Gladio, NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis

PLEASE NOTE: PER ITS CUSTOMER REVIEW POLICY, AMAZON EDITORS HAVE REMOVED THE RELEVANT URL'S THAT I PROVIDED TO SOURCE MATERIAL AND REPLACED THEM WITH "[...]".As someone who shares many fundamental elements of Cottrell's worldview, I found this book a great disappointment. Those who do not already understand the topics that he discusses will be immediately repelled from it, and for the best of reasons. Someone like me who wants to learn more of the core details of state-controlled and state-sponsored terrorism used as the pretext to justify seizure of ever more of our civil liberties finds little more than bombastic opinion.Cottrell's "writing" sounds like his gabbing to a pal on the phone who then has his precious words transcribed and published largely as is. The "analysis" offered varies between adolescent name-calling and Hollywood gossip-column potshots with rarely if ever a coherent historical narrative. In a book that cries out for reliable sources and citations of bold claims, there are few if any. This might not be so bad if at least the book had its facts right, but it often does not. Thus a newcomer to this essential area of history will be put-off and likely offended, equating the immaturity of style with a fatuity of its claims.Readers interested in understanding the general topic of the modern "democratic" nation-state as a criminal enterprise that is busy up to its eyeballs in domestic covert ops, including state-sponsored domestic and also international terrorism, can learn a great deal more from the following three books and one movie: James W. Douglass, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters"; Philip Willan, "Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terror in Italy"; Daniele Ganser, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe," and Alan Francovich "The Maltese Double-Cross" (film documentary on the CIA's control over the bombing of Pan Am 103 Lockerbie). I cannot recommend a best single source on the most dramatic act of terrorism ever conceived and executed outside of open warfare, September 11, 2001 - the event that changed the world as we know it - a bogeyman and touchstone to be discussed at essay's end.Cottrell typically offers bad hunches instead of actual history. Referencing the Bay of Pigs invasion, "[Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman] Lemnitzer had more than a shrewd idea Zapata was doomed, but did nothing to halt it even though he had enough opportunities. ...[and the JCS were mistaken about Bay of Pigs because] the joint chiefs [and] the CIA, force-fed with worthless intelligence peddled by the Florida mob hankering after bordellos, had no sensible grasp of the risks involved in putting ashore an inexperienced bunch of mercenaries against toughened defenders." (p.94). FACTS: BoP was a CIA, not a Pentagon, operation over which the Pentagon did not have veto authority. Kennedy understood that the CIA had framed him either to failure or to capitulate to direct military intervention - which he had repeatedly expressly forbidden beforehand - and formed the D.I.A. in response to the BoP fiasco to provide the Pentagon with more oversight of such missions. The CIA's Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell understood perfectly that the BoP operation was doomed to failure without direct U.S. military intervention. Their plan was to use the crisis created by the failing invasion to extract permission for direct US military intervention from Kennedy despite his earlier prohibitions against it. (See "Unspeakable;" see Peter Grose, "Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles," 1994 wherein Dulles' diary admits this plan, pp. 521-522, in light of which read Bissell's obvious dissembling in Evan Thomas, "The Very Best Men," 1995, Chpt. "Invasion." Lemnitzer had precisely the same motivation, as Cottrell himself correctly infers (p.94). Cottrell all but pins the responsibility for Kennedy's assassination on Lemnitzer, whereas a mature historian such as Douglass explicitly states that Lemnitzer was only one of a chorus in the National Security State determined to take out Kennedy.The Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Cottrell, was "sparked off" by the US-based Jupiter missiles in Turkey (p.99) because Khrushchev decided to use them as a political ploy to keep himself in office. It was:"The old standby of an international crisis was thus fabricated, with the aim of forcing American Jupiter missiles out of Turkey. The stage was set for Red October 1962." (p.101) COMMENT: Cottrell must be the only geopolitical analyst oblivious of the fact that the US had ongoing plans to invade Cuba - even though he alludes to it elsewhere with Northwoods, et. al. He ignores the obvious fact that the USSR had installed the missiles to protect Cuba from invasion, not so Khrushchev could "fabricate a crisis." Indeed, one of the conditions to which Kennedy agreed in order for Khrushchev to withdraw missiles from Cuba was a promise that the U.S. would not invade the island, a promise kept even by the hard-liners after they disposed of Kennedy. Furthermore, the crisis was quite real and almost resulted in nuclear war as USSR field commanders had direct control of, and authority to use, tactical nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the Missile Crisis led to Khrushchev's downfall in the Kremlin because his own military hard-liners thought him too soft in backing down from Kennedy. As Khruschev wrote 1970 in "Khrushchev Remembers," he conciliated after a direct plea from Robert Kennedy that JFK might be overthrown by his generals and that then, with the generals in charge, the situation "could get out of control." (p.498)Throughout, readers should compare a deep and thoughtful account of the moral dimensions of such men as Kennedy - and even his enemies - as provided in "Unspeakable" with the cartoonish and clownish descriptions of almost all the actors in "Gladio."Too much of the book is slapdash nonsense. I have no doubt that Breivik's supposed "lone wolf" terrorism in Norway was Gladio-style state crafted terrorism, but Cottrell's clumsiness makes him (and the rest of us) appear to be "conspiracy nuts." Thus, of the Breivik Oslo bombing, Cottrell states "If the bomb exploded at ground level, we should expect to see some kind of signature crater, conspicuous by its absence." (p. 425) FACT: Photos of the huge crater caused by the bomb are available online, e.g., at the DailyMail online in the UK. [...] When Cottrell makes such glaring core mistakes like this, one is left wondering at every other un-sourced claim he makes whether it happens to be true or whether he pulled it out of his hat?Even when Cottrell has something nice to say, he can't get his facts in order, as when he praises Philip Agee for his "whistle-blowing epic 'Beyond Hope'." COMMENT: Agee wrote no such book, but his famous whistle-blowing books are "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," and "On the Run." Perhaps his tongue confused Agee's work with William Blum's "Killing Hope." Cottrell can't even describe Operation Northwoods correctly as when he carelessly mixes parts from several different operations, for example, falsely claiming that "It called for the hijacking of a US passenger jet by special forces disguised as Cuban agents" (p.85).The problem is that Cottrell thinks with his gossip-mongering mouth moving and memorializes the result in print regardless of the facts. Cottrell has received extravagant praise from reviewer Madison Ruppert on whose website Cottrell posts his articles. In two such articles - see urls below - he attacks NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a mole and also a "Manchurian Candidate" although one cannot be both, since the latter is an individual completely brainwashed and under CIA control unbeknownst to even himself. Worse, amongst his detailed points proving that Snowden is dirty, Cottrell offers on June 28, 2013 "Fourth. He got on a plane to Russia without a visa. I have been to Russia many, many times and I can tell you that is an impossible feat without real inside connections." As anyone who reads newspapers knows, Fidel Narváez Narváez, the Ecuadorean consul in London, issued a typed but unsigned safe passage document - a temporary visa - that allowed Snowden to travel to the Russian airport. This safe passage document had unfortunately been issued by Narvaez with urging from Julian Assange in London but without permission of Quito. President Rafael Correa -- who would have to take the heat for such a move and who needed to pave the way for it politically before it was issued -- subsequently declared it had no authority. Perhaps Hong Kong, eager to be relieved of Snowden, allowed him to leave using the unsigned document, but Russia could not so easily do so. Snowden then became stuck in the Russian airport transit area when the U.S. revoked his passport. The Ecuadorian document was published online two days before Cottrell's attack piece; Smearing someone who is likely a genuine hero because you are too lazy or self-important to get the facts right does not seem like good sport. Sorting out just who did what and why in these matters is hard work, and unfortunately Cottrell lacks both the temperament and the skills for doing so. One can only hope that so much of his foolish output is at least sincere. (See Cottrell's "Edward Snowden's Flying Circus: Quite the maddest show on Earth" and "Edward Snowden: the Manchurian Candidate") [...]Unfortunately, what Cottrell says, and more importantly fails to say, about 9/11 gives profound pause. There is not a single word about it, let alone what he believes of it, in his expansive introduction, "Lambs to Slaughter," pp.6-31, even though according to him "Era Two" of Gladio "led to the demonization of the Muslim minority in Europe." (p.31, note "Europe," not "USA") A book on state terror may not need to address 9/11, but if not it needs to say why not, since 9/11 remains the most spectacular (non-overtly-military) act of terror to date. Cottrell includes "The London Bombings" by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed in his bibliography, but omits Ahmed's two books on 9/11: "War on Freedom" and "War on Truth." Because he is a supposed master of Italy's Gladio History, one waits to learn what he will make of Gladio participant and Italy's ex-President Francesco Cossiga's public statement that 9/11 was a joint CIA-Mossad-Zionist operation. Buried in an endnote he offers:"On November 2007, he [Cossiga] puzzled many Italians with remarks in Corriere della Sera that 9/11 was planned and carried out by the CIA, in conjunction with Israel's Mossad, in order to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, inferring that Italian intelligence knew this." Actually, a more accurate translation has Cossiga stating "...all of the democratic countries of the Americas and of Europe, especially the Italian centre-left, are now well aware that these cataclysmic attacks were planned and carried out by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world..." But what if anything does Cottrell have to say about 9/11? For obvious reasons, I have not read this book in its entirety, so if I do him an injustice, perhaps some better informed reader will politely correct me in a comment that cites exactly where he says otherwise. The only reference that I found suggesting Cottrell's own opinion about 9/11 is fn. 31 on p.158. Referring to Texas congressman Charlie Wilson's privatized support for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the USSR, Cottrell writes, "The [movie "Charlie Wilson's War" shows] how his private-enterprise efforts to aid rebels fighting Russian invaders turned into the classic blowback, with unforeseen and long-reaching effects." I have not seen the movie nor read the book but a 2/11/2010 article by HDS Greenway titled "Opinion: Charlie Wilson's war and the politics of blowback" says what I take Cottrell to mean:"In CIA-speak, the 30-year war represents the greatest and most devastating example of `blowback' in the agency's history. Blowback is the unintended consequence of an operation that turns around and savages its handlers. [The USA could have accomplished its goals by collaborating with moderates rather than Islamist fundamentalists, but did not, thus....] ... the inspired efforts of the United States and Pakistan to arm and train a resistance to the Soviet Union's grab of Afghanistan led inexorably to 9/11 and the 'Forever War,' as Dexter Filkins so aptly named the current struggle."Thus, at the end of the day, what we seem to learn from Cottrell is that unlike every other one of the major acts of terrorism that he discusses from London 7/7 to the Madrid train bombings, 9/11 is largely as the Official Story claims, though perhaps with room for a LIHOP (letting it happen on purpose) interpretation. Although I remain an admirer of Sibel Edmonds, one of the braver 9/11 whistle-blowers, who openly espouses a LIHOP account of 9/11 by "elements of our government" and believe her to be perfectly sincere, it is difficult to attribute the same sincerity to someone with Cottrell's background who understands in much greater depth than Edmonds just how much state machinery and coordination can be brought to bear in secret to accomplish a domestic covert operation on the scale of 9/11. My own writings on the topic may be found online amongst the essays at Jim Hoffman's websites, "9-11 Research" and "9-11 Review," [...] but suffice it to say that 9/11 involved the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and Building 7 as well as the coordination of resources to accomplish this grand piece of theater as well as to keep it secret before it occurred and to facilitate the public's unwillingness to understand it after it occurred. On the matter of controlled demolition, I stand with such 9/11 researchers as Jim Hoffman, Steven Jones, Richard Gage, and David Chandler. Controlled demolition takes nothing away from the parts of the 9/11 narrative told by whistle-blowers like Edmonds, FBI agents Colleen Rowley and Robert G. Wright, Army Intelligence Lt. Colonel Anthony Schaffer (Able Danger), or J.P. Morgan risk architect Indira Singh (who exposed P-tech as a CIA proprietary), but it puts these narratives in perspective, and rids us of the foolish thought that "if only" so-and-so had done such-and-such or told so-and-so thus-and-such, 9/11 could have been stopped.

This well researched and heavily documented book ties together the decades of "Red" terrorist actions in Europe, their modern Islamic-branded successors, and the common thread of the presence and involvement of NATO. Cottrell examines the art and science of false flag attacks on civilian populations to maintain a constant cultural climate of fear and willingness of ordinary people to surrender their civil rights in exchange for security. He also reveals how these operations were well rehearsed in Europe before Americans ever heard of the War on Terror. Common ingredients for a successful false flag operation--state surveillance of civilians, secret paramilitary forces on standby (or often conducting "anti-terrorism" drills that coincide with the actual terror event), compliant mass media that broadcast the official state story line and corrupted justice systems--are available in all the NATO countries and, some would say, in the U.S.A. The facts that several Amazon reviews of this book seem to be polemical hatchet jobs and the astronomical used prices quoted for a book that is still in print suggest that there are powers that would rather we don't read this book.

This is a poor example of a Kindle book with scholarly pretensions. The Table of Contents and Index are non-functional, lacking links to the text. I tried putting in bookmarks for chapter locations, at least, but sometimes I can't find the list. The only way to read the book seriously is on Kindle Reader, where the table of contents works and you can get at bookmarks and other notes through the Notebook button. The only way to use the index is to find it (Location 11596) bookmark it, use Notebook to go to the bookmark (which you should make sure stays at the bottom of the notes for ease of finding it), page through the index to find your term, use Search | Go to | Page and then search yourself on the page for the indexed term. Crappy! I give the book a 3 based on this and editing problems I noticed. Once I can read it in Kindle Reader (carrying around my laptop, since my Kindle is so problematic for reading it) I suspect I'll raise the book to a 4 based on its promising text--unless I'm too irritated by the difficulty of it all.

The story of how the North Atlantic alliance used fascist fugitives, Nazi collaborators and criminal gangs to carry out terrorist acts during the Cold War needs to be told. However, Richard Cottrell's narrative as presented in Gladio NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe is scattered at best. As much as Cottrell brings some gravitas to a topic that is the domain of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists, New World Order fanatics or other weirdos, this book could have been edited in a more topical or geographical manner, say, the crimes in Greece, the bombings in Italy, the weirdness of Belgium, or the fact that this stuff is now no longer the province of kooks but has been investigated and people have been sent to prison for these crimes. There is another book on this topic, but it is very academic and somewhat expensive, but might be a better source, that is Danielle Ganser's Secret Armies book. However, this book is more accessible than Ganser's.

The four stars are for the authour who is considered to be a well-respected journalist. Other than that, for those of you who may suffer from insomnia, this is a great book. Two or three page will have you out in no time. Despite the fact that Mr Cottrell is a great researcher, I found the book to be tedious and boring. I put it aside after three chapters. For those of you who enjoy laborious exercises in the reading of lengthy manuscripts​, I highly recommend this work.

I love the writing style of the author. I wish he'd write more books of this style, ie investigative style. Although he doesn't tend to cite some of his sources, if you're in the know, as I am, the book makes for a very interesting read. In essence, NATO is portrayed as the scourge of the world this side of WWII onwards....and for a reason! Thought provoking read.

Awesome exposes the complicity of NATO and EU countries in false flag terrorism, deep state activities. If you really want to understand what you get for your democracy read this ASAP>

Read this and you'll never look at the War on Terror, your government or NATO in the same way ever again. This is well-argued with numerous instances of wrong-doing, proving that our rulers are not the benevolent force they publicly claim to be.

If you're going to have a conspiracy theory, have a sterling one. If you saw the documentary Gladio, many years ago, and were intrigued and nebulously worried, you need this to turn those worries solid.Hefty book of serious import. Make of it what you will.

Puts together a sensible and coherent expose of the secret world and its war on ordinary people.Fascinating and entertaining too!