Archiving: 'Operation Gladio' by Paul L. Williams (Chapters 3-5)
The rise of the P2 Masonic Lodge (a wretched hive of scum and villainy)...
This article is the second installment in our series covering Paul L. Williams’ book ‘Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia’. You can find the first installment here.
Chapter 3: The Vatican Alliance
In 1947, Pope Pius XII was happy to allow black money to flow through his newly formed ‘Vatican Bank’. In fact, the Truman administration had already funnelled $350 million through it by this point, for economic relief and political payments. At this time, Pius XII realised that he would need more funds from the USA, as 50% of the Italian people were now aligning themselves with the new Communist Party. In 1945, just a couple of years prior, the Pope had already held an audience with Bill Donovan to discuss Gladio, and the Pope praised him as a crusader against communism.
In the last few months of 1947, mobsters from the likes of NYC and Chicago started to flood into Italy in order to aid Luciano and Don Calo in solving the communist threat. The CIA paid for this muscle via the Vatican Bank and various ecclesiastical organisations. The Mafia were now unleashed onto the Italian electorate, and they started to burn down communist offices, while also making four assassination attempts on Girolamo Li Causi (the Communist Party leader). A mobster sent in by Angleton also opened fire—committing a massacre—on an Italian crowd that was celebrating May Day… the funds for this act were supplied by Donovan, via money channeled through the World Commerce Corporation. It is estimated that CIA-fueled mob violence during this period left, on average, five people dead a week.
On top of this, Monsignor Don Giuseppe Bicchierai acted under papal authority to put together a gang of people to beat up leftists and intimidate voters. All of the weaponry for this was supplied by the CIA from surplus WW2 army leftovers. The tactics worked, and the Christian Democrats were returned to power on Election Day.
In 1949, Pope Pius issued a decree that would excommunicate all Catholics who printed and/or distributed communist political materials. To keep this all in-line, Pius tightened his connections to the CIA. The Vatican would work closely with the CIA, with suspect members of the Curia being monitored by moles.
Angleton would even swear his allegiance to the Church, becoming a Knight of Malta. Among the list of other Knighted people are William Casey, William Colby, John McCone, G.H.W. Bush, William F. Buckley, and Bill Donovan. So too was Reinhard Gehlen, who was Hitler’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front during WW2.
The Helliwell plan was now under way, the Mafia connection had been made, and the alliance with the Vatican had now been forged. But there was still a problem: the mob could no longer meet the CIA’s demand for heroin sales. New sources for opium had to be found, or this cold war could be in jeopardy.
Chapter 4: The Drug Network
Very early on, there were plans to make Marseille a new port for heroin shipments. But in early February 1947, the Communist-Socialist coalition held a meeting of Marseille dock workers. The result was the publication of a manifesto that called for all unions to launch strikes against the war in Vietnam. The original plans now came to a ‘screeching halt’.
To crush the strike, Luciano made contact with the leaders of the Corsican Mafia, who then launched a series of attacks on the strikers and their leaders. The attacks, which were funded by the CIA, continued until 1950. They were eventually crushed, and thanks to CIA funding, Marseille became the new centre of heroin trading.
Production was one problem, but there was also the problem of supply. The new network needed a ‘narcotics broker’. The leading opium broker in Turkey was Sami El-Khoury, who had met Luciano after the strike was broken off. The pair struck a deal, and millions of kilos of raw opium started flowing through the Middle-East until it reached laboratories in Marseille. Afterwards, the heroin was shipped—with CIA protection—to Cuba. After the Turkey deal, the CIA then struck a deal with a Burmese general, which opened up a route from Burma to Marseilles. In exchange, in 1951, the CIA started supplying arms to the general’s army (the KMT in Burma).
As the heroin trade ramped up in the West, the CIA publicly blamed Chairman Mao (which also helped them make a case for the Cold War). In order to support this lie, the CIA employed over 400 mainstream journalists and news presenters to write up fake articles and false information about China and heroin.
Meanwhile, a man called Sindona from an Italian peasant family had become (during the war) a respected member of the Luciano mob. By 1955, he became a CIA operative, and he would be a key ‘nexus’ between the CIA, the mob, and the Vatican, that would lead to a chain of events that entailed toppling governments, massacres, and financial ruin…
Chapter 5: The Secret Society
Throughout the 1950s, many of the Catholic Church’s Italian clerics and ‘black nobility’ joined Operation Gladio. Thousands of Priests and Bishops were not only trained for ideological war, but physical war too. Money for these activities was, of course, directly funded by the CIA. To protect the Catholic Church’s reputation, many of the anti-Communist Gladio operations were held in Masonic Lodges. In time, several ‘stay-behind’ units would also eventually develop into Masonic Lodges—the most famous being ‘P2’ (‘Propaganda Due’). P2 would become infamous for being a Masonic Lodge overrun with mob members. P2, and other lodges, were able to offer ex-fascists with democratic cover, and put them in touch with US masonic services in order to utilise them in the fight against communism. The P2 would also go on to boast many significant Vatican clerics and bishops, including the likes of the Pope’s Secretary of State.
But because of this, and because of his silence on the issue, Pope Pius appeared to be endorsing Freemasonry. This was theologically and spiritually stunning, given the Church’s historical stance on the Freemasons. But Pius was willing to let rumour slide if it meant defeating communism.
By the end of 1963, when Pope Paul VI had been elected, Operation Gladio had been somewhat exposed. Information about Gladio had started to leak, pretty much as soon as the secret armies started forming. But by this time, Gladio was also in-place in countries like Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden. Italy, however, remained Gladio’s centre of attention, after the Italian Communists began to gain democratic support again. This time though, the Italian Communists were receiving financial aid from the Soviet Union. Interestingly enough, the Vatican under Pius’ successor (John XXIII) did not openly condemn this news. Instead, he issued an encyclical that aimed for ‘peace on Earth’, which attempted some degree of peace-making between Catholics and communists.
After John XXIII died, the CIA became devoted to influencing the Papal election so that another “pink pope” would not win. The CIA favoured Cardinal Montini, who was a staunch defender of the Catholic Gladio, and had served in the OSS. To cut a long story short, Cardinal Montini would become Pope Paul VI. One of Paul VI’s first acts as Pope was then to make a chap called Gelli a Knight of St. Silvester, which would then cement links between the Vatican and P2.
Gelli was the son of a Tuscan miller, who during the War worked in special services and intelligence. Through his contacts with William Colby (an OSS official in France, and a devout Catholic), Gelli gained access to the Vatican, where he worked with Fr. Krunoslav Draganovic to set up ‘ratlines’ for war criminals to escape to South America. One of the most infamous NAZIs to come under Gelli’s care was Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyons”, who had already been protected by the US in Germany with a safe house. Barbie, during his 20 years in South America, would prove to be a crucial link for the CIA to access La Mafia Cruzena (a drug cartel), which would later become a great source of funding for Gladio. Gelli also helped to smuggle in over $80 million in gold and silver from the Ultashi (a Croatian fascist group) to the Vatican Bank (though Gelli took 150 bars for himself). This would make Gelli a frequent VIP guest at Vatican dinner parties. In 1956, Gelli returned to Italy, where he would use the guise of being a factory owner to work for the CIA’s liaison to General Giovanni de Lorenzo.
Then in 1953, the CIA’s nightmares came true: the Italian Communists gained big electoral victories, winning 25% of the popular vote, whilst all other parties lost seats. To try and win cabinet positions, the Communists then held a rally, which Gladio members attended and subsequently smashed up, while disguised as police officers. General de Lorenzo, along with twenty other senior army officers, also silently planned a coup in cooperation with the CIA. All of this, named ‘Operation Piano Solo’, would eventually culminate in the planning of a false-flag attempted assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1964.
By 1970, Gelli had become P2’s new ‘Worshipful Master’, and became known by the codename ‘Fillipo’. The lodge now received massive infusions of cash—approximately $10 million a month—from the CIA. The money was primarily used to buy arms to launch terror attacks in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and South America. Within ten years of Gelli becoming Worshipful Master, the P2 had branches in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal, Nicaragua, West Germany, and England. Its members and associates included Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger.
During his time as leader of P2, Gelli started compiling revealing documents about not only leftists, but also allies and members of his own lodge. As part of the joining process, Gelli would demand the new recruits hand over incriminating and embarrassing documents of themselves to prove their loyalty. Among these documents that he accumulated were even nude photos of Pope John Paul II… Apparently, after receiving them, Gelli remarked “if it’s possible to take these photos of the Pope, imagine how easy it is to shoot him”.
This concludes our summary of chapters 3,4, & 5 of ‘Operation Gladio’. Subscribe and stay-tuned for more to come.