Lis­ten now: One Seg­ment

In the late 1960s, 70s and early 80s, Italy expe­ri­enced “the years of lead”- a series of bomb­ings, kid­nap­pings and assas­si­na­tions result­ing from the “Strat­egy of Ten­sion.” The Strat­egy of Ten­sion (intended to desta­bi­lize Italy, drive it to the right and — ulti­mately — restore fas­cism to that coun­try), appears to have been an out­growth of “Oper­a­tion Gladio.” Gladio was the code-name for the Ital­ian ele­ment of a NATO pro­gram called “Oper­a­tion Stay Behind.” This pro­gram was osten­si­bly aimed at set­ting up guer­rilla groups to resist the Com­mu­nists, if they should come to power in Europe. This broad­cast illus­trates that, in launch­ing the ter­ror­ism, the oper­a­tion appears to have pre­cip­i­tated col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ital­ian fas­cist groups and ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence. (Recorded in the fall of 1995.)