The Librarian’s Notes: On Operation Gladio and our Apocalyptic Drug Problem
Some initial reflections from the librarian who has read all the books on the reading list… and is trying to connect some dots…
Written by the IAA Librarian
While travelling on my regular commutes to and from the IAA British Headquarters (location undisclosed), I’ve often found myself feeling like someone who’s been forced to navigate through a sort of apocalyptic wasteland—a frightening culmination of end-time prophecies that I’ve now had the task of bearing witness to for the better part of the last two years…
At just about every other city block on these commutes, I have been confronted by the pungent smell of burning cannabis (mixed in with a milieu of other pungent smells from the cityscape…), and consistently alongside me, waiting for the trains across town, have been a seemingly inexhaustible cast of disheveled roving youths, swaying listlessly from side to side, their eyes watery and bloodshot. But perhaps worst of all, might yet be the multitude of ‘stoners’ that tend to remain unseen; all of those people—made in the image of God—who will seemingly spend countless hours of their lives wasted on their sofas, smoking joints and eating Domino’s Pizza (a wretched choice of pizza, I’d say, fitting for an ‘end-time’…). These unseen shut-ins, in my mind, represent the true ‘last men’ of our times. Their talents and ambitions squandered in a haze of fumes. An entire generation of once-spirited men now condemned to just idle away without purpose, while they wait around for the next ‘thing of the day’ to consume, or to be consumed by…
While I know that this may not sound like the ‘fire and brimstone’ version of the apocalypse that most people tend to bring to mind when they first think of these things (this is more like the ‘light-up-and-get-stoned’ apocalypse, if I may…), I would like to be given an opportunity here, in this first publication of my notes, to thread together a number of reference points that I’ve come across lately here in the IAA’s small but comprehensive library collection, in order to help illustrate an important contention that I’ve found: that the drug epidemic that we are witnessing today is in fact a major function of a larger ‘beast system’ that we’re now contending with here at the tail-end of our civilization, and it is not, something that has simply sprung up ‘organically’ as a result of some arbitrary notion of cultural liberalisation or ‘progress’. Rather, it has been brought about, quite consciously, by the collective works of various intelligence agencies, bankers, mobsters, international fraternal orders, and to the consternation of many, even the Vatican...
Of course, you can still refer to it as ‘organic’ if you’d like, and to a certain degree, I may not even object to that (‘beasts’ are ‘organisms’ or ‘organic’, after all…). However, I would simply like to illustrate how this drug-induced civilisational decay that I’ve been describing, which lately I have had the utmost difficulty accepting as ‘normal’, has been the fruit borne from no less than many of the world’s most powerful institutions and political actors acting in concordance, and that history was not always fated to turn out this way... Many intentioned plans (sometimes even well-intentioned) were put into action over the last century, that got us to where we are today, and if we don’t take note of that, then I fear that we may never figure out a way to change course on where we are headed, and quite possibly be resigned to accepting all that is to come as the mere ‘organic unfolding of history’...
So, where do I now begin giving an auxiliary account of ‘manufactured and intentioned’, and furthermore, ‘apocalyptic’ history? Such a task would have daunted me had it not been for a new shipment of books that we had just received at the IAA Library during this very autumn. I actually recall it being an exceptionally cold morning in October, when I first picked up our library’s copy of Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia, by Paul L. Williams—the book which I’ll be centering my notes on in this particular report. The image of a silver crucifix on the front cover practically beamed at me, as I was fleetingly contemplating the fate of an inebriated young woman (on hard drugs, most likely) that I had encountered just that very morning. I had found her laying on a cobbled-together pile of blankets right outside of my building, and had been wondering to myself where her fate would ultimately lead her by the time that I returned…
Surely, I know that I may come off as a harsh critic of drug abuse, but beyond my critiques, I do have a genuine sympathy for those who engage in the act, and as far as I can tell, I also truly want to understand the issues surrounding the epidemic, as comprehensively as possible. It was perhaps by providence then that I should have discovered this book, and subsequently learned that there was more method to the mayhem after all…
Williams’ book tells the story of ‘Operation Gladio’, an anti-communist “stay-behind” operation that was launched secretly by the CIA just after the Second World War. The story Williams tells is full of murders, kidnappings, Freemason plots, and most relevant to this report, drugs. This love triangle between the Mafia, CIA, and the Vatican, would be responsible for the mass importation of heroin into the USA—and therefore Western culture more broadly. The reason this concerned the Vatican was because of the anti-religious sentiments of the Soviet Communist movement. Successive 20th Century popes, though particularly John Paul II, saw communism as being anti-Christ. It therefore fully consumed the Vatican, who for decades bent their will towards extracting it from nations like Italy… Even if it meant teaming up with American technocrats.
The drug plot then begins in Havana, 1945, when the US intelligence agencies held a conference with the Italian Mafia. The US intelligence agencies called the conference with the sole aim of convincing the Mafia to enter into a deal to trade heroin on the streets of Harlem. The OSS (later the CIA) would run the drugs into the US and the Mafia would store and sell it. Why did the OSS want to enter into such a corrupt trade deal? Because the OSS needed to raise money for ‘Operation Gladio’, to fight the communists in Italy and elsewhere, without getting the approval of the White House.
Initially, the Mafia refused to accept the OSS’ offer, on the grounds that it was beneath Mafia etiquette to sell drugs. However, the OSS had a better offer: sell the heroin… but only to black people. This, with a bit of persuading behind the scenes, sweetened the deal for the Mafia. Both the Mafia and US intelligence saw the blacks as beneath them, and therefore worthy consumers of heavy drugs. And what makes this worse is the fact that, all the way up until the 1990s, the Vatican—and multiple Popes themselves—were fully aware of this dirty drug money, funnelling it through the Vatican Bank so that they could “liberate” the Eastern bloc from the Soviet communists.
You know what’s strange, now that I think about it?… The obsessions that regular people can have with news events like ‘BLM’ and George Floyd, while also refusing to acknowledge that the issue of drug-proliferation has anything to do with these events. It is a testament to the hedonism machine that has been manufactured by our global technocrats: so long as the people like the drugs, then nothing else related to drugs will matter to them. But the story goes much deeper than this. Williams does a great job at demonstrating how the whole of Operation Gladio feeds into globalised technocracy, particularly with Pope John Paul II’s vision of the Vatican Bank being the foundation upon which the Roman Catholic Church could influence and partake in global secular politics…
Upon yet further reflection, I also can’t help but recall some sources on the Tavistock Institute that I have come across here in the library. How, in the 20th Century, Tavistock used both drugs and behavioural therapies in order to influence the behaviour of the general populace. I’ve been wondering… What if, just like pharmaceuticals, there is a connection between general behaviour control and the mass importation of drugs like heroin? After all, just like pharmaceutical drugs, recreational drugs also create (at best) a breeding ground for apathy, laziness, and self-indulgence.
To understand this better, we also need to factor in the spiritual elements of the Operation Gladio drug running scheme. Much of the Operation’s logistics and politics were driven by the Propaganda Due (P2) Lodge – a famous Italian Masonic lodge, led by Licio Gelli. The P2 Lodge was comprised of US and Italian politicians/intelligence operatives, leading Vatican clergymen, Mafia members, and a wide array of powerful figures in US/Italian civic life. The P2 Lodge also provided ‘muscle’ when needed, including the murder of Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, during the cover-up of the international money-laundering scandal that was caused by Gladio. The Lodge hung Calvi from Blackfriars Bridge in London, with five bricks and thousands of dollars in multiple currencies stuffed in his pockets. The nickname for the P2 Lodge was the “black friars”, hence the location of the hanging, and the bricks and cash symbolised masonic rituals known to have taken place in the P2 Lodge.
Would it be too much to assume then, with such details in mind, that there was an additional element to the drug-running, other than mere fundraising? What if this was part of a wider political project, designed by the likes of the Freemasons, to invoke a widespread culture of drug use, along with all of its accompanying behavioural implications within Western culture? We can certainly find some connection between these things in the writings of Fr. Seraphim Rose, for example.
Fr. Seraphim who, before he became an Orthodox Christian, partook in the drug culture of spiritual occultism, warns us of the dangers of drug use for the soul. In his book The Soul After Death, Rose warns his readers against drugs because of their hallucinogenic and mind-altering effects. Using writings on the life of St. Cyprian and Justina, Rose in particular draws parallels to these drugged-up states and pagan worship. Pagans, as noted by various Church Fathers, used such drugs to invoke otherworldly, “near-death” and “out of body” experiences within the individual. Spiritually speaking, this is very dangerous for two core reasons.
Firstly, the “out of body” or “near death” experience of drugs, particularly drugs like LSD, appear to make us more mentally and physically vulnerable to demonic attacks. Multiple pagan records, especially of the conversion experiences of converted Church Fathers, speak about these experiences bringing people face to face with demons. Take this example of a pagan ‘sorcerer’ from the life of St. Cyprian, who says of meeting a mystical figure in the hallucinogenic state…
He promised to make me a prince… The outward appearance of the prince of darkness was like a flower… When he would turn from one or the other side, that whole place would tremble, a multitude of evil spirits of various degrees stood obediently at his throne. I gave myself over entirely into his service at that time, obeying his every command…
The second spiritual consequence derives from the first: it endangers the salvation of the individual’s soul. Even if the drug-taker does not experience such lucid experiences with demonic figures, it creates a sense of numbness, otherworldliness, or passivity that is detrimental to the ascetic struggle of Christianity. In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul tells us to ‘be watchful’ in our faith, echoing the words of Christ who tells us to be alert to the Second Coming, the “thief in the night”. Such passivity and spiritual-disconnect from the world, which is heightened dramatically by the use of drugs, endangers this sense of spiritual watchfulness. Therefore, it endangers the very possibility of one’s salvation. Combine this passivity with the spiritual haze that hallucinations and out of body experiences produce, and it is a lethal satanic cocktail for the well-being and salvation of our spiritual selves.
We must also understand the drug-running element of Operation Gladio through this spiritual lens. The role of Freemasons, criminals, and corrupt hedonistic characters, in the introduction of a drug like heroin to the masses of Western society cannot be seen as detached from the spiritual realm. While there is no doubt that greed, hunger for power, and desire for control, also played a role in such decisions and schemes, we cannot merely reduce it to this, as materialist historians do. We must remember the spiritual, particularly when the dots connect as clearly as they do in this instance.
In the broader view of things then, I think we’ve got to understand this link between drugs, technocracy, and anti-salvation, as being ‘eschatechnological’; meaning that it has to do with the attempt to achieve an eschatological end to Man via technological means. We see this clearly in HG Wells’ concept of the “abolition of distance”, the notion that technology—from steamboats to computers—has abolished all notions of locality and distance to foreign peoples. Technology, the modernists think, has freed us from natural constraints, and opened to us a new “one world” of which they are the gods (... omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent).
The Tower of Babel in this case is perhaps the global system of a ‘perfected’ Liberalism (‘individual rights’, ‘separation of church and state’, ‘secular humanism’, etc.), and the means of salvation—or ‘spiritual liberation’, we might say more accurately—is the suspension of all critical and traditional Christian faculties. Instead of looking to God and His means of salvation for us, the modernists now look towards the technological society to free us common folk from our earthly shackles. Drugs, such as heroin, play right into this agenda. Not only on a very surface level, do the passive effects of a drug-high distract us from what is really going on in our own communities, it also distracts us from the true spiritual path—from prayer, sacraments, church attendance, communion, etc.
What if all those people you see zonked out on the park bench—or laying in a pile of blankets in front of your apartment building—are not a side effect of the agenda? What if, instead, they are very much a goal of the agenda?... The eschatechnological vision of people from the likes of the P2 Lodge, who seek a global agenda of atomic individualism and worship of false idols… The importation of mass drug use into Western societies then was perhaps a successful attempt to sever our spiritual being, in order to create regular flirtations with the demonic (as was so clearly evident in 60s and 70s rock and hippie culture). Further to this, the role of drugs in society has created the spiritual atmosphere by which populations become submissive or easily manipulated. Not only via recreational drugs, but through prescription drugs as well… And the role of pharmaceuticals in this eschatechnological society will be the very thing that I shall report on next…
But for now, I’m afraid that I’ve bumped up against my word-limit for an appropriate memo from a librarian to our readership. Our editor-in-chief (McNukes) had initially tasked me with writing a brief introductory note to our growing collection here at the Iron Age Archive Library (after I had informed him that I had now read most of the books on the shelves), but after reading this, I believe he’ll realise that he will have to extend my writing assignment from a mere one-off note into a series of them, as there are far more books and references that I would like introduce to our readership, and perhaps, future exclusive library and book club members.
Dare I say, that I’ve only scratched the surface today with my reflections on ‘Operation Gladio’, the drug epidemic, and eschatechnology, and that there is truly a much vaster treasure trove of knowledge that I’ve been uncovering here at the library (authors from [A]ttali to [Z]bigniew… Brzezinski), and I would very much like to bring my various findings to light while I’m allowed to continue.
Mr. McNukes has already informed me that he would like to read some of my chapter-by-chapter notes on the various books that I’ve read so far, and so, we shall see where this new endeavour leads us. As for now, I shall get back to the books, and just note that, for the record, I haven’t been slacking on my librarian duties at all… Rather, I’ve been working unpaid overtime; staying late into the night here at the Archive to read, rather than catching an earlier train back to the city… Perhaps that’s why the train rides have looked more apocalyptic than they needed to be…
Editor’s note:
It is quite possible that the Iron Age Archive will soon begin to publish some of our librarian’s chapter-by-chapter summaries of the books that he’s read while either on company time or during unauthorized office hours—perhaps some exclusively to paid subscribers on a weekly basis, as to help pay for his new salary as a member of our research department. His writing style is idiosyncratic, he doesn’t understand what his proper duties are here at the Archive, and he makes grammatical errors everywhere (which I have to correct), but fortunately, we believe that we’ve now found a proper place here at our organisation for him and his work. I’ve read through his very detailed (and harrowing) summary of Paul L.Williams’ Operation Gladio book, and after fixing the numerous grammar errors that pepper it, I will see about publishing the chapters of it regularly here on the Substack. Stay tuned, and thank you for your continued support.
Also, if you didn’t already know, our British HQ library is an outgrowth from our weekly book club, which can be attended on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/ja7GBbAnA . Our librarian has already read far more than we’ve actually covered in our meetings, but we would certainly like to cover just as much ground eventually.