 Leopoldo Nuti

end of the war, but non-discrimination vis-à-vis the other European

powers remained a constant goal of post-war Italian diplomacy.
Finally, one should note the remarkable pro-Americanism that
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characterised the making of some crucial decisions for the country’s

security. It was to Washington, rather than London or Paris, that the
Italian military were looking when the matter came to a head and the
decision to set up the stay-behind network was taken. It may well be
possible to read between the lines of the parliamentary reports and as
some interpretations have suggested, maintain that the decision was
initially taken to prevent the US from setting up its own clandestine
stay-behind network in Italy. Nevertheless, the documentation shows
an unprecedented degree of intimacy and confidence between the
security and intelligence organizations of the two countries, which is
also confirmed by the results of other research in several related fields.
The US provided the financial support, the material, and much of the
training for the establishment of the stay-behind network; perhaps it
did not provide the initial input, but certainly it was there all the time
and played a crucial role throughout the various steps of its creation.
The memoirs of General Inzerilli also testify to an unprecedented
degree of intimacy between the two services.52 The reports also
confirm, however, that such a relationship was far from being a one-
way street: whenever the Italian security service was not willing to
follow the US advice it insisted on having its own way, and – as far one
can see on the basis of this limited evidence – it often succeeded in
doing so.
In short, the parliamentary reports tell a story which fits very well
with the results of historical research on Italy’s foreign and security
policy after World War II, and confirm some of its key assumptions. It
would be extremely interesting to have access to the complete
documentation of the ‘Gladio’ operation and explore these matters in
more depth, but even in its current, limited state these records provide
an important additional link in our knowledge of a tense phase of the
Cold War.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Marilena Gala, Maria Eleonora Guasconi, Paul
Koedijk and Olav Riste for their comments on a previous version of this
paper; and Tim Naftali for allowing me to cite extensively from his
unpublished paper ‘Villa Angleton: The United States and Italian
Intelligence’.

52
Inzerilli, Gladio, 38 and 66.
 Italy 979

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