Operation Gladio
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) "stay-behind" operation in Italy during the Cold War. Its purpose was to prepare for, and implement, armed resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest. The name Gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword. 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 some neutral countries.
The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and any relationship to terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960s to early 1980s) are the subject of debate. Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.
Gladio in fiction
A precise analogue of Operation Gladio was described in the 1949 fiction novel An Affair of State by Pat Frank. In Frank's version, U.S. Department of State officers recruit a stay-behind network in Hungary to fight an insurgency against the Soviet Union after the Soviet Union launches an attack on and captures Western Europe.
In the Archer episode "Lo Scandalo", the character Malory Archer mentions having been involved in Operation Gladio when younger. It is described by Lana Kane as "a crypto-fascist shitshow, starring Allen Dulles and a bunch of former Nazis."
- John Douglas-Gray in his thriller The Novak Legacy
- Umberto Eco in his 2015 novel Numero Zero
See also
- Belgian stay-behind network
- Stay-behind
- False flag
- Fifth column
- Counter-guerilla
- Italian Communist Party (PCI) (1921–1991)
- Operation Condor
- Paul L. Williams - authored a book on the topic
