An Introduction to Gladio B - James Corbett on Breaking The Set

James Corbett of The Corbett Report joins Abby Martin of Breaking The Set to discuss "Gladio B," the continuation of the clandestine NATO program, Operation Gladio. We talk about the history of Gladio and the transition of the program into a campaign to fund and foment Islamic terrorism in the Central Asia/Caucasus region. For more information, please consult the "Gladio B" video series from earlier this year available from CorbettReport.com and BoilingFrogsPost.com:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN6xa7kD9dZ_qXHAmm4dx-Bqqy10mSVDZ

Abby Martin: I have briefly touched upon upon the shady tactics

used by the governments to foment public support for war.

One such program by the US was put in place during the Cold War

-- called Operation Gladio -- the aim of which

was to have paramilitary organizations stay behind in the Eastern Bloc

to continue the destabilization of regional powers.

And although the program was finally acknowledged in 2006

and is said to be long over, some allege that it never really ended:

instead, this clandestine operation simply morphed
to fit the needs of the War on Terror.

Here to help me break down this very important and convoluted subject

is James Corbett, independent journalist and host of The Corbett Report.

Thanks for coming on, James.

James Corbett: Thank you for having me, Abby.

Abby: So, what did Operation Gladio consist of,

and how far-reaching was the program?

James: Well, you were recently, on the program, talking about

the top five conspiracies that turned out to be true;

and I think Operation Gladio has to rank up there among them.

"Gladio" is the code name for a clandestine operation that,

as you indicate, was set up by NATO in conjunction with the CIA

in the wake of World War II, as the Cold War started to develop.

And the official cover of this program was that it was designed

as a stay-behind program to fund, train, equip, supply, and otherwise

facilitate groups to be ready in the case of a Soviet invasion of Europe.

And if that were to happen, basically, these groups would be able to resist

the Soviet occupation forces while NATO prepared some sort of military response.

That was, at least, the official cover for what was happening;

but ultimately, what resulted from this was, over the course

of the five decades of the Cold War, these funds and arms and equipment

were going to paramilitary groups and ultranationalist groups

that were basically against... hard-line anti-Communists.

And this resulted in a number of different operations, events,

and outrages that ultimately were blamed on Communists

as a way of trying to, basically, cripple the political Left in Europe

during that period.

And perhaps the best-known of those outrages and atrocities

was the 1980 Bologna Bombing, which killed 85 people and wounded 200 more.

That was, again, directly linked to this Operation Gladio.

It was eventually exposed in the early 1990s in the Italian Parliament,

and eventually that resulted in an outcry that was supposedly going to kick off

a European Parliamentary investigation that never actually occurred.

But we've been led to believe, in a lot of the English-language media

and in the Western world, that this was specifically focused on Europe,

and it specifically started and ended with the Cold War.

But in fact, as more information continues to come out about it,

we start to see that the field of operations of Operation Gladio

really is global, and that it continues to this current day.

Abby: Well, let's talk about that transition. I mean, very shocking:

I didn't even really understand the extent of Operation Gladio

until I was watching your series. I recommend everyone to check that out.

Really thorough series, just basically outlining everything

that this operation was.

As you said, I mean, it's a decades-long operation that consisted of

false-flag terror attacks, death, the funding of ultranationalist groups

to foment terrorism.

Let's talk about the transition into Gladio B.

You said that there's evidence showing that this is still happening today,

and it's actually morphed into something else.

What is that, and what evidence is there to back that up?

James: Well, as you say, I had a video series that I conducted earlier this year

with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. And as people may or may not know,

she has been referred to as "the most gagged woman in the United States"

by the ACLU and other organizations for having the state secrets privilege

applied to her case, to classify all sorts of information about

what she was working on, at her time in the FBI, in the translation department

at the Washington Field Office.

And basically, the information that she had indicated that there was a change

that occurred in this Operation Gladio, that occurred in the mid-1990s.

And she was specifically focused on the Turkish field of operations.

And this is, again, documented and on the record --

although little known and little talked about in the Western media --

but Turkey was, in fact, one of the first places where Operation Gladio eventuated,

and was, in fact, one of the central places -- as a geostrategic window,

the bridge, the so-called bridge between Europe and the Middle East,

it's always had a geostrategic location and, as such,

was one of the jewels in the crown of the Operation Gladio program.

But in the mid-1990s, Operation Gladio started to shift

from that funding of paramilitaries and ultranationalist groups

-- in Turkey, specifically -- towards an operation

more like what we saw in Afghanistan in the 1980s:

where the US, specifically, was funding, and helping, and training,

and arming the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

And this became the model for what's known as Gladio B.

Gladio B is the term that -- Sibel Edmonds indicates --

is the actual FBI file that they have on this,

the information on this in the FBI.

But there is a different name for whatever office in the Pentagon

actually works with NATO on this operation. That's still classified:

we don't know that.

But we do know that it's referred to as Gladio B by the FBI.

And basically, this is the cooperation of NATO and US

-- including high-ranking US State Department officials and others

-- with Islamic terrorists, basically -- in the perpetuation

of a strategy of tension which can be used as a type of weapon

against â specifically, in Central Asia and the Caucasus region,

which is an exceptionally important part of the global chessboard,

as Zbigniew Brzezinski talks about.

And in fact, in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard,"

he identified Central Asia as the absolute key for...

anyone who wants to have world dominance in this day and age

needs to control Central Asia.

And that's where we find a lot of these operations, now, are being based,

with US and NATO officials cooperating with Islamic terrorists

in order to foment a type of destabilization

that is aimed, ultimately, against rivals Russia and China.

Abby: Right, very fascinating. I remember in the video series

you were talking about, right before 9/11 -- as in 1997-2001 -- I mean,

we're talking about al-Zawahiri, alleged top al-Qaeda officials being flown out,

fostered by NATO, propagated by NATO and also the CIA

and covert forces in the area.

You said that this is actually going on still, to this day. What are they doing?

And explain, really, how this manifested into perpetuating

what we're seeing play off across that region of the world right now.

James: Well, you're exactly right about that.

And again, this comes directly from Sibel Edmonds,

who was working directly with the information from the FBI,

that Ayman al-Zawahiri was meeting with top-level US officials

in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1997 to 2001 -- in that range.

And this is important because, for people who don't know,

Ayman al-Zawahiri was, of course, Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man,

and is now the nominal head of al-Qaeda itself.

So the fact that he had such high-level contacts

for so many years in the heart of the US State Department

and with high-ranking officials is an exceptionally big story,

for obvious reasons.

And the fact that this is still ongoing, I think, is certainly viewable

in the context of what's happening in that Central Asia/Caucasus region,

with countries of such importance geostrategically,

like Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan,

which are in that Caspian Sea basin and that corridor

where a lot of the pipelines for those oil resources

are being hard-wired right now.

Abby: And I wanted to jump in there really, really quickly, James,

because we have about a minute left. But of course,

Sibel talks about drug-running in this operation as well:

the heroin from Afghanistan.

But really quickly, I mean, why haven'tmore of these allegations

been covered in, even, independent media, James?

James: Unfortunately, there is a total wall of silence on this.

And part of the reason, I think, the independent media hasn't picked up on it

is because there is so much to talk about, and there are so many connections

that a lot of people just simply haven't even heard about before.

So it is an area of the globe that a lot of people aren't familiar with,

and it takes a lot of coaching to get people familiar with

some of the players and names and dates. So just...

that's one of the reasons why it hasn't been featured in the independent media.

And obviously, the mainstream media, unfortunately, as we know,

is controlled on these types of subjects, and won't go near

this type of blockbuster information.

Abby: Well, now that you've kind of outlined the preliminary

base of knowledge about it, we'll get you on again to break it more down.

Thank you so much. James Corbett, "Corbett Report:"

everyone check out this series, "Operation Gladio [B]."

James: Thank you.

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