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A still very secret world

Cold war, secret army. Stay Behind in Norway
Forfatter: Frode Fanebust
Forlag: Pax Forlag (Norge)
During the Cold War, Stay Behind armies were to be mobilized in Western Europe by a possible Soviet occupation. British and Americans used some of these for other purposes.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Shortly after World War II, several Western European states initiated so-called Stay Behinds – secret armies that would begin to operate only after a possible Soviet occupation. The Stay Behind would operate as resistance groups with their own networks to evacuate royal families and political leaders to the UK (with British Oberon submarines), keep in touch with London and Washington with secret communications equipment and use buried explosives to blast the Occupation Force's control and communication centers. The nights were made up of cells based on the principle need to know: that no one knew the others. The states of Europe were divided into a British and a US area of ​​responsibility.

British request? Already in February 1946, the Minister of Defense and former leader of Milorg Jens Christian Hauge began to work for an occupation preparedness that would become Norway's Stay Behind. Frode Fanebust writes in his new book Cold War, Secret Army: Stay Behind in Norway that Hauge's experience of the war and his ties to the British influenced him. The British – who had initiated Stay Behinds already from 1940 as a result of the fear of a German invasion – described Hauge as his "very best friend in the political environment". The Germans created a Stay Behind network in Italy before the Allied offensive in the spring of 1945. Creating Stay Behinds was something quite natural, but it should not be excluded that Hauge was requested by the British when states with British ties started working with Stay Behinds at about the same time.

Too easy. Fanebust points to problems by studying this secret world. He shows some humility towards his study object, but the book still has weaknesses. His critique of Daniele Gancer's book NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (2005, in Swedish 2016) goes too far and is characterized by a Norwegian political discourse. It is now well-established that the post-war victory forces recruited much of the Nazi and fascist elite, including Stay Behinds. An American intelligence officer, Erhard Dabringhaus, who revealed that the Americans had recruited "the butcher from Lyon" Klaus Barbie, also said that Stay Behinds in West Germany included "800 SS leaders." In Italy, the entire apparatus of the fascists was taken over at the end of the war following an agreement – "Operation Sunrise" – between SS General Karl Wolff and later CIA commander Allen Dulles, then Chief of Defense Lyman Lemnitzer. The Nazi intelligence organization for the Eastern Front, including its chief general Reinhard Gehlen, was included in the CIA and later to the West German intelligence service BND. In Madrid, Adolf Hitler's most faithful Special Forces commander Otto Skorzeny, with ties to the Argentine death squads and Operation Condor with a total of 60 executed (according to the Paraguay terrorist archives), was recruited by the CIA. Stefano delle Chiaie, central to the Rome bombing in 000 and the coup attempt in Italy in 1969, fled with coup leader Junio ​​Valerio Borghese to Skorzeny in Madrid, who had given the CIA support for the coup. Then Delle Chiaie worked for Chile's General Augusto Pinochet with Operation Condor. Together with the "butcher" Barbie he planned the coup in Bolivia in 1970. Borghese, who had also been under the SS command, was recruited by Allen Dulles' husband James Jesus Angleton, later head of the CIA's counter-espionage for 1980 years. Angleton was also fired by the new CIA commander William Colby in 20.

Fanebust leans towards "historians" who rely on documents that may only show one-tenth of reality – the one that can withstand the light of day.

Oral. Frode Fanebust emphasizes William Colby's words, ignoring the fact that there was a much darker CIA, which organized Nazis and fascists and did not trust Social Democrats. These CIA contacts participated directly in organizations of coups, political murders and terrorism. Nor is Colby's story impeccable. As the leader of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, he was responsible for the execution of 30 Vietnamese. When I visited Colby in 000, he used exactly the same words as in the book. What he said and wrote was very conscious; he did not want to reveal any secrets. But he was kind enough to quote me literally on CNN a few days afterwards. Colby's statements were certainly correct, but he told far from the whole truth, and even more problematic will be when Fanebust leans against official "historians" who rely on downgraded documents that may only show one-tenth of reality – and only one that is pretty enough to withstand the light of day. Defense Secretary and NATO Military Committee leader in the 1989s, General Herman Zeiner Gundersen, explained to me that as something is written down on paper, it is no longer secret, as the paper can always be leaked to a journalist. The most sensitive information is only transmitted orally. It is positive that Fanebust has spoken to people such as opponent Svein Blindheim, who apparently did not want to let their experiences go into oblivion.

Anarchists were blamed. Ganser refers to former chief of Italian Stay Behind, General Gerardo Serravalle, who had to intervene in Italian domestic policy to obtain funding from the CIA. In the lawsuit against terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra of the fascist group Ordine Nuovo, Serravalle said all his cells were built up after need to knowprinciple. No one knew what the organization looked like – but Vinciguerra described it in detail in the courtroom. Serravalle thought there had to be a parallel network that he, as the boss, was not informed about. This network, with members of Ordine Nuovo, was responsible for several bombings, including in Milan 1969, where the anarchists were blamed. The head of counter-espionage, General Gianadelio Maletti, said in a court case in 2001 that the explosives for the bomb attack were delivered by the Americans from a warehouse in West Germany. The operation was American, he claimed. An Italian CIA agent, Carlo Digilio, said in the same lawsuit that he had trained Ordine Nuovo to use explosives. Fanebust's criticism of Ganser disregards this information.

The then US Defense Secretary, General Lyman Lemnitzer, suggested that US forces launch a terrorist campaign with bomb attacks in US cities to blame Cuba.

Under the surface. I asked a former head of Norwegian intelligence if the Americans had a parallel network in Norway, which he would not exclude. Colby also confirmed that Americans may have created such a network in some of the Scandinavian countries. A Norwegian I myself had contacted told me that he had belonged to a group that performed operations for the Americans in the 70s, including at Kola from Northern Finland. He thought the Norwegian authorities were responsible but did not know for sure. You are right to be humble to this world. There may have been several secret networks that we know nothing about today. This secret world is still very secret.

In a 1962 document, then-US Secretary of Defense General Lyman Lemnitzer suggested that US forces launch a terrorist campaign with bomb attacks in American cities to blame Cuba. This was to legitimize an American war against the country. President John F. Kennedy accepted neither the war nor the terrorist campaign and fired Lemnitzer as the chief of defense. In 1963 Lemnitzer instead became NATO's Supreme Commander for Europe (Supreme Allied Commander Europe), thereby chairing the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) meetings that planned operations and exercises for the European Stay Behinds. At the same time, Bill Harvey – Dulles and Angleton's husband – became the CIA station commander in Rome. In 1964, he asked Colonel Renzo Rocca to use his Stay Behinds for a terrorist campaign in Italy and blamed the Socialist Left for putting an end to cooperation between the Socialist Party and Christian Democrats, something that President Kennedy had already given the green light to. Italian terrorism from the late 60s was intended to stop Prime Minister Aldo Moro's "historic compromise" between Christian Democrats and an already more Social Democratic Communist Party. Such a compromise was seen as unacceptable in Washington.

Nothing on paper. The fact that the Americans from Operation Sunrise in 1945, Dulles and Lemnitzer, opened an agreement between victory forces and the losing armies, recruited Nazis and fascists to the CIA, proposed coups and terrorist campaigns and from 1964 sought to initiate such campaigns in Italy must take Ganser's work more seriously than Fanebust does. Fanebust emphasizes the Clandestine Planning Committee, but does not mention the equally important Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). Former head of German BND, Wolbert Smidt with experience from both of these committees, told an intelligence seminar in 2005 (at the Department of Defense Studies) that the key difference between CPC and ACC was that the neutral states were also in the ACC, but this was so sensitive that the Swedish Cold War investigation did not dare to address it. At a dinner with US Secretary of Defense, General John Vessey, he told me that "when it comes to Sweden, there was only one rule: 'Nothing on paper'".

Fanebust writes It is quite true that conditions were very different in Europe. The Nordic countries never had terrorist campaigns like Italy, Belgium, West Germany and Turkey. But there are examples that run counter to Fanebust's version. MI6's station manager in Oslo in the late 80s, John Venning, then asked Norwegian stay behavior manager Finn Horvei to find someone to break into a Norwegian weapons store to smuggle weapons to the IRA terrorist group in Northern Ireland. Horvei contacted a UN criminal in the Middle East, Espen Lie, but Lie could not keep up. Chief of Intelligence Major General Alf Roar Berg confronted Horvei with this, but Horvei refused. When the relationship was later confirmed, Horvei had to accept a position at the Norwegian Defense College. The matter has already been addressed in the book The Secret Army of Norway – The Story of Stay Behind (Time, 1995) by Finn Seven and Ronald Bye. Whether MI6 wanted to smuggle weapons to infiltrate the IRA, control weapons for the IRA or discredit the IRA in the media (for the burglary), I do not know, but that Norwegian Stay Behind sought to support terrorists with weapons as a friend service to the British is a fact. The action was stopped only because it was leaked to the media. Fanebust has made an ambitious attempt, but you should read Ganser's book first and foremost.

In important questions, Fanebust has chosen to overlook essential facts.

 

Ola Tunander
Ola Tunander
Tunander is Professor Emeritus of PRIO. See also wikipedia, at PRIO: , as well as a bibliography on Waterstone

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