The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called "Gladio" (meaning "sword"), was a secret mixed civilian and military unit, trained to form a resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion and part of a network of similar organizations in North Atlantic Treaty Organization states. It functioned from at least 1951 until 1990, when the Belgian branch was promptly and officially dissolved after its existence became publicly known following revelations concerning the Italian branch of the stay-behind network.
The history of the Belgian branch of the Gladio network starts in 1948 when Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak and Minister of Justice Paul Struye gave the Staatsveiligheid (State Security Service) permission to discuss with allied intelligence services the organization of a clandestine stay-behind network. These negotiations mainly happened with Sir Stewart Menzies of the British SIS and representatives of the then freshly founded CIA. The explicit objectives of this collaboration were outlined in a top-secret letter from Menzies to Spaak:[citation needed]
The present object of [Anglo-Belgian co-operation between the special services] should be directed to two main aims:
The improvement of our information on the subject of Cominform and potential enemy activities in so far as they concern our two countries.
The preparation of appropriate intelligence and action organizations in the event of war.
The amount of influence at this early stage, accredited to the CIA varies from source to source. CIA did not yet have full authority over the Office of Policy Coordination, which directed U.S. covert action until 1952. During the initial negotiations Menzies proposed to keep the US out of the organization, but Spaak objected to further developments not being in a tripartite (Belgium–Great-Britain–United States) or multilateral setting. In the final report of the parliamentary inquiry there is little mention of CIA involvement, but investigative journalist Walter de Bock points, based on Pentagon documents,[clarification needed] at the CIA's significant early organizational role and de facto control until 1968.[1] Similarly, Colonel Margot complains in an internal note, dated April 8, 1959, about the influence of the US intelligence services on the Belgian branch of the Gladio-network.[2]
These initial negotiations led to closer collaboration between the three countries' secret services under the name Tripartite Meeting Belgium. Following this meeting, the Belgian stay-behind network became operational, but it was not until January 4, 1952, that the first formal instructions for stay-behind operations were issued to Ludovicus Caeymaex (Staatsveiligheid) and General Etienne Baele.[3]
Growing polarization between East and West and awareness of the need for continental collaboration led to the foundation in 1949 of the Comité Clandestin de l'Union Occidentale (C.C.U.O.), which contained Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Great-Britain.[4] The C.C.U.O. laid the base for the formation of the NATO and coordinated the various stay-behind networks in the five member countries.[5] Its functions were transferred to the Clandestine Planning Committee (C.P.C.), another NATO-organization in 1951, which was renamed in to Coordination and Planning Committee in 1959.[6] The C.P.C. elaborated a plan for installing two taskgroups, one for communications and one for secret networks, a structure reflected in the Allied Coordination Committee (A.C.C.) founded in 1958 to relieve the C.P.C. of some of its tasks.[6]
The A.C.C. consisted of the members of the C.C.U.O. plus the US and coordinated the stay-behind activities, as was stipulated on its first meeting in April 1959 under French supervision:
The A.C.C. is a six-power regional committee for providing mutual consultation and developing policy guidance on matters of common interest regarding stay behind matters in the Western European countries concerned.[6] [added emphasis]
—Declaration of principles, April 29–30, 1959
These interlocking coordination organizations, like the C.P.C. and A.C.C, were initially headquartered in Paris, but moved along with SHAPE, NATO's central headquarters, to Mons in Belgium after the French withdrawal from NATO's unified command structure in 1966. After the initial six counties, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Norway became members of the A.C.C.. Though all of the counties were members of NATO, an official link between the A.C.C and NATO was denied. The parliamentary committee noted "... one can not do away with the impression that in practice closer and closer relations did come to exist".[7]
In the following decades the stay-behind activities were mainly coordinated through A.C.C.-meetings. These activities consisted officially of (multinational) training activities like infiltration, parachute jumping and long range communications, of which numerous were held at least between 1972 and 1989.[8] Due to the secretive nature of the network, the milieu of various operatives involved and the Cold War setting, allegations were raised that the stay-behind network was during this time also at least indirectly involved with clandestine actions on Belgian soil. The last documented meeting of the A.C.C took place on 23 and 24 October 1990 under supervision of General Van Calster, where the participants discussed a.o. a scaling-back of the stay-behind network in light of changing international relations.[citation needed]
This was the meeting that Italian president Giulio Andreotti[clarification needed] was referring to following the October 24, 1990 revelation of the existence of Gladio in Italy, a revelations several others governments' spokespersons[example needed] reacted to by claiming that any stay-behind in their own country was history. This only exasperated Andreotti, who declared to the press that the last stay-behind meeting had taken place in Belgium a few days ago. After the exposure of the Italian branch and inquiries by Italian officials to their Belgian counterparts, Defense minister Guy Coëme and Prime Minister Wilfried Martens made the existence of the Belgian section of the Gladio-network public in a press meeting on November 7, 1990.[citation needed]
The government decided on November 23, 1990, a few days after the proposition for a parliamentary investigation to officially disband the network.[citation needed]
Organization, activities and resources
The Belgian Gladio-branch consisted of two separate sections:
S.D.R.A VIII (French: Service de Documentation, de Renseignments et d'Action VIII, "Documentation, Information and Action Service VIII"), residing under the military intelligence service, the Belgian General Information and Security Service (S.G.R) and thus the minister of Defense.
S.T.C/Mob.[9] (Dutch: Sectie training, communicatie en documentatie "Training, Communication and Documentation Service"), residing under the Staatsveiligheid and thus the minister of Justice.
S.D.R.A VIII was one of the sections of S.D.R.A (military security service), which in its turn is part of the S.G.R. (general military intelligence and security service). The S.G.R's functions are formally described in a decree from 1989 and are twofold: intelligence gathering and ensuring the security of military personnel and installations, issuing clearances, etc. The S.D.R.A is mandated with the second task, and is dived into functional sections: for instance, S.D.R.A III is contra-infiltration (for S.D.R.A XI, see further).
The members of S.D.R.A VIII were military personnel, trained in unorthodox warfare, combat and sabotage, parachute jumping and maritime operations.[10] The operatives were trained to accompany the government aboard in case of a Soviet invasion, and then establish liaisons with the Belgian resistance movement and engage in warfare.[citation needed]
Oversight
In the course of the parliamentary investigation, the committee stumbled by chance on the existence of the secretariat of the Coordination and Planning Committee, which formed S.D.R.A XI, but was funded through secret NATO-payments. When Paul Detrembleur, former head of the S.D.R.A and last administrator of S.D.R.A XI/C.P.C.-secretariat, was called to testify before the parliamentary inquiry about the activities of this section in relation to the Gladio-activities, he refused to divulge any information.[11][12]
The final parliamentary report stressed the resulting incomplete insight into the functioning of the C.P.C. and its relation to S.D.R.A. VIII, which formally organized the military section of the Gladio-network. The report noted that the C.P.C. was responsible for the relations between the Belgian secret services and the NATO high command (especially SHAPE), and that the witnesses denied being involved with stay-behind activities. The reason was, the latter claimed, that NATO was "forward defending"-oriented and thus not interested in stay-behind activities in countries like Belgium, which did not border Warsaw Pact-nations. The commission then further noted the discrepancy between these claims and given reason, and the fact that the C.P.C. co-coordinated the S.D.R.A. VIII and participated in the A.C.C.-meetings.[13]
S.T.C/Mob. function and oversight
The civilian branch of the Belgian stay-behind had the mission to collect intelligence under conditions of enemy occupation which could be useful to the government and to organize secure communication routes to evacuate the members of the government and other people with official functions.
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Military trainers/operatives and civilian operatives
Recruitment (how, criteria)
Training activities (joint international training/war games, sabotage, intelligence ....)
Funding (equipment)
Weapons, weapons-depots.
Both military intelligence and Staatsveiligheid maintained dossiers on Gladio training activities, of which incomplete versions were made available to the parliamentary committee. Events from the list of operations by the military branch was provided by Coëme and is denoted by A, while events from the list from the archives of the Staatsveiligheid (titled "Overzicht oefeningen in het kader ACC – periode 1980-1990") is denoted by B:
(A) 1972: Training on clandestine techniques.
(A) 1976: Training on radio-communications, intelligence, maritime operations, aerial operations and escape routes.
(A) 1977: Training on optimizing techniques to locate downed pilots and the use of escape routes.
(A) 1978: In-door training on clandestine missions.
(A) 1980: Training on parachute-jumping, long-distance radio communication and clandestine techniques.
(B) June 1980: OREGAN II
(A) 1981: Lessons and training on clandestine activities.
(A) 1983: Training on escape routes, intelligence, aerial operations and radio communications.
(A) 1985: Six trainings (at least two outside Belgium, one in Belgium): infiltration a parachute-jumping, extracting material through escape routes.
(A) 1986, 1987 & 1988:: Trainings outside Belgium on intelligence operations and radio communications.
Minister Melchior Wathelet testified before the parliamentary inquiry that secret weapon depots were created in the 1950s, of which a first one was discovered in 1957 due to a landslide, and a second one in 1959 by playing children. He further stated that after these discoveries it was decided to abandon the depots and transfer the weapons to a military depot.[8] An inventory report, dated 1991, for the military section of Gladio mentions inflatable boats, video-equipment and around 300 weapons, including M1 carbines, MP40 submachine guns and "armes en cocon", weapons packaged for long-term storage.[14]
Parliamentary inquiry
Overview
After the existence of the Belgian branch of the Gladio-network became public, speculations and allegations about involvement of the Gladio-operatives in various high-profile and often unsolved crimes and terrorist acts during the 1980s began to appear in the media. To investigate these allegations and clarify the operation of the Belgian branch, a senatorial investigative commission was established on 20 December 1990. It was tasked with clarifying the structure, aims etc. of the network and the amount of oversight; which connections existed with domestic and foreign intelligence and police services; and whether there was a link with events previously examined in parliamentary inquiries[15] or certain serious crimes and terrorist acts committed the previous decade.[4]
The commission convened from 16 January 1991 until 5 July 1991, during which fifty seven meetings were held and thirty seven witnesses were heard. Amongst those who testified before the commission were ministers Guy Coëme, Melchior Wathelet and Louis Tobback; former administrator-director-general of the Staatsveiligheid (77-90) and head of STC-MOB Albert Raes, Ludo Caeymaex (administrator-general Staatsveiligheid 58–77); then current administrator-general of the StaatsveiligheidStéphane Schewebach, Jacques Devlieghere (Staatsveiligheid 78–89, nr. 2); S.D.R.A.-operative André Moyen[nl]; Gladio-instructors Guibert Nieweling (code name "Addie"), Michel Huys ("Alain"), Etienne Annarts ("Stéphane").
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Problems
The two major obstacles facing the commission of inquiry were firstly the secret nature of the case and the related unwillingness of witnesses in disclosing information and secondly time constraints.
Firstly, due to the nature of the case, and the various legal, professional and military requirements of confidentiality, the commission went to great lengths in limiting public access to discussed material. For instance, the parliament did forgo an earlier proposition for a parliamentary in favor for the proposition by Lallemand which included the requirement that the commission operated behind closed doors (in contravention to the regular parliamentary inquiry procedures).[16] Lallemand placed also additional restriction on the ability to communicate with the press, handling of documents, etc. These restrictions were criticized both for being undemocratic, unnecessary or counter-productive and for not being strict enough.[17]
The committee initially envisaged a solution whereby the names of the operatives were handed to three selected magistrates, familiar with the relevant unsolved criminal investigations. The relevant agencies and witnesses refused to do so, with the refusal varying from polite claims of forgetfulness or references to oaths of secrecy to outright hostility.[18] This issue was compounded by the fact that records on former operatives were systematically purged and the magistrates were not up to date with more recent investigations. Gijsels noted that order... ?Names with the CIA/London? The final report then concluded that the cooperation from both the military and the Staatsveiligheid was generally satisfactory, but deplored the stubborn withholding of the names of civilian operatives. Parlementaire Commissie (1991), p.?[clarification needed]
Secondly, the commission faced time-related problems. The time allotted to the commission was initially five months, a period which the final report deplored as "very little" and short in comparison to other inquiries. The Senate granted on July 12, 1991, a request for extra time, which enabled the committee to work for another three months. Unfortunately most of the allotted time fell during the parliamentary recess, which further frustrated the effort to fully pursue the intended lines of inquiry. For instance, the commission had planned to interview several investigative journalists, people like Richard Brenneke and had requested several "dossiers chauds" (English: "hot cases").[clarification needed]
Handled material and major findings
Handled material: Westmooreland, John Wood/Rudy Daems, ...
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A September 10, 1973, note from the Belgian Brigade de Surveillance et de Renseignement intelligence agency described the organization of a coup d'état by certain "financial networks and far-right organizations", naming among others Emile Lecerf, boss of the Nouvelle Europe magazine (NEM) and political godfather of Francis Dossogne (future leader of far-right Front de la Jeunesse - FJ) and Paul Latinus, founder of the Westland New Post extremist group, in which Gladio's influence has been suspected, although ultimately never proved in justice. Paul Latinus would escape to Pinochet's Chile for a few months in 1981, before committing suicide in 1984. On the other hand, Emile Lecerf was also a member of the Jeune Europe far-right group.[20]
In 1996, Le Soir newspaper caused a public uproar by revealing the existence of a classified document, dated August 1995, and titled "Plan de base de la défense militaire du territoire" ("Basic plan for the military defense of the territory"). The newspaper quoted some passages of what it called a "racist plan": "Many immigrant communities now populate large urban areas. Should these population groups ever adopt a position that is in strong disagreement with Belgian policies, they could launch actions intended to counteract these policies or to make their concerns known ... In our estimation there is no open threat in Belgium ... But there is a permanent, clandestine threat" (French: "Nombre de communautés immigrées se sont fixées dans les grandes agglomérations. Si ces groupes de population devaient entrer clairement en désaccord avec la politique belge, ils pourraient déclencher des actions visant à contrarier cette politique ou visant à faire connaître leur mécontentements ... Nous considérons qu'il n'existe aucune menace ouverte en Belgique ... Mais il existe bien une menace clandestine avec un caractère permanent" - sic).
The dissolved SDRA-8 had been replaced by the "Commandement territorial interforces" (CTI), a military intelligence agency organized by provinces and essentially composed of about a thousand reserve officers. Its goal was to infiltrate civil society and find informants, with the mission to be especially concerned by the "immigrant communities which represented a permanent clandestine threat". According to Le Soir, if the CTI is not closely linked to the military agency Service Général du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (SGRS), then it is "nothing else than a new structure of military intelligence... particularly suspicious of anything that is foreign to it".[23][24][25]
Defense minister Poncelet replied in the Belgian Senate that the plan was only an internal draft proposal, which was never approved by the military command or the defense minister himself.[26]
Finally, the activities of the Belgian military intelligence agencies prompted the Parliamentary Committee of Surveillance (Comité R) to investigate various abusive wiretappings. "The central documentation of the SGR is composed of 450 000 files", stated Le Soir.[23]
BBET, 2006
The arrest by police of members of far-right group Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw in September 2006 led to the Belgian press recalling the "Bloody Eighties", which were marred by the violent attacks of the Brabant killers leaving twenty-eight dead and the bombings carried out by the communist organization Communist Combatant Cells which caused two deaths.[27] According to Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx and Interior Minister Patrick Dewael, the suspects (11 of whom were members of the military) were preparing terrorist attacks in order to "destabilize" Belgium.[28][29]
The Brabant killers, also named the Nijvel Gang in Dutch-speaking media, and the mad killers of Brabant in French-speaking media, are responsible for a series of violent attacks that mainly occurred in the Belgian province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985. A total of 28 people died and 22 were injured. The actions of the gang, believed to consist of a core of three men, made it Belgium's most notorious unsolved crime spree. The active participants were known as The Giant ; the Killer and the Old Man. The identities and whereabouts of the "Brabant killers" are unknown. Although significant resources are still dedicated to the case, the most recent arrests are of the now-retired original senior detectives themselves, for alleged evidence tampering.
Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and by the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, Operation Gladio is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and in some neutral countries.
A stay-behind operation is one where a country emplaces secret operatives or organizations in its own territory, for use in case of a later enemy occupation. The stay-behind operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement, and act as spies from behind enemy lines. Small-scale operations may cover discrete areas, but larger stay-behind operations envisage reacting to the conquest of whole countries.
A strategy of tension is a political policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.
The State Security Service (VSSE) (known in Dutch as Staatsveiligheid; French: Sûreté de l'État) is a Belgian intelligence and security agency. Established in 1830, it is the oldest intelligence service except for the Vatican's. The State Security is a civilian agency under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, while the military intelligence agency, the General Information and Security Service, operates under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. The current Administrator-General is Jaak Raes, after his predecessor Alain Winants occupied the position between 2006 and 2014. The VSSE takes part in a number of international intelligence cooperative relationships, such as the Club de Berne and the CTG. It has contacts with over 90 sister services across four continents.
The General Intelligence and Security Service (GISS), known in Dutch as Algemene Dienst Inlichting en Veiligheid (ADIV), and in French as Service Général du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (SGRS) is the Belgian military intelligence service under responsibility of the Minister of Defence. It is one of two Belgian intelligence services, together with the civilian Belgian State Security Service (VSSE).
Felice Casson is an Italian magistrate and politician, who discovered the existence of Operation Gladio, a "stay-behind" NATO anti-communist army during the Cold War, while investigating the Peteano bombing in 1972, for which two neo-fascists were convicted; the explosives used in the attack supposedly came from a NATO arms cache. 622 Gladio members, including two people who served as prime minister and president, were exposed in the course of the investigation.
Benoît, Baron de Bonvoisin is a Belgian far-right activist.
Westland New Post (WNP) was a short-lived Belgian extreme right-wing organization founded in March 1981 by Paul Latinus and members of the Front de la Jeunesse (FJ). The organization ceased to exist after the Front de la Jeunesse disbanded in 1983 and Paul Latinus was found dead in his girlfriend's home in April 1984.
The US Army Field Manual 30-31B is a Cold War-era hoax conducted by the Soviet intelligence services. It supposedly identified a "strategy of tension" involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It has been called the Westmoreland Field Manual because it is signed with the alleged signature of General William Westmoreland. It was labelled as supplement B, although the publicly released version of FM30-31 only has one appendix, Supplement A.
The Fichenaffäre or Secret files scandal shook public opinion in Switzerland in 1989. That year, it was revealed that the Swiss federal authorities, as well as the cantonal police forces, had put in place a system of mass surveillance of the population.
Projekt-26, best known as P-26, was a stay-behind army in Switzerland charged with countering a possible invasion of the country. The existence of P-26 as secret intelligence agencies dissimulated in the military intelligence agency (UNA) was revealed in November 1990 by the PUK EMD Parliamentary Commission headed by senator Carlo Schmid. The commission, whose initial aim was to investigate the alleged presence of secret files on citizens constituted in the Swiss Ministry of Defence, was created in March 1990 in the wake of the Fichenaffäre or Secret Files Scandal, during which it had been discovered that the federal police, BUPO, had maintained files on 900,000 persons.
The Chamber of Representatives, the lower house of the Belgian Federal Parliament, has the right to conduct parliamentary inquiries pursuant to article 56 of the Belgian Constitution, which provides that "Each Chamber has the right of inquiry". The Senate also had a right to enquiry until 2014. Committees of inquiry were rarely set up until 20 years ago, and have been used increasingly in the recent past, dealing with matters deemed of major public concern or apparent governmental failure.
Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy. Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security, which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness.
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. conducted operations focused on combatting socialism in Turkey, executed chiefly through Operation Gladio's Turkish branch, the Counter-Guerrilla. The Syrian civil war has seen a resurgence of CIA activity in Turkey in recent years.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA helped swing the 1948 general election in favor of the centrist Christian Democrats and would continue to intervene in Italian politics until at least the early 1960s.
Albert Raes was a Belgian magistrate and was head of the Belgian Security Services from 1977 until 1990.
Projekt 27, usually referred to as P-27, was a secret intelligence-gathering unit of the Swiss Armed Forces between 1981 and 1990. It was part of the Swiss military intelligence service UNA, tasked with the "gathering of intelligence under unusual and dangerous conditions". It was formed as a planned wartime intelligence structure and distinguished from Projekt 26 or P-26, which was the counterpart of NATO's own stay-behind network. It was dissolved in 1990 after its existence was made public in the wake of the secret files scandal, exposed during a parliamentary investigation headed by Senator Carlo Schmid. The commission discovered that the intelligence-gathering activities of these clandestine organizations, along with the cantonal and federal police forces, compiled dossiers of around 900,000 individuals and organizations who were placed under surveillance due to suspected "un-Swiss" behavior.
Jules Gérard-Libois was a Belgian historian and writer. He notably founded and presided over the Centre for Socio-Political Research and Information, known for its series of working papers entitled Courriers hedomadaires which he created in 1958, together with Jean Ladrière, François Perin, and Jean Neuville. For years, Gérard-Libois provided commentary by the elections at the francophone Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. He co-founded the African Study and Documentation Centre. He was a member of the group surrounding the journal Esprit, and the steering committee of La Revue Nouvelle. As a historian specialised in African history, Gérard-Libois was one of the experts appointed to oversee the tasks of the Lumumba Commission, the Belgian parliamentary inquiry into the circumstances of the murders of former Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba and his allies Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito. He was the honorary director of information at the European Commission.
The Study and Training Group for Military Reconnaissance was a highly classified clandestine unit of the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1964 to 1979.
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