Operation Gladio

by Paul L. Williams

  Fr. Bergoglio later claimed that he had no knowledge of stolen babies, of which there were hundreds, if not thousands, until the collapse of the regime. He said that he did what he could but had little influence “to save people from the regime.”60

  “HE KNEW EVERYTHING”

  “Bergoglio has a very cowardly attitude when it comes to something so terrible as the theft of babies,” said Estela de la Cuadra, whose husband, brother, brother-in-law and pregnant sister had been executed. “He doesn't face this reality, and it doesn't bother him. The question is how to save his name, save himself. But he can't keep these allegations from reaching the public. The people know how he is.”61

  Ms. de la Cuadra also expressed her outrage that Bergoglio, when serving as the head of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, refused to defrock Fr. Christian von Wernich, even after he had been jailed for life in 2007 for seven killings, forty-two abductions and thirty-four cases of torture, in which he told victims, “God wants to know where your friends are.”62 Von Wernich had served the dictatorship as chaplain of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.

  “I've testified in court that Bergoglio knew everything, that he wasn't—despite what he says—uninvolved,” Ms. de la Cuadra said.63

  CRIMINAL CHARGES

  In 2005, Argentine human rights attorney Myriam Bregman filed a criminal suit against Bergoglio, who had been elevated to the College of Cardinals, accusing him of complicity in the kidnapping and torture of Fr. Yorio and Fr. Jalics, along with six members of their parish. Bergoglio refused to respond to the subpoena to appear in court, invoking his immunity from prosecution under Argentine law as a Vatican official.64

  “He finally accepted to see us in an office alongside Buenos Aires cathedral sitting underneath a tapestry of the Virgin Mary,” Ms. Bregman said. “It was an intimidating experience. We were very uncomfortable intruding in a religious building.” She added that Bergoglio did not provide any significant information on the two priests. “He seemed reticent, I left with a bitter taste,” she said.65

  Later, in an interview with Sergio Rubin, his official biographer, Bergoglio said that he regularly hid people on church property during the Dirty War and once gave his identity papers to a fugitive with similar facial features so the man could escape across the border. But, Bergoglio added, these acts were performed in secret since church leaders were called upon to support the junta.66

  Responding to these comments, Ms. Bregman said that Bergoglio's words condemn him and prove that he condoned the torture and the killing. “The dictatorship could not have operated without this key support,” she said.67

  BERGOGLIO TRIUMPHANT

  On March 13, 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio ascended to the throne of St. Peter as Pope Francis I. The nagging questions about his background may never receive a satisfactory answer. Nor will concerns that the CIA manipulated the election as it had in the past with Juan Perón.68 Argentine journalists and scholars with insight into the Agency's activities in their country already have labeled Bergoglio “Washington's Pope.”69 Certainly, the new pontiff upheld the interests of General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera during the Dirty War, and served to suppress all manifestations of liberation theology. And, certainly, he can serve to influence policy (including the agenda of neoconservatives) throughout South and Central America. His installation, it has been noted, took place one week following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.70 By the end of 2013, Bergoglio emerged as the most popular cleric on planet earth, earning an approval rating of 88 percent among American Catholics.71 Few appear to take heed that Francis is the first pope to be charged with crimes against humanity

  Considering the importance and all-consuming nature of the work I was doing at the Agency; considering the missionary zeal, sense of elitism and marvelous camaraderie among my colleagues there…one can see how easy it would have been for me to drop out of the world and immerse myself exclusively in the cloak and dagger life. And some of my colleagues at the Agency did just that. Socially as well as professionally they cliqued together, forming a sealed fraternity. They ate at their own favorite restaurants; they partied almost only among themselves; their families drifted to each other, so their defenses did not always have to be up. In this way they increasingly separated themselves from the ordinary world and developed a rather skewed view of that world. Their own dedicated double life became the proper norm, and they looked down on the life of the rest of the citizenry. And out of this an inbred, distorted, elitist view of intelligence that held it to be above the normal processes of society, with its own rationale and justification, beyond the restraints of the Constitution, which applied to everything and everyone else.

  Former CIA Director William Colby, 1978

  Who in the US chain of command was responsible for implementing and directing Gladio, Condor, and the strategy of tension? It's hard to believe that these massive operations were orchestrated by a cadre of CIA agents, elite White House personnel, and select Congressional officials within a planning room in Langley, Virginia. The undertakings spanned decades and required an ongoing funding of fresh billions from the drug trade and other illicit sources. Moreover, mounting evidence shows that the Agency often acted without any input from the executive or legislative branches of the government.

  After 1948, Congress and the White House remained in the dark about most developments within the Agency, including Gladio operations. During the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration directed the CIA to undertake covert activities in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), and Indonesia (1957). But even these missions were conducted without consultation with any Congressional subcommittee on intelligence.1 Congress was briefed in advance of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and several clandestine missions in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. But no evidence has surfaced that either Congress or the White House sanctioned the establishment of Castle Bank and Trust, the Bank of Credit and Commercial International (BCCI), or the Nugan Hand Bank—all of which were solely owned and controlled by the CIA for money laundering purposes.2

  In the wake of Watergate and revelations about the CIA's involvement in the toppling of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance (Hughes–Ryan) Act in 1974, which stipulated that the president must be personally informed of all covert operations and must endorse a “finding” that such operations are necessary for “national security.”3

  THE CHURCH COMMITTEE

  Despite this legislation, the CIA continued to engage in subversive undertakings, including the shipment of arms to the rebels in Angola and to the Kurds in northern Iraq. When news of such undertakings began to surface, the Senate established the Church Committee in 1974 to probe into the activities of the CIA. In its final report, the committee upheld the following:

  The overwhelming number of excesses continuing over a prolonged period of time were due in large measure to the fact that the system of checks and balances—created in our Constitution to limit abuse of Governmental power—was seldom applied to the intelligence community. Guidance and regulation from outside the intelligence agencies—where it has been imposed at all—has been vague. Presidents and other senior Executive officials, particularly the Attorneys General, have virtually abdicated their Constitutional responsibility to oversee and set standards for intelligence activity. Senior government officials generally gave the agencies broad, general mandates or pressed for immediate results on pressing problems. In neither case did they provide guidance to prevent excesses and their broad mandates and pressures themselves often resulted in excessive or improper intelligence activity.

  Congress has often declined to exercise meaningful oversight, and on occasion has passed laws or made statements which were taken by intelligence agencies as supporting overly-broad investigations.

  On the other hand, the record reveals instances when intelligence agencies have concealed improper activities from their superiors in the Executive branch and from the Congress, or have
elected to disclose only the less questionable aspects of their activities.

  There has been, in short, a clear and sustained failure by those responsible to control the intelligence community and to ensure its accountability. There has been an equally clear and sustained failure by intelligence agencies to fully inform the proper authorities of their activities and to comply with directives from those authorities.4

  BEYOND THE LAW

  Ignoring the recommendations of the Church Committee and the stipulations of the Foreign Assistance Act, President Jimmy Carter, during the Iranian hostage crisis, encouraged the CIA not to inform Congress of its undertakings in Tehran.5 The Agency needed no encouragement. From the time of its creation, it had opted not to inform any elected official of the full scale of its undertakings, including Gladio, let alone the source of its funding.

  Who, then, was directing the killings, the terror attacks, and the coup d’états? Who was sanctioning the transactions with the mafias and the drug cartels? Who was creating the secret armies, the neofascist societies, and the bogus banks? The answer, in part, resides in the strange story of Michele Sindona's purchase of the Franklin National Bank in 1972.

  Sindona purchased the controlling interest in the bank from Laurence Tisch. One of the world's richest men, Tisch was the acting chairman and chief executive officer of CBS. He also owned a chain of movie theaters, a cigarette manufacturing plant, a conglomerate of hotels, and a fleet of oil tankers.6 During World War II, Tisch served under William “Wild Bill” Donovan at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and never severed his ties to the intelligence community. He was a distinguished member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a Washington “think tank.”7

  THE THINK TANK

  In 1961, the Christian Science Monitor described the CFR as “probably one of the most influential, semipublic organizations in the field of foreign policy.” It noted that the organization is “composed of 1,400 of the most elite names in the world of government, labor, business, finance, communication, the foundations, and the academies,” and “has staffed almost every key position of every administration since that of FDR.”8 Fourteen years later, Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a member of the CFR for sixteen years, reported that a powerful clique within the organization sought “the surrender of the sovereignty of the national independence of the United States” to create a one world government.9

  Few critics of the CFR were more vocal than Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who wrote in his memoirs: “Their goal is to impose a benign stability on the quarreling family of nations through merger and consolidation. They see the elimination of national boundaries, the suppression of racial and ethnic loyalties as the most expeditious avenue to world peace. Their rationale rests exclusively on materialism.”10 After noting that CFR members control both political parties, Goldwater continued:

  When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945 three different Republicans have occupied the White House for a period of sixteen years. Four Democrats have held this most powerful post for seventeen years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy direction…. When a new President comes on board, there is a great turnover in personnel but no change in policy. Example: During the Nixon years Henry Kissinger, CFR member and Nelson Rockefeller's protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, CFR member and David Rockefeller's protégé.11

  SPOOK HAVEN

  In 1972, when Sindona purchased controlling interest in Franklin National, the CFR was a haven for spooks, spies, diplomats, military officials, and White House dignitaries. Among its members were Allen Dulles, CIA director from 1953 to 1961; William F. Buckley, CIA agent and publisher of National Review; master CIA operatives Robert R. Bowie, Donald Gregg, and Deane R. Hinton; Katharine Graham, CIA advisor and the publisher of The Washington Post; Edward Martin, former OSS deputy chief of staff and US ambassador to Argentina from 1964 to 1968; Henry Sturgis Morgan, OSS officer and co-founder of Morgan Stanley; Jacob D. Beam, CIA agent and US ambassador to the USSR from 1969 to 1973; General Lyman Lemnitzer, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 1963 to 1969; Dean Acheson, US secretary of state from 1949 to 1953; Henry Kissinger, US national security advisor from 1969 to 1973; and David M. Kennedy, Sindona's business partner, who served as the US secretary of the Treasury from 1969 to 1971. Other members of the prestigious “club,” at that time, were Kingman Brewster Jr., president of Yale from 1963 to 1977; Arthur F. Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978; Navy Admiral William J. Crowe; Thomas S. Gates, US secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1961; J. Peter Grace, CEO of W. R. Grace and chairman of Radio Free Europe; Henry A. Grunwald, managing editor of Time magazine; Irving Kristol, founder of Encounter, a magazine funded by the CIA; William S. Paley, chairman of CBS from 1946 to 1983; Robert McNamara, US secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 and president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981; Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York from 1956 to 1973; and David Rockefeller, CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank and founder of the Trilateral Commission. The list even included the names of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, and Hubert H. Humphrey, his vice president from 1965 to 1969.12

  THE PROBLEM BANK

  Laurence Tisch had been widely hailed as one of most astute businessmen in American history. Throughout his long career, he rarely made a financial blunder. But in 1972, he acquired, through his Loews Corporation, 21.6 percent of Franklin National, which was based in Franklin Square on Long Island, New York. The acquisition was quaggy from the get-go. On March 6, 1972, federal bank examiners found the bank at the brink of insolvency, with its classified and criticized loans at $211.1 million. This figure represented 11.6 percent of Franklin's total loans and 91.2 percent of its capital. Moreover, the purchase of the stock placed Tisch in a compromising position. Being the major shareholder and a member of the board of directors of both the holding company and the bank, he had improper control of Franklin's assets and activities. This “rebuttable presumption” triggered a Federal Reserve investigation that might have resulted in criminal charges and a stiff prison sentence.13

  As soon as the investigation got underway, Sindona appeared at Franklin on July 20, 1972, with hat in hand, offering Tisch forty dollars a share, eight dollars above the market value. Sindona was not a second-class mobster but a world-renowned financier who would not buy a pig in a poke. Yet at the time of the purchase Franklin was posting a loss of $7.2 million and had been classified as a “problem bank” by the Office of the Currency.14 Why did Sindona suddenly show up with the offer? Why would Sindona take such a massive financial risk for an institution on the verge of collapse? And why was he willing to pay so much more than the bank shares were worth?

  CONSPIRACY THEORY

  Some writers have speculated that the deal may have been triggered by the animosity between Arthur Roth, who served as the CEO of Franklin National from 1946 to 1968, and David Rockefeller, the CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. Roth testified that he ran into trouble with the Rockefeller brothers when he sought to establish a branch office of Franklin National in New York City. He said:

  Starting in 1958, I came into direct personal conflict not only with David but with his brother Nelson; and this went on over several years. It first came into the open during hearings on the new omnibus banking bill in Albany in February 1958. A good part of the legislature was present, because we'd sent telegrams to each assemblyman and senator the night before, saying that if he wanted to learn the answer to the bank controversy, to come to the legislative chamber the following day.15

  Arthur T. Roth compiled a huge dossier on the shady dealings of the Rockefellers and presented it to reporters when Governor Nelson Rockefeller arrived in California to campaign for the Presidency. The wrath of the Rocke
fellers, according to this scenario, knew no bounds and they set out to concoct a plan—involving Tisch and Sindona—that would result in the destruction of Franklin National.16

  THE SHADOW GAME

  Sindona purchased the Long Island bank through Fasco AG, his holding company. He was represented by the New York law firm of Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander, in which President Richard Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell had been partners. Sindona informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had raised the $40 million for the deal by selling his shares in La Centrale, Credito Varesino, Pacchetti, and Zitropo—major industrial and financial concerns—to Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. Tisch got his money; the Securities and Exchange Commission seemed satisfied; and the Comptroller of the Currency asked no questions. But nowhere can it be verified that Sindona received the $40 million from Calvi and Banco Ambrosiano and nowhere can investigators find proof that Fasco transferred the money from any of its accounts.17

  As soon as the purchase was made, David M. Kennedy, Sindona's old partner, took a place on the board of Fasco AG, and assumed responsibility for voting the shares at the annual board meeting of Franklin National.18 Kennedy, at that time, had left his position as President Nixon's secretary of the Treasury to become the US ambassador to NATO. One of the highest ranking federal officials was a principal player in the new shadow game.