By 1960, the ’Ndrangheta—a branch of the Mafia whose criminal activities came to count for 3 percent of Italy's GDP—had opened their own Masonic lodge in the tiny Calabrian town of Roccella under Baron Pasquale Placido, a local aristocrat.19 This lodge would eventually unite with P2 in an attempt to overthrow the Italian government.20
CATHOLIC MASONS
By 1965, the membership roll of P2 contained the names of many ecclesiastical dignitaries, including:
Alberto Alblondi, Bishop of Livorno;
Msgr. Gottardi Alessandro, President of Fratelli Maristi;
Cardinal Augustin Bea, the Vatican Secretary of State;
Salvatore Baldassari, Bishop of Ravenna;
Bishop Annibale Bugnini, Secretary to the Commission on Liturgical Reform;
Msgr. Agostino Cacciavillan (later a cardinal), Secretary of the Nuncio to the Philippines and Spain;
Msgr. Umberto Cameli, Director of the Office of Ecclesiastical Affairs in Italy;
Agostino Casaroli (later a cardinal), Undersecretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs;
Bishop Fiorenzo Angelini, Vicar General of Roman Hospitals;
Fr. Carlo Graziani, Rector of the Vatican Minor Seminary;
Fr. Angelo Lanzoni, Chief of the Office of Vatican Secretary of State;
Virgilio Levi, Assistant Director of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano;
Cardinal Achille Liénart, Bishop of Lille and Grand Master of Masonic Lodges;
Bishop Pasquale Macchi, Pope Paul VI's private secretary;
Msgr. Francesco Marchisano (later a cardinal), Prelate of Honor of the Pope and Secretary for Seminaries and Universities;
Abbot Salvatore Marsili, head of the Order of St. Benedict of Finalpia;
Bishop Marcello Morgante (later a cardinal), spiritual head of Ascoli Piceno in east Italy;
Bishop Virgilio Noè (later a cardinal), head of the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship;
Vittore Palestra, legal counsel of the Sacred Rota of the Vatican State;
Archbishop Michele Pellegrino (later a cardinal), spiritual head of Turin;
Fr. Florenzo Romita, member of the Sacred Congregation of the Clergy;
Fr. Pietro Santini, Vice-Official of the Vicar of Rome;
Msgr. Domenico Semproni, member of the Tribunal of the Vicarate of the Vatican;
Bishop Dino Trabalzini, Bishop of Rieti and Auxiliary Bishop of Southern Rome;
Fr. Vittorio Trocchi, Secretary for the Catholic Laity in the Consistory of the Vatican State Consultations;
Fr. Roberto Tucci (later a cardinal), Director General of Vatican Radio; and
Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, Secretary of State under Paul VI.21
Over the next decade, scores of additional Vatican officials, including cardinals, Roman Catholic hierarchs, and prominent bishops and archbishops, would become members of Masonic lodges—many with ties to P2.22 It is difficult to believe that the supreme pontiffs (Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI) were blissfully unaware that so many of the Church's dignitaries were practicing Freemasons. And it remains equally mind-boggling that the pontiffs elevated these clerics to loftier positions upon learning of their membership in P2 and other Masonic lodges.
As it transformed into one of the world's richest and most powerful institutions, the Roman Catholic Church shed many of its long-held doctrines for the sake of political expediency and financial gain, including the condemnations of Freemasonry and usury. This transformation crystallized with the pope's embrace of Licio Gelli—an avowed atheist and the Grand Master of P2—who became a Knight of Malta, one of the favored sons of Holy Mother Church.
GLADIO EXPOSED
By 1963, when Licio Gelli became a Freemason and Giovanni Battista Montini became Paul VI, Gladio was no longer a clandestine operation. Information about the project had surfaced almost as soon as the secret armies were established. In June 1947, Édouard Depreux, France's Socialist Minister of Interior, announced to the press: “Toward the end of last year, we uncovered the existence of a black resistance movement, composed of resistance fighters of the far-right, Vichy collaborators, and monarchists. They had devised a secret attack called ‘Plan Bleu’ which should have gone into action either by the end of July or on August 6, 1947.” Depreux's remarks created a public outcry and the secret army was dismantled, only to be reassembled within the year by Henri Alexis Ribière, the head of Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), France's military secret service.23
THE AUSTRIAN SPORTS CLUB
In 1947, Theodor Soucek and Dr. Hugo Rössner were arrested in Vienna when the Austrian police discovered that they had recruited a secret army of former Nazi soldiers and right-wing partisans to prepare for a Soviet invasion and had amassed a cache of sophisticated weapons that included German rocket artillery. In court, prosecutors argued that Soucek and Rössner had concocted plans to attack and kill members of the Communist Party of Austria (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs). Instead of refuting this allegation, the two men presented themselves as defenders of the homeland and maintained that their efforts were funded by the newly created CIA. The realization that a covert army, funded by a foreign government, was operating on Austrian soil sent shockwaves throughout the country. Soucek and Rössner were convicted of sedition and sentenced to death in 1949. However, after serving a short stint in prison, they were pardoned by Austrian Chancellor Theodor Körner without reason or explanation.24
By 1950, Franz Olah, a member of the Austrian Parliament, had regrouped the covert unit under the codename Österreichischer Wander-, Sport- und Geselligkeitsverein (Austrian Hiking, Sports, and Society club), with funding from the CIA. “We bought cars under this name,” Olah later said, “and installed communication centers in several regions of Austria.” He added that the army of “a couple of thousand people” was trained in the use of “weapons and plastic explosives.”25
OTTO'S OUTBURST
The presence of Gladio in Germany came to light in 1952 when Hans Otto, a former SS officer, walked into a police station in Frankfurt and announced that he “…belonged to a political resistance group, the task of which was to carry out sabotage activities and blow up bridges in case of a Soviet invasion….” He said that, although the initiative was made up of former Nazis, new recruits were not expected to espouse neofascist beliefs but only to manifest a deep-seated hatred of Communism. Otto added that the unit, which bore the name Technischer Dienst des Bundes Deutscher Jugend (TD-BDJ)—the Technical Service Branch of the League of German Youth, had amassed a blacklist of hundreds of leftists “who were to be assassinated in case of emergency.”26
Upon questioning, Otto told the Hessen authorities that the TD-BDJ received millions in funding from “an American citizen [named] Sterling Garwood,” whom, he identified, as “an agent of the CIA.”27 He further said that the unit had been organized by Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who remained sheltered within Vatican City.
Georg August Zinn, the Hessen prime minister, became so alarmed by Otto's testimony that he ordered the arrest of one hundred members of the TD-BDJ and called for a full-scale investigation of the resistance group. Zinn's request was denied by the Bundesgerichtshof, the country's highest court (located in Karlsruhe, in southwest Germany), and all members of the secret army were released without comment. Baffled by the high court's decision, the prime minister said, “The only legal explanation for these releases can be that the people of Karlsruhe declared they acted upon American direction.”28
SWEDEN'S SECRET ARMY
In 1953, additional information about Gladio surfaced in Sweden with the arrest of Otto Hallberg, a notorious racist and former SS commander, on charges of promoting terrorism. Hallberg openly admitted that he was the leader of a covert army named “Sveaborg” that had been created by US intelligence officers to ward off any Soviet plans for the annexation of Scandinavia. Relaxed and confident, the former Nazi command
er rightfully predicted that any investigation into his unit and any police charges raised against him would be squashed by higher authorities, since no Swedish official wanted news to surface concerning the extent to which the Swedish government remained under the direct sway of the CIA and NATO.29
GLADIO'S FIRST COUP
In 1960, the Gladio operation turned strategic when the Turkish stay-behind unit, known as Counter-Guerrilla, joined with the military to stage a coup d’état against the government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. Menderes, who was planning a visit to Moscow to secure economic aid, was cast into prison, put on trial by a hastily assembled court, and executed on the island of İmralı.30 After civilian rule was restored by a democratic election, Col. Alparslan Türkeş, one of the leaders of the uprising, formed the Nationalist Action Party and its paramilitary youth group, the Grey Wolves, with CIA funds. The new party espoused a fanatical pan-Turkish ideology that called for reclaiming large sections of the Soviet Union under the flag of a reborn Turkish empire.31
THE PINK POPE
But Italy remained the center of attention for Gladio officials as the PCI reemerged from its years of domination by the Christian Democrats to make monumental gains among the populace. By the early 1960s, the Italian Communist Party boasted a membership of 1,350,000, making it once again the largest Communist party in the free world. Most alarming for Gladio, the party began to receive annual support from the Soviet Union that fluctuated in amount from $40 to $50 million.32
Yet the Vatican under Pope John XXIII, the successor to Pius XII, failed to condemn this development. Instead, the new pope issued an encyclical, Pacem in Terris—an official letter from the pope to the bishops, titled “Peace on Earth”—which represented an attempt at rapprochement between Catholicism and Communism. In addition, John came to develop a fondness for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, with whom he held a private audience.33
In May 1963, John McCone, director of the CIA and a Knight of Malta, received a memorandum from James Spain, of the agency's Office of National Estimates, on the ramifications of Pope John's policies. There is “no doubt,” wrote Spain in a fifteen-page memo, “that vigorous new currents are flowing in virtually every phase of the church's thinking and activities….[This has] resulted in a new approach toward Italian politics which is permissive rather than positive.”34
When Spain visited the Vatican, posing as a visiting scholar on a foreign affairs grant, he voiced his concerns about major gains made by the Italian Left, including the PCI, in the 1963 election. Many members of the Curia felt the Left's success was attributable to Pope John's conciliatory attitude toward the Communists. This was the first election in which the Christian Democrats were not officially endorsed by the Italian Bishops Conference. John XXIII insisted upon maintaining a neutral stance in order not to jeopardize his Soviet initiative.35
LEARNING A LESSON
As author Martin A. Lee wrote,
Director McCone now took a personal as well as professional interest in the Vatican situation. Thomas Kalamasinas, the station chief in Rome, was instructed to raise the priority of the Vatican spying operation. But the CIA ran into a snag when it learned that some of its best contacts—for example, the conservative prelates who held key posts in the Extraordinary Affairs Section of the Papal Secretariat, were shut out by John XXIII's tendency to circumvent his own bureaucracy when dealing with the Kremlin. The pope evidently feared that his diplomatic efforts might be sabotaged by some Machiavellian monsignor. For this reason, he pursued his goal outside the normal channels of the Curia. A small group of trusted collaborators served as couriers for the pope, who rarely used the telephone to speak with anyone outside the Vatican for fear that the line might be tapped.36
When John XXIII died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, the CIA under McCone became intent upon influencing the outcome of the conclave so that another “pink pope” would not ascend to the throne of St. Peter. The Agency's favored candidate was Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, the former Bishop of Milan, whose father had been the director of Catholic Action and a member of the Italian Parliament.37
THE RIGGED PAPAL ELECTION
Montini was an ardent supporter of Catholic Gladio. He had served the OSS during World War II in the so-called Vessel Operation and had received millions in black funds from the CIA for his charitable work as the Archbishop of Milan.38 The relationship between Montini and the US Intelligence community was so close that his ascendancy to the See of St. Peter may have been rigged. Time correspondent Roland Flamini uncovered evidence that showed CIA officials were able to confirm the election of Montini in advance of a puff of white smoke emanating from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and expressed their pleasure that the conclave had proceeded according to plan.39
One of Montini's first acts as Pope Paul VI was the appointment of Gelli as Equitem Ordinis Sancti Silvestri Papae (a Knight in the Order of St. Silvester), one of Catholicism's highest awards.40 The knighting was extraordinary since Gelli remained an avowed atheist who had never performed an act in the service of Holy Mother Church. Nevertheless, the ceremony was of profound significance to Gladio operatives, since it served to confirm the close ties between the Vatican and P2, as well as the Holy See's reliance on Gelli and other CIA agents to maintain its privileged place of power and independence within Italy.
THE RAT KING
The son of a Tuscan miller, Gelli was born in Pistoria on April 21, 1919. At the age of seventeen, he enrolled as a volunteer in the 735th Black Shirts Battalion and went to fight in Spain, where his brother Raffaele was killed by Communist forces at Málaga in April, 1938. Upon his return to Italy, he became the key liaison officer to the elite SS Division under Field Marshall Hermann Göring. During the Allied occupation in 1943, he escaped incarceration by volunteering to serve with the Counter Intelligence Corps of the Fifth Army.41 In this capacity, he worked in close contact with William Colby, the OSS agent in France, and Allen Dulles, the OSS director, in the establishment of the Office of Reserve Affairs. This shadowy agency, located on Rome's Via Sicilia, was manned by a secret force of the carabinieri (the Italian national police) under the command of Federico Umberto D'Amato, a former member of Decima MAS. Its sole purpose was to exercise control “over the most delicate activities of the state.”42
Through Colby, a devout Roman Catholic, Gelli gained entry to the Vatican, where he united with Fr. Krunoslav Draganović, a Franciscan monk and member of the Ustashi (a Croatian fascist group during World War II) , to set up the ratlines by which war criminals, including members of the Nazi High Command, could escape to South American and other havens of refuge.43 Many of the escapees were issued Vatican passports and traveled to their new hiding places in clerical garb.44 A memo from an intelligence official working at the US State Department in 1947 explained that “the Vatican justifies its participation by its desire to infiltrate not only European countries, but Latin American countries as well, [dealing with] people of all political beliefs as long as they are anti-Communists and pro-Catholic Church.”45
NEW NAZI HAVENS
The management of the ratline required Gelli to make frequent visits to Argentina, the favored country of Nazi fugitives, where he became a confidant of President Juan Perón.46 By the early 1950s, the South American country was swarming with Nazi criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer responsible for carrying out “the final solution to the Jewish problem.” The situation caused US Ambassador Spruille Braden to say, “There is no country in the world where the Nazis find themselves in such a strong position as Argentina.”47 Thanks in part to Gelli, over sixteen hundred Nazi scientists and their dependents made their way to the United States to inaugurate the space age. Many of these Nazis ended up working as aircraft designers and engineers at the Glenn L. Martin Company (later the Lockheed Martin Corporation) and Republic Aviation.48
The efforts of Gelli and Fr. Draganović were supported by Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) officials, who realized that many of the
Nazi scientists, doctors, intelligence officers, and engineers could be of critical importance in the battle against Communism. By 1947, the CIC was shelling out $1,400 to Fr. Draganović and Gelli for each war criminal who was sent to their care.49
KLAUS BARBIE
One of the most notorious Nazis to come under the care of Gelli and Fr. Draganović was Klaus Barbie. The so-called “Butcher of Lyons” was responsible for 4,342 murders and 7,591 deportations to death camps during his two-year posting in the French city. After the war, US intelligence placed him in a safe house in Augsburg, provided him with a sanitized identity, and granted him a generous stipend of $1,700 a month. In 1983, the Justice Department belatedly admitted that US intelligence officials had arranged for Barbie's escape to Bolivia (where he became known as Klaus Altmann and opened a sawmill in La Paz), and that they had lied by denying to French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld that he was under their protection.50
Throughout his twenty-year stay in South America, Barbie proved to be of crucial importance to the CIA by forging close ties to La Mafia Cruzena (a drug cartel formed by Hugo Banzer Suárez, a man trained by the US military at Fort Hunt and the Escuela de Golpes in Panama), and, thereby, securing a new source of funding for mounting attacks against leftist regimes.51
THE NAZI GOLD
The operation of the ratline brought Gelli in close contact with the future Pope Paul VI. At the close of the war, Monsignor Montini had been placed in charge of Caritas Italiana, a Vatican charity that provided “protection” for German soldiers and Nazi sympathizers. The protection came to include the issuance of refugee travel documents (replete with new identities) to such illustrious figures as Hans Hefelman, a principal figure in the Third Reich's euthanasia program, and Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary.52
In addition to the ratline, Gelli played a key role in the smuggling of over $80 million in gold and silver bars from the Ustashi treasury in Croatia to the Vatican Bank. Holy Mother Church was very pleased to receive the deposit for “safe-keeping,” even though Gelli squirreled away 150 gold bars for himself.53
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