Replies

To begin with, the theory was in that pdf introduction:

"Planning for the day the Cold War turned hot, given the expected Soviet threat, necessarily led to thoughts of how to counter a Russian military occupation of Western Europe. That immediately suggested comparison with the Second World War, when Resistance movements in many European countries had bedevilled Nazi occupiers. In 1939-1945 the anti-Nazi Resistance forces had had to be improvised. How much the better, reasoned the planners, if the entire enterprise could be prepared and equipped in advance."

"The executive agents in the creation of the stay-behind networks were the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) of the United Kingdom. Other major actors included security services in a number of European countries. In all cases identical techniques were used. The intelligence services made an effort to establish distinct networks for spying on the occupiers, that is espionage, and for sabotage, or subverting an enemy occupation."

"To establish the networks the CIA and others recruited individuals willing to participate in these dangerous activities, often allowing such initial, or chief, agents to recruit additional sub-agents. Intelligence services provided some training, placed caches of arms, ammunition, radio equipment, and other items for their networks, and set up regular channels for contact."

"The degree of cooperation in some cases ranged up to the conduct of exercises with military units or paramilitary forces. The number of recruits for the secret armies ranged from dozens in some nations to hundreds or even thousands in others. The Resistance example was always an obvious one. Observers of the secret Cold War assumed the existence of the networks; so there are occasional references to the stay-behind networks in spy memoirs and literature. But by and large the subject was acknowledged with a wink and a nod. Until almost the end of the Cold War."

"In the summer of 1990, after the collapse of Soviet-dominated regimes in Eastern Europe, but prior to the final disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Italian government made public the existence of such a network in that country. Over the years since there has been a recurrent stream of revelations regarding similar networks in many European nations, and in a number of countries there have been official investigations."

"For the first time in this book, Daniele Ganser has brought together the full story of the networks the Italians came to call 'Gladio'. This is a significant and disturbing history. The notion of the project in the intelligence services undoubtedly began as an effort to create forces that would remain quiescent until war brought them into play."

"Instead, in country after country we find the same groups of individuals or cells originally activated for the wartime function beginning to exercise their strength in peacetime political processes. Sometimes these efforts involved violence, even terrorism, and sometimes the terrorists made use of the very equipment furnished to them for their Cold War function."

"Even worse, police and security services in a number of cases chose to protect the perpetrators of crimes to preserve their Cold War capabilities. These latter actions resulted in the effective suppression of knowledge of Gladio networks long after their activities became not merely counterproductive but dangerous."

. .

However, this 'book' PhD dissertation containing the above quotes is unfortunately housed at...
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119640.pdf
...which is a fairly repulsive site in terms of political attitudes. However, the above pdf url is direct and you don't have to look at the site hosting the pdf.

How the pdf location affects the veracity of the Gladio and related information in the dissertation pdf , I leave to your own judgment. Remember: "Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State" - James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974

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I apologize in advance for the sites where the links are. However, I assume that both Freepers and Eisler are smart enough to process the information and its veracity for itself and on its own merit. Each of the specific two link contents seem reasonably well sourced.

It does seem pretty clear from the two source links that at least something happened in Italy ...and perhaps other European countries... that was not good as a result some unintended and uncontrolled perversion of the NATO leave-behind operation that most of us were not generally aware of in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.