Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the Cia, and the Mafia

by Paul L. Williams

After the publication of the P2 list on March 17, 1981, Licio Gelli was forced to flee the country. News of the generals, admirals, parliamentarians, Italian cabinet members, industrialists, police officers, secret service officials, and ecclesiastical dignitaries who belonged to P2 had been published before, most notably by Mino Pecorelli in his newsletter Osservatore Politico. Many mainstream reporters had dismissed such stories as scabrous examples of yellow journalism. For this reason, the discovery of the P2 list at Gelli’s villa jolted the Italian press into an awareness of the reality of the sinister lodge and its intent to gain control of the government. The discoveries by the carabinieri became headline news throughout Italy and central Europe. The fears of the CIA came to full fruition. John Paul II’s refusal to shore up the losses of the Vatican’s shell companies had resulted in the exposure of P2, the raid on Stibam, and the collapse of Arnaldo Forlani’s Christian Democratic government.12 This exposure prompted General Alberto Dalla Chiesa of the carabinieri to come to the realization that the Red Brigades were a puppet organization of right-wing militants, that these militants were being manipulated by P2, and that P2 fell under the command of SISMI. He also uncovered evidence that the funding for P2 and its strategy of tension was coming from a heroin pipeline that had been established between Sicily and the United States, along with a letter from Aldo Moro t...