Clay Shaw in Italy: Amid Permindex and Gladio
Back in 1992, when I initially went to New Orleans, I interviewed some of Clay Shaw’s remaining family and friends. One of the things that was repeated to me was that he liked to travel; it was not just part of his job as a businessman and as the face of the International Trade Mart. We know about some of these journeys through declassified records. For instance, Shaw filed reports with the CIA from various countries in Europe and Latin America: Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Czechoslovakia. (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, pp. 198-99)
But further, Shaw was such a valued asset that the Agency gave him what was called a “Y” number. Shaw’s reports under that rubric include “Observations on International Fairs at Milan, Brussels, Basel, Paris and London/Comments on Western European Economics and Desire to Trade with the Soviet Bloc.” (Davy, p. 199). These journeys explain why Shaw frequented the VIP room of Eastern Air Lines and used his alias of Clay Bertrand to sign in there. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 278)
But from these relatives, I understood that Shaw’s favorite countries in Europe were England, and even more so, Italy. Shaw was likely introduced to Britain during his service in World War II. (Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy, p. 76) But it is clear through Anthony Frewin--writing under the pen name Anthony Edward Weeks-- that Shaw still held British contacts after the war. One of the pieces of evidence that DA Jim Garrison recovered from Shaw’s home was his address book. Since Frewin lives in England, he began to look up some of these persons and penned a 12-page article on the subject. He wrote that the first thing that struck him about the address book was that Shaw’s British contacts all lived in the best, most expensive areas, e.g., Belgravia, Mayfair, Kensington, etc. (see Lobster, No. 20) On a phone call I had with the author, he stated, this guy was not Joe Sixpack. As we shall see, that is an understatement.
About Shaw’s visits to Italy, the FBI seems to have understood that they were not just social. As the Garrison investigation discovered through an acquaintance of Bureau official Regis Kennedy, “Shaw was a CIA agent who had done work, of an unspecified nature, over a five-year span in Italy.” (Davy, p. 100) As William Davy comments, this almost has to be in reference to Shaw’s service with Permindex/Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Rome. As Davy suggested, this is fascinating, and not just because of Permindex itself. But because one of the main organizers of that business group was Ferenc Nagy, the former prime minister of Hungary. Nagy fled Hungary due to a leftist overthrow in 1947. From the USA, he then became a backer of the Hungarian anti-communist émigré community.
But Nagy was also a friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a former Governor-General of Algeria under Charles de Gaulle. But he split with the French president over the issue of independence for Algeria. Soustelle became a backer of the OAS, the rebel military group that tried to both assassinate and overthrow de Gaulle over the independence movement in Algeria, which Soustelle opposed. There is very little doubt that Soustelle had implicit backing from the CIA on this issue. (Davy, p. 99; James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, pp. 99-100) And, as we shall see, Soustelle figures into the whole Permindex black op backdrop.
There is another connection with Permindex and Shaw, which is important to note in advance. It was not revealed until 2003, perhaps as one of the Assassination Record Review Board’s (ARRB) delayed declassifications. An Agency document dated from June 28, 1978 described Clay Shaw’s service to CIA as encompassing from 1949-72. That document made reference to a claim “that CIA used Shaw for service in Italy with U.S. agent Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield.” Shaw’s part is described as making connections with political circles and the business world in Rome, and also with developing relationships with extreme rightwing groups. As we shall see, this was accomplished, and the Canadian high-powered lawyer Bloomfield was an integral part of it. (Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 389)
II
Since 1948, Italy had been a high priority for the then-nascent Central Intelligence Agency. In fact, it was the subject of the first National Security Council meeting in late 1947. (John Ranelagh, The Agency, p. 115) Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was concerned about a communist victory in the 1948 Italian elections. Therefore, a directive was issued initiating propaganda and psychological warfare activities to marginalize the leftist parties and promote the Christian Democrats as a bulwark against them. Both the CIA and the State Department participated in this campaign. It was implemented through both the Agency’s Office of Special Operations and, according to Christopher Simpson’s book Blowback, also through the law offices of Sullivan and Cromwell. The latter being the home of the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen. At that location, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, James Angleton, Bill Colby and others went to work supervising the rigging of the vote.
There was a real possibility that the Italian communists and their allies would win the 1948 elections outright. Which meant they would have a foothold in Western Europe. (Simpson, pp. 89-90) For obvious reasons, this possibility was also a nightmare for the Vatican: to have Godless communism in your own backyard? As Bishop James Griffiths, an American emissary to the Vatican, wrote, they feared a “disastrous failure at the polls which will put Italy behind the Iron Curtain.” (Simpson, p. 90) According to Simpson, the CIA laundered ten million dollars to give directly to the Vatican for anti-communist agitation purposes. This was only one part of an enormous 350 million dollar overall total for the American crusade in Italy.
This fear and this expenditure were justified to these Cold Warriors because in 1946, the Italian Communist party—at that time the largest in the world outside of Russia—and the Socialists had actually outpolled the Christian Democrats for the Constituent Assembly. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 23). But because they were separate parties, they had to settle for a coalition government under a Christian Democrat premier. In 1947, a party of American congressmen stopped off in Italy and announced the theme of the upcoming election:
The country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization. (Blum, p. 24)
The two leftist parties were going to unite in 1948 to form the Popular Democratic Front (FDP), and early in the year had won local elections in Pescara, defeating the Christian Democrats. As Bill Colby later wrote:
It was primarily this fear that led to the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination which gave the CIA the capability to undertake covert political propaganda and paramilitary operations in the first place. (Blum, p 25)
This is how important these elections seemed to Washington. Because there was a question in the CIA Director’s mind about legality, the forming of a new department was created to do such missions in the future. And this had both presidential and congressional permission. (Ranelagh, p. 115)
James Angleton also had a special interest in Italy. His father, who had business in the National Cash Register company, moved his family there when Jim was fourteen. Hugh Angleton was a colonel in the OSS during the war. An operations officer, Max Corvo, said of Hugh’s politics, “He was ultra-conservative, a sympathizer with Fascist officials. He was certainly not unfriendly with the Fascists.” (Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, p. 33) Hugh sent his son to England to get a boarding school education. During the war, young Angleton started out in the army and was then switched over to the OSS and stationed in London to handle the Italy desk. (ibid., p. 38) He was transferred to Rome in 1944 and made chief of counter-intelligence for the entire country. By all accounts, Angleton liked Italy and stayed there until the end of 1947. When he returned to the USA, he got a high position in the newly birthed CIA. (ibid., p. 44)
III
One of the things that Angleton did before he left Italy is important to note for our subject at hand. He and Junio Valerio Borghese organized what was called ‘Stay-behind’ units in Italy. (Paul L. Williams, Operation Gladio, p. 15) Borghese was a Navy commander during Mussolini’s reign and fought alongside the Nazis against the Allies. By most accounts, he should have been imprisoned for war crimes. But Angleton secured his release into US Army custody. He dressed The Black Prince in an American uniform and shipped him from Milan to Rome. As Paul Williams wrote:
Angleton needed Borghese and the 10, 267 fascists who fought under his command to help establish the stay-behind units that would ward off any Soviet aggression. (Williams, p. 28)
Angleton got Borghese off with about three years of preventive detention. He wanted The Black Prince to “lead a shadow government, along with a secret army that could manipulate Italian affairs throughout the coming decades.” (ibid) The State Department passed an edict which gave Angleton control over the police, military intelligence and the Italian secret services.
With this power, Borghese was now running the newly formed Gladio forces in Italy, under sectors entitled sabotage, espionage, propaganda, escape tactics and guerrilla warfare. In addition, a training camp for the stay behind units was constructed on the island of Sardinia. This camp was not just for the Italian Gladio trainees but those from Germany, France and Austria. They were sent there by former Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen. (ibid., p. 29) As Angleton had rescued Borghese from post-war justice, Allen Dulles had saved Gehlen. The two war criminals were now in business together. They had lost the war, but—through Angleton and Dulles—they had won the peace. Very soon, there were to be hundreds of these Gladio units infiltrated into Western Europe.
They were not just a contingent military force, but as with Borghese, a potent political one. Borghese joined the MSI (Italian Social Movement), a neo-fascist party that was largely made up of former supporters of Mussolini. But that was not reactionary enough for him. He later formed the Fronte Nazionale (National Front), which wished to abolish parties and trade unions, and was much more devoted to a quasi-military state. (Philip Willan, Puppetmasters, pp. 93-94)
He was hardly alone in this belief. There was also Stefano Delle Chiaie, founder of National Vanguard. That group also wished to work outside the political system to subvert democracy to the point that Italy would return to fascism. And it was not just in Italy; his group carried out bombings and killings in both Spain and Chile. (Williams, p. 112)
These rightwing groups were so powerful and well-organized that they encouraged two coups in six years. The first, in 1964, was called Piano Solo. The previous year, the communists had arranged a large labor rally and, undercover as police, Gladio members smashed it, injuring 200. (Williams, p. 74) As a result, General Giovanni DeLorenzo, assisted by 20 other senior army officers—along with CIA station chief William Harvey, military attache Vernon Walthers, plus the director of Gladio--planned an overthrow which included National Vanguard and the Mafia. Piano Solo was to conclude with the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the installation of a handpicked Christian Democrat as president. It included extensive surveillance and the rounding up of leftwing activists and their imprisonment at a concentration camp in Sardinia. (Wilian, Puppetmasters, p.35) The coup did not proceed since Moro created a compromise between the socialists and Christian Democrats, plus President Segni—who was in on the planning—sustained a cerebral hemorrhage which forced his resignation. (Williams, pp. 74-75)
IV
The timing of all this, the huge communist demonstration and the crackdown, can probably be attributed to President Kennedy’s breaking of Dwight Eisenhower’s Italy policy. The idea for funding the Christian Democrats was to defeat the left; so obviously, that policy did not include making the socialists or communists part of the Christian Democratic government. At the urging of Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy was advocating for a policy of apertura, that is, an opening to the left. Schlesinger thought that by including the socialists in the government, one could split them off from the communists. Kennedy thought this was a good idea. So, in his 1963 visit to Italy, he decided to advocate the policy change. (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pp. 464-68)
Both Angleton and former ambassador Clare Booth Luce strongly opposed it. Luce wrote JFK an over-the-top letter, and Angleton spread rumors that Schlesinger was a Soviet agent. CIA officer William Harvey also opposed it and recommended ways to defeat it. Richard Nixon also opposed it. (Michele Metta, CMC: The Undercover CIA and Mossad Station, pp. 40-41) Kennedy ignored this. On his trip to Italy, he talked to the Socialist leader, Pietro Nenni, directly. After which Nenni clasped his wife and started weeping with joy. By the end of the year, apertura was made policy. It was this violation of tradition which likely caused the attempted coup in 1964.
The second coup attempt was in 1970. It was led by Angleton’s favorite son, Borghese. It was supported by Delle Chiaie’s group and over 200 forest guards who arrived in coaches near Rome. Borghese thought he had support from three army regiments, the police and the Air Force. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 91) Also, the plotters had met with the CIA and had financing from a Swiss company in advance.
The Black Prince was so confident of success that he had his speech already planned and, of all things, he was going to back Italy’s intervention in Vietnam! Why? Because Borghese had established contact with President Nixon and with NATO units in Malta to implement the overthrow. One of the connecting points was a man named Pier Talenti, who had worked for Nixon since 1968 and had an estate and business in Italy. Angleton arrived in the country before the coup, and he left shortly after it was aborted. (Willan, Puppetmasters, pp 117-18) In fact, NATO ships were warmed up and ready to go. What went wrong was that the planned call to Nixon was not passed on from Malta. (ibid., p. 93) Another problem was that when the coup did not go as planned, Soviet ships entered the Mediterranean. (Ibid., p. 97)
In addition to the attempted coups, Gladio’s so-called “strategy of tension” also included a series of bombings. The first one was in December of 1969 in Milan’s Piazza Fontana. Seventeen people were killed and eighty-eight were injured. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 123) That same afternoon, three other bombs exploded in Rome, killing fourteen. These bombings went on until the early eighties. The most famous one was the Bologna railway station bombing of 1980, where 73 people were killed and over 200 were injured. Collectively, these were known as the Years of Lead. As time went on, they were discovered to be false flag operations. That is, they were investigated originally as leftist plots but later discovered to be done by neo-fascist groups with support from the CIA. The idea was to destabilize the country out of Kennedy’s centrist/left coalition to a centrist/right one.
V
After Borghese’s failed coup, he fled to Spain. He passed away there in 1974. Many years ago, I noted an entry in Clay Shaw’s address book to a Princess Marcella Borghese, who had married into the Borghese family. In my very early investigation of Shaw, this was one of the first hints that he was not the Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal that he proclaimed himself to be. (Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy, p. 211) Another was the fact that he scrubbed his Who’s Who in the Southwest entry after either 1963 or 1964. Up until that time, his name appeared regularly. In those prior entries, he was listed as a member of the Board of Directors of Permindex. The exposure of Permindex would also have undermined his self-proclaimed liberal pose. Because Permindex and its offspring, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, appear to be a part of Gladio and this stay behind network in Italy. Shaw seemed interested in concealing this association.
And for good reason. At that time, this network was so hidden and such a taboo subject that people literally lost their lives over revealing its scope and power. For example, Mino Pecorelli was an offbeat but insightful journalist in Italy in the sixties and seventies. He had some valuable sources inside “the underground state and secret services.” (Richard Cottrell, Gladio, p. 75). His stories about Gladio and its relationship to the kidnapping and eventual murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro clearly hinted at a connection between the two. Pecorelli was even in receipt of some letters Moro wrote his family while in captivity. Mino hinted that, behind the Moro kidnapping stood a “lucid superpower”, clearly hinting at the USA. He also noted that it was interesting that the State Department sent over a Deputy Secretary to advise the Italian government not to negotiate for Moro’s release. He also indicated a connection between Gladio and the Moro death. Shortly thereafter, he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting near his office in Rome. (Ibid) Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti was implicated in his murder. He was first found guilty, then acquitted on appeal. (Richard Cottrell, Gladio, p. 78)
Aldo Moro was a natural target of the stay-behind operations. Why? Because it was he who forged Kennedy’s left/center coalition back in 1963. (Talbot, p. 468). But what made Moro even more dangerous to the Gladio network was that, in the seventies, he was going to widen the window even more. He was going to include the communists, or PCI, in his government. In fact, in a visit to the USA, Henry Kissinger harangued him for advocating this policy, plus the fact that he leaned toward the Arabs in the Middle East dispute. It got so bad that Moro foreshortened his visit. Kissinger then slipped a story about it to the New York Times, warning that Italy could go communist. Senator Henry Jackson warned that if Moro did this, Italy would be kicked out of NATO. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 220-21; see also Williams, p. 103)
After he was kidnapped and held in captivity for 55 days, some of the things he said during his so-called trial at the hands of the Red Brigades leaked out. He reportedly said that the strategy of tension was foreign-inspired but implemented with the help of the secret services. He referred to Gladio guerrilla training in case of occupation. Understandably, since he appears to have had a hand in his demise, he had nothing but venom for Andreotti--who was now acting Prime Minister--and Moro accused him of having meetings with the Agency. Moro also admitted that the Christian Democrats were funded by the CIA. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 291). But, and it’s a big but, his captors insist that he said even more, and these transcripts have been either lost or stolen. (ibid., p. 281, 284)
Moro was kidnapped in a precision-type, carefully planned operation in March of 1978, with the killers in airline pilot costumes. The ambush was brilliantly executed: all five bodyguards were eliminated immediately, but Moro was kept alive in the hail of bullets. This happened on the day the debate about his new communist policy was to begin. (Williams, p. 103) In fact, it was so perfectly done that some commentators felt it was beyond the ability of the Red Brigades.
VI
Was there a central force behind this strategy of tension and the Moro kidnap/murder? There actually does seem to have been, not just a central force but a central character. His name was Licio Gelli, Venerable Master of the infamous Propaganda Due (P2). On the day of the Moro kidnapping, his secretary stated that Gelli was visited by two men. She overheard the following words exchanged: “The major part is over. Now we’ll see the reactions.” (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 228) This testimony was so explosive that the Tina Anselmi P2 Commission would not hear it in open session. In fact, when it was discovered that Gelli was the head of this secret group, the government collapsed. When his villa was raided, it was revealed that P2 had well over 900 members and from almost every power center in Italy: 43 members of Parliament, 4 cabinet members, heads of branches of the secret services, chiefs of the intelligence services (SIFAR and SISMI), leaders of the Treasury, finance ministers and chairmen of banks, among many others. It even included the clergy and the military. (Willan, The Last Supper, p. 115, p. 121; Metta, CMC p. 9). It was later discovered that during the Years of Lead, both prime ministers, Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi, were members of P2. (Williams, p 265)
In other words, the exposure of Gelli confirmed that there was nothing fanciful about the idea that there was a shadow government overseeing the visible government. And if Gelli’s secretary was correct, that shadow government did control the political system. (Willan, The Last Supper, pp. 113-15). About his P2 lodge, Gelli told one writer, “It was an invisible army, just as Gladio was an invisible army.” (ibid., p. 117). And that was no understatement as, in addition to Moro, there was also evidence that Gelli got his intelligence services to plant ersatz leads in the Bologna bombing. (Williams, pp. 218-19)
And there was a direct American connection. Because Gelli attended the inaugurations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 67) Gelli had connections to the Allies’ intelligence network during his service in World War II, and P2 was the main Masonic lodge that kept up relations with the CIA; reportedly, the Agency funded them to the tune of millions per month. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 70, p. 78)
When he was exposed through the raid, and the vast power and reach of P2 was now in the open, he went on the run. About three months later, his daughter arrived at the Rome airport. She was searched, and a false bottom was found in her briefcase. It contained a trove of documents. One of them was entitled “Stability Operations, Intelligence—Special Fields.” It outlined how Army intelligence should respond to communist insurgencies in allied nations. Part of the manual suggested that insurgency movements should be targeted and then infiltrated “with a view to establishing clandestine control by US Army intelligence over the work of such agents.” And this specifically included the leadership level. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 209) This discovery fit into the notion that the Red Brigades had been penetrated, and this is how Gelli knew what was happening with Moro the day he was kidnapped. The question then became: Was he also knowledgeable about Moro’s murder 55 days later, and was this why he ran? We will likely never know since well over 40 members of P2 were involved in working on the Moro case. (Metta, CMC p. 156)
How did Gelli ascend so rapidly in the hierarchy of masonry to become one of the most powerful men in all of Italy? The Anselmi Commission on P2 discovered that Gelli was pointed out by assistant Grand Master Roberto Ascarelli to Grand Master Giordano Gamberini, in terms of his ability to do great things and enlist qualified people to the lodge. Prior to joining P2, Ascarelli knew Gelli though a lodge called Hod. (Willan, Puppetmasters, p. 59; Metta, Accomplishing Jim Garrison’s Investigation, p. 73)
And here is the capper: Permindex/CMC met in the same place as Gelli’s P2 group; in the offices of Ascarelli in the Spanish Steps area of Rome. Later on, in a book, Gelli admitted to this location. But further, Michele Metta discovered that Ascarelli was on the Board of Directors of Permindex/CMC. (Metta, Accomplishing Jim Garrison, pp. 72-73)
There was a crossover between the two rightwing groups. In other words, the man who sponsored Licio Gelli--the most powerful fascist in Italy-- served in the same group as Clay Shaw. So much for the myth of Shaw as the Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal.
