Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecanana Show.
Speaker 2: Hey, Dan Thomas, doing well man, Thanks for thanks for
Speaker 2: hosting me.
Speaker 1: As always, of course I'm going to start something new here,
Speaker 1: don't really uh know, have an idea of how many
Speaker 1: episodes you have in mind for this, But this is
Speaker 1: a pretty big topic and a requested topic. So Operation Gladio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's I suggested we play it by ear figuratively
Speaker 2: and literally and see how long it takes us to
Speaker 2: cover the material and not just what we consider and
Speaker 2: you know, a more than an adequate capacity, but that the
Speaker 2: subs like I want to hear about Ladio is one
Speaker 2: of these misunderstood things. You know, there's a great deal
Speaker 2: of brutality of a of a particular sort. I mean
Speaker 2: the Cold War. The Cold War was neither was a
Speaker 2: condition of neither war nor peace. So even behind the
Speaker 2: verbial lines of peace and divided Europe, you know, there
Speaker 2: was a certain callousness that that that bled into contemplation
Speaker 2: of what was not just necessary but also reasonable. You know,
Speaker 2: the moral metric shifted, okay, I mean obviously in in
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia, what was very ine, late bare was that
Speaker 2: you know, Okay, the face of modern warfare very much
Speaker 2: reduces attrition to a to to you know, to a
Speaker 2: subjective goal. You know, that must be coded in the
Speaker 2: most contact terms possible and studied as to you know,
Speaker 2: the impactfulness on victory odds. You know that quite literally
Speaker 2: the manufacturer of human corpses facilitates or does not facilitate.
Speaker 2: But again too, you know, there were like peace didn't
Speaker 2: really reign anywhere in the Cold War that it was
Speaker 2: a contested battle space, and obviously Europe proper, you know,
Speaker 2: the the inner German border west, you know, thank god
Speaker 2: that didn't become an active battle space. But as I'm
Speaker 2: always citing, like William Odum, anyone who served, anyone who's
Speaker 2: deployed there, you know, on either side, would relay that
Speaker 2: like these were not peace conditioned. That felt like being
Speaker 2: at war. You know, it was not remotely like any
Speaker 2: other you know, peace time posting. And people look at
Speaker 2: something like Operation Gladi. Oh, they it's a gross affront,
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, not just to their not not
Speaker 2: just their they're they're kind of like moral conceptual horizon
Speaker 2: just in absolute terms, but the idea that this kind
Speaker 2: of thing could be carried out in their conditions of
Speaker 2: peace is just like a bondable, too abominable to them.
Speaker 2: And interestingly it's lumped in with the Phoenix program, which
Speaker 2: obviously did what what ovidly was like, and you know,
Speaker 2: a mac V SAG operation, and mac V SAG was
Speaker 2: was very adjacent CIA in those days. It was a
Speaker 2: mac V SAG and US civilian intelligence operation, you know,
Speaker 2: like the constant to to you know, direct action targeting
Speaker 2: of discreet personages who construted the analf infrastructure. You know,
Speaker 2: because you're fighting a non state actor, obviously the human
Speaker 2: beings are the infrastructure of your ops. Okay, but you know,
Speaker 2: people discussed it during obviously the the Gates Committee hearings,
Speaker 2: the kind of guilded CIA, and people talk about it
Speaker 2: today like, oh, this is what horrible overreach. It's it's
Speaker 2: unbelievable America and Americans could do something like this, which
Speaker 2: is really kind of preposterous, man, because that by definition,
Speaker 2: you know, not just an asymmetrical war, but an ideological
Speaker 2: war in a Cold War battlespace, you know, whereby on
Speaker 2: top of everything else, you know, there's this kind of
Speaker 2: profound difference between combatants, you know, culturally, racially, you know,
Speaker 2: every other way Okay, I mean actually come as no
Speaker 2: surprise anybody, and I don't want to go too far
Speaker 2: a field, but yes, there were instances of corruption within
Speaker 2: the Phoenix program. You know, some some army, the Army
Speaker 2: of the Republic of Vietnam, like an intelligence officer like
Speaker 2: got mad at some guy like carrying out with his wife,
Speaker 2: and this guy ended up on the list and ended
Speaker 2: up getting whacked. And that's horrible and it's indefensible. But
Speaker 2: in absolute terms, you know, presuming a basic integrity of
Speaker 2: the officers and NCOs involved, and I believe it was
Speaker 2: exclusively officers and n CEOs, and particularly in those days
Speaker 2: of special forces, that was a pretty rigidly maintained schema,
Speaker 2: you know, had it been where it was, it was
Speaker 2: implemented as intended. Not only was it highly effective in
Speaker 2: my opinion, but it was far far, far more justifiable
Speaker 2: and moral terms. You know. Then then deploying arc light raids,
Speaker 2: you know that drop five and a pound bombs on
Speaker 2: you know, on women, kids and old people in the
Speaker 2: middle of a race, Patty. But you know, so when
Speaker 2: people talk about Gladil as if they're discussing, you know,
Speaker 2: something like a real life horror film you should look
Speaker 2: at it in those terms that as aforementioned, you know,
Speaker 2: and or you consider in the same vein as people
Speaker 2: do who suggested like the Pinochet regime, like the distilled
Speaker 2: essence of evil. It's become this kind of bogey man,
Speaker 2: this conceptual bogey man. For whatever reason. I speculate there's
Speaker 2: some seminal text, whether by Howard Zander Chomsky and I
Speaker 2: really Chomsky's done some worthwhile things, but I think even
Speaker 2: his most ardent defenders, at least you know, who are
Speaker 2: tuned into your content, would agree with me that, you know,
Speaker 2: his uh, his objectivity was compromised by these deeply i'd argue,
Speaker 2: almost theologically felt conceptual biases. But there's number there's a
Speaker 2: number of things going on with thedio. Okay. First of all,
Speaker 2: the Cold War was a totally abnormal conflict. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm always making the point again and again. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons it's completely foolhardy, you know, whether it's Lindsey
Speaker 2: Graham or whether it's you know, the kind of pitiable uh,
Speaker 2: you know, seing to be former President Biden talking about
Speaker 2: like you know, Putin not not not Russia, Putin, like
Speaker 2: he's not gonna stop in Ukraine, He's gonna Poland like this,
Speaker 2: but like like this this idea that states, you know,
Speaker 2: like mad men just kind of somehow, by accident of
Speaker 2: faith or by guile and ruthlessness, you capture apparatus of
Speaker 2: space and proceed like capture land like somehow like the
Speaker 2: more like, if you collect enough fertile women and sore
Speaker 2: like can grow like sortum or something like, you win,
Speaker 2: like I even know what their notion is. But even
Speaker 2: that was obsolescence really even by the Second World War,
Speaker 2: save for the fact of the need of for Germany
Speaker 2: or Japan or one of the disadvantage kind of bat
Speaker 2: and when I say disadvantage I mean vis a vis
Speaker 2: their power potential too, you know, become a superpower. You know, yes,
Speaker 2: growth from and and is the is the basis of
Speaker 2: political and military challenges which become synonymous and and discreete
Speaker 2: and and totally unusual ways and such conditions. But also
Speaker 2: like like Laban drom even if you to wholy reject outright,
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of national socialist view of of
Speaker 2: of blutes and ross and everything else. I mean that
Speaker 2: that's there were that was that the twentieth century was uh,
Speaker 2: you know. Essentially it was it was the grand clash
Speaker 2: of uh, it was the grand class of civilizations to
Speaker 2: determine like what globalism would be. Okay, So once the
Speaker 2: Cold War said it in earnest, you know, your your ops,
Speaker 2: you were fighting your ops because they'd become the standard
Speaker 2: bearers of of of of an idea. And America was
Speaker 2: always kind of returning the serve to the con immunists
Speaker 2: because that both that that conceptual environment as well as
Speaker 2: you know, what military imperatives were prioritized within that paradigm.
Speaker 2: You know that it was it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 2: It was the Warsaw Pact, and they're adjacent elements, you know,
Speaker 2: who are the ones pursuing a revolutionary imperative? So, I mean, uh,
Speaker 2: that was the problem, and that was one of that.
Speaker 2: That was one of George Kennan's points, you know in uh,
Speaker 2: in the Long Memo or whatever. You It's it's not that,
Speaker 2: you know, we we've got to challenge the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: and Warsaw Pact for every ancient ground. It's that we've
Speaker 2: got to put ourselves in a position and we're not
Speaker 2: simply reacting and returning to serve. You know, Now, how
Speaker 2: do you do that if again, you're you're ops are
Speaker 2: the standard bearers of an idea, you know, and really
Speaker 2: your victory metric to accomplish global domination, destroy all competing ideologies,
Speaker 2: you know, assimilate people into this world society essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: that was envisioned by the Nuremberg you know ideology. But
Speaker 2: you know, obviously the Soviet Union was the concord of
Speaker 2: the United States and the Soviet Union. They'd totally falling apart.
Speaker 2: So any future victory scenario would entail the United States
Speaker 2: basically inheriting the mantle of what was envisioned, you know,
Speaker 2: by the Nuremberg ideological program. But the way that you know,
Speaker 2: the way that you win that is by eradicating the
Speaker 2: me idea and in underconniction of the act of war
Speaker 2: that consues the eradication of humans who are the standard
Speaker 2: bearers of you know, the enemy idea, such that you know,
Speaker 2: along the variety of criteria or perhaps even just one
Speaker 2: singular distinctively resilient criteria, that they can't be re educated
Speaker 2: or somehow like assimilated into a new paradigm. Okay, obviously
Speaker 2: this has implications for you know, the the absolute enmity
Speaker 2: between the the Reich and and European Jewry, such that
Speaker 2: European jury who was a self conscious, self identified political actor.
Speaker 2: But I that's a bit outside the scope of we're
Speaker 2: talking about. But there's complications that were emergent here that
Speaker 2: must be considered within those realities are just explicated, Okay,
Speaker 2: and this is very important now interestingly, and perhaps this
Speaker 2: won't surprise anybody, you know, really the pioneers of political warfare,
Speaker 2: as you know, from the side of you know, the
Speaker 2: colonialist power or kind of perspective of you know, the
Speaker 2: more powerful combatant or if you will, you know, the
Speaker 2: party combatant who like America, who is you know, perpetually
Speaker 2: returning to serve when op for decided to act. You know,
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom really kind of perfected what became a
Speaker 2: symmetrical warfare doctrine and political warfare doctrine. Okay, we're talking
Speaker 2: about Operation Banner and how Frank Kitson, you know, in
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland, especially owing to our viewing of resurrection Man
Speaker 2: Frank Kitsen, one of his I mean, basically the key
Speaker 2: takeaway from his kind of operational theory, if it can
Speaker 2: be distilled down to one kind of core principle on
Speaker 2: how to wage war against an insurgency is you've got
Speaker 2: to create a counter gang. But you've got to do
Speaker 2: this in some way. It's basically organic, Okay. You know,
Speaker 2: you've got to work with what the Germans called the
Speaker 2: mentioned material that's on the ground. You've got to sort
Speaker 2: of mold them. And they're political and military and sceptual
Speaker 2: horizon around what's instinctively already present, you know, and you've
Speaker 2: got to sort of transform the energies into something that's
Speaker 2: you know, deadly er, more efficient, more military with the
Speaker 2: capital m you know, and more workable in integrated command capacity.
Speaker 2: You know, then would just kind of be there, you know,
Speaker 2: like autocatonically or whatever. And of course Kits and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, despite the fact that he was only the
Speaker 2: commander on the ground in an operation Banner and Northern
Speaker 2: Ireland for about two or three years, that conflict model
Speaker 2: endured the duration of hostilities. And I've made the point
Speaker 2: again and again that you know, when when the provisional
Speaker 2: IRA and adjacent Republican groupings and others, what insists that
Speaker 2: there was for formal collusion underway between the British security
Speaker 2: element and loyalists. That was true. Okay, Now that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that, you know, Frank Kitson got together and hired
Speaker 2: some mercenary types and said, okay, you're now the Ulster
Speaker 2: Volunteer Force, you know, or you're now ready and commando.
Speaker 2: It was nothing like that. Like what they did was
Speaker 2: they looked at what they looked at what was already
Speaker 2: developing on the ground. You know, in uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the the sectarian war in the street where like literal
Speaker 2: battle lions are being established between you know, sectarian living
Speaker 2: between living spaces based on sectarian criteria, and you had
Speaker 2: these militious just spontaneously forming, you know. So they began approaching,
Speaker 2: you know, guys like Gusty Spence, you know, who was
Speaker 2: indispensable and the the the recreation of the Ulster Volunteer
Speaker 2: Force in nineteen sixty six. Spence a certain combat in
Speaker 2: Greece with the British Army. Okay, the UVF was always
Speaker 2: kind of the share punk of loyalism, you know. The
Speaker 2: UDA was this kind of like mass vigilante movement which
Speaker 2: wasn't out in Hill ninety two, but UFF which was
Speaker 2: technically like the their their direct action wing that was
Speaker 2: very very very much cultivated by British intelligence and military elements. Okay,
Speaker 2: and by by nineteen ninety three, loyalists were out killing
Speaker 2: the IRA, you know, Suddenly, like it just became very
Speaker 2: very good at targeting people who were either you know,
Speaker 2: ir provisional IRA members or you know, shin Fein representatives
Speaker 2: or social democrats they wanted dead for whatever reason. Like
Speaker 2: suddenly loyals became very very good at what they did. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean no means like saying like what they did
Speaker 2: was good. But when the bound of rationality, you know,
Speaker 2: and that Kitten's own point was look, you know, and
Speaker 2: he was comparing in punitive terms with the British do
Speaker 2: things the Americans and the Germans. He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't, you don't bring just more and more firepower
Speaker 2: to bear, you know, against uh, against an insurgency. You know,
Speaker 2: you're you're gonna kill a whole lot of people. You're
Speaker 2: gonna you know, many of whom are you know, women, kids,
Speaker 2: old people and just you know, other people who are
Speaker 2: you know, clearly noncombatants. And you're probably gonna you're probably
Speaker 2: gonna create more insurgents than you annihilate. But also there's
Speaker 2: got to be a kind of like menuet like ridiculously
Speaker 2: that sounds between forces under arms, you know, for them
Speaker 2: to for one hostile contact is made for them to
Speaker 2: remain engaged and actually you know, push for victory, you know,
Speaker 2: by by by you know, by the way you're killing
Speaker 2: the enemy. You know, if you if you seek your
Speaker 2: counter gang loose on like this gang of like Mau
Speaker 2: Mau rebels, if you lose like the u v F
Speaker 2: on the p I R A, when they make a contact,
Speaker 2: they're gonna fight it out and slaughter each other in
Speaker 2: a way that wouldn't happen if you know you, you
Speaker 2: know you you you roll, you roll through cedar tanks
Speaker 2: into the streets. When the IRA doesn't anything you don't like,
Speaker 2: you know, they'll disappear literally into the ether. And then
Speaker 2: the like lab of Satchel charge into like the turret hatch,
Speaker 2: you know, like when your when one of your people,
Speaker 2: like pops us head out for smoke. You know. And
Speaker 2: there's something that's kind of understated, needing to mirror what
Speaker 2: op for is in order to annihilate him in kind
Speaker 2: of like the post conventional Westphalian landscape. Now, what was
Speaker 2: gladiol and how does that had to do with like
Speaker 2: anything else was talking about. Well, around nineteen fifty two
Speaker 2: America in the UK, this is when they became really
Speaker 2: truly kind of like fully indexed in military terms, not
Speaker 2: not not just at the operational and kind of command
Speaker 2: to control level and drilling with one another, you know,
Speaker 2: like in the inner German border, you know, be at
Speaker 2: the North German North German Plains, it was primarily the
Speaker 2: British that Benelux State's responsibility and like the fold the
Speaker 2: gap which is primarily American armored cavalies area of operation.
Speaker 2: But they like like a conceptual indexing, like took a
Speaker 2: route and I believe a lot of this ode to
Speaker 2: the fact that by by January fifty two, obviously both
Speaker 2: you know, American forces as well as you know, the
Speaker 2: British Army had been engaged, you know, in a very
Speaker 2: brutal conflict in Korea. Okay, their learning curve was expanding
Speaker 2: in all kinds of ways relating to the study of war. Okay,
Speaker 2: they developed this need within the minds of you know,
Speaker 2: military analyst types on the civilian side and kind of
Speaker 2: like think tank whiz kids or were ubiquitous in the
Speaker 2: Cold War as we've talked about, but also you know
Speaker 2: military officers, uh, you know, from from from company level upward,
Speaker 2: you know, like we need, we need to develop some
Speaker 2: kind of tactical strategic imperatives, you know, relating asymmetrical warfare
Speaker 2: that allows you know, the the realization of you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the like the full spectrum of our of
Speaker 2: our killing power, but again without without allowing politics to
Speaker 2: creep into decision making, you know, in a in a
Speaker 2: way that you know, it's kind of proven fatal in
Speaker 2: some key instances visa vis the managerial state, you know,
Speaker 2: the like the experience of the Gall in Algeria, like
Speaker 2: first and foremost, I mean I think the Gall was
Speaker 2: not I don't think highly of them, but just in
Speaker 2: purely objective terms, I mean, that's one example. But so
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty two, and especially when you have the
Speaker 2: experience of fighting the People's Liberation Army at China, you know,
Speaker 2: and this this this kind of like endless ability of
Speaker 2: them to absorb casualties, you know, and utilize combined arms
Speaker 2: with Soviet help, and there was a lot of Soviet
Speaker 2: pilots flying sorties over Korea and kind of horrifyingly, a
Speaker 2: number of American POWs ended up in the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: and never returned. But because it may, you know, it
Speaker 2: became clear that when war comes, and uh mind you
Speaker 2: this was you know, uh, this was long before strategic
Speaker 2: parody existed between the United States and Warsaw Packed, but
Speaker 2: I mean it was also before the it's it was
Speaker 2: also like manned manned bombers were you know, the the
Speaker 2: zenith of of kind of strategic nuclear platforms. But the
Speaker 2: understanding was in basically every scenario game that you know,
Speaker 2: the Warsaw Packs is gonna overrun Europe. They're gonna smash that.
Speaker 2: The National Volks Army, which emerged later, but in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two, a combination of Volks two Lights I were
Speaker 2: the East German Army in all but name and group
Speaker 2: of Soviet forces in Germany were as possible for the
Speaker 2: operational sector I'm about to describe. After fifty six it
Speaker 2: became the National Vokes Armies domain. They were gonna smash
Speaker 2: through the inner German border, you know, which at times
Speaker 2: at the time the Berlin Wall wasn't there. After the
Speaker 2: Berlin Wall was created, Interestingly, there were these like weak
Speaker 2: points where like chargers could like blow holes you know,
Speaker 2: so that the National volks Army can storm through with armor,
Speaker 2: but because it may the understanding that was when war
Speaker 2: came the National Volks Army They're gonna storm West Berlin. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, the warsaw packed overshoots Berlin assaults across the
Speaker 2: North German plane smashers to the Foldy Gap, almost certainly
Speaker 2: utilizing chemical weapons and possibly taking the nuclear weapons if necessary,
Speaker 2: and NATO at best get hold out for seventy two hours,
Speaker 2: you know, until until the Soviet army reaches the Rhine.
Speaker 2: And then even if NATO is the capacity to reconstitute,
Speaker 2: it's not gonna have the forces and being in order
Speaker 2: to prevent you know, a further Soviet push, you know,
Speaker 2: thin Atlantic Ocean. Okay, so you're looking at a situation
Speaker 2: where okay, you know, and in these days, mind you,
Speaker 2: the the catal is changed. For why this uh was
Speaker 2: considered in terms almost exclusively of conventional war fighting, save
Speaker 2: again for you know, the tactical deployment of chemical and
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons and the real this this isn't this endured
Speaker 2: thirty years later, but for very different reason. Then we'll
Speaker 2: get into that. But the fact isn't it basically it's
Speaker 2: a basically conventional fight NAT, it was gonna be overrun
Speaker 2: by the massive superiority of forces in being by warsaw PCTs. Okay,
Speaker 2: The only hope really of liberating the continents in these
Speaker 2: cases would be some sort of infrastructure, infrastructure in situ
Speaker 2: that could be activated, you know, in order to generate
Speaker 2: UH an insurgency, like a pre existing insurgency basically, and
Speaker 2: this had never really been attempted before, unless you count
Speaker 2: the Viet Cong, but it's kind of a different thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, the understanding was that UH men were
Speaker 2: selected who are designated, you know, to be stay behind
Speaker 2: elements all the way up to I believe battalion level. Arms,
Speaker 2: cachetes were hidden, escape were prepared. Politically, loyal civilians were
Speaker 2: recruited when TURN developed their own like social infrastructure around
Speaker 2: what was to become the core mission, an event of
Speaker 2: UH Soviet conquest. Plant the true truly clans, truly clandestine
Speaker 2: cells were established who made contact with one another, but
Speaker 2: didn't even make contact with each other's respective handlers, you know,
Speaker 2: or with the above board but still highly secret GLADIO
Speaker 2: designated elements and UH. This was largely devised by the
Speaker 2: United Kings what was which during World War Two, what
Speaker 2: came to be called the United Kingdoms Special Operations Executive
Speaker 2: Okay Gladiol was largely created with the experience and development
Speaker 2: of former SEO officers. I had the pleasure a man
Speaker 2: who was a dear friend of my family and who
Speaker 2: was actually one of them. That of going to the
Speaker 2: old university is because he taught there. His name was
Speaker 2: Uh Samuel Sarcesian. As he might have gleaned, he was Armenian.
Speaker 2: His parents are Armenian immigrants. He was in the Special Forces.
Speaker 2: He was in a heavy action in Korea in the infantry,
Speaker 2: and he was one of the first true green Berets,
Speaker 2: you know, to pass the Q course and get the
Speaker 2: Green Berets. And why they recruit him, it wasn't just
Speaker 2: because he was an excellent comments soldiers. Because he was Armenian,
Speaker 2: you know, he could stay behind and blend in, you know,
Speaker 2: And the earliest like special forces became something somewhat different
Speaker 2: or it included that mission as well as like many
Speaker 2: other adjacent UH ones as time went on. But Uh,
Speaker 2: that really is the birth of special Forces. It's very
Speaker 2: much a Cold War creature, you know. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that's bad or something. I actually think, I actually are
Speaker 2: any Special Forces is in a lot better shape these
Speaker 2: days than I think so kind. It's got a lot
Speaker 2: of problems, but I don't want I don't want to
Speaker 2: upset the that our friends who are military guys, and
Speaker 2: they I mean, like are literal friends of hours. Like
Speaker 2: I'm not talking like Randos and I. I they don't
Speaker 2: mean they know I hold them in tremendous respect. But
Speaker 2: its point being, uh, you know it, Uh, this was
Speaker 2: very much you know, it's taking very seriously. And not
Speaker 2: only was like for example, like my my, my mentor
Speaker 2: and family friend, the Sarkesian, like not only was he
Speaker 2: a you know, Armenian immigrant stock, but uh the dialectical
Speaker 2: inflection he could affect that properly to fit in with locals.
Speaker 2: You know, this was very very sophisticated on operational terms,
Speaker 2: especially for the time. Now something interesting happened. It's always
Speaker 2: developed and the center of gladio because of the gladio
Speaker 2: was Italy. Okay, now now why Italy? You know Italy?
Speaker 2: Uh I maintained that, uh, the real it is the
Speaker 2: Marshall Plan. It wasn't it wasn't just uh it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't what Stalin said and just you know, kind
Speaker 2: of bind the Buddhist Republic to American debt or whatever like. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that was like an added benefit. But I
Speaker 2: mean the Buddhist Republic was done. I mean they were
Speaker 2: they were being more in the plan out of existence.
Speaker 2: Like Italy on the other hand, just geostrategically as well
Speaker 2: as in sheer economic terms for you know, a European
Speaker 2: zone of of commerce and industry. You know, they were
Speaker 2: incredibly important. Okay, Italy had to be brought in the NATO.
Speaker 2: Italy also had to be repaired from the devastation it
Speaker 2: had suffered, you know, and throughout the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: You know, it'll ended up becoming i think for a time,
Speaker 2: you know, like the fifth largest economy in the world,
Speaker 2: you know it only also it never underwent a denacification
Speaker 2: process it Uh, there was still a very active communist
Speaker 2: party there, you know that that didn't just participate and
Speaker 2: challenge for seats, but they insulated themselves into coalition and
Speaker 2: governments regularly, you know. And on the other side you
Speaker 2: had openly fascist and national socialist parties that uh were
Speaker 2: rapidly they weren't just rabidly anti communists, they were rapidly
Speaker 2: anti Soviet. They still viewed the Soviet Union like as
Speaker 2: their ops. Okay, and I maintain, you know, the big
Speaker 2: you don't know. I mean, you're you're a learned guy,
Speaker 2: but some of this stuff is trivia. You know. YACKI
Speaker 2: had a huge falling out with Moseley, and Moseley refused
Speaker 2: the publish imperium through the Union movement the brand because
Speaker 2: Mosley wasn't an arch cold warrior, you know, like one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten percent, And a lot of people are like, well,
Speaker 2: he was trying to find his way back to respectability
Speaker 2: in British political life. I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 2: I think he really believed that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, anybody who knows, anybody who knows what Mosley
Speaker 1: went through in the next you know, fifteen to twenty years,
Speaker 1: knows that he he was he knew he wasn't getting
Speaker 1: back into oh yeah, the main stream of politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's ridiculous what he was saying. I
Speaker 2: think he's gonna be a prime minister or something. I mean,
Speaker 2: like all the fair people thinking what it's uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's video on YouTube of him in like nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two going into some British town to and their
Speaker 1: people chasing him, trying to beat him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a preposterous claim. And like who's he trying
Speaker 2: to impress? And it's like Mosley even in the even
Speaker 2: in the inter Warriors, like, uh, I mean, Mosley did
Speaker 2: his own thing, and he was uh, he indexed very
Speaker 2: much with Hitler. But at the point he disagreed with
Speaker 2: Hitler on and he was like open about it, I
Speaker 2: mean like and he yeah, he one of the reasons
Speaker 2: is he's a hero of mine. He was very like
Speaker 2: free thinking man. But so Italy being this back to
Speaker 2: where we were, Italy being Italy being ground Zery Gladio. Again,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just because the political the internal political situation,
Speaker 2: you know, the need to bring Italy back into the
Speaker 2: fold of Europe under his perannumber. You know what was
Speaker 2: then the European coal and Steel community, and you know,
Speaker 2: and the and to bringing up the snuff as as
Speaker 2: a real uh as a real you know, like regional
Speaker 2: power into itself. But also you hadn't, Gladio, was you
Speaker 2: had You had a whole lot of very fit, very
Speaker 2: committed fascist men of military age who had experience you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, these this is not that kind
Speaker 2: of duty that just regular guys are gonna sign on for,
Speaker 2: you know, even if they're basically patriotic anti communists like
Speaker 2: you need uh, like you need basically like like fascist
Speaker 2: jihadi for something like this. Okay, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: also too you know, how do you how do you
Speaker 2: recruit men for for these roles? Do you? You don't just
Speaker 2: like put an ad out, you know and like the
Speaker 2: them equivalent of you know, Craigslist or something, you know,
Speaker 2: like as it was in two thousand and six. You
Speaker 2: don't uh, you know, you don't just uh, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, at the evening news, you know, just say like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're building a state behind fascist army. You know,
Speaker 2: would you look to be part of it? You know?
Speaker 2: They they had like you know, NATO uh intelligence as
Speaker 2: well as uh, you know, like the NATO's kind of
Speaker 2: commanding control element, which would have been at that point
Speaker 2: the supreme alleyed command in Europe. They had to basically
Speaker 2: which is why I brought up, you know, kissing this
Speaker 2: point on counter yangs. They basically had the index with
Speaker 2: you know, the fascist resistance that still existed there, and
Speaker 2: these national socialist guys who never changed their stripes and
Speaker 2: who were very very active. You know, you basically had
Speaker 2: index with them when some kind of trust sell them
Speaker 2: on the merits of the mission and you know, convinced
Speaker 2: them to essentially start start training for this you know
Speaker 2: what was then a very like real contingency and we're
Speaker 2: gonna these people into cells you know, like a self
Speaker 2: stroke that's actually workable, that allows them, you know, to
Speaker 2: become habituated to their the command structure of uh of whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't know the force levels would have been exactly,
Speaker 2: but you know, whatever arm element they were part of.
Speaker 2: But also it got them habituated to drilling with one
Speaker 2: of you with another and all the all the kind
Speaker 2: of psychosocial imperatives that one needs to cultivate if you're
Speaker 2: gonna send you know, what is called the military sociology,
Speaker 2: a primary group of men, you know, into action. But uh,
Speaker 2: a lot of this, you know a lot of people
Speaker 2: didn't know about any of this. I mean people like
Speaker 2: my dad did, but like, uh, that to my dad,
Speaker 2: so secret squirrel. But he was in a position to
Speaker 2: know about certain things that other people didn't. But the
Speaker 2: general public it really didn't know about the scope, breath
Speaker 2: and Purpose and Gladio until about October nineteen ninety, Okay,
Speaker 2: and that was very interesting because basically, like right about
Speaker 2: a year after the Energement border collapsed, a lot of
Speaker 2: these uh, a lot of these, a lot of these
Speaker 2: kinds of like deep dark secrets of the Cold War
Speaker 2: wanally that way, we're just kind of like things that
Speaker 2: had been very eyes only like suddenly came to light.
Speaker 2: I think the I think it's still the people who
Speaker 2: are in control of a lot of this data. They
Speaker 2: knew that this was very very rapidly you know, gonna
Speaker 2: be kind of censored and take out, taking out of circulation,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what happened, say this sense of like
Speaker 2: it's now or never now. So in October nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna butcher this name and I'm so sorry, but
Speaker 2: uh Julie Androtti he issued for this series of revelations
Speaker 2: relating to the internal situation like of the Western Bloc,
Speaker 2: like pretty much from you know, the emergence in NATO
Speaker 2: and especially kind of it's the starting point was you know,
Speaker 2: mid Korean War, like when Gladio first became kind of
Speaker 2: you know became more than just sort of a you know,
Speaker 2: like an abstract uh you know model banded about it
Speaker 2: among like war college types. Giulio Androtti, I think it
Speaker 2: was something of like an Italian and in hour man,
Speaker 2: but not quite I think it was. I think he
Speaker 2: was far more of a compelling person is I don't
Speaker 2: mean that negatively, but he My point is that he
Speaker 2: wasn't even considering the Italian situation he was in. He
Speaker 2: was unusual for a post post war European executive in
Speaker 2: DROUGHTI he was the forty first Prime Minister of Italy.
Speaker 2: He served in seven governments seventy two, seventy three, seventy six,
Speaker 2: seventy nine, nineteen eighty nine to ninety two. He was
Speaker 2: really and he was the leader of the primary organizer
Speaker 2: of the Christian Democrats from the earliest days. And here's
Speaker 2: the thing. People don't understand the Christian Democrats in Europe.
Speaker 2: They're not just like the Republicans of the Tories. They
Speaker 2: were basically the Vatican Party in Italy to a lesser
Speaker 2: degree in Germany like after World War Two. Okay, they
Speaker 2: were genuinely conservative, were socially right wing. They had a
Speaker 2: very strong IDENTI vacation with the Catholic Church, and Catholic
Speaker 2: what alistair magendire, I guess we call virtue I Thics,
Speaker 2: although I'm sure they had I'm not Catholic and I'm
Speaker 2: no read Italian. I'm sure they had different sources to
Speaker 2: draw upon. But my point being the Christian Democrats, they
Speaker 2: they uh there there their heritage probably had more to
Speaker 2: do uh with you know, the kind of political culture
Speaker 2: one had in Austria and the Inner War years than
Speaker 2: it did, you know, with with somebody like uh like
Speaker 2: you know, like uh like like like Adaer Okay, for example.
Speaker 2: Much as like I said, there there was some basic
Speaker 2: similarities and and Geordie had an inner thing uh perspective,
Speaker 2: and he he's viewed these days as probably the most
Speaker 2: powerful and prominent like political like executive political figure of
Speaker 2: uh of the Italian First Republic, you know, since you know,
Speaker 2: since nineteen forty five basically Okay, And I'm going so
Speaker 2: deep into his biography because it's essential understanding gladio okay,
Speaker 2: and you'll see why or like what I mean in
Speaker 2: a minute. He begins a protege of a man named
Speaker 2: Elsid de Geest Sperri, the Sperry became a member of
Speaker 2: the Parliament of a Trentino, which was a UH part
Speaker 2: of the Austrian reichstad It was one of these uh
Speaker 2: it was one of these Italian territories that was semi
Speaker 2: autonomous but was under the sovereignty of the Habsburg Empire. Okay,
Speaker 2: because Sperry began began the First World War is partitically neutral.
Speaker 2: He sympathized very very strongly with Pope Benedict and said basically,
Speaker 2: like you know, if you're if you're a good Catholic
Speaker 2: and you know, like a good Italian, you know you're
Speaker 2: you're gonna buy you know, Pope Benedicts, Uh, ultimately what
Speaker 2: were ultimately unsuccessful, you know, like but very well intentioned
Speaker 2: of Resince here everts towards peace. Carl the First of
Speaker 2: Austria was another figure very much kind of like Index
Speaker 2: with this respective who uh whom you know who uh
Speaker 2: Ugus Berry saw, you know, I die with but Gaspari
Speaker 2: as time went on, became somewhat radicalized. Okay. In nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen he was one of the founders but became the
Speaker 2: Italian People's Party along with Luigi Sturzo. He served as
Speaker 2: a deputy in the Italian Parliament for a few years
Speaker 2: from twenty one to twenty four, which is obviously you know,
Speaker 2: the fascist ascendancy was nineteen twenty two. He was enthusiastic
Speaker 2: about support of his party, the PPI and UH the
Speaker 2: first UH government around their first kabinet Mussolini, because the
Speaker 2: way he viewed it, it was that you know, this is this,
Speaker 2: this is what we need to standing is of Bolshevism,
Speaker 2: because Bolshevism is going to destroy the Catholic Church and
Speaker 2: they're already you know, just like they're doing to the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church. And he wasn't wrong, you know, and Mussolini's
Speaker 2: Moslene's relations to Catholicism was complicated. It was kind of
Speaker 2: like Charleston Moross okay, And it's hard for like, first
Speaker 2: of all, I don't believe Mosleini was an atheist, even
Speaker 2: though he wasn't you know, God fearing in the sense
Speaker 2: we're talking about. But it's when a si rumors put
Speaker 2: themselves and you know, kind of a twenty twentieth century
Speaker 2: modernist perspective, especially when shaped by the Great War, and
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of certainly humanizing paradigms like they're
Speaker 2: in all level of which seemed to mirror each other,
Speaker 2: and some sort of like grand constellation tailored the rob
Speaker 2: man of his ability to live othe his historical he
Speaker 2: had as a discreet personality. It's not as like Marxist
Speaker 2: Pavelin or something. It's you know, they're very very much
Speaker 2: the core of the European right, like the true right,
Speaker 2: like thought in these terms. Yeah yeah, but uh as
Speaker 2: uh as Mussolin's grip kind of became absolute and unlike Hitler,
Speaker 2: who you know was a huge or a tremendous aspect
Speaker 2: of his ascendency oud uh you know, the strategics of
Speaker 2: of plebisites. You know, Mussolini was much more. There's not
Speaker 2: only called a personality on Mussolini in there. There definitely
Speaker 2: wasn't you know, uh, from the from from the center
Speaker 2: right to the to the truly fascist. You know, I
Speaker 2: mostly he had had a very strong mandate for a
Speaker 2: twentieth century executive, but uh, he was prone to almost
Speaker 2: like quasi Leninists, you know, sort of utterances that then
Speaker 2: that henceforward just became the law. You know. He mostly
Speaker 2: mostly fundamentally, uh fundamentally altered the structural balance of power
Speaker 2: between the executive and and in the parliam and and
Speaker 2: and in the electoral system itself as well as the
Speaker 2: parliament was largely becoming someone gilded anyway by the Serrebral Law,
Speaker 2: which basically guaranteed like the National Fascist Party, you know,
Speaker 2: like a certain signage of cabinet seats, okay, so essentially
Speaker 2: became a one party state without you know, something like
Speaker 2: the Enabling Act to finesse it. And for the record too,
Speaker 2: and this is a subject for a different series or episode,
Speaker 2: but you know, Hitler didn't. Hitler didn't take the oath
Speaker 2: of office as counselor, you know, and then or even
Speaker 2: later after you after the Enabling Act, you know, when
Speaker 2: he became a consulor and and fear of the German Reich,
Speaker 2: he didn't. He didn't something declare that like you know now,
Speaker 2: like you know, organized state are all you know, or
Speaker 2: all apparatus of the party, you know, and the internal
Speaker 2: police apparatus was very directly co opted by National Socialists
Speaker 2: and became an organ of the party, which is interesting
Speaker 2: of itself, but other than that, that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons there was this kind of agonistic pluralism in the
Speaker 2: Third Reich, where in some ways people didn't couldn't quite
Speaker 2: grasp like where you know, sort of like the state
Speaker 2: bureaucracy stops and the party bureaucracy began. Or you had
Speaker 2: you had organic government that literally had like an identical mandate,
Speaker 2: you know, but one was you know, like a branch
Speaker 2: of the s D which was accountal of the s S.
Speaker 2: Like another was you know, like a an internal security
Speaker 2: department that was you know, tied to the AD there,
Speaker 2: you know, which had absolutely no leg accountability to the
Speaker 2: same chain of command. But the uh, what ultimately happened was, uh,
Speaker 2: these kinds of these kinds of like reform is by
Speaker 2: the by bully pulpit flexing like figuratively and literally. This
Speaker 2: led to this led a great deal of turmoil in
Speaker 2: the early years of the the National Fascist Party. And
Speaker 2: it's a single party rule, there's a great deal of
Speaker 2: violence against other parties would refuse to accept, uh you know,
Speaker 2: the serbral law and just kind of refuse will accept,
Speaker 2: you know, it'll dose a sort of self appointed mandate.
Speaker 2: This caused the PPI to this the fracture. Digas Ferry
Speaker 2: became uh he remained on as a secretary of a
Speaker 2: of the Anti Fascist faction that remained until November twenty
Speaker 2: November No. Twenty until until November nineteen twenty six. You know,
Speaker 2: in a true climate of kind of over violence and
Speaker 2: intimidation became the norm. You know, the the PPI was
Speaker 2: was just formly dissolved. You know. Gasperi himself was arrested
Speaker 2: in March of twenty seven. He did four years in prison.
Speaker 2: The Vatican negotiated a real lease, you know, which again
Speaker 2: as the indexing and the relationship between the Vatican and
Speaker 2: the Christian Democrats and their precursors, that's really important, you know,
Speaker 2: to understanding the politics the inner warriors nearly Cold War.
Speaker 2: But you know, he was, uh, he was after his
Speaker 2: release in nineteen twenty eight, he was basically unpersoned, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he had deficuely finding employment. He was in serious financial difficulties.
Speaker 2: His uh, some of his church contacts, you know securit
Speaker 2: yim a job as a cataloger in the Vatican Library,
Speaker 2: which probably saved his life, and that's where he spent
Speaker 2: the next that in the next fourteen years until until
Speaker 2: the collapse of the of the Kingdom of Italy I mean,
Speaker 2: the Rum state in forty three, I mean the rum
Speaker 2: state of the Cellar Republic endured. But you know it's uh,
Speaker 2: the big contribution of Gaspari one of the major international
Speaker 2: one of the major international newspapers, which in those days
Speaker 2: a political newspaper, a new political newspaper having international circulation
Speaker 2: was a big deal. He wrote a column where this
Speaker 2: was in Ninete, this was in nineteen thirty four, I mean,
Speaker 2: when he had absolutely no love for the National Fascist Party,
Speaker 2: but uh he uh he celebrated the defeat of the
Speaker 2: Social Democrats and uh in Austria we claim were you know,
Speaker 2: on a on a mention of de christianizing Austria, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know that they were cobD allies of the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2: And he see declared to knowing certain terms that the
Speaker 2: German Church that we you know in Italy we should
Speaker 2: follow example of the of the German Catholic Church, you know,
Speaker 2: and we should prefer knowing certain terms you know, national
Speaker 2: Socialism to Bolshevism, like Bolshevism is our is the mortal
Speaker 2: enemy of Christ and of the Catholic Church. So this
Speaker 2: is uh, you know, these these these alliances are more
Speaker 2: complicated than people will. You know. It's during uh, during
Speaker 2: World War two. This is one of the spirit has
Speaker 2: formally established the Christian Democrats. I think it was clear
Speaker 2: to me he saw the writing on the wall that
Speaker 2: you know, the Acts were going to lose the war.
Speaker 2: He published, uh, and deliberately limited circulation to uh what
Speaker 2: appears to be you know, like a handful of cadres
Speaker 2: that we trusted. The samounted to a program for the
Speaker 2: new Christian Democrat Party, and uh it was titled quite literally,
Speaker 2: you know, Ideas for Reconstruction. Okay, Gasperry. From that point on,
Speaker 2: you know, he was like the under He was the
Speaker 2: undisputed kind of han show. Not just the Christian Democrats,
Speaker 2: which were a new sort of constellation of of of
Speaker 2: political values contained in one you know, pretty pretty autocratic
Speaker 2: and well managed party, but they ended up dominating Parliament
Speaker 2: for decades, you know, and they were basically right wing.
Speaker 2: I mean I don't mean that in twenty first century terms.
Speaker 2: I mean they were very much like a nationalist Catholic
Speaker 2: you know, very you know, very pro very very patriotic,
Speaker 2: you know, like racialism didn't feature into their equation to
Speaker 2: the same degree that it did and does some continent
Speaker 2: all tendencies. But this was a genuine like right wing tenancy, okay,
Speaker 2: And when Southern Italy was conquered by the Allies, this
Speaker 2: ferry became basically like the main representatives of the Christian
Speaker 2: Democrats and what became known as the National Liberation Community,
Speaker 2: the National Liberation Committee, like dissident elements that you know,
Speaker 2: we're we're all kind of jockeying from you know, patronage
Speaker 2: by the Allies and you know who would give them
Speaker 2: the mandate and uh, you know, the security elements in
Speaker 2: order to in order to do insinuate themselves as you know,
Speaker 2: the prominent pre eminent like cadre or party like ruling
Speaker 2: the country. It's uh, this very first uh became a
Speaker 2: minister without portfolio and a government led by Ivan Benom.
Speaker 2: Later in Farizio Perry's cabinet, he became the Minister of
Speaker 2: Foreign Affairs. And that's kind of when that's got all
Speaker 2: these ideas he's been cultivating, like got wide sort of circulation,
Speaker 2: you know, And in my opinion, he was always a
Speaker 2: more kind of thoughtful individual than add and hour I
Speaker 2: think of adding now it's kind of like a great
Speaker 2: perbial horse trader and like literally like an incredibly like
Speaker 2: skilled politician, but I there was there was no real
Speaker 2: vision there like good or bad. I mean there's I
Speaker 2: Han Drudell had something to say about adding how but
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not going to repeat it less like
Speaker 2: YouTube virus or something. But to be fair, I compared
Speaker 2: to some possibilities I had now looks pretty good and gaspary. Uh,
Speaker 2: I think it was positively hero. I'm considering a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of you know, the challenges he was
Speaker 2: facing quite literally not just a you know, his his
Speaker 2: soul and sanity, but his life and whim. Finally, uh, Gaspari.
Speaker 2: From forty five to fifty three, he was prime He
Speaker 2: was prime minister of a successive Christian Democrat like governments. Now,
Speaker 2: if you know what about Italian politics, that's that's like
Speaker 2: absurd longevity. Okay, that's like that's that that's basically a
Speaker 2: British prime minister like ruling for like you know, like
Speaker 2: eighteen years. Okay, Like I don't think if I'm not
Speaker 2: making front of the Italians. This is like a fact.
Speaker 2: But uh this uh you know this, it was declared
Speaker 2: a republic. You know immediately they signed uh a peace treaty.
Speaker 2: Uh like a from a Peatriot with the Alan forty seven.
Speaker 2: They they were they were one of the original Natal
Speaker 2: members in forty nine, you know. And again uh Gasparri
Speaker 2: and uh the Christian Democrat delegation, they actively courted the
Speaker 2: United States, you know. And again I don't I don't
Speaker 2: buy into the mythology of like, oh, the Marshall Plan
Speaker 2: just like created magic money and like made made Europe
Speaker 2: like rich. Again. Uh, that's that's complete nonsense. But there
Speaker 2: were infrastructural needs and there was a need for capital
Speaker 2: and key sectors in order for Europe to be able
Speaker 2: to like like realize its great power potential. And the
Speaker 2: Marshall Plan when it's uh, when it when it's capital
Speaker 2: inflows were truly targeted in a way that indexed with
Speaker 2: necessary developmental schemes. It was highly effective. And he uh
Speaker 2: he lobbied very very hard for U for participation in
Speaker 2: the Marshall Plan. The like the Marshall Plan, I gets
Speaker 2: it really did. In the case of Italy, I I
Speaker 2: don't think the term you know, like economic miracle, like
Speaker 2: the Spanish miracle or itself pretty miracle, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's it's just another everything kind of like conscious or
Speaker 2: not to like make economics. It's a good secure thing.
Speaker 2: But to act like it's literally some kind of magic
Speaker 2: and it it doesn't owe to you know, the human
Speaker 2: ability to you know, to truly like build equity, you know,
Speaker 2: from from the raw stuff of the capital again quite
Speaker 2: literally and you know, the uh, the Marshall plane itself
Speaker 2: did not revide Europe. But at the same time, again
Speaker 2: the European colon steel community was essential. And you know,
Speaker 2: gesperit's like like like pushing to make this, you know,
Speaker 2: a policy priority and you know, making it an unconditional imperative,
Speaker 2: you know, for for his government was essential when uh,
Speaker 2: when he did take uh when when he did it
Speaker 2: become prime MINSI that first time, succeeding Ferruccio Pary. He
Speaker 2: inherited a coalition that included both Italian Communist Party and
Speaker 2: Italian Socialist Party delegates, along with along with other like
Speaker 2: smaller parties that were nominally independent or you know, had names,
Speaker 2: you know, like the you know, like a Liberal Republican
Speaker 2: Party or the Action Party, but you know, some of
Speaker 2: which had very much you know, we're communists at Jason
Speaker 2: if not, you know, no proxies too. To Gatsbury's credit,
Speaker 2: his Deputy Prime Minister Palmiro Togliotti did cooperate in gas
Speaker 2: Spurry's attempts to soften the terms of impending l I
Speaker 2: PCE treaty with Italy. You know, again, you know, seeing
Speaker 2: very much what was being done to Germany, and this
Speaker 2: was this, This is you know, him lobbing so heavily
Speaker 2: and so very publicly for relief through and cop operation.
Speaker 2: They're in the European recovery program, you know, which was
Speaker 2: the tangling of the Marshall Plan. You know this this,
Speaker 2: this was opposed most siparously by the communists, but gas
Speaker 2: Sperry did manage to hold this you know, initial prime
Speaker 2: ministership together despite all odds, especially when you consider you know,
Speaker 2: the the fact that he was dealing with the cabinet
Speaker 2: has very much stopped. But that was very much stocked
Speaker 2: by os the Uh. It was under Gasperry's watch that
Speaker 2: Italy would you know, the one thing significant referendum on
Speaker 2: his watch pose the question of whether Italy was to
Speaker 2: remain a monarchy here become a republic, you know, and
Speaker 2: again that I believe very much was uh was uh
Speaker 2: the spirits like Machiavellian streak. You know, like I said,
Speaker 2: like he like Franco's redeem post World of the Spury
Speaker 2: obviously was a far more amorable figure. One of the
Speaker 2: ways that uh, they were able to you know, kind
Speaker 2: of bring the Vatican into the fold and not just
Speaker 2: uh administrative capacities and in terms of uh insinuating a
Speaker 2: kind of moral legitimacy, which you know carried a lot
Speaker 2: of cachet still in those days, but also uh it's
Speaker 2: allowed it allowed for a certain freedom of movement in
Speaker 2: global politique vis a vis what you know, other countries
Speaker 2: would respond to that they wouldn't have, you know, if
Speaker 2: Italy was merely, you know, a a client regime in
Speaker 2: the United States with all the trappings they're in, including
Speaker 2: you know, the stripping away of the Roman Church from
Speaker 2: you know, not just uh authority in government and administration,
Speaker 2: but also in national life. It's uh. He was chief
Speaker 2: of the Italian delegation at the World War two peace
Speaker 2: conference in Paris. Uh. You know, he remained harshly critical
Speaker 2: of the sanctions that remained on in poets on Italy,
Speaker 2: owing to various intrigues and some of which were just
Speaker 2: kind of born of vengeance driven sensibilities, especially considering that
Speaker 2: you know, Italian leadership was not going to be placed
Speaker 2: on trial or you know, or certect these kinds of
Speaker 2: show trial homicides under auspices of you know, justice. But
Speaker 2: he did gain very strong concessions from the allies that
Speaker 2: guaranteed Italian sovereignty, particularly as regarded the bulk and some
Speaker 2: of the eastern border territory was lost Yugoslavia, but the
Speaker 2: free territory of Trice was divided between the two two stays.
Speaker 2: And obviously you know, NATO meaning at that point just America,
Speaker 2: like you know, signed on as the guardan tour of
Speaker 2: of these uh borders. Now back to Androtti again, this
Speaker 2: is important to understand. I'm not boring with it, but
Speaker 2: let's figure out the hell I am you have my
Speaker 2: senior moments. Back to Androtti, Androti had achieved cabinet rank
Speaker 2: at a very young age, and by the time, by
Speaker 2: by the end of his tenure, he'd he'd occupied virtual
Speaker 2: every major office of the post war Italian state, and
Speaker 2: he again was seen as quite literally like the unofficial
Speaker 2: liaison with the Vatican, you know, and foreign policy terms
Speaker 2: and DROUGHTI you know very much the protos vego Sperry.
Speaker 2: You know, he guided the European unions like Italy within
Speaker 2: kind of the what the ecing and the EU, and
Speaker 2: Roti guided Italy's integration into it, and fascinating leads to
Speaker 2: me if you know what my kind of research interests
Speaker 2: are and if you kind of understand the nuances of
Speaker 2: what Gladio was to the men who staffed it, which
Speaker 2: was something very different than the men who conceived of
Speaker 2: it and wanted to utilize it for strategic purposes, you
Speaker 2: know that were fairly transparent and already pursued uh close
Speaker 2: relations with the Arab world, you know, and he uh
Speaker 2: he had a strong, strong following not just in Italy
Speaker 2: but uh especially through Catholic Europe, but also like you know,
Speaker 2: throughout the futality, throughout the totality of what was becoming,
Speaker 2: uh you know, the Burgening ec EU. He substantially mediated corruption.
Speaker 2: He'd ow's seen the transformation of the country from you know,
Speaker 2: a basically rural country into literally the world's fifth largest economy.
Speaker 2: That's totally insane. That's only comparable, I think to like
Speaker 2: South Korea went from having an economic profile comparable at
Speaker 2: Burkina Fosso to like being like the number nine Ruld economy.
Speaker 2: Like granted there was like massive subsidies and infrastructural aid.
Speaker 2: You know, that was kind of like the reward for
Speaker 2: you know, contributing some very much and not not just
Speaker 2: in not not just in in in treasure, but in blood,
Speaker 2: you know, to the Vietnam War. But it's truly remarkable
Speaker 2: to consider, especially when it's something that just seems like
Speaker 2: impossible an AGV man, you know, like undercurrent historical conditions.
Speaker 2: But the uh his uh, he was a huge uh.
Speaker 2: Andrati's ops claimed that he was a neoliberal. That's kind
Speaker 2: of like the catch that's kind of like the favored
Speaker 2: uh sort of slander, you know, of of of the
Speaker 2: of these kinds of posts war European politicians, you know,
Speaker 2: who rejected kind of like the Keynesian model, and you know,
Speaker 2: began to realize that this overregulation and state planning was
Speaker 2: was quite literally crushing what remained in national industry. But
Speaker 2: it also it was you know, it was it was
Speaker 2: actually like you know, enslaving Europe to the dollar like
Speaker 2: even more than a you know, even even even more
Speaker 2: than today. I mean by by like a wide mile,
Speaker 2: it's not even close. But I he was only a
Speaker 2: supply sider. But he you know, like I said, I think, uh,
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't know seriously, especially people who
Speaker 2: articully learned it in economics, you know when they bandied this,
Speaker 2: uh like, oh he was he was a neoliberal and
Speaker 2: like God's in the right. Do that too, that that
Speaker 2: means that you have no like credibility or something as
Speaker 2: a right winger. It's like, I don't, I you know,
Speaker 2: the the political was the economic and I mean that
Speaker 2: that's that's a liberal con seed man. That's not the
Speaker 2: way you think of things anyway. But uh, you know
Speaker 2: Androtti again is also his His two other kind of
Speaker 2: big commitments were you know, staunchly supporting an the next
Speaker 2: thing with the Vatican, and you know, a strong hostility
Speaker 2: towards the Italian Commedist Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Now remember how we're talking about the English, the British, rather,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of Scots and uh and the Alsterman among
Speaker 2: the ryans of those Biostards. And how they really were
Speaker 2: the pioneers of asymmetrical warfare well around uh, around the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, very late seventies. Look here, general Sir John Hackett,
Speaker 2: he was former commander in chief of the British Army
Speaker 2: on the Rhine, which was again they they were the
Speaker 2: primary UH British Army element and the inner German border. Okay.
Speaker 2: They were kind of the equivalent of ah of of
Speaker 2: of twelve twelve Black Horse, the folding Gap. Okay. He
Speaker 2: he confirmed over a series of interviews and like talks
Speaker 2: you know, at various you know, war college side venues.
Speaker 2: This was November sixteenth, nineteen nineties. So again you're right
Speaker 2: on the heels of these earlier disclosures about Gladio Well
Speaker 2: Hacket hack I said, have known certain terms that a contingent,
Speaker 2: a contingity, a contingency plant plan involving quote stay behind
Speaker 2: and resistance in depth was drawn up after ninety forty
Speaker 2: five and was absolutely essential. Okay. A proto j of
Speaker 2: his anthony for R. Hockley, a former commander in chief
Speaker 2: of NATO's UH forces in Northern Europe, which would have
Speaker 2: been area of operation would have been UH UH Norway, Denmark,
Speaker 2: the UH, the North, the Scandinavian, the North Sea. He
Speaker 2: uh reiterated to The Guardian magazine that yes, what General
Speaker 2: Hackett that suggested it was was absolutely true. Now, the
Speaker 2: British were big on public diplomacy in a way America wasn't,
Speaker 2: you know, I think a couple of years back, it's
Speaker 2: before there was as many options available on Twitter to
Speaker 2: you know, do spaces and things. And I don't believe
Speaker 2: I've ever done on pot about it, but I've posted
Speaker 2: many images of the Soviet Military Power magazine that you
Speaker 2: could purchase in any post office and it was released
Speaker 2: every year from I believe eighty one until nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: It was put out by the Defense Intelligence Agency. It
Speaker 2: was full of this incredible artwork because obviously a lot
Speaker 2: of these weapons platforms, NATO didn't have actual photographs of them,
Speaker 2: but you know, they knew they existed. But this was
Speaker 2: obviously an effort at you know, true public diplomacy, like
Speaker 2: educates the public on a question of policy significance or
Speaker 2: political goings on. You know that you know, they wouldn't
Speaker 2: they wouldn't ordinarily be availed to, you know, a body
Speaker 2: of work that could sort of explain such college matters
Speaker 2: and in concise terms, and that seems completely quaints like
Speaker 2: in the Internet era. But Britain was always big on this.
Speaker 2: America was less big on this, you know. But in
Speaker 2: the Cold War there were a few kind of very
Speaker 2: striking examples, and Soviet military power was one of them. Well,
Speaker 2: what the British did was and my dad had these
Speaker 2: books on his bookshelf as when I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: and they only blew my fucking mind. But Sir General,
Speaker 2: Sir John Hackett, he wrote a book in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight and it was marketed as a novel in America.
Speaker 2: I don't believe it was marketed as such in the UK.
Speaker 2: And in the UK it had a different epilogue, and
Speaker 2: we'll get into that in a minute, but it was
Speaker 2: called the Third World War August nineteen eighty five. It
Speaker 2: was a fictionalized account that reads kind of like threads
Speaker 2: and a threads. You know, it was a movie, but uh,
Speaker 2: you know the it doesn't have a traditional like fiction
Speaker 2: narrative structure. You know, like it'll jump to some you know,
Speaker 2: like warsaw packed like early warning posts you know in
Speaker 2: East Germany, you know, and they'll like jump to you know,
Speaker 2: some Soviet missile base in Kazakhstan, and they'll like jump
Speaker 2: to like you know, the President's like situation room. But uh,
Speaker 2: what it basically is is it's it describes a scenario, okay,
Speaker 2: that being that in August nineteen eighty five, Sovie mean
Speaker 2: Warsaw packed the Salt Western the Uh. There's a follow
Speaker 2: up in nineteen eighty two called The Third World War
Speaker 2: The Untold Story, which elaborated on the original with some
Speaker 2: details of this counter faction universe, but also again like
Speaker 2: it it it added a kind of what I think
Speaker 2: it was an alibi for Western for American audiences. It's fascinating,
Speaker 2: but for context. Some of them hack it believed in
Speaker 2: you know, this was the final really critical phase of
Speaker 2: the Cold War. You know, like seventy eight, seventy nine,
Speaker 2: like eighty five were able Archer era. You know, it
Speaker 2: was a four armed conclusion to a lot of these uh,
Speaker 2: a lot of these general law officers that there was
Speaker 2: going to be a war in Europe, Okay, and uh,
Speaker 2: basically their job was not just to protect you know,
Speaker 2: the people in the United Kingdom or the people the
Speaker 2: United States, you know, the people of Italy, you know,
Speaker 2: depending on the executive we're talking about, it's the folks
Speaker 2: of their abilities and also to you know, to do
Speaker 2: everything they can to fight and win in nuclear war
Speaker 2: for our Hockeley, who was heck gets some protege I
Speaker 2: mentioned a minute ago. During this time he started advocating
Speaker 2: strongly for the creation of a new Home Guard and
Speaker 2: anticipation of a potential Soviet assault. You know, the the
Speaker 2: Home Guard of World War two was like lampoon and
Speaker 2: stuff like Dad's are you know, have you've ever seen that?
Speaker 2: But for Hogween Haggar were serious about having able bodied
Speaker 2: young men, you know, like basically, uh take on the
Speaker 2: role of uh of a gladiol element an event, uh
Speaker 2: of warsaw Pact, assault of the island. Okay, So in
Speaker 2: the books or in the book, uh, we'll start with
Speaker 2: kind of I think is the primary source, which is
Speaker 2: the first addition, and uh the Third World War untold
Speaker 2: story they describe uh, basically the political situation as it
Speaker 2: stood then in terms of you know, alliances, allegiances, then
Speaker 2: active battle spaces. There was some speculation about space based
Speaker 2: weapons platforms, but otherwise it was all based on like
Speaker 2: forces and being you know, at then extent force levels
Speaker 2: and weapons systems that actually existed and could expect it
Speaker 2: to be performed, could expected to perform an action as
Speaker 2: described in the narrative. But uh, the novel starts then
Speaker 2: for presidential election, Walter Mondale, who's the Democratic nominee, loses
Speaker 2: the former Governor Thompson of South Carolina, who's obviously supposed
Speaker 2: to be Ronald Reagan. Okay, most of what's going on,
Speaker 2: as you know, in the world situation, as it's person
Speaker 2: and witnessed by like Reagan and his cabinet, is detailed
Speaker 2: by you know, President Thompson's advisors, you know, who are
Speaker 2: briefing him on the international situation, like from the time
Speaker 2: he takes office, you know, until and then beyond the
Speaker 2: outside of hostilities, you know. So at the outset of
Speaker 2: the book, Uh, Asia's uh becoming a real powerhouse. They've increasingly,
Speaker 2: with the accepts in North Korea and Vietnam, liberalize their
Speaker 2: economies and the sort of you know, ease back from
Speaker 2: any kind of political interdependence with the Soviet Union. From
Speaker 2: a strategic and military perspective, China has a has like
Speaker 2: a Dang type figure at the helm. It was like
Speaker 2: not like a reformer kind of in like the Western
Speaker 2: you know, like fox democracy sense, but he's basically become
Speaker 2: a hostile to communism and all but name he's trying
Speaker 2: to flip UH North Korea and Vietnam against the Russia,
Speaker 2: but basically buying them off, you know, and pursue UH
Speaker 2: a kind of gradual you know, encircle them into the
Speaker 2: Soviet Far East, the India, which is UH, the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union's like only real like strong ally in the region.
Speaker 2: You know, it continues to deteriorate. They're the exception to
Speaker 2: like Asia's prosperous condition. It's literally the tior rating. The
Speaker 2: Arab Cold War is intensifying as UH as a a
Speaker 2: nacerost Uh government in Egypt that's basically you know, like
Speaker 2: a left wing nationalist like some of communists adjacent dictatorship
Speaker 2: is creating towards war with Saudi Arabia. South Africa has
Speaker 2: become a federation, like a racially divided federation, but under
Speaker 2: a Bantu bantustan system, which is basically stable but lives
Speaker 2: under concerns threat by Nigeria, which is now like fully
Speaker 2: committed to the South African border war. As are like
Speaker 2: actual Soviet troops Ethiopia as UH all apart including Eritrea,
Speaker 2: the Soviets try to show up the situation and install
Speaker 2: their own proxy government but this fails, and then the
Speaker 2: book shows like a world map, like what the implications
Speaker 2: of all these things are like a hypothetical like you
Speaker 2: know Reagan like a situation room, like on every front,
Speaker 2: like the Soviets are are are losing the Cold War,
Speaker 2: you know, it's uh. Meanwhile, the Pollet Burrow, which presumably
Speaker 2: the trifecta of because this public is rated in seventy
Speaker 2: eight the trifecta and drop off Vermiko and Ustenov is
Speaker 2: kind of like the real trum Rather, they're like they're
Speaker 2: the real executive of the USSR, you know, with the
Speaker 2: with the increasingly kind of disabled, the version of the
Speaker 2: figurehead and drop of or his like counterpart in the story,
Speaker 2: he basically drops the same speech that he did in
Speaker 2: eighty or eighty one where he talked about how, you know,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was like could not compete, you know,
Speaker 2: like in the information revolution, and you know, they the
Speaker 2: amount of computing powder computing power in the country was pathetic,
Speaker 2: you know, compared to any developed state. And if this
Speaker 2: wasn't altered within a decade and remedied, like the Soyds
Speaker 2: would lose the Cold War. Basically, an identical speech is
Speaker 2: given by you know, the stand in for a drop
Speaker 2: off or you know again the trump we just mentioned.
Speaker 2: You know, the poet bro accepts these conclusions proffered by
Speaker 2: this uh composite executive character or character character is kind
Speaker 2: of consensus that you know, the total state nation of
Speaker 2: the economy means that the Soviet armed forces will not
Speaker 2: be able to retain technological parody for the with the
Speaker 2: West for beyond a decade, and that the that the
Speaker 2: only way like the Soviet Union can bring the Cold
Speaker 2: War to a victorious conclusion is uh to assault Western Europe,
Speaker 2: annihilate NATO, you know, kind of forever, banish American forces
Speaker 2: from the continent, you know, and then you know, the
Speaker 2: super peace from a position of uh a strength and
Speaker 2: uh if not benevolence. The poet through understands that those
Speaker 2: resistance from NATO is guaranteed that before you state it's
Speaker 2: amount of counteroffensive, the threat of the threat, especially of
Speaker 2: tactical nuclear weapons and the use of chemical weapons, and
Speaker 2: the potential in the case of the former of horizontaliscalation
Speaker 2: will not some NATO states out of the war further
Speaker 2: compromising you know, their ability to reconstitute amidst you know,
Speaker 2: the massive kind of gap and numerical forces and being so,
Speaker 2: the Soviet Diplomatic Corps also believes that they can cause
Speaker 2: a schism in the Western Defense Court on by convincing
Speaker 2: France the sty out of the conflict. Who you know,
Speaker 2: France is not a NATO member. They remain adjacent, but
Speaker 2: during this period of relations between NATO and France were
Speaker 2: particularly frosty. The poet broad decides that there's three options
Speaker 2: before them, very in a wills with a large a
Speaker 2: massive preemptive nuclear strike against Europe alongside UH special as
Speaker 2: paratrooper elements deployed in areas not under direct nuclear assault,
Speaker 2: followed by a seven day land invasion to the Linz
Speaker 2: frand for wins Frankfurt Dunkirk line. So another event is
Speaker 2: so bad in any event, assault the proverbial center with
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons like without regard for you know, counter value
Speaker 2: attriction like assault the periphery with special operations elements, and
Speaker 2: then smashed through UH. Then now it radiated you know,
Speaker 2: former main line of resistance, you know, with warsaw packed armor,
Speaker 2: you know. And then upon reaching UH again the lens
Speaker 2: Frankfurt Dunkirk lying basically within you know, a stone's throw
Speaker 2: of of the ocean, you know, to demand a demand
Speaker 2: Natal come to peace terms. Variant B is identically above,
Speaker 2: but with full deployment of chemical weapons and high explosive
Speaker 2: conventional ordinance, but a complete ban on the use of
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons. Variant C would be a conventional invasion with
Speaker 2: tactical nuclear strikes being employed. If if, if, if NATO
Speaker 2: is able to hold before warsaw path reaches the Rhine
Speaker 2: within seven days, the PO ultimately decides on Invariant C
Speaker 2: to avoid horizontal escalation. And you know, the development of
Speaker 2: what almost certainly would you know, snowball into a general
Speaker 2: nuclear war, especially based upon the platforms then deployed and
Speaker 2: the particularly kind of dangerous coupling of their their sensitivity
Speaker 2: to the sensory data, but their lack of ability to
Speaker 2: gauge you know, the the the true strength of forces
Speaker 2: from where the you know, the enemy device detected is
Speaker 2: ben emergents. You know. But uh what uh like short
Speaker 2: story long, What basically carries the day for NATO is
Speaker 2: like these stay behind like Gladio units and like the
Speaker 2: US Marine Corps. They they were able to flip Yugoslavia
Speaker 2: out of a position of neutrality into like actual hostility
Speaker 2: against the Soviet Union, with the exception of like some
Speaker 2: aspects of you know, uh of ethnics serves, like serving
Speaker 2: in the security apparatus, you know, both police and military.
Speaker 2: But you know, the uh, the Soviet Union stalls basically
Speaker 2: because uh when warsaw packed uh they hit West German
Speaker 2: forces at Kreenfield, attempts to chase them out of the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: and compounding you know, the the setback of the the
Speaker 2: high attrition they took. You know these uh, these these
Speaker 2: these Dutch militias, you know like raise up and and
Speaker 2: just uh and just smash. You know. Essentially these these
Speaker 2: already weakened uh, the Soviet columns, you know they are
Speaker 2: they're they're essentially you know, becoming kind of like dead
Speaker 2: uh where they sit, going to their uh lack of
Speaker 2: access to fuel. But you know, it's obvious that this
Speaker 2: book was published, uh to present a scenario to the
Speaker 2: British people. I mean, it's like it's like a it's
Speaker 2: a policy, Uh, it's it's a war plan. It's it's
Speaker 2: a work plan slash war gaming manual, coupled with uh,
Speaker 2: you know, an argument in favor of you know, this
Speaker 2: tactical doctorate is how Britain can best protect itself an
Speaker 2: event of World War three and over this taste where
Speaker 2: people might find the kind of place in such things.
Speaker 2: It's essential and people need to be behind these aforementioned elements,
Speaker 2: you know, for them to be effective. You know, not
Speaker 2: just in you know, material and logistical terms, but in
Speaker 2: terms they're rational, morale and everything else. Now it's got
Speaker 2: very interesting when you know the the early four structure
Speaker 2: of Gladio elements like turns out to be like like
Speaker 2: out and out you know, fascists, you know, especially in Italy,
Speaker 2: and there's a parallel here. I think it was Roberto
Speaker 2: Fiori who was uh. I think it's the Italian the
Speaker 2: Italian Liberation movement to the Italian national movements. You know,
Speaker 2: the the legacy of the National Fascist Party they had
Speaker 2: us gives them development in the ranks, not unlike that
Speaker 2: of the national fronts, you know, into the into the
Speaker 2: into the into the political, into the political soldier wing
Speaker 2: and like the Flag group, which I find totally fascinating,
Speaker 2: and it bears directly on what we're going through today
Speaker 2: within our own within our own resistance culture. And we'll
Speaker 2: get into that next episode. I'm sorry if that went
Speaker 2: too long, but I'm like really tired. Otherwise I keep
Speaker 2: on going. But I hope that's an acceptable stopping point.
Speaker 2: There's like a lot more to take in, and this
Speaker 2: is kind of a logical stopping point. You'll see what
Speaker 2: I mean. We'll get in the next episode. If that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yep, that works. Two plugs real quick from on line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, you'll find me on Twitter at Capital r
Speaker 2: e a l underscore number seven him as seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: You'll find me on substick real Thomas seven seven seven
Speaker 2: at subset dot com. I got a pot on there,
Speaker 2: I got long from on there, I got a Mersh line.
Speaker 2: Now it should be so kind, like we drop the
Speaker 2: Mersh address and on the description section, you know, buy
Speaker 2: like really dope shirts and flags and stuff like that
Speaker 2: that I think are really cool. My uh the artist
Speaker 2: who who mocked him up, Hair Kreeg. He's he's He's
Speaker 2: fucking incredible, Just an incredible dude and a fine artist.
Speaker 2: I'm working on this documentary of our and Taylor. I'm
Speaker 2: going to the DNC convention in a few weeks. And again,
Speaker 2: I am sorry to everybody I had to miss Nashville
Speaker 2: this weekend, but I got to see my strength. Man.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to sound like some like banged up freaking
Speaker 2: old lady or something, but as far as my plugs
Speaker 2: like seeking you so fine man in my Instagram, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm all over the place. I'm trying to bear down now.
Speaker 2: And you know this uh, this documentary kind of video
Speaker 2: content type stuff which I which which I think is
Speaker 2: not that I don't know, some pretentious. I think there's
Speaker 2: a profundity to it, man, but also it's this is
Speaker 2: important history that's going to be lost then. But that
Speaker 2: and my manuscript is kind of like my my big
Speaker 2: focus right now. But I'm always available to do pods
Speaker 2: man like uh never ever hesitate to ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's let's reconvene and and do part two of Lady,
Speaker 2: and we should watch we should watch another movie too, man,
Speaker 2: so we can.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're gonna do that. Well we uh while
Speaker 1: we sign off, I'm gonna recommend a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah man. Yeah, well thanks, yep, take care.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecingano Show. Thomas,
Speaker 1: how are you doing?
Speaker 2: And well thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's get uh, let's get part two of
Speaker 1: Operation Gladio going. It's been a little while, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been busy and decided to take a break for
Speaker 1: one episode and uh talk about current events. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm eager for this. Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I think I left off talking about public diplomacy and
Speaker 2: talking uh the civili about Sir John Hackett and his
Speaker 2: uh you know, in his his conflict model, his predicted
Speaker 2: conflict model. Those then later made available and marketed as
Speaker 2: you know, in book form, you know, as a bit
Speaker 2: of strategic forecasting, you know, like like fiction. And I
Speaker 2: think I was discussing that to emphasize did agree to
Speaker 2: which you know, convention know four structure planning returned in
Speaker 2: earnest you know, not just in policy corridors, but it
Speaker 2: was it was very much at the forefront of in
Speaker 2: the minds of public intellectuals, you know, people at Thomas
Speaker 2: shilling people you know, like like Hackett himself, you know,
Speaker 2: the emergency deeper parodies and you know countermeasures uh against
Speaker 2: both you know, long range nuclear weapons platforms as well
Speaker 2: as theater based weapons systems, you know, led people to
Speaker 2: realize that that conventional forces had had acquired a new relevancy,
Speaker 2: and obviously there's a political aspect of that very much
Speaker 2: related to, you know, how to manage a potential occupation
Speaker 2: by Soviet forces. And that's really what that that's really
Speaker 2: what gave sort of momentum to GLADIOH from something that
Speaker 2: was just sort of bandied about in in think tanks
Speaker 2: and and various defense ministries and in the constellation of
Speaker 2: states that made up NATO, and you know, it became
Speaker 2: a real essential aspect of of war planning for the
Speaker 2: Western Alliance and uh, I think particularly the experience of
Speaker 2: Vietnam as well as some of these experiences in in
Speaker 2: Latin America and Africa. You know, you don't you don't
Speaker 2: want to wait until the onset of hostilities to develop
Speaker 2: what Frank Kittson called, you know, your your counterinserviancy element.
Speaker 2: You know, you want that to be part of your
Speaker 2: force structure and being okay, and also especially in Italy,
Speaker 2: but in other states too. You know, there was a
Speaker 2: radical right wing that were it not assimilated in some
Speaker 2: sort of formal capacity into the into the into the
Speaker 2: formal political and military structure like the former kind of
Speaker 2: the formal sort of you know, conflict readiness paradigm. You know,
Speaker 2: these these these people could have caused a whole lot
Speaker 2: of problems, you know, I mean, they did cause problems.
Speaker 2: I'm talking within the bound of rationality of old world logic.
Speaker 2: I'm not rendering an absolute judgment on these people's values
Speaker 2: and what they considered to be acceptable, owing to you know,
Speaker 2: what was in their perception an ongoing emergency. But it
Speaker 2: was an odd sort of conspiracy of historical variables, particularly
Speaker 2: in the final phase of the Cold War, that you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like led to this being. Is something that
Speaker 2: was developed in earnest and then taken seriously by people
Speaker 2: like a different a different paradigm with with less binary
Speaker 2: possible outcomes and event of hostilities. It's not something that
Speaker 2: really would have it sounds that really would have acquired
Speaker 2: legs metaphorically speaking, you know. And and like we talked
Speaker 2: about command and control, really what under like the revolution
Speaker 2: and military affairs, which was a real thing. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just a propaganda work to intimidate Warsaw Pact. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just something that wore college types or constantly looking for
Speaker 2: ways to kind of tweak not just force structure, but doctrine,
Speaker 2: like kind of P NUMBERC doctrine it. It had a
Speaker 2: real core of realism to it, you know, the kind
Speaker 2: of the computing revolution and the emergence a true high
Speaker 2: tech you know, at the very close of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: and they're like the very very early nineteen eighties, like
Speaker 2: this changed everything. Okay, and America and NATO, they never
Speaker 2: had the same kind of rigid commitment, arguably inflexible commitment
Speaker 2: that the Warsaw Pact had, you know, to treating things,
Speaker 2: to treating battle doctrine almost like regulation and not deviating
Speaker 2: from that. You know, they didn't do that, but they
Speaker 2: were similarly interested in eliminating uncertainties from the bad space
Speaker 2: in terms of operational outcomes, okay, and command to control,
Speaker 2: which also spills over into in devetails with situational awareness,
Speaker 2: you know, up to the minute, if not the moment.
Speaker 2: You know, this was a real thing. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that it takes on an outside significance when
Speaker 2: you're trying to control the battle space and a future
Speaker 2: conflict in that capacity is there's there's outliers that are
Speaker 2: unconventional in nature, Okay, both in absolute terms as well
Speaker 2: as in according to the rationale of military science. Okay,
Speaker 2: So you couldn't really leave these elements that were already
Speaker 2: existing and kind of coalescing, you know, in Italy and
Speaker 2: in the Bentalic States, to a less a degree, in
Speaker 2: the Buddhist Republic, Like, you couldn't just leave these kind
Speaker 2: of resurgent through or vestigial fascists and national socialist cadres.
Speaker 2: You couldn't just kind of like leave them alone and
Speaker 2: hope they behave themselves. You know. But then suddenly, you know,
Speaker 2: when war arrives, you know, you have a problem with
Speaker 2: these people. And then like while you're while you're fighting
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union and warsaw packed, you know, the outcome
Speaker 2: of which probably would have been decided within like seventy
Speaker 2: two to one hundred hours in the initial phase. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, it just was it was a recipe for
Speaker 2: disaster to say like, oh well, we're just we're just
Speaker 2: going to like address this contingency when it emerges. You know,
Speaker 2: that's not realistic. So that was that's something to keep
Speaker 2: in mind, you know, kind of like a very different
Speaker 2: initiative in terms of it's underlying reasoning, in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, its application of force, and in terms of
Speaker 2: its purpose, Like the Phoenix Program, I raised because people
Speaker 2: act like the Phoenix programs like this sinister thing. You know,
Speaker 2: there was nothing nice about it. It definitely blurred the
Speaker 2: line between you know, civilian in combatant, and it pretty
Speaker 2: much flew in the face of what was at least
Speaker 2: formal precedent as regards the laws and customs of war
Speaker 2: and what is legitimate what and who is legitimate target
Speaker 2: and who is not. But there's an organic quality to
Speaker 2: two doctrines that develop incident too and then anticipation of
Speaker 2: armed hostilities. Okay, so they're really there wasn't some like
Speaker 2: sinister thing about surrounding Edo. It wasn't some shadow government
Speaker 2: waiting in the wings, because oh then NATO was actually
Speaker 2: you know, occulted fascist and it's it wasn't that, you know,
Speaker 2: these guys were you know, secretly indexed with the government
Speaker 2: and they were just like mask reading as extremists to
Speaker 2: kind of try and get an understanding of of of
Speaker 2: how exactly how many people in the population at large
Speaker 2: was sympathetic to these ideas and then in turn could
Speaker 2: be mobilized. It was nothing like that, Okay. It was
Speaker 2: very organic. Okay, whether people agree with it on ethical
Speaker 2: or doctrinal terms, or not, that was essential and one
Speaker 2: of the reasons one of the ways NATO survived, especially
Speaker 2: after France about out, despite continuing to participate in a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of command post exercise for NATO.
Speaker 2: You know, it was the nuclear question changed things, obviously,
Speaker 2: but it was.
Speaker 3: One of the the main thing that that changed was
Speaker 3: that NATO kind of developed into and one of the
Speaker 3: reasons it's obsolete today among the many, but NATO kind
Speaker 3: of developed into by about nineteen eighty, like late.
Speaker 2: Very late seventies, early eighties, it kind of morphed into
Speaker 2: this sort of forum to integrate and optimize assets of
Speaker 2: the several member states and in so doing also kind
Speaker 2: of marshaling, mobilizing and optimizing assets that were just like
Speaker 2: intrinsic to the battlespace, like literally natural features of Europe,
Speaker 2: you know, within the territories that constant of the alliance,
Speaker 2: as well as within spaces that were undoubtedly going to
Speaker 2: be you know, the setting for future engagements nature. You know,
Speaker 2: so everything from you know, setting up logistical infrastructure to
Speaker 2: facilitate rapid reinforcement, you know, in terms of uh, you know,
Speaker 2: homogenizing the gauge of of railroad tracking to you know,
Speaker 2: making sure that the properly uh paved roads were uh
Speaker 2: you know, abutted the essential uh like the essential choke
Speaker 2: points as it were, where you know, NATO is likely
Speaker 2: to be able to hold op for you know, for
Speaker 2: at least you know, forty eight hours or so, you
Speaker 2: know it. It's what an aspect of this too is
Speaker 2: a utilizing the terrain a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: theater based nuclear weapons we're actually based on on farmland,
Speaker 2: you know, and and getting getting these farmers to agree
Speaker 2: to that, like it took some out and out bribery
Speaker 2: as well as you know, very kind of aggressive political
Speaker 2: finesse and I'm sure in some cases threats. But you know,
Speaker 2: the human aspect of ecologies, discrete ecologies within defined territorial spaces,
Speaker 2: I mean that they're not only an important answer to
Speaker 2: that think may be the most important aspect. Okay, So
Speaker 2: people likely to become partisans in event of warsaw Pack conquest,
Speaker 2: you know, these were people who already existed, you know,
Speaker 2: and kind of drilling them into a viable you know,
Speaker 2: stay behind military force or paramilitary force built around you know,
Speaker 2: what kind of a kind of counterinsurgent cadre structure that
Speaker 2: that only tracked with like the overall disposition of what
Speaker 2: constanted preperedness and what constituted adequate force structures you know,
Speaker 2: to survive, if not actually defeat were saw packed in
Speaker 2: uh in general uh war conventional or otherwise. You know.
Speaker 2: So these uh, these guys in the Italian social movement,
Speaker 2: you know, these these these these national socialist guys who
Speaker 2: you know already had kind of a self structure their own,
Speaker 2: you know, these these uh, these guys who were affiliated
Speaker 2: with the non traditional conservative elements, but like we're very
Speaker 2: much you know, engaged in the Cold War. Like these
Speaker 2: people had to be brought into the fold in some way,
Speaker 2: shape or form, Okay, And this had precedents, I mean
Speaker 2: even in Europe, you know obviously like both the exists
Speaker 2: and the Allies. You know, you're talking about OSS or
Speaker 2: the the od there the Ladder, which had all kinds
Speaker 2: of problems and was shot through with with with some outtraders.
Speaker 2: But there's also some you know, there's there were some
Speaker 2: aspects of it, particularly I don't know how intelligence agencies
Speaker 2: like break down what would be the equivalent of an
Speaker 2: order of battle, but there were there were there were
Speaker 2: company level elements, if that's the proper way to conceptualize it,
Speaker 2: who had no truck with Canarists, had no only idea
Speaker 2: he was even you know, conspiring against the fear and
Speaker 2: the party, you know, who were very much engaged in
Speaker 2: doing things like you know, identifying chet Nicks that you know,
Speaker 2: we're we're not just fighting the Partisans, but you know,
Speaker 2: we're also fighting other factions at chet Nicks and basically
Speaker 2: found themselves you know, adjacent to uh, the access powers
Speaker 2: and theater and what they want to accomplish, you know.
Speaker 2: And and these guys are brought in the fold okay,
Speaker 2: America obviously OSS and and British secret intelligence. They're constantly
Speaker 2: trying to they're constantly trying to identify, you know, French
Speaker 2: resistance types who they could insist, you know, we're not
Speaker 2: actually communists. And they were failing at that in terms
Speaker 2: of ideological bonafides. But that's not the reason why like
Speaker 2: the Gaul becomes such an important front man to them.
Speaker 2: It's not that these it's not these like partisans stay
Speaker 2: behind elements in France, like just like a level of
Speaker 2: trills to golf so much. It's that, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: in the Anglophone world especially, he could be held out
Speaker 2: as kind of a catalyzing figure that the people would accept,
Speaker 2: you know, and when the when the reality of uh,
Speaker 2: when the reality of of of the elements that you know,
Speaker 2: supposedly he inspired and upon his you know stage return
Speaker 2: to France to be the commander of it. I mean
Speaker 2: often these people had like no trouble them whatsoever. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's the it's the appearance, uh that matters,
Speaker 2: and the ability to you know, finesses that people will
Speaker 2: basically accept it. You know. The U in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the critical year in my opinion, and
Speaker 2: in terms of like the first real kind of the
Speaker 2: first real kind of like integrated NATO war planning what
Speaker 2: became NATO, This this kind of like integrated operational structure
Speaker 2: sort of like emerged, you know. It was nineteen forty
Speaker 2: seven in France, the United Kingdom, the Benelux states. They
Speaker 2: they had commissioned well came to me known as the
Speaker 2: quote Western Union Clandestine Committee, which technically was just kind
Speaker 2: of like this academic forum of like military officers and
Speaker 2: conflict specialists in military science types. But it was its
Speaker 2: work was informing policy in a direct way. It was
Speaker 2: like a direct pipeline to the several defense departments of
Speaker 2: of post war Europe. And one of the first things
Speaker 2: they did was create at least on at least formally,
Speaker 2: was create a joint policy and stay behind elements, you know.
Speaker 2: And this was what was presented by the Europeans in
Speaker 2: ninety fifty one, after you know, NATO had formally come
Speaker 2: to existence, that this whole, this format, this Clandestine Committee,
Speaker 2: it was basically formally assimilated into in the NATO or
Speaker 2: on ninety fifty one, fifty two, okay, and that's when
Speaker 2: Supreme Allied Commander Europe, you know, in other words, you know,
Speaker 2: the Americans, they they established they were own kind of
Speaker 2: assimile of it, which was also like you know, had
Speaker 2: jurisdiction over earlier incarnations such as the Western Union Klindestine Committee.
Speaker 2: They UH she Supreme Allied Command Commander Europe UH branded
Speaker 2: this UH committee the quote Clandestine Planning Committee, and it
Speaker 2: was housed at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was taken very seriously, you know, and of course
Speaker 2: America at that time was was engaged in Korea in
Speaker 2: a very a very brutal war, you know, and not
Speaker 2: not just was not was America engaged against you know,
Speaker 2: the North Korean Army, but you know they were engaged
Speaker 2: against the Chinese people of Origion Army. Okay, this was
Speaker 2: very critical time. The peacetime role obviously of uh the
Speaker 2: Glendeston Planning Committee, you know what a basically to coordinate
Speaker 2: the different military and paramilitary plans and kind of conceptual
Speaker 2: paradigms in the several states and adjacent partners states like
Speaker 2: you know, Switchland to Austria and then later France in
Speaker 2: order to both like avoid you know, like duplicate committees.
Speaker 2: You know that, especially in military capacities at the command level,
Speaker 2: at the general command level, you can't have like, as
Speaker 2: it said, too many cooks in the kitchen without every
Speaker 2: real problems. Okay, So Supreme l i'd command. They were
Speaker 2: sending a message like, look, you know that that's not
Speaker 2: happening what we just described. You're not You're not all
Speaker 2: going to develop your own policy on houses coordinated. There's
Speaker 2: gonna be one policy. It's it's going to be an
Speaker 2: integrated command and control structure, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: treated basically like any other like any other NATO Branch
Speaker 2: Combat Element. Okay, there is two groups formed within uh
Speaker 2: this uh, this clandestine Planning Committee, one of which was
Speaker 2: uh pretty much exclusively focused on on communications, you know,
Speaker 2: and and homogenizing language fluency and familiarity with you know,
Speaker 2: essentially uh, the platforms, the weapons platforms, the command and
Speaker 2: control technologies, everything else you know that was agreed upon
Speaker 2: to be utilized. One of the we this is a
Speaker 2: warsaw pact was that you know, German uh like not
Speaker 2: spell folks. Army officers probably above the equivalent of captain,
Speaker 2: like most of them had at least some fluency in Russian.
Speaker 2: Like most Russians did not speak speak German. You know,
Speaker 2: most of the Germans did not speak Polish. You know.
Speaker 2: The uh you had the the Baltic people, a lot
Speaker 2: of them spoke like neither Russian nor German. You know.
Speaker 2: So there was this this uh led to kind of
Speaker 2: like a house divided, I mean commanding control level that's fataled.
Speaker 2: So NATO, you know, they they integrated their rank structure,
Speaker 2: you know, these like formal equivalents of uh like like
Speaker 2: what like uh, well like an E three is six
Speaker 2: and everything. Okay, they uh it was you know they
Speaker 2: it was decided you know, like in what command, I
Speaker 2: mean different commands, like different languages would be favored like
Speaker 2: within that command based on you know, the the the
Speaker 2: the ethnic constitution of primary elements in theater. But uh,
Speaker 2: basically like fluency, basic fluency and like German or English
Speaker 2: like was was essential. You know, they're uh, there was
Speaker 2: an integration of uh, like the main battle tanks used
Speaker 2: you know, like uh back then, Uh, it was less complicated.
Speaker 2: It was far more brutal and perilous to like be
Speaker 2: part of a tank crew, but it was comparatively like
Speaker 2: little tech compared to like we'd used to. But you know,
Speaker 2: like they you know, like American tank crew has become
Speaker 2: familiar with you know, like we like British tanks and
Speaker 2: vice versa, and like both would you know, become familiar
Speaker 2: with you know, like German panthers that were in heaviest
Speaker 2: deployment and things like that. You know, So similarly, you know,
Speaker 2: the way this the dis vision towards stay behind elements
Speaker 2: and partisans was was homogenized, you know, and and brought
Speaker 2: into this homogenization process of of command and control. And
Speaker 2: in addition to that working group that you know focused
Speaker 2: on communication and networks and everything else. There's another working
Speaker 2: group you know, or committee if you will, called the
Speaker 2: Special Projects Branch, and that basically you would it would
Speaker 2: work a different scenarios, okay, I know it. Try and determine, okay,
Speaker 2: like what what what? What are the capabilities of these
Speaker 2: stay of these stay behind units, Like what can they
Speaker 2: actually do? You know? What's their mission orientation? And concrete terms,
Speaker 2: you know, like what what are they? What are they?
Speaker 2: What are they trying to strike at? You know, like
Speaker 2: are they trying to are they trying to index with
Speaker 2: civilian elements that can either be cajoled into cooperating with
Speaker 2: them or who are naturally disposed to be friendly to
Speaker 2: them anyway? You know? Basically, are they like a European
Speaker 2: Viet cong except on the right? Are they? Are they
Speaker 2: basically like a reserve element so that when you know,
Speaker 2: mass casualties occur, like these guys can basic rush to
Speaker 2: the front and and and and fill the roles of regulars,
Speaker 2: like are they is their function basically like partisan attacks
Speaker 2: and terrorism, you know, against the East German and Soviet
Speaker 2: and check who occupiers or whatever, and so the Special
Speaker 2: Projects Branch, you know, like clarified this stuff. Okay, Eventually
Speaker 2: this became integrated in UH in nineteen fifty seven, and
Speaker 2: I I think that's really when UH, that's really when
Speaker 2: like NATO came into its own and that's when still
Speaker 2: people were banning about, especially people who did not want,
Speaker 2: especially people who favored like a demilitarization in Germany, you know,
Speaker 2: like the United States and warsaw packs basically out of Europe.
Speaker 2: And their notion was, well, we can create our own
Speaker 2: collective security arrangement with with with without European defense community,
Speaker 2: you know, consisting like the Benelux states, you know, like Germany,
Speaker 2: ideally France, you know, Italy and the UK. And the
Speaker 2: idea was that it would be a totally integrated structure
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't represent like anyone nation. Like one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why I like the BUNDESLH like their uniform
Speaker 2: seems so like dull and there's not even anything like
Speaker 2: about them, that's like, other than the fact that cuff
Speaker 2: titles are still in use, you can't really tell that
Speaker 2: they're like a German army. But the whole the uniforms
Speaker 2: they adopted ultimately was in this era like fifty seven
Speaker 2: and that was like deliberate because the idea was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is like the Army of Europe, but we've also
Speaker 2: got to like make it clear that there's not any
Speaker 2: quot unquote like chauvinistic tendencies like avafan SS you know,
Speaker 2: but where you know, where we're kind of just like
Speaker 2: this like European Defense Force and in a in parliament
Speaker 2: committees across the proposed member states. The conceptionally like it
Speaker 2: gained some some ground, but you know it it proved
Speaker 2: basically unworkable, particularly after you know, the things things changed
Speaker 2: in Berlin and it was clear that you know, really
Speaker 2: after Korea in my opinion, and some other things, but
Speaker 2: it became clear that like the Soviets were not they
Speaker 2: and they had no more good faith credibility and as
Speaker 2: of the Soviets Sovits, we're never gonna leave Germany, okay,
Speaker 2: and Berlin particularly it wasn't just like the coveted sort
Speaker 2: of prize on the on the war map, but it
Speaker 2: was it was a thorn in the side of warsaw Pack,
Speaker 2: just like Cuba was a huge thorn in the side
Speaker 2: of you know, the United States. But it that by
Speaker 2: you know, by like nineteen sixty sixty one. I know,
Speaker 2: nobody was talking about a European Defense Committee anymore. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that one of the things that
Speaker 2: came out of kind of this experimental like military culture
Speaker 2: on the continent was the establishment of a combined the
Speaker 2: Six Powers Lions Committee is the United States, United Kingdom, France,
Speaker 2: Benelux countries, you know, all of whom again had been
Speaker 2: involved in developing developing a war plan in doctrinal paradigm
Speaker 2: for the stay behind organizations. But you know when when
Speaker 2: this when the Six Powers Committee like formally convened, which
Speaker 2: became the quote Allied Clandestine Committee, and its final iteration
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy six was the quote Allied Coordination Committee.
Speaker 2: It literally its functions like the way people described it,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm talking about you know, top NATO brass
Speaker 2: as well as you know, civilian elements, you know, like
Speaker 2: in the in the Bundust Republic government who were like
Speaker 2: indexed with the NATO structure. They uh, they uh, they
Speaker 2: refer to it as specifically, you know, the technical committee
Speaker 2: to bring stay by the organizations together and clearly defined
Speaker 2: like their mission, mandate, force structure and all of that. Okay,
Speaker 2: what was the authority of a supreme all command in Europe,
Speaker 2: and it was basically godlike within its dominion. You know,
Speaker 2: That's one of the things. I mean when you signed
Speaker 2: on for NATO, you signed on to go all in
Speaker 2: when war arrived, were saw packed. I mean you also
Speaker 2: agreed not just tacitly, but in a very what what
Speaker 2: what what would become a very active, actively engaged capacity
Speaker 2: of you know, not just allowing like theater based nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons to be based on your territory, but like essentially
Speaker 2: UH allowing UH America to have you know, control over
Speaker 2: these munitions, you know, I mean it was just like
Speaker 2: one example, I mean at the point somebody the other
Speaker 2: day like when the when when these intermediate range platforms
Speaker 2: plitsic mental platforms arrived in Europe and went platforms like
Speaker 2: the person too, which people find odd these days, but
Speaker 2: was you know the army had was it was an
Speaker 2: army weapons platform like at the folded Gap, it was
Speaker 2: a loof off flowed that retained control over the launch mechanism.
Speaker 2: It was the Americans who retained physical custody of the warheads.
Speaker 2: And you know, if an order came down, you know,
Speaker 2: those wards actually married to their launch vehicles. But I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it was it was America who had the final
Speaker 2: say on these things, you know, but it uh the
Speaker 2: UH and this is pretty openly talked about, at least
Speaker 2: within within within NATO command corridors. I mean, some of
Speaker 2: the languages was deliberately ambiguous. But it's not. It wasn't
Speaker 2: this like eyes only thing where people would claim like
Speaker 2: it didn't exist, you know, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: And that's why, like when what it came to be
Speaker 2: colloquially and kind of flippantly known as you know, like
Speaker 2: the Years of Lead and Italy jumped off. That's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why a lot of the media establishment,
Speaker 2: you know, found uh allied command structures to basically be culpable.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you there's a whole other issue, we'd
Speaker 2: probably to get in that another episode, like what were
Speaker 2: the Years of Lead? Like were these were these were
Speaker 2: these self described like fascist?
Speaker 1: I mean they were they were allied with the Red
Speaker 1: Army Froction, the Red Army Froction, and so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of them were definitely, Yeah, some of them
Speaker 2: it's not clear who they were. And some of them
Speaker 2: the guys they arrested, it doesn't really track. It was
Speaker 2: like who they could blame these things on, you know,
Speaker 2: but assuming as you know, but the some of the
Speaker 2: subs probably don't like. The claim was that you know,
Speaker 2: this this quote unquote like neo fascist terrorism, which killed
Speaker 2: a lot of people. The claim was that, well, these
Speaker 2: are the stay behind organizations, you know, NATO and these
Speaker 2: you know, right wing governments. They're directing these attacks to
Speaker 2: happen so as to procure you know, like a permanent
Speaker 2: emergency mandate, you know, to basically like militarize the country
Speaker 2: in perpetuity. I mean that's not impossible, but I mean
Speaker 2: the late seventies, early eighties, when you had the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union from a few hundred kilometers away, you know, like
Speaker 2: pointing pointing these like massive i RBMs at Western Europe,
Speaker 2: you know, that had multiple warheads that you know, when
Speaker 2: they hit their target would just like devastate the entire country.
Speaker 2: In the case of like these smaller states, I mean,
Speaker 2: like it's not if you want people to if you
Speaker 2: want to create some sort of like balance of terror
Speaker 2: at in you know, at scale such that you know
Speaker 2: it provides like a catalyst for martial law, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can you don't need to kill eighty people in
Speaker 2: a train station bombing in nineteen eighty. You can say that, like, well,
Speaker 2: the Soviets have targeted us for annihilation and obviously based
Speaker 2: on the deployment pattern, like they now believe that, uh,
Speaker 2: that nuclear that first use of nuclear weapons is perfectly
Speaker 2: acceptable as a means of accomplishing their goals by by
Speaker 2: megacittle force of arms. I mean you ok, there you go.
Speaker 2: You know, like the Soviets gonna kill us all if
Speaker 2: we don't build countermeasures and and and mass arrest people
Speaker 2: who are are not willing to support, you know, the
Speaker 2: war effort when it comes, Like, there's ways, there's ways
Speaker 2: you can do it in epoch or could have done it,
Speaker 2: Like you don't need to like pull off a spectacular
Speaker 2: you know, a series of bombings or shootings and like
Speaker 2: kill a few hundred year own countrymen. Like that's not
Speaker 2: and again it's not impossible, but it just kind of
Speaker 2: defies credibility to me in the absence some more concrete evidence.
Speaker 2: And again this was this was discussed very openly. It
Speaker 2: like US Army at the US Army War College. This
Speaker 2: was circulated later. I mean, it's still in the Cold War.
Speaker 2: I don't know when it first emerged, but there was
Speaker 2: a there was a document like a study put out
Speaker 2: by Supreme Ali Command Europe that from the Supreme Headquarters
Speaker 2: of the Light Powers in Europe. It was titled Supreme
Speaker 2: Headquarters Powers in Europe Problems Outstanding with the quote standing Group.
Speaker 2: There's a subheading number four titled quote special Plans and
Speaker 2: quite literally it it it was Taylor to address, uh, like,
Speaker 2: the DeLine the literal delineation of responsibilities of the quote
Speaker 2: clandestine services. And it went on to say, you know,
Speaker 2: quote the delineation of responsibilities that's a premium and commanded
Speaker 2: Europe on clandestine matters, including quote pertinent definitions and organizations
Speaker 2: and principles for unorthodox warfare planning. You know. So this
Speaker 2: was really at the forefront. And again I don't I
Speaker 2: don't want to go too far afield because this is
Speaker 2: already a dense topic. But you've got to understand the
Speaker 2: overall as the Soviets approach to nuclear parody and arguably
Speaker 2: you know, shot past NATO and specifically United States in
Speaker 2: terms of its strategic nuclear capability. Yeah, like America developing
Speaker 2: countermeasures that you know, characterized by deep parrot what's called
Speaker 2: deep parodies. You know, arguably that kind of neutralized Soviet
Speaker 2: advantages owing to smarter and higher tech. But like, regardless
Speaker 2: of the nuclear weapons are off the table or not,
Speaker 2: even if horizontal escalation was like an inevitability, even you
Speaker 2: could prove that World War three was going to start
Speaker 2: with a conventional like combined arms fight across a massive front,
Speaker 2: and casualties were gonna be utterly horrifying. One of the reasons, uh,
Speaker 2: the tankers on the North German plane, which was mostly
Speaker 2: a British Army area of operation conto the Folded Gap,
Speaker 2: you know, which was patrolled by eleventh Army Calory. You know,
Speaker 2: black Horse is like the lead element. These guys are
Speaker 2: totally knowing certain terms, you know they I mean, they
Speaker 2: were issued in phetamines on the regular. You know you're
Speaker 2: gonna you're gonna have Our job is to hold for
Speaker 2: seventy two hours and you're not gonna survive this. But
Speaker 2: we will hold for seventy two hours without sleep, you know,
Speaker 2: and kill as many, kill as many of Ivan's tanks
Speaker 2: as we can before we get over run. And we
Speaker 2: will get overrun, you know. And the thought was it
Speaker 2: wasn't the thought it was I think it was pretty
Speaker 2: well grounded and based on the inputs that were utilized,
Speaker 2: which for the time was was correct. Within six to
Speaker 2: seven days Warsaw pack that had reached the Rhine, and
Speaker 2: around ninety two ninety three when the old Soviet archives
Speaker 2: that brief period they were basically open, you know, to
Speaker 2: Western historians, including mister Irving, it was pretty clear that
Speaker 2: the Soviets planned once they reached the Rhine to stop,
Speaker 2: to reconstitute, regroup and refit, and then presumably like demand
Speaker 2: like issue surrender terms to the Allies and then you know,
Speaker 2: like demand demand the Allies demure and accept the you know,
Speaker 2: the Soviet dominance of Europe. So it was even like
Speaker 2: a best case scenario. You're you know, you're you're looking
Speaker 2: at being overrun, okay, and the only way to combat
Speaker 2: that you can't you can't you can't combat that from
Speaker 2: the air, okay. You know, the only way to combat
Speaker 2: that is literally on the ground, you know, in a
Speaker 2: way that uh essentially makes the again kind of like
Speaker 2: the social, political and military and paramilitary like ecology essentially
Speaker 2: too hostile and too dangerous and too unstable like for
Speaker 2: the occupied to manage. Okay. And again I mean, for
Speaker 2: this might seem obvious to some people, but it seems
Speaker 2: obvious for the reasons I'm talking about, because that that
Speaker 2: became this essential, this essential aspect of of war doctrine,
Speaker 2: you know, says Clindestine, uh, the Ali Clandestine Coordinating Committee.
Speaker 2: It created what was also known as the several quote
Speaker 2: Allied clindistant Coordinating Groups. And these guys would they the
Speaker 2: liaise on the personnel front with the NATO command elements
Speaker 2: down to like at least battalion level and probably comedy level.
Speaker 2: These uh, the these these coordinating groups were almost exclusively
Speaker 2: staffed by uh, you know, men from from Supreme headquarters,
Speaker 2: you know, Allied UH forces in Europe. The uh, the
Speaker 2: idea was, uh, you know again to create a kind
Speaker 2: of how much an aity of of thought and orientation,
Speaker 2: you know, towards the formal mission statement. Well, uh, at
Speaker 2: the same time kind of tailoring these efforts to address
Speaker 2: and kind of satisfy the local conditions in each of
Speaker 2: these countries, which varied quite a lot, you know, culturally, linguistically,
Speaker 2: you know, the terrain was different, like the way people viewed, uh,
Speaker 2: the way people viewed like the Easterns and the Russians differed.
Speaker 2: You know, it was there's there's political, there was anthropological,
Speaker 2: there was you know, sociological aspects. How these decisions were running. Now,
Speaker 2: an event of World War three, Supreme Allied Commanded Europe
Speaker 2: absolutely intended and was meant to and was structured to
Speaker 2: exercise operational control well for pretty much every aspect of
Speaker 2: the member state. For then the reason without like micromanaging
Speaker 2: or trying to make micromanage you know, like unit or
Speaker 2: into tactics because of self defeating. But so in terms
Speaker 2: of like overall, in terms of like overall strategic orientation,
Speaker 2: there wasn't in forest homogeneity, but to coordinate activities such
Speaker 2: that we're talking about across like all different commands. An
Speaker 2: event of wartime, you know, particularly where you're raising the
Speaker 2: clock because you basically have you know, seventy two hours
Speaker 2: to hold the Soviet Union at Bay on the mainline,
Speaker 2: resistance at Fold in the North Rim and plane. You're
Speaker 2: not gonna be able to just like splendidly like and
Speaker 2: incorporate this structure into in a pre existing community areas.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're gonna have to abide for those differences
Speaker 2: and for those discrete you know kind of sensitivities to
Speaker 2: various things that might seem totally innocuous or ridiculous or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. So I'm not suggesting this with some like
Speaker 2: well machine, but it was basically I mean that that's
Speaker 2: kind of the best you can do if this is uh,
Speaker 2: if this is the mission orientation, you know, like the
Speaker 2: you get the world as the world is not, you know,
Speaker 2: like the not not not a tlleric utopia or everybody
Speaker 2: is everybody privileges reason over a passion and man is
Speaker 2: basically melible. And I mean that's that's not the way
Speaker 2: things are, you know, I believe. And this takes us
Speaker 2: back some years to it was after you know, the
Speaker 2: Supreme Allied command elements, We're already devising ideas on how
Speaker 2: to incorporate stay behinds into the order of battle and
Speaker 2: the war playing structure. I mean that like again, that
Speaker 2: that that kind of research began in ernest around nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven as NATO kind of evolved, and again like
Speaker 2: as as nuclear forces came off the table, as you know,
Speaker 2: both the primary deterrented and the primary kind of assault
Speaker 2: platform you know again, conventional forces and political uh warfare
Speaker 2: took on an outside significance, and in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: a man named Vincenzovi and Seguerra. He's the man who
Speaker 2: was blamed and continues to be for the Patiano massacre
Speaker 2: on May thirty first, ninety seventy two. Patiano is a
Speaker 2: suburb of Cigarato in Italy. Apparently some anonymous call came in,
Speaker 2: you know, this is like provisional Ira style to the
Speaker 2: local police, the Cadabagnetti, I think they're called, telling them
Speaker 2: to check this car, this abandoned car. The car itself
Speaker 2: turned out to be an explosive, like like the whole
Speaker 2: thing was like wired with like I think plass speak.
Speaker 2: So when these coppers investigated it, you know when they
Speaker 2: like Jimmy didor open like like it exploded and and
Speaker 2: and you know killed the I think it killed three
Speaker 2: of the cop three of the five cops, and like
Speaker 2: the others were aimed. But you know, it begs uh.
Speaker 2: There was more severe attacks subsequent, some of which were
Speaker 2: bona fide man's casualty events. But it does beg the
Speaker 2: question like why, And it's not just uh, people like
Speaker 2: Howard's in and with crank ideas you see, like fashion's
Speaker 2: under their bed it's reasonably serious historians who claim that
Speaker 2: like see like this is this is the fruits of
Speaker 2: Operation Ladio, and it's like okay, but like why what
Speaker 2: was the motive of these guys doing this? You know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I like I said, like their claim is that,
Speaker 2: oh well, it was just part of a tension strategy.
Speaker 2: But it's like, but again, like you you don't need
Speaker 2: that when warsaw packed as as twenty three thousand nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons and thousands of them are pointed it at Europe
Speaker 2: at decapitation range. You know, it's kind of the same
Speaker 2: reason in my mind, Like you don't need to like
Speaker 2: blow up the World Trade Center and pretend al Kaeda
Speaker 2: did it to like pass the Patriot Act. You know,
Speaker 2: that's not that's not things worked, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: it's like look at the COVID nonsense that the government
Speaker 2: like murder ten million people to pretend COVID with like
Speaker 2: this deadly virus. Like no, I mean, like it's it's uh,
Speaker 2: that's not really a propaganda works, and people generally go
Speaker 2: along with it, you know, like at the face value.
Speaker 2: You know, and again, especially during the Cold War, there
Speaker 2: was peculiar exigencies due to the history of students of
Speaker 2: history will know, like Juliusavola when he was arrested and
Speaker 2: indicted and he was acquitted. It was events so these
Speaker 2: uh years of light attacks, and the claim was that
Speaker 2: Evla was some kind of like guru figure took this
Speaker 2: cult of like young fascist partisans and so in some
Speaker 2: like in chot way, like he was conspiring to kill
Speaker 2: people with these like terrorists, which made no sense whatsoever
Speaker 2: and basically got lapped out of court. But the perpetrators
Speaker 2: of the Patiano massacre was alleged to be Vincenzo Vinceeguera,
Speaker 2: a guy named Carlo Sicatuni, a guy named Ivano Boccaccino.
Speaker 2: All these guys were members of the New Order was
Speaker 2: Chloe called the New Order. The full name of it
Speaker 2: was the New Order Scholarship Center, okay, which was basically
Speaker 2: it was. It was basically like uh, that kind of
Speaker 2: kind of like neo fascist cell, like intellectual type guys
Speaker 2: who were also in into like paramilitary stuff and things.
Speaker 2: They were big on like Julius Evlon stuff. You know.
Speaker 2: But like I said, it doesn't really like it doesn't
Speaker 2: really track, you know. Bocaccino was in fact he he
Speaker 2: he himself was involved in some of these events, and
Speaker 2: he later was killed like in in murky circumstances during
Speaker 2: like a similar event. You know, some people claim that like,
Speaker 2: well he was like a cop or like some intelligence
Speaker 2: ass that that is possible, or maybe he was just
Speaker 2: like a nut. Okay, Vinciguerta and Cicutini, they were both
Speaker 2: sentenced to life in prison for years. Uh. Cicutini, Uh,
Speaker 2: he fled to Spain, like when the indictment came down
Speaker 2: with the informational complaint. I don't know if in Europe,
Speaker 2: like they actually indict people, they afford people to process,
Speaker 2: at least in a loose sense, like but they I
Speaker 2: think their protocol is different. But he uh, he was
Speaker 2: finally pinched in like you know, nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 2: then uh about a decade later, like when his health
Speaker 2: was failing, like they just they just like coult him
Speaker 2: lose it for compassionate release. And it's like, really, man,
Speaker 2: like you, this guy's just like demented terrorists, acording to
Speaker 2: you when you're like cutting them loose for ill health.
Speaker 2: I mean, like the whole the whole thing was strange.
Speaker 2: What's significant too, is that like the New Order and
Speaker 2: this whole, uh, this whole kind of like New Order
Speaker 2: like like think tank or like intellectual kind of cadre,
Speaker 2: do anything about it. Like that. These guys were they
Speaker 2: were born out of the the Italian Social Movement, which
Speaker 2: wasn't me. It was it was an openly like neo
Speaker 2: fascist party, but it was a mainstream party, you know,
Speaker 2: uh like Mussolini's granddaughter, you know, like she was, uh
Speaker 2: she was like a public face of it, you know,
Speaker 2: and in their traditional strongholds like Pepe, people people like
Speaker 2: openly like celebrated and rep and repped that. You know,
Speaker 2: like that, the New Order was something of a schismatic
Speaker 2: breakoff from that from the Italian Social movement. Like I said,
Speaker 2: what I like in it too, what I like in
Speaker 2: it too. It's an imperfect example, but you know, like
Speaker 2: that like the National Front schism that uh led like
Speaker 2: you know, the Flag Group, which was you know the
Speaker 2: uh different traditional kind of John Tyndall National Front, And
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with that. I think National Front actually
Speaker 2: did some really great things, especially for especially for uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the downwardly mobile kind of like white working
Speaker 2: class whose communities really were devastated by you know, the
Speaker 2: UK is sort of Swiss dal Merstic globalism. But you
Speaker 2: know the uh, and like I said, the Italian social
Speaker 2: movement itself is every evil and like sense of build
Speaker 2: the new order was very much more on like a
Speaker 2: national socialist tip if that uh, I don't know if
Speaker 2: that makes any different seqal or not. But again, like
Speaker 2: I don't, this whole narrative doesn't really add up. But
Speaker 2: you know the uh, it's also too like I don't,
Speaker 2: I mean happened the regene is basically speaking out of
Speaker 2: like both sides of its mouth. It's like, okay, like
Speaker 2: these state behind organizations, I'm not going as far as
Speaker 2: to say that like well, you know, like NATO created them,
Speaker 2: Like you can't. You can't just like create al Qaeda
Speaker 2: or whatever like idiots like Michael Morrissey. You can just
Speaker 2: like create some radical like neo fascist cadre as a
Speaker 2: state on one element. Like it's how life works, you know.
Speaker 2: The these tendencies developed very organically, They solidify in a
Speaker 2: harden and become in some people's cases like extreme owing
Speaker 2: to like you know, personal influences in their orbit who
Speaker 2: kind of feed on these people's like youth of energy
Speaker 2: that tends to outshine their their capacity for self reflection.
Speaker 2: But it's uh, you know. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: at the same time, the fact that these guys were
Speaker 2: for decades by the time this stuff was happening, they
Speaker 2: were not just fully assimilated into kind of like the
Speaker 2: NATO command and control structure, but they were considered to
Speaker 2: be like an essential part of it. So it's like,
Speaker 2: but now you can't control your people anymore, and they're
Speaker 2: like blowing up cops. They're like, you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: opening fire, they're ripping through fill auto like it at
Speaker 2: train stations and killing old ladies and everybody else who
Speaker 2: happens to be down range their fire like that. That
Speaker 2: doesn't really make sense, man, Okay, you know, it just doesn't.
Speaker 2: And not everything is uh not not not everything's a
Speaker 2: science experiment, and you know, not everything's uh not not
Speaker 2: everything lends itself the cutable inputs where you can you know,
Speaker 2: derive like a concrete answer on the human condition and
Speaker 2: you know, war and peace and stuff like that. I uh,
Speaker 2: some I think that that's there's a lot of uh,
Speaker 2: even to this day, there's like a lot of smoke
Speaker 2: around these things, like for really for no reason, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. Like the men who were really
Speaker 2: instrumental in these activities are long dead. You know. It's
Speaker 2: like like you could say, well, this might like embarrass
Speaker 2: the government. It's like, okay, if peop want to take
Speaker 2: the people want to take government seriously anymore. Even if
Speaker 2: they did, it's like okay, I mean there is there's uh,
Speaker 2: there's a laundry list of like AAST nine A grievances
Speaker 2: like people hang on you know, like the government. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like, what's what's one more? You know, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't really understand the discussion. I mean I understand it intellectually.
Speaker 2: You know. What I mean is I continue to kind
Speaker 2: of stupefy me that people don't see uh like see
Speaker 2: through how like fucking uh transparent? The this is Oh wow,
Speaker 2: we've been going for out an hour, haven't we. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's get into the years of LED next MANX. If
Speaker 2: I if I start that now, we're gonna be here
Speaker 2: like another hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: I don't want to fuck with the program.
Speaker 1: Sounds good to me.
Speaker 2: Someone I want to crash thom because I got frankly,
Speaker 2: I got a big day tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah you do, but uh do plugs real.
Speaker 2: Quick yes, sir, you can always find them. You can
Speaker 2: always find me on my web site. It's Thomas seven
Speaker 2: seven seven dot com number seven h M A S
Speaker 2: seven seven seven dot com. I'm on Twitter. I got
Speaker 2: a pretty active I got a pretty active timeline. It's
Speaker 2: real capital R E A L Underscore number seven h
Speaker 2: M A S seven seven seven. I'm on t ram.
Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram. I uh my substack is the best
Speaker 2: place hitting me up. I got I got a lot
Speaker 2: of video. This My podcast is a lot of just
Speaker 2: kind of like random audio and me talking to people.
Speaker 2: We got a very active chat that's been hopping a
Speaker 2: lot lately. That's real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack
Speaker 2: dot com. If EP could include like some of my
Speaker 2: plugs in the video description, that would that would be great. Man.
Speaker 2: You'd have my gratitude of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have your and I have your the uh the
Speaker 1: the new merch you have and everything included there.
Speaker 2: No, that's awesome. Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, I am
Speaker 2: very blessed that our our buddy Harrik Kreeg. I have
Speaker 2: no idea how to mock that stuff up, man, and
Speaker 2: he's got real ability, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm very It looks good it looks really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look really good. Looks yeah yeah, no, it's people
Speaker 2: really like it, and it makes me happy, man, that
Speaker 2: we can deliver stuff that people like you can actually
Speaker 2: want to like wear on their body, you know.
Speaker 1: And you actually got retweeted by Candae Owens yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. That's why it's been like a deluge
Speaker 2: of It's weird, man, It's I it's weird being like
Speaker 2: Internet famous in some small way. Like I mean, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm fine with it. I don't know, think about Cannas Owens.
Speaker 2: I don't really mess with their content or anything whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, she wants to retweet me, that's fine, but
Speaker 2: uh yeah, it's kind of nutty.
Speaker 1: All right, Thomas, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Bud.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekaniana Show.
Speaker 1: Thomas is back, and I think this is the I'm
Speaker 1: going to conclude Gladio today, right, it's long time coming.
Speaker 1: You're muted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just call up my outline he
Speaker 2: real quick, No problem, Yeah no, I think, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: here we go. I already got it up. Yeah. Like
Speaker 2: I said, man, just to advise the viewers and subs,
Speaker 2: like I don't. I don't feel great, so like forgive
Speaker 2: me if I repeat myself or like lose my place.
Speaker 2: But I think we're I think we're good. So I
Speaker 2: think I want to get into today, and like I
Speaker 2: will as we get into the topic. Gladio created an
Speaker 2: interesting ideological culture that is relevant to like what we
Speaker 2: do today. It's not it's not just a strange footnote
Speaker 2: of history. It's not just something that gives rise to
Speaker 2: conspiratorial narratives. It's not just you know, this kind of
Speaker 2: artifact of Cold War grand strategy and military planning and
Speaker 2: and you know, related specifically to the nuances of political
Speaker 2: warfare and and all of that. You know, And like
Speaker 2: I said, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves,
Speaker 2: but you know, ground zero for gladi was really Italy, okay,
Speaker 2: and Italy. Italy absolutely lost the war, like like all
Speaker 2: of Europe. Did you know the Vatican was hit incredibly hard,
Speaker 2: like figuratively and literally, you know, like Vatican two was
Speaker 2: basically like like the the the Catholic leadership hierarchy reuh
Speaker 2: reinventing itself to to be agreeable to you know, to
Speaker 2: American hegemy and like and like that. In the Nurmer
Speaker 2: World War, okay, and the rest of Italy. Italy was
Speaker 2: was a key. I mean, Italy was like the fifth
Speaker 2: largest economy I think into the seventies on this planet.
Speaker 2: And Italy, Italy and the Benelux countries they were they
Speaker 2: were they were like NATO's literal flanks, okay. I mean
Speaker 2: obviously like the the Bunis Republic, the Bunia you know,
Speaker 2: the US Army, you know, espeifically, the armored KAEV and
Speaker 2: field artillery, the British Army on the North German plane.
Speaker 2: They they were they were the fare punk of like
Speaker 2: the mainline of resistance in near German border. But the
Speaker 2: Italian Army you know, in the south and the Benelux
Speaker 2: uh military elements on then in the north they were
Speaker 2: just as essential. So there was this weird situation with
Speaker 2: the Italy because it wasn't occupied like the Bundus Republic was.
Speaker 2: It was part of NATO. But there was also this
Speaker 2: like overtly fan that's just culture that was still active there,
Speaker 2: like they were sending people to parliament, you know, they
Speaker 2: and it just kind of had to be tolerated because
Speaker 2: it's like what are you gonna do? It's like they
Speaker 2: had they had a pro they had a Cold War
Speaker 2: your government that they had like a permanent incumbency, you know,
Speaker 2: they were they they hated the Communists. They were like
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten percent fying the Cold War. It
Speaker 2: was kind of like something that it was kind of
Speaker 2: something like Washington had to tolerate. So but of course
Speaker 2: they decided to kind of like try and purpose that
Speaker 2: towards Cold War ends on the political side, not just
Speaker 2: the military side. And that was like the core of Gladio.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's obviously Gladio elements in in the
Speaker 2: Benelux countries, like in France as well, even though France
Speaker 2: wasn't you know, part of the formal NATO structure, there
Speaker 2: was a there were there were Gladio elements of a
Speaker 2: sort like in in the Buddhist Republic. Oh that was
Speaker 2: like a tricky thing, you know, and it was it
Speaker 2: was weirdly handled. But Italy, like the of these guys
Speaker 2: was Italy. You know. Also you know, like the Italians,
Speaker 2: the Italian Seven, they contribute like an outsized in an
Speaker 2: outsized way to European cultural things. And like we've talked about,
Speaker 2: you know, like I mean going back to the to
Speaker 2: the inner warriors, you know, like Mussolanie's March on Rome.
Speaker 2: That was a huge development, you know. Uh, it was
Speaker 2: this right wing revolutionary tendency that was basically like returning
Speaker 2: the serve like out of the bullster of revolution. And
Speaker 2: weird when you seem to Americans like art and like
Speaker 2: artistic endeavors and and aesthetical things that has this that
Speaker 2: has like an outsized cachet in Europe like to this day,
Speaker 2: Like you wouldn't think of America of some painter or
Speaker 2: even like a novelist or a filmmaker, like you wouldn't
Speaker 2: think of You wouldn't think of him like putting something
Speaker 2: in the stream of cultural commerce and it like a
Speaker 2: movement developing around it or coming to like symbolize some
Speaker 2: kind of movement. But in Italy that's very much the case.
Speaker 2: It wasn't it is, you know, and the Cold War
Speaker 2: was no exception. So you had these guys in Italy
Speaker 2: running around who constant kind of like the core of
Speaker 2: Gladio and like some of them are very compromised. They
Speaker 2: were basically like NATO agents and that's like just what
Speaker 2: they were, and they didn't really give a fuck, like
Speaker 2: about what your knowing ideology was beyond you know, cold
Speaker 2: war imperatives. But you also had these guys who were
Speaker 2: you know, who were basically like act like said Julius
Speaker 2: eve Lah or whore in the early days, had you know,
Speaker 2: fought in the Italian army like with the Axis, or
Speaker 2: you know, they were guys who came to Gladio because
Speaker 2: they were agitating against communists, you know, or they were
Speaker 2: or immigrants or you know, whatever their kind of core
Speaker 2: issues were, and they got swept up, you know by
Speaker 2: like Italian carbonaria or or political police. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: look like why why do you make it so useful?
Speaker 2: Like this is what you're wanting to do? You know?
Speaker 2: So that that's that's kind of like the that that
Speaker 2: that's kind of that was kind of like the situation
Speaker 2: on the Italian street, you know, particularly in Rome, but
Speaker 2: kind of like all over the country. And I can't
Speaker 2: remember I got into this or not. I refreshed my recollection,
Speaker 2: but I if I'm repeating myself, call me on it.
Speaker 2: But what kind of brought gladi out of people's awareness?
Speaker 2: I'm talking in terms of like the general public was,
Speaker 2: uh was the Patiano massacre? I can't remember we got
Speaker 2: into this last time or not, but basically on May thirty,
Speaker 2: first seventy two, there was was characterized as a neo
Speaker 2: fascist terror attack. There's an anonymous call, uh play to this
Speaker 2: carbonary barracks in a suburb of uh the Sigadado, and
Speaker 2: the caller said, you know, hey, check this car, Check
Speaker 2: this abandoned car. You know it's it's an I ED.
Speaker 2: And when they did, and it like it exploded, as
Speaker 2: like they were trying to investigate it, and it killed
Speaker 2: these three cops. The perpetrators are the guys who got
Speaker 2: brought up, who got stuck with the charges on grounds
Speaker 2: of it. They were, uh, this guy named Vincenzo and Seguera,
Speaker 2: Carlo Sicatini, and this guy Ivano Bucket Chino and all
Speaker 2: these guys remembers of this of this group called New Order,
Speaker 2: the the the official name is the New Order of
Speaker 2: Scholarship Center. It was basically like a think tank and
Speaker 2: it wasn't a political party. It was kind of like Ellen.
Speaker 2: The ben La was like uh Greece g R E
Speaker 2: c E or Grace, you know it was. It basically
Speaker 2: was what it appeared to be. It was like a
Speaker 2: Research Group, you know, and when when you know what,
Speaker 2: where they who was funding them and where they were
Speaker 2: getting money from wasn't exactly clear, but there was a
Speaker 2: lot of that. There's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 2: of like money going into it. And the Italian Social Movement,
Speaker 2: which was a mainstream political party despite they can they
Speaker 2: considered and consider themselves to uh to be the direct
Speaker 2: descendance of the the National Fascist Party and they kind
Speaker 2: of are like, it's not cap but the New Order
Speaker 2: Scholarship Center they came about based on like a schiz
Speaker 2: on in the Italian Social Movement, which is interesting, like
Speaker 2: as as the Italian Social Movement kind of approached mainstream
Speaker 2: respectability and like the Eisenhower era, which happened to like
Speaker 2: a lot of like right wing parties in Europe and
Speaker 2: during that era too, I mean that was one like
Speaker 2: Francis Yacki was like writing speeches for Joseph McCarthy, Like
Speaker 2: very unusual stuff was going on due to you know
Speaker 2: what amounts so like an enduring emergency. You know, this
Speaker 2: is the era like the Berlin crises and things. You know,
Speaker 2: people are convinced that coldor is gonna be him hot
Speaker 2: become hot This was also in a bunch of guys
Speaker 2: with real trigger time, you know, like basically the entire
Speaker 2: first SS, like leap stand Art, they were rotting in
Speaker 2: prison sept Dietrich had a life sentence, Yak and Piper
Speaker 2: at the death kind of lead. A bunch of these
Speaker 2: guys got released during this era, like not because NATO
Speaker 2: wanted to be nice and not not because Washington decided
Speaker 2: they wanted to roll back the present they've established at Nurnberg.
Speaker 2: But they're like, you know, we're we're we're almost certainly
Speaker 2: going to fight World War three imminently, and we need
Speaker 2: we you know, we need officers and n c os
Speaker 2: that we actually fought the Ivans and we can't be
Speaker 2: going around to arresting people for being right wing and
Speaker 2: that's not gonna work. So kind of the mainstream of
Speaker 2: the Italian social movement are Turo Michellini, who was like
Speaker 2: their Hancho, Like he was basically a moderate for the time.
Speaker 2: He was like a right wing moderate. He uh, he
Speaker 2: wanted to click up with the Christian Democrats, with the monarchists,
Speaker 2: you know, basically he wanted to join kind of like
Speaker 2: the mainstream coalition of like center right parties, and these
Speaker 2: guys uh, like Buggaccino and like Vinci Gatta and like Sicutini,
Speaker 2: they were like, uh, like that's not happening, like they're forebears.
Speaker 2: I don't think they were involved at that time, but
Speaker 2: you know, these there was these schismatic guys you know
Speaker 2: who were who were uh, who are very much like
Speaker 2: Evold and Ancolytes, and they're like that's bullshit, like you're
Speaker 2: not You're not gonna turn us into some like some
Speaker 2: like regime approved like like part of the parliamentary apparatus.
Speaker 2: You know. So these guys found a new order, okay,
Speaker 2: and there was a uh and this guy this is
Speaker 2: kind of formalize the nineteen fifty six there was this
Speaker 2: big meeting in Milan that was the Italian social mooge
Speaker 2: in Congress and this guy Pino Rowdy, who was the
Speaker 2: he was he was like kind of the representative what
Speaker 2: became like new order. He basically stood up and said,
Speaker 2: like you know that you're you're disgracing the honor like
Speaker 2: the man who died like fighting the Americans and the communists.
Speaker 2: You know, how dare you? You know you're trying to
Speaker 2: hijack us? You know this this is this is Jewish,
Speaker 2: you know, fuck you basically, So like that was that
Speaker 2: So these New Order guys were kind of like and
Speaker 2: everybody shit list anyway, Like I'm not saying they didn't
Speaker 2: plant as Bob. Maybe they did or maybe they didn't,
Speaker 2: but it served multiple purposes to claim these guys did it,
Speaker 2: even if they did not. And I love Italians and Italy.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying bad things about them as a people,
Speaker 2: but Italian justice is not exactly rigorous or going to
Speaker 2: do process, you know, especially during that era.
Speaker 1: If you don't like the Italian government, wait five years,
Speaker 1: we'll get a new one.
Speaker 2: Yeah that too, But that's that's kind of the context
Speaker 2: and other other right wing movements in Europe, and this
Speaker 2: is a very different circumstance. It wasn't like now there,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'm always talking about these these literally
Speaker 2: mentally retarded people who like show for Zelensky and stuff
Speaker 2: because they're like too stupid to be alive. But some
Speaker 2: of the are they're like they're like brain eating amba
Speaker 2: or something. But but in those you know like that nowadays,
Speaker 2: there there's there's literally like the regime, there's globalism, and
Speaker 2: then there's people resisting it, you know, whether there's Salathis
Speaker 2: who are not good guys, or our friends, whether they're in Iran,
Speaker 2: whether they're in Russia who are our friends, whether they're
Speaker 2: you know. But I mean in the Cold War there
Speaker 2: was all these bizarre intrigues and everything was characterized by
Speaker 2: Cold War dynamics and phenomenon. So like even if you
Speaker 2: didn't want to take a side, you had to insinuate
Speaker 2: sinsinuate yourself somehow into that paradigm, like otherwise you were
Speaker 2: just pissing into the wind, you know. So and plus two,
Speaker 2: you could play people off against each other, you know,
Speaker 2: like if you know in the fifties and sixties and
Speaker 2: then post it tot you know, in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: I mean basically, if you were approached, if you were
Speaker 2: if you were a partisan, whether you're in Italy or
Speaker 2: the or the Benelux countries or the UK, and you've
Speaker 2: got actual bodies on in the street, you could approach
Speaker 2: by some intelligence guy or some NATO type. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean you can basically take turns to him. You know,
Speaker 2: you want to start behaving myself, You want me to
Speaker 2: commit to doing something when you need to fight the communists,
Speaker 2: you would have given me a lot of money or
Speaker 2: a lot of small and ammo or like a lot
Speaker 2: of drugs I can sell or something, you know. And
Speaker 2: there was like limits to this obviously, but you know,
Speaker 2: it was a rarefied circumstance, you know, a new order. Also,
Speaker 2: there's stuff was disseminated throughout Europe and in those good days,
Speaker 2: you know, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, you know, print media
Speaker 2: was the only thing, was the only game in town,
Speaker 2: you know, so and what you could find, especially especially
Speaker 2: based on the censorship censorship regime, not just in the
Speaker 2: Buddhist Republic, but in the UK and other places, you know,
Speaker 2: you had to take like you had to get what
Speaker 2: could be smuggled in, you know, and sometimes it be
Speaker 2: in English, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it'd be like an
Speaker 2: English translation that was imprecise. But a whole lot of
Speaker 2: this material relevant to the right, relative to the old
Speaker 2: resistance in Europe. What's coming out of Italy and you
Speaker 2: know now orders publications they very much valorize the Third
Speaker 2: Right and the Kingdom of Italy. And there were dead,
Speaker 2: you know, in the independent State of Croatia, and like
Speaker 2: all the excess powers they also they had links with
Speaker 2: the Boor of Republican Rhodesia also, like they had strong
Speaker 2: support there. You know. It was very anti modernist. It
Speaker 2: was very Strasser, right, you know, and despite what people
Speaker 2: think Strasser had, uh, he had he had a he
Speaker 2: had a very nuanced view of things. I don't agree
Speaker 2: with this perspective. But it wasn't just oh he was
Speaker 2: a socialist, but he also didn't like Zionism. It's there
Speaker 2: was nothing like that. And he was not pro Soviet.
Speaker 2: He said that, you know, Europe has to fight some
Speaker 2: kind of concord with Moscow no matter what the government
Speaker 2: is there, and that's the way forward. But he basically
Speaker 2: the reason why the standard of the Black Front it
Speaker 2: was the hammer and sword. It wasn't just because it
Speaker 2: looks cool. You know, he's the Strassers, the Strasser. His
Speaker 2: whole point was we've got to return to like medieval origins.
Speaker 2: That's you know, not not in some ridiculous way or
Speaker 2: or not in some luodite way. But he's like, you know, this,
Speaker 2: this devolved, localized governmental structure is what's natural to Europe.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, we need a national government, but it's
Speaker 2: got to be totally federated and not just the name only,
Speaker 2: you know, like they like down to down like the
Speaker 2: township level, like they basically wanted like local sovereignty and
Speaker 2: for matters that you know impact you know, like the
Speaker 2: folk community or like war in peace question the base
Speaker 2: of security, like that's that's what the national community ossifies
Speaker 2: as one. But otherwise, you know, it's it exists in
Speaker 2: this totally like organic kind of like spontaneous and the
Speaker 2: wealth capacity. And that's basically what the third position was
Speaker 2: up on during the entire Cold War. And the third
Speaker 2: position as we think of it, it does not exist anymore.
Speaker 2: You know. John Bowden made that point. So if you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm a third positionist, well that doesn't make any sense
Speaker 2: in America anyway, because there is no American third position. Okay,
Speaker 2: there was like a there there was there was a
Speaker 2: there was a taffy and right wing position that was
Speaker 2: America first, we shouldn't be fighting the Cold War. But
Speaker 2: that's something totally different. And in the twenty oars centi's
Speaker 2: just not a third a third position anywhere, because there's
Speaker 2: not there's not the binary paradigm. There's globalism and everybody
Speaker 2: opposing it. That's it. And those people opposing it. They
Speaker 2: have different motives for opposing it, some of which are
Speaker 2: some of which you know, are like rhyme with one another,
Speaker 2: some which don't at all. But there's but but there's
Speaker 2: not two positions. There's one position and there's the resistance.
Speaker 2: This is actually important. It's not just something that academic
Speaker 2: types and people like me are into or relate to,
Speaker 2: you know, contemplate, pontificate that.
Speaker 1: Well people, but people may. I think sometimes people think
Speaker 1: that you say stuff like that just to just to
Speaker 1: upset them. Because it upsets them. They you know, they
Speaker 1: think they're a third positionist and they underah in what way.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's like talking about being right
Speaker 1: wing or left wing and you're talking about the early
Speaker 1: you know, twentieth century.
Speaker 2: In Europe.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing as in Europe as it
Speaker 1: is in the United States. There's a lot more nuance there.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also the same guys who think that they
Speaker 2: like they think that they think that they're right wing
Speaker 2: if they agree on foreign policy with Chuck Schumer, Ben Nettinya,
Speaker 2: who Joe Biden in Nancy Pelosi. It's like, I don't
Speaker 2: care if you don't like the Russians. If you're ethnically
Speaker 2: cleansing Slavic people on orders of a zion Is for
Speaker 2: the purpose of dismantling Ukraine and Russia as discreete ethnocultural entities,
Speaker 2: you're not right wing. You're some kind of fuck head
Speaker 2: who's killing people for the globalist regime. Like the fact
Speaker 2: you wear like a little swastigardless of a black metal
Speaker 2: or because you're like some like Brony Satanists, doesn't make
Speaker 2: you right wing. It just makes you a fucking idiot.
Speaker 2: You know. Like if I if I like rob a
Speaker 2: liquor store when I'm high on crack and say, you know,
Speaker 2: God saves the King, that doesn't make me a monarchist.
Speaker 2: It makes me a crackhead who robs liquor stores and
Speaker 2: says weird things. You know. It's kind of the same thing. Man,
Speaker 2: Like if Nambla started like wearing swasiguds nimblesics to fucking basted,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go like fucking kid because it's like beast
Speaker 2: like they literally would be like that, you know. Like,
Speaker 2: but that's a different I don't want to ran about
Speaker 2: that and get my blood pressure up. But the uh,
Speaker 2: but you know, yeah, I did. I mean, but that
Speaker 2: that was basically like the situation in Italy and again
Speaker 2: like uh the damastic car, these these Carbonariti like that
Speaker 2: that these guys probably I don't think they wanted to
Speaker 2: kill the police, but I think they definitely were like
Speaker 2: guilty of the crying charge despite whatever propaganda might have
Speaker 2: been milked out of it by by the Italian government.
Speaker 2: Because these guys are these guys are serious, like the
Speaker 2: New Order guys, they jumped the gun a little bit.
Speaker 2: A lot of them didn't have practical experience as partisans
Speaker 2: like the like the Growth Army fraction did you know,
Speaker 2: they weren't properly trained in that stuff. But you know
Speaker 2: they were serious. They were like willing to engage in
Speaker 2: direct the action. But as time went on, they kind
Speaker 2: of they became something of an elite uh organization. You know,
Speaker 2: they very they gave, they gate kept very hard. They
Speaker 2: always helped themselves out as a vanguard as tendency. You know,
Speaker 2: as time went on there there kind of causeic paramilitary
Speaker 2: aspect became more uh like a high speed and and incredible.
Speaker 2: You know, at peak they had about ten thousand numbers
Speaker 2: and these guys, Uh, this is only campaign for nuclear
Speaker 2: disarmament was a big thing in Europe, which it selves
Speaker 2: like a cover not just for like you know, uh
Speaker 2: like like Soviet and wasn't like money was coming into
Speaker 2: fund this stuff, but it's also a cover for like
Speaker 2: real radicals, you know, and and and communists and anarchists
Speaker 2: of varied stripes like now order they they go out
Speaker 2: and like kick the shit out of these guys when
Speaker 2: they'd have like protests and these like mass demonstrations, you know.
Speaker 2: So that that caused the Garment in Rome to kind
Speaker 2: of like raise a cyber and be like, okay, like
Speaker 2: let's not just like smash these guys. And then I
Speaker 2: think that had a lot to do with them kind
Speaker 2: of being the Cora Gladio beyond like what I already suggested,
Speaker 2: what I was just going to peculiar conditions of Italy
Speaker 2: and and and nuances they're in. But it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: these guys, these guys will get dirty, Okay, you know
Speaker 2: that they're not afraid to do that. And they they
Speaker 2: seem to be thirsty for action, you know, so they're
Speaker 2: not we we can be advised, especially if we if
Speaker 2: we sent some special operations for US types to kind
Speaker 2: of bring up the speed. These guys will probably be
Speaker 2: like looking forward to some kind of Soviet assault where
Speaker 2: they can go out and and and play cowboys and Indians.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a perfect stormist stuff. But uh,
Speaker 2: later on a substantial uh the stancial percentage of these
Speaker 2: guys like rejoined uh the Italian social movement, but that
Speaker 2: they remained kind of like I think some of that too.
Speaker 2: It was them like hemorrhaging off people who like weren't
Speaker 2: really up to the task of doing extra legal stuff.
Speaker 2: It's complicated, but there's a lot of historians, and not
Speaker 2: just mainstream historians, but like you know, uh, like vanguardist
Speaker 2: types like us, we like read this as like, oh,
Speaker 2: there was a second schism. I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of complicated. I in the time we
Speaker 2: got left, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 2: go on that tangent deeply. But the uh and not coincidentally,
Speaker 2: the New Order's motto was our honor is called loyalty.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna try and pronounce the Italian variant of that,
Speaker 2: but obviously that's you know, my yeah, has Troy, my
Speaker 2: loyalty is my honor which is the en SS model.
Speaker 2: The symi of the organization was a double headed axe,
Speaker 2: you know, like meaning like we look both right and left,
Speaker 2: but you know, the ross, the folk community is the center,
Speaker 2: and like we represent that as a vanguard, you know,
Speaker 2: and we fight both elements from within when they threaten us,
Speaker 2: but we will act as like the shpare punkd of
Speaker 2: either if it advances, you know, the interests of the
Speaker 2: folk community. An important side note to this is what
Speaker 2: became of the British National Front, which today and I
Speaker 2: can't say for sure what the state of the London
Speaker 2: Street is or anything. I read the Nation and so
Speaker 2: if our English and Ulster friends and Scottish friends, if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong about this, please weigh in and don't be offended.
Speaker 2: But I don't think I'm wrong. I think the National
Speaker 2: Front the British National Fraud, not to be confused with
Speaker 2: the French organization, which is a lot more mainstream and
Speaker 2: regime approved. The I think the National Front these days
Speaker 2: is basically a website, okay, or like a social media Uh,
Speaker 2: it's got some social media presence, but like even they're
Speaker 2: like nobody, not even just fold, like a couple hundred
Speaker 2: people who fuck with it and don't care about it.
Speaker 2: But it was a big deal in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: They're the fourth largest party. They're they were the largest
Speaker 2: party after the lib Dems in the UK for a minute. Okay.
Speaker 2: They were founded by A. K. Chesterton who had been
Speaker 2: who'd been affiliated with Mosley. He came from UH. He
Speaker 2: came from the League of Empire Loyalists and the first
Speaker 2: British National Party and he was related to UH. He
Speaker 2: was related to G. K. Schesterton. He'd been born in
Speaker 2: South Africa. During the Second Bold War, his family fled
Speaker 2: back to the UK. But it uh, this was uh.
Speaker 2: This was during the time when Enna Powell was really
Speaker 2: kind of carving out like a dissident tendance in the
Speaker 2: UK too. But the National Front it really got cloud
Speaker 2: when John Tindall kind of came to the helm And
Speaker 2: Tindall was an interesting guy. I highly recommend his autobiography.
Speaker 2: It's really it's good stuff. But you know Tindall, Uh.
Speaker 2: Kindall's big thing was, you know, stop non white immigration,
Speaker 2: and he campaigned on a plat from a repatriot these
Speaker 2: people now, which absolutely would have been possible at that time.
Speaker 2: That wasn't He wasn't just like talking shit like we're
Speaker 2: gonna build a wool and it's gonna stop all these
Speaker 2: Mexicans because it's a wol. It was like nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It was like you could do this because the politable
Speaker 2: will was there, you know, and uh, this is when
Speaker 2: things are totally going to hell in Northern Ireland, and
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland is relevant to this Gladio a third position
Speaker 2: thing two. I'm not just on a crazy tangent, but
Speaker 2: Tindall was basically like a main He was a pretty mainstream,
Speaker 2: like white nationalist, empire loyalist type guy. He's like, why
Speaker 2: we post the footing with the IRA, Fuck these people
Speaker 2: smash them? Why are we getting flooded with these Third
Speaker 2: world immigrants? Like why, you know, why? How come? You
Speaker 2: know why? Why why are the Tories like talking a
Speaker 2: lot of shit. But we're basically getting state socialism then,
Speaker 2: and and we're not you know, we're we're not even
Speaker 2: a competitive economy anymore. But something started happening within the
Speaker 2: National Front and the NF two. They'd have these mass
Speaker 2: rallies in London and you know, in uh, in Liverpool
Speaker 2: and in Belfast, although it hit Belfast a little bit later,
Speaker 2: and I'm getting ahead of myself. But the guys who
Speaker 2: came to constitute the West Belfast Brigade, like C Company
Speaker 2: of the West Belfast Brigade of the UDA, Johnny Adare,
Speaker 2: who was who was an infamous guy and not an
Speaker 2: admirable guy, very much a gangster. He was a National
Speaker 2: Front still head and he was in the Rock against
Speaker 2: Communism scene, and so were all his friends. And these
Speaker 2: guys became C Company, okay, and like they were all
Speaker 2: about the National Front. So on the one hand, like
Speaker 2: Comedy eighteen and these guys other than other than the
Speaker 2: mid Ulster UV which became the LVF under Billy Rice Rain.
Speaker 2: You know, people say like, well it was an outlie
Speaker 2: or like the far right and loyalists don't have the
Speaker 2: common ground. That's not really true, okay, Like, but we'll
Speaker 2: get into that in a minute. And this totally relates
Speaker 2: to the third position of schismatic schismatics in Italy, which
Speaker 2: in turn impacted the National Front, which in turn found
Speaker 2: an audience in Ulster, specifically belf Pass. But what happened
Speaker 2: in the National Front was the schism happened between what
Speaker 2: was called the political soul faction and what was the
Speaker 2: Flag group because the National Front zine or newsletter was
Speaker 2: the Flag. Okay, But essentially Tindall leaves a National Front
Speaker 2: and identity too and he forms the British National Party,
Speaker 2: which in turn became the b n P of the nineties,
Speaker 2: where Nick Griffin was at the helm, which is understanding
Speaker 2: because Griffin was part of the political soldier faction. But
Speaker 2: the uh, the National Front split during the during this
Speaker 2: time appropising when Tindall left, okay, and the Official National Front,
Speaker 2: which was the political soldier faction, they started they started
Speaker 2: associating with this guy, Roberto Fiori. But I believe Griffin
Speaker 2: actually lived with for a time, not in some weird way,
Speaker 2: but like they lived into like the same rooming house
Speaker 2: or a bunch of like right wing guys. It was
Speaker 2: more like their h hughes basically. But the Official National
Speaker 2: Front or the Political Soldier faction, they basically are like,
Speaker 2: why why are we worried about preserving the monarchy? Like
Speaker 2: why are we worried about trying to bring the UK
Speaker 2: back to you know, as it existed between you know,
Speaker 2: like the reign of you know, the minute of the
Speaker 2: Prime misership A Disraeli and you know through like Getwardian
Speaker 2: days to you know, basically probably like when Ramsey McDonald
Speaker 2: the game PM, It's like, why is that like our model?
Speaker 2: You know, He's like, we got to start looking at
Speaker 2: ourselves as as uh as political soldiers. You know, Uh,
Speaker 2: we got to start viewing uh, you know, America and
Speaker 2: its client regime in London as our enemy just as
Speaker 2: much as the communists are. They started uh making overtures
Speaker 2: to cut offy because cut off he would would, uh,
Speaker 2: he'd support elements that he thought would advance the goals
Speaker 2: that you know. Kadafi was very much Warsaw packed adjacent,
Speaker 2: like ten percent, but he was an unusual guy and
Speaker 2: like my friend Big D like in you know, the
Speaker 2: first time I cut con it what I mean, it
Speaker 2: was no Rouken and he was talking. You know, he
Speaker 2: got swept up in the indictments when when Jeff Fort
Speaker 2: you know, was and the Rukens were taking money from
Speaker 2: Kadafi was fourth then talk and spent on dope to
Speaker 2: put on the street. And Kadafi he's like, fuck, this
Speaker 2: guy put a hit on them. But you're, like Big
Speaker 2: D said, He's like the a lot of the Rooken
Speaker 2: leadership was all about that. But so we're like these
Speaker 2: third positions guys in Europe, okay. And and of course
Speaker 2: the uh like the Flag Group, you know, they they
Speaker 2: were like, this is bullshit. You know, you don't you don't,
Speaker 2: you don't associate with non whites. We're not radicals, you know,
Speaker 2: a all of that. Okay. But as the National Front
Speaker 2: was doing that, the uh you know, and and this
Speaker 2: kind of stress right stuff was was being like widely
Speaker 2: disseminated at least within like right wing circles, you know.
Speaker 2: At this time, like in nineteen eighty six, when the
Speaker 2: two wings that party formally split, it was probably about
Speaker 2: they probably about like five thousand like like hardcore members
Speaker 2: like paid dues and they're like like on record and
Speaker 2: all of that stuff, and about uh probably about three
Speaker 2: thousand of them like mhm, like stay with like the
Speaker 2: mainstream National Front, but two thousand like clicked up with
Speaker 2: you know, like the political soldier like official National Front
Speaker 2: political Soldier wing. But they had you know in the
Speaker 2: UK only here like if you got a form of play,
Speaker 2: if Yourenacord is a political party, like you pay dues,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like a membership organization and you've got
Speaker 2: supporters who aren't at all involved in like the membership
Speaker 2: side of things. So despite like what seems like paltry
Speaker 2: numbers for like a protest party, that's actually pretty good
Speaker 2: for the time. And like I said, these guys could,
Speaker 2: these guys could get a crowd in the streets in London,
Speaker 2: particularly if they were you know, if they were if
Speaker 2: they were clashing you know with the campaign for nolear
Speaker 2: disarment types or or or like radical left types, because
Speaker 2: like people didn't like those types, you know, they just didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, at end of this day, I
Speaker 2: think if the man in this I realized London has
Speaker 2: changed dramatically since then and since I was there in
Speaker 2: the late nineties. But I I'm sure it's kind of
Speaker 2: like Shytown. There's there is kind of like but the
Speaker 2: silent majority type element that gets mad when they see
Speaker 2: that stuff. And a lot of these non white people,
Speaker 2: whether they should be there or not a different question,
Speaker 2: but a lot of them don't like that shit either.
Speaker 2: But you know, so plus do like the National Front,
Speaker 2: even it's early iteration. You know, under Tyndall, it did stand,
Speaker 2: it did contest, it did contest elections, but it viewed
Speaker 2: itself as a vanguardist tendency when it did, uh that
Speaker 2: change really after Tyndall left, they decided they wanted to
Speaker 2: become almost like a mainstream party in some ways, you know,
Speaker 2: and like a mass membership organization. This is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons for the skins of my belief because for
Speaker 2: something like for an organization like that, like that's fatal
Speaker 2: to it. You know, it's not. It's not just that
Speaker 2: you've got to adopt a vanguardist posture if you're in
Speaker 2: the United States or the UK or or the EU
Speaker 2: these days, like an those days, even when there's kind
Speaker 2: of more room to participate in formal processes, you you
Speaker 2: couldn't you couldn't just try and like reinvent yourself as
Speaker 2: kind of like the dissident Tories or something like or it.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't like just just by like sheer value and
Speaker 2: you would be diluted and the into becoming an effectual
Speaker 2: like regardless of the fact that you know, there's not
Speaker 2: there's not real social capital between an organization putting people
Speaker 2: in an organization like a million members or something. But
Speaker 2: any event, and now that was the big thing the
Speaker 2: political Soldier faction. They refuse to stay in for protect
Speaker 2: contest elections, but bringing it to bringing it to bring
Speaker 2: it to the to the Northern Ireland situation and kind
Speaker 2: of how Gladiol which in turn kind of gave rise
Speaker 2: the third position, which in turn impact like an active
Speaker 2: conflict on the ground and weighs unforeseen. This guy named
Speaker 2: Andy Tierry, he was born in Belfast. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a poor family. He sounded like an x x ex
Speaker 2: British Army soldier. He grew up in the loyalist heartland
Speaker 2: on Shango Road, and his family and many others he
Speaker 2: had like uh moved to bally Murphy and then New Barnsley,
Speaker 2: like when his dad needed work, like you know, cause
Speaker 2: among other things. In the late sixties it was like
Speaker 2: a huge recession you know across the UK, but I
Speaker 2: mean Belfast was especially hit hard. And when the troubles
Speaker 2: kept off in sixty nine, the family, uh, they got
Speaker 2: ethnically cleansed, like they're they got attacked. So they go
Speaker 2: back to the shay I go Try is an ancient
Speaker 2: Scottish name, So I'm sure like the Tierries are on
Speaker 2: the shit list of the of the provos, anybody else,
Speaker 2: Like when it first jumped off yet is his roots
Speaker 2: could be traced to the early days of the ulcer plantations.
Speaker 2: I mean this, this guy had like loyalism in his DNA. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's a fact.
Speaker 2: It's just a fact. But so Tierry clicks up with
Speaker 2: the He first clicks up with the UVF. They liked
Speaker 2: him because he was serious and tough, and he was
Speaker 2: literally from the Shanghio Road and his family had been
Speaker 2: attacked by out of the provos or adjacent vigilantes. But
Speaker 2: Tierry looks at the UVF and he's like, you know,
Speaker 2: these guys are like the UVF soul notion first of all,
Speaker 2: I mean it, you know, it was this the second
Speaker 2: iteration which came about in sixty five and in which
Speaker 2: Tierry joined. They were very, very selective. They looked at themselves,
Speaker 2: this direct action element, who's job it was to kill
Speaker 2: the IRA. Like, yes, they dropped a lot of civilian
Speaker 2: bodies too, just to terrorize people. But their idea was
Speaker 2: were not a mass members sportman is, We're not a
Speaker 2: vigilante grouping. You know, we're an elite element. We're a
Speaker 2: counter terrorist element. You know, we we attack the provos
Speaker 2: and we killed them. You know. Tiri's old thing is like,
Speaker 2: look like my family, but my family got murked and
Speaker 2: and like kicked out of our home. You know, we
Speaker 2: we need somebody to protect Protestant areas from this kind
Speaker 2: of thing. Yes, you say, you know what, that's not
Speaker 2: we do. So Tiri joins the UDA. Well, first he
Speaker 2: joined the shankillt Defense Association, And there was a bunch
Speaker 2: of quote defense associations that got set up in Protestant hoods,
Speaker 2: especially in interface areas, and basically they'd organize on like
Speaker 2: quasi military lines, you know, and like vigilantism, whether it's
Speaker 2: here in the American South and whether it's an Ulster,
Speaker 2: that's just like what we do. You know, that's just
Speaker 2: what that's what Ulster Scott do. Okay. As the as
Speaker 2: these defense organizations like started street fighting with their Catholic
Speaker 2: neighbors and and with the provos and and with other elements,
Speaker 2: they start getting coalesced into a single element which became
Speaker 2: the Ulster Defense Association, which at peak I think had
Speaker 2: about fifty thousand members. And UDA's notion they weren't outlawed
Speaker 2: until nineteen ninety two because they incorporated above Board, and
Speaker 2: they said we're a defense organization and like an event
Speaker 2: Dublin intervenes, we're gonna go to the rifle and we're
Speaker 2: going to attack, or an event you know, we get
Speaker 2: sold out by London, we're gonna fight. You know. That
Speaker 2: was their whole deal. And UFF was the current name
Speaker 2: for the direct action element, which was Ulster Freedom Fighters. Okay,
Speaker 2: those are their shooters, that's what they called themselves. And
Speaker 2: they claimed that they weren't the same organization. And a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the provo side as well as
Speaker 2: just kind of observers are critical of how this whole
Speaker 2: thing was handled by the Crown. They say like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, UFF was very much like in part of
Speaker 2: Crown proxy and that's why they just let it do
Speaker 2: each thing. That's not the old It's it's more murky
Speaker 2: than that, okay. Butterierry, he he developed a reputation for
Speaker 2: two things. He was a guy who kind of raised
Speaker 2: hell within the organization for like strongly heterodox ideas, and
Speaker 2: he was he was very very tough, so like the
Speaker 2: men respected him, even though he thought that he was
Speaker 2: kind of spinning off into crazy territory. I said with
Speaker 2: all respect, that's just a fact. He Heerry's kind of
Speaker 2: the zenith of this tendency. In May nine seventy four
Speaker 2: there was the Ulster Workers Council strike and Tierry knew
Speaker 2: a bunch of these guys and like the in the
Speaker 2: Belfast and Ulster wide labor movement because he'd been like
Speaker 2: a shop steward like back in his like days as
Speaker 2: like a factory laborer, you know, So he was he
Speaker 2: was somewhat close to this guy Glenn Barr, who was
Speaker 2: the strike leaders like the UDA. In those days they
Speaker 2: had like a very socialist event you know, and like
Speaker 2: the and like the the worst council strike like basically
Speaker 2: like shut down Belfast. This was still when you know,
Speaker 2: like the UK was an economy relying on national industry.
Speaker 2: There's like really really food barred things. So Tierry got
Speaker 2: this reputation is like this kind of like labor leader
Speaker 2: and like hero the working man like which he was.
Speaker 2: I wasn't cap he was those things, but he also
Speaker 2: was like this like rabid loyalist. So that like raised
Speaker 2: the UDA's profile because like people theretofore have been like
Speaker 2: these guys are just like a munch of like yahou
Speaker 2: vigilantes and killers and like sectarian wacos. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe these guys are like actually like serious people or
Speaker 2: and whether we like them or not, they're gonna have
Speaker 2: like a serious impact on how the crisis resolves in
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland. But Terry, he was a big strass arrist.
Speaker 2: He was like reading the kind of content that like
Speaker 2: the New Order was putting out. He was like reading
Speaker 2: like potical soldier stuff that the National Front was putting out.
Speaker 2: He took out. He started putting out essays and like
Speaker 2: the UDA magazine. But we got a push for an
Speaker 2: independent ulster like Ian Paisley's a bastard, Like fuck these
Speaker 2: politicians who are trying to like piggyback on the fact
Speaker 2: were fighting the war. You know. Tierry famously banned like
Speaker 2: Ian Paisley from like this one UDA meeting, Like he
Speaker 2: physically is like you like pushed them bags, like get
Speaker 2: the fuck out of here. That made a bunch of
Speaker 2: people really upset. They're like, you can't do that. He's
Speaker 2: not gonna do what the fucking want. You know, what
Speaker 2: are you gonna do about it? You know? So maybe
Speaker 2: he had more balls and good sense in some ways,
Speaker 2: but point being This is like when the third position
Speaker 2: like came to Ulster, which at that point was like
Speaker 2: a peaked conflict cycle. Okay, so that's kind of when
Speaker 2: and people started like connecting the dots. I don't like
Speaker 2: mean like you know, like the man in the street.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like academic types and these military sociologists
Speaker 2: and these guys were very much kind of on the
Speaker 2: public affairs and psychological warfare side of special operations. They're like,
Speaker 2: what's happening here, Like maybe this isn't like a great
Speaker 2: thing that this third position off is like spinning off
Speaker 2: from what was a very manageable and constructive, you know,
Speaker 2: missing profile and Gladio and I believe that was the
Speaker 2: earliest stuff that's super critical of Gladio. It kind of
Speaker 2: got it kind of went into circulation again during during
Speaker 2: uh the uh the premiership of of h who's the
Speaker 2: Italian guy who who likes the ladies and dyed his
Speaker 2: hair and like Sconi, Yeah, yeah, he bro Leasconi was
Speaker 2: part of this weird like quasi Mason Lodge that people
Speaker 2: added like a bunch of these guys and like they're
Speaker 2: like two thousand, like oh, that's that's part of Gladio.
Speaker 2: So these kind of info wars type guys and like
Speaker 2: other kind of people like that, they started circling all
Speaker 2: this stuff like Gladio like it's just like this big
Speaker 2: conspiracy like not, and like a lot of the content
Speaker 2: they were dropping about in like the later seventies, as
Speaker 2: people were kind of like saying, like Gladio is a
Speaker 2: is a terrorist tendency and here's why what was happening
Speaker 2: in Belfast. You know, look at these cops got blown
Speaker 2: up in Italy, Like look at all these bad guys.
Speaker 2: Who are you know, they're fascists. They they they got
Speaker 2: crazy ideas. They're sitting around reading reading Stressorus propaganda. That's
Speaker 2: kind of like what brought it into and kind of
Speaker 2: into the into the conscious mind of some of these people.
Speaker 2: And this is this is actually important. You know, It's
Speaker 2: not I realized I got like a strong research interest
Speaker 2: and things and like not in Ireland. But that that that, uh,
Speaker 2: that they that it's significant what we're talking about. And
Speaker 2: you know, like I said too like as it later on, Yeah,
Speaker 2: after Thierry was killed, Uh, you know this kind of
Speaker 2: third force in the loyalist paramilitarism or third way rather
Speaker 2: third position in paramilitarism that kind of endured man. And
Speaker 2: like I said, like I put Billy Wright in the
Speaker 2: camp even though conditions were different. By the time he
Speaker 2: became powerful on the on the street. And uh, but
Speaker 2: this guy, uh Tierri's buddy was this guy named Sammy Duddy.
Speaker 2: And uh one of the there's a there's an there's
Speaker 2: a there's a conflict resolution outreach center in Belfast named
Speaker 2: from Duddy, which is interesting. But he was a guy.
Speaker 2: He's a guy with a reputation, is like a thinker
Speaker 2: in the U d A. And a lot of these
Speaker 2: UDA guys are very committed to their politics. But a
Speaker 2: lot of them are kind of like brawlers and like
Speaker 2: roughnecks and and and like action oriented guys. The other
Speaker 2: kinds of guys were prone to by like discussing political
Speaker 2: theory with you, you know. But you know, uh Tiri
Speaker 2: and uh Duddy absolutely worth those kinds of guys as
Speaker 2: well as being you know, very very very hard dudes.
Speaker 2: But that the uh tiriy Uh he was one of
Speaker 2: the guys who found the quote the new Ulster of
Speaker 2: political research group. They they they became famous or within
Speaker 2: conflict study circles because uh, they published this paper called
Speaker 2: UH Beyond the Beyond the Religious Divide, and it reiterated
Speaker 2: the call for an independent Ulster or at least like
Speaker 2: it devolved a truly devolved UH political structure to be
Speaker 2: implemented and finding some way to make peace with the
Speaker 2: provos and some sort of like organic capacity which was
Speaker 2: really which was really which was really interesting, I think,
Speaker 2: but that uh, you know, he this is this this
Speaker 2: really if you look at people want to know about
Speaker 2: like what the real world impact was of of Gladio
Speaker 2: and whatnot. Like that's I mean, beyond the fact there's
Speaker 2: a series of insane murders in Belgium that people think
Speaker 2: was Gladio adjacent. I don't think that's the case. We
Speaker 2: can talk about that in another I've i think playing
Speaker 2: with the idea of doing some content unlike the big
Speaker 2: like conspiracy theories, like the things that ways, the ones
Speaker 2: that always think are worth addressing, you know, and I
Speaker 2: know it's just like stupid, but that would be the
Speaker 2: time to take up something like that. But that's that's
Speaker 2: basically what I have on Gladio, man. And then like
Speaker 2: it's just like as an addendum or an epilogue, you know,
Speaker 2: this people gotta understand too, you know, the original mandate
Speaker 2: of Special Operations Forces it wasn't to train Navy seals
Speaker 2: to be like direct the action super commandos you know
Speaker 2: who who deployed the landlocked countries and get on target
Speaker 2: of individual guys who are thought to be you know,
Speaker 2: teleban operatives and like penetrate our targets and then kill them.
Speaker 2: That's like not what they were for, Like Special Operations Forces,
Speaker 2: as Kennedy envisioned it as a William Odom who was
Speaker 2: very much big army, but as he you know, he
Speaker 2: had he was he was instrumental in native war planning.
Speaker 2: The way he envisioned in their role in the force structure,
Speaker 2: it was when Warsaw Pact overruns us, we're gonna we're
Speaker 2: gonna parachute or glide in. You guys who like the
Speaker 2: people in theater and talk their language are going to
Speaker 2: click up with these gladiol guys on the ground and
Speaker 2: you're gonna train them on how to do things operationally,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna lead them and you're basically gonna play
Speaker 2: Red Dawn in occupied West Germany or in Italy. Like
Speaker 2: that was the idea. You know, it took time for
Speaker 2: this is gonna develop into a mainstream idea, and like
Speaker 2: by the late eighties, like yeah, that everybody took that
Speaker 2: for granted. But this was viewed as weird and crazy
Speaker 2: and dangerous and shady pretty much by everybody. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the reason it's green Berets like nowadays, like
Speaker 2: the spare punked up of the Army of Special Operations Forces.
Speaker 2: Until the nineties, people like at green Berets as you're
Speaker 2: a weirdo, you like killing people, you're probably a fascist,
Speaker 2: and you're creepy, and you will never get promoted above
Speaker 2: like colonel probably that's not just like something in Rambo movies.
Speaker 2: That was like the way it was okay, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't clear like how in a general war this would
Speaker 2: actually develop because it never you never know when you
Speaker 2: have a novel concept, don't get me wrong, Like this,
Speaker 2: this idea of repecial forces was absolutely correct. That was
Speaker 2: a very forward looking idea and it was a very
Speaker 2: ballsy idea, and it was absolutely the way uh, you know,
Speaker 2: Army Command Europe should have been looking at things. But uh,
Speaker 2: it was not something that people felt comfortable with. And
Speaker 2: of course there was a concern too, like what if
Speaker 2: these guys like go native, which was entirely possible, Okay,
Speaker 2: but that's that's where a lot of this kind of
Speaker 2: strange uh stuff came from. In terms of cap about
Speaker 2: Gladio of being this conspiracy the part it was a
Speaker 2: typical typical lefty stuff about oh, the government is actually
Speaker 2: fascist and doing all these bad things, like the government
Speaker 2: is terrible things. But it's not because they're like secret
Speaker 2: fascists or something, obviously, but the a lot of the
Speaker 2: concern about this kind of stuff, that's where it came from.
Speaker 2: But it did despite the fact that you know, World
Speaker 2: War three never came, there was a direct impact on
Speaker 2: the politics of Europe and even in conflict zones like
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland. And those guys who constituted that the core
Speaker 2: of these tendencies that came up with Gladiol, we they
Speaker 2: are part of what we are. I mean, if if
Speaker 2: you're somebody who you know is finds common cause with me,
Speaker 2: I mean I'm not I'm not speaking for anybody else,
Speaker 2: you know when I say we, you know, so that's
Speaker 2: you've got to know. You've got to know your own heritage,
Speaker 2: not just you know. Uh. In terms of ethnos and
Speaker 2: and and your familiar lore and your your your race
Speaker 2: and your nationality, like you've got to know, like where
Speaker 2: are these ideas that you commit to or come from?
Speaker 2: And that's part of it. I hope that wasn't a
Speaker 2: scattershot like I said, I don't know. I think we
Speaker 2: can wrap up now because I don't frankly have much
Speaker 2: else and I'm not feeling good, so forgive me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not a problem. I have two questions. Yeah, One,
Speaker 1: were you thinking of Mark du trou when you talked
Speaker 1: about the serial killer.
Speaker 2: Or he's he's another one who's also affiliated with that? No,
Speaker 2: these guys in Belgium, they pulled these high incident robberies
Speaker 2: where they'd storm like a grocery store or something like
Speaker 2: not even like a turn of the made set. They'd say,
Speaker 2: this is a robbery. Empty your pockets. Then they take
Speaker 2: like the manager and they them open the safe and
Speaker 2: they take like like like if quoting like three hundred
Speaker 2: dollars or something. Then they'd kill everybody and witnesses and
Speaker 2: see them like loading into this van. And it was
Speaker 2: guys with like glocks and h and k's and stare
Speaker 2: like like military weapons, like wearing gloves who were like
Speaker 2: in shape, and it's like these guys are killing like five,
Speaker 2: they're catching murder liability for five bodies to steal like
Speaker 2: a few hundred dollars. And they did this like six
Speaker 2: or seven times, like they were never identified. But guys
Speaker 2: doing that kind of stuff like got like like three
Speaker 2: to six guys would show up in like military gear
Speaker 2: with like balaklavas or ski masks. This is a robbery.
Speaker 2: No one's gonna get hurt. But then they kill everybody
Speaker 2: and a lot of people like these guys were gladiooperatives,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to scare people. But it's like why
Speaker 2: would they be doing that. It's not like subsequently the
Speaker 2: government of Belgium's like this is martial law. It was
Speaker 2: just like they were doing this and nobody knew why
Speaker 2: the government was being weird about it. Definitely said people
Speaker 2: are like, oh no, they were just training for you know,
Speaker 2: like on target direct the action mission. It's like, that's
Speaker 2: not any train people. And if they're gonna do that,
Speaker 2: you know what you do or what you would do.
Speaker 2: You'd say, this is a tramp house. See if you
Speaker 2: guys can get in there kill everybody and not die,
Speaker 2: Like that's how you do it, you would say there's
Speaker 2: some pensioners and like women and kids shopping for groceries
Speaker 2: like shoot them. Oh, and nobody has any weapons like
Speaker 2: that's not that doesn't make any sense. But I'm not
Speaker 2: feeling well, so I'm having some brain flog. But I'll
Speaker 2: I'll do chows another one though, and that case also
Speaker 2: makes like no sense.
Speaker 1: But all right, well then I'll let you. I'll let
Speaker 1: you get going here. Yeah, just do quick plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, man, thank you, Pete. I've got a lot
Speaker 2: of content in the can from my pod and people
Speaker 2: like my homie Jefferson Lee and like my friend Danna
Speaker 2: they Ramondo. They've been like helping me with all this stuff,
Speaker 2: which is awesome. So there's a lot of fresh stuff
Speaker 2: on my substack where the that's where the podcast is
Speaker 2: and other good stuff. It's real Thomas seven seven seven
Speaker 2: dot substack dot com. I'm on social media at real
Speaker 2: capital r E A L underscore number seven lowercase h
Speaker 2: O M A S seven seven seven. I'm on t
Speaker 2: gram and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: My dear friend HERR Kreig, he puts out like branded
Speaker 2: merse that we make because just like stuff that I
Speaker 2: think it's cool because I'm kind of like a T
Speaker 2: shirt guy and like a closed guy. If you'd include that,
Speaker 2: like in the descriptions. I can never remember like what
Speaker 2: the what the website is, but yeah, that's so where
Speaker 2: I'm at. Then I promise im I'll be better in
Speaker 2: a few days and and forgive me if this wasn't
Speaker 2: up to snuff.
Speaker 1: Man, No, this is all good. This was uh, this
Speaker 1: was good. There was a lot there. Yeah, I'll include
Speaker 1: everything that you you asked.
Speaker 2: All right, that's a great, thank you.
Speaker 1: Hete all right talks. So thanks