ALSO BY PAUL L. WILLIAMS
The Vatican Exposed
Crescent Moon Rising
The Day of Islam
The Al Qaeda Connection
Osama's Revenge
Published 2015 by Prometheus Books
Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia. Copyright © 2015 by Paul L. Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruits you will recognize them.
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
Matthew 7: 15–23
Apologia
Acknowledgments
Leading Rogues
Chronology
List of Abbreviations
Chapter One: The Stay–Behind Units
Chapter Two: The Lucky Break: Negroes and Narcotics
Chapter Three: The Vatican Alliance
Chapter Four: The Drug Network
Chapter Five: The Secret Society
Chapter Six: The Rise of Michele Sindona
Chapter Seven: False Flag Terrorism
Chapter Eight: Gladio: South of the Border
Chapter Nine: Il Crack Sindona
Chapter Ten: High Times, New Crimes
Chapter Eleven: A Papal Problem
Chapter Twelve: The New Network
Chapter Thirteen: The Shell Game
Chapter Fourteen: The Desperate Don
Chapter Fifteen: The Pope Must Die
Chapter Sixteen: The Shooting in St. Peter's Square
Chapter Seventeen: A Raid and Redirection
Chapter Eighteen: Blackfriars Bridge
Chapter Nineteen: Killings and Kidnapping
Chapter Twenty: Works of God
Chapter Twenty-One: Death and Resurrection
Chapter Twenty-Two: Gladio Triumphant
Chapter Twenty-Three: Semper Eadem
Notes
Index
I know what you're thinking.
The author of this book must be a Baptist.
It's a common assumption.
Most Welsh people are Baptists and Williams is a Welsh name.
But names are deceptive.
I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. My parish was St. John the Baptist Church in West Scranton, where I learned by rote the Baltimore Catechism and sang “Panis Angelicus” with the choir. I wrote “JMJ” (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) on the right hand corner of my composition papers, went to confession every Saturday afternoon, and received Holy Communion at Sunday Mass. I participated in all the rites and rituals—the Forty Hour Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, the recitation of the litanies to the saints, and the yearly novenas at St. Ann's Basilica.
In those Tridentine days, the liturgy was in Latin, which gave the Mass a sense of timelessness and the assurance that the teachings of Holy Mother Church were semper eadem—“always the same”—binding the generations in one system of belief.
I had my throat blessed on the feast of St. Blaise and my forehead anointed with ashes on the first day of Lent. I wore a St. Christopher's medal and a scapular. I fasted and abstained on the days appointed and received all the sacraments, save Holy Orders and Extreme Unction.
As a graduate student at Drew University, my mentor was Fr. Gabriel Coless, an Augustinian monk, who provided rigorous instruction in the Patristics and Medieval Latin. After receiving my doctorate, I taught religion and the humanities at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit institution, and served as the editor of the annual proceedings of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. I also penned a number of articles on Vatican II and the effects of aggiornamento for National Review, where I met William Buckley, the celebrated CIA spook.
I encountered the wrath of Rome while writing Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Catholic Church for Doubleday. Doubleday, at that time, was a publishing outlet for the Catholic Church through its imprint, Image Books, and an imprimatur was considered a prerequisite for publication. My clerical overseers found no fault with my handling of the evolution of doctrine and the matter of the pontiffs who later were decried as heretics. The problem arose with the subject of the Church's “temporalities.” I was told to expunge all references to the Vatican Bank, including the donation of Mussolini, the Ambrosiano affair, and the P2 scandal. These topics had garnered headlines throughout the world and to exclude them from a book with a tell-all title would be an act of obsequiousness that bordered on cowardice. I refused to make the suggested cuts and was supported in my decision by Patricia Kossman, my intrepid editor. In 1990, the work was published by Doubleday without a nihil obstat—the declaration that nothing about the work is contrary to the faith—despite the fact that it contained no canonical errata.
In subsequent years, I probed deeper into the affairs of Vatican, Inc., during my tenure as the editor and publisher of the Metro, and as a consultant (CI-9) for the FBI. My findings, including the ties between the Vatican and Gambino crime family, constituted the core of The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder and the Mafia, which was published by Prometheus in 2001.
For the past fourteen years, I have been engaged in combing all available government records regarding the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia. The task has been grueling, since most of the files—even the files of Pope Paul VI, Michele Sindona, Roberto Calvi, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus and other individuals long dead—remain classified; any disclosure of their contents would represent a threat to “national security.” Fortunately, enough information has come to light in recent years that readers can obtain a complete account of the unholy alliance of Gladio.
Am I still a Catholic?
Suffice it to say, anyone who attempts to come to terms with the facts presented in these pages will have his faith in Holy Mother Church compromised, if not shattered.
The 1,100+ footnotes in this book attest to my reliance on the work of others, particularly such scholars as Alfred McCoy, Peter Dale Scott, Martin A. Lee, Dale Yallop, and Sibel Edmonds, who have uncovered material by unprecedented spade work that shou
ld be of interest to all seekers of the truth. I would be remiss if I did not mention the following researchers and journalists who met with untimely deaths by probing into the matter of Gladio: Gary Webb, Giorgio Ambrosoli, Carmine Pecorelli, Emilio Alessandrini, Antonio Varisco, Boris Giuliano, Giuseppe Della Cha, General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, and Uğur Mumcu. As always, I am indebted to Jonathan Kurtz, Steven Mitchell, and the staff at Prometheus, my very courageous publishing company. Finally, I must acknowledge my wife Patricia, who has been my staunchest supporter throughout our forty-three glorious years of marriage, and Judith Schmitt and Judith Forte, who continue to keep me in their prayers.
(in order of appearance)
Allen Dulles—Swiss director of the OSS who became the director of the CIA in 1953
William “Wild Bill” Donovan—executive director of the OSS and chairman of the World Commerce Corporation
Reinhard Gehlen—Nazi general who commanded the “werewolves,” the first Gladio unit
James Jesus Angleton—commander of the secret counterintelligence unit of the OSS
Junio Valerio Borghese—leader of Decima Mas and commander of the Gladio units in Italy
Paul E. Helliwell—OSS official, director of Sea Supply, Inc., and the president of the Castle & Trust Bank
Charles “Lucky” Luciano—American Mafioso, agent of the ONI, and kingpin of the international heroin trade
Monsignor Giovanni Montini (Pope Paul VI)—Vatican undersecretary of state who introduced the OSS to the Sicilian Mafia
Don Calogero Vizzini (“Don Calo”)—Sicilian capo who took part in Operation Husky and the creation of the heroin network
Vito Genovese—Lucky Luciano's right-hand man in charge of heroin distribution throughout the United States
Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII)—Roman pontiff who formed an alliance with the CIA
Cardinal Francis Spellman—leader of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta and CIA operative
William Colby—Vatican insider, legal consul at Nugan Hand bank, and future director of the CIA
Michele Sindona—nexus between the CIA, the mob, and the Vatican
Licio Gelli—grand-master of P2 and director of the “strategy of tension”
Alparslan Türkeş—leader of Turkey's National Action Party and its paramilitary youth group, the Grey Wolves.
Giulio Andreotti—prominent P2 member and Italy's prime minister
Giuseppe Santovito—head of SISMI
David Kennedy—Sindona's partner, chairman of Continental Illinois, and secretary of the Treasury under Richard M. Nixon
Monsignor Paul Marcinkus—cleric from Cicero, Illinois, who became the head of the IOR
Theodore Shackley—CIA operative who set up the heroin trade in Southeast Asia and played a part in the attempted assassination of John Paul II
Roberto Calvi—head of Banco Ambrosiano who set up the Vatican shell companies
Henry Kissinger—former US secretary of state and a master geopolitical strategist
Fr. Felix Morlion—former OSS official, founder of the Pro Deo intelligence agency in Rome
Michael Ledeen—US intelligence official who worked closely with P2 and CSIS
Zbigniew Brzezinski—former National Security Advisor and master geostrategist
Juan Perón—thrice-elected president of Argentina with close ties to Licio Gelli and P2
Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis)—Jesuit Provincial-General in Argentina, complicit in Operation Condor
David Rockefeller—founder of the Trilateral Commission and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank
Cardinal John Cody—archbishop of Chicago and CIA operative
Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II)—archbishop of Krakow, who came to preside over the greatest scandals within the Roman Church since the time of the Borgias
Abdullah Çatlı—vice chairman of the Gray Wolves and assassin for the CIA
Mehmet Ağca—assassin for the babas who made the attempted hit on Pope John Paul II
Alexander de Marenches—leader of the Safari Club and director of the French secret service
Francesco Pazienza—second in command at SISMI and a CIA operative
Claire Sterling—CIA spinmaster/journalist
Enrico De Pedis—leader of Banda della Magliana
Salvatore Inzerillo—godfather of the Gambino-Inzerillo-Spatola crime family
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—Afghan warlord, CIA operative
Fethullah Gülen—Muslim preacher dedicated to the formation of a New Islamic World Order
June 1942—Pius XII creates the Vatican Bank; Lucky Luciano is recruited by ONI
April 1943—Operation Husky
Feb. 1945—Fort Hunt Conference (formation of Gladio)
April 1945—Angleton and Borghese establish Italian stay-behind units
Oct. 1946—Luciano hosts Havana conference
Sept. 1947—CIA is established
Nov. 1947—Heroin comes to Harlem; PCI makes monumental election gains
Jan. 1948—Vatican receives $65 million in “black funds”
Jan. 1951—CIA develops drug trade with KMT
Fall 1953—Operation Mockingbird
Jan. 1955—Establishment of Catholic Gladio
Fall 1956—Gelli serves as CIA's liaison to Italian military intelligence
Oct. 1957—Hotel des Palmes gathering; Sindona becomes mob financier; Apalachin Conference
Nov. 1957—Creation of Fasco AG with CIA funds
Sept. 1958—Vito Genovese goes to jail
Jan. 1959—P2 lodges pop up on NATO bases
Feb. 1960—Gladio mounts first coup in Turkey
Jan. 1962—Helliwell forms Castle Bank and Trust
Oct. 1962—“Strategy of tension” gets underway with the murder of Enrico Mattei
May 1963—Vatican is bugged
June 1963—Gelli knighted by Paul VI
Fall 1963—Piano Solo
Jan. 1964—Sindona joins P2
April 1968—Medellin Conference; Msgr. Paul Marcinkus becomes IOR secretary
Spring 1968—Shackley meets Trafficante in Saigon
Jan. 1969—“Years of lead” begin
May 1969—Sindona anointed “pope's banker”
Fall 1969—Operation Condor
Dec. 1969—Piazza Fontana bombing
Jan. 1970—CIA establishes MIT in Turkey
Dec. 1970—Golpe Borghese
Jan. 1971—CIA funds Opus Dei; Vatican establishes first shell company
May 1971—Peteano attack
Fall 1972—BCCI set up in Karachi; Nixon approves Sicilian coup
July 1973—David Rockefeller forms Trilateral Commission
June 1974—Brescia bombing
Aug. 1974—Attack on the Italicus; collapse of Franklin National Bank
Sept. 1974—Collapse of BPF
April 1975—Fall of Saigon
May 1975—Church Committee
Fall 1975—Banzer Plan
March 1976—Dirty War begins in Argentina
Sept. 1976—Henry Kissinger forms the Safari Club
Oct. 1977—Conference at Hotel Vitosha
Winter 1977—CIA funds Hekmatyar and other “holy warriors” to cultivate Afghan poppy fields
Sept. 1978—Death of John Paul I
March 1979—Assassination of Carmine Pecorelli
July 1979—Assassinations of Giorgio Ambrosoli and Boris Giuliano
Dec. 1979—Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Aug. 1980—Bologna bombing
Sept. 1980—Coup in Turkey
Fall 1980—Gelli and George H. W. Bush plan October Surprise; CIA forms partnership with Honduran drug lords
March 1981—P2 exposed; Solidarity strike
May 1981—Attempted assassination of John Paul II
May 1981—Killing of Salvatore Inzerillo
Sept. 1981—Vatican issues “letter of patronage”
Fall 1981—Mena, Arkansas, becomes cocaine hub
Dec. 1981—Ma
rtial law in Poland
May 1982—General Alberto Dalla Chiesa is murdered
June 1982—Collapse of Banco Ambrosiano; Calvi hangs from Blackfriars Bridge
Nov. 1982—Raid on Stibam
June 1983—Emanuela Orlandi kidnapping
Nov. 1983—Henri Arsan dies in jail cell
March 1986—Sindona is poisoned in prison
Feb. 1987—Arrest warrant for Archbishop Marcinkus
April 1989—Kerry Commission
Nov. 1990—European Parliament condemns Gladio
May 1996—William Colby's mysterious end
Nov. 1996—Susurluk incident
Sept. 1998—Gülen comes to Pennsylvania
Aug. 2001—Creation of AKP in Turkey
Oct. 2001—US-led invasion of Afghanistan
Nov. 2002—Andreotti receives guilty verdict
April 2012—IOR fails transparency test
March 2013—Bergoglio becomes Francis I
April 2014—Canonization of John Paul II
AIUC—American International Underwriters Corp.—Insurance company owned by C. V. Starr, which later became the company AIG
AKP—Adalet ve Kalkinma—Turkey's Justice and Development Party
ANSA—Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata—Italy's leading news wire service
ASALA—Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia
AV—Avanguardia Nazionale—National Vanguard—Italian right-wing terror group
BCCI—Bank of Credit and Commerce International
BND—Bundesnachrichtendienst—Germany's overseas intelligence agency
BNDD—Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs—precursor of the DEA
BPF—Banca Privata Finanziaria—Bank of Private Finance—first bank owned by Sindona
CAT—Civil Air Transport
CDP—Christian Democratic Party
CFR—Council on Foreign Relations
CIA—Central Intelligence Agency
CIC—Counter-Intelligence Corps—precursor to the CIA
CIG—Central Intelligence Group—another precursor to the CIA
CSIS—Center for Strategic and International Studies
CSS—Committee for State Security—Bulgarian secret service
DEA—US Drug Enforcement Agency
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