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

by Paul L. Williams

The only ecclesiastical purpose for Cody’s trip to Krakow was to cultivate Wojtyła’s interest in a dark horse candidacy for the papacy. While Cody remained in Poland, Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia began to work the phones in support of the little known Pole, who was not a member of the Roman Curia.

The cultivation of a dark horse was necessitated by the fear that Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, the prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops, might fail to capture the needed votes for the holy office. Baggio, a prominent member of P2, had served Operation Condor

Prior to the conclave, the cardinals with ties to P2 met at Villa Stritch on the outskirts of Rome to plan alternative courses of action during the conclave.

The new pope called himself John Paul I

And few within the CIA and the Sicilian Mafia fancied him a threat to the existing order of things.

Through Cardinal Benelli, who became his friend and counselor, John Paul was aware of the Vatican’s involvement in a plot to sell $1 billion in counterfeit securities.

Phony bonds from companies such as American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), General Electric, Chrysler, and Pan American World Airways were delivered in July 1971 to the IOR. In order to ensure that the bonds would be accepted as genuine, Archbishop Marcinkus made trial deposits at the Handelsbanken in Zurich and at Banca di Roma. The securities were examined and certified as authentic.15 The problem arose when officials of both banks went with samples of the bonds to examiners at the Bankers Association in New York, who found that the securities were counterfeit. Word went out to Interpol. The Organized Crime and Racketeering Division of the US Department of Justice sought an interview with Cardinal Tisserant, only to learn that the Vatican official had died of natural causes. After questioning Marcinkus, US officials sought an indictment for his arrest. But the Nixon administration called a halt to the probe, and the case against the Archbishop was placed among the dead files of the FBI.

On September 7, Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence, conveyed to the Holy Father even worse news. The Bank of Italy was investigating the links between Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank, including Calvi’s purchase of Banca Cattolica del Veneto from the IOR in 1972. This purchase had occurred when John Paul was Archbishop of Venice. The sale had been made without his consultation, let alone that of any other patriarch or prelate.

On January 29, 1979, five gunmen murdered the Italian magistrate, when his orange Renault 5 stopped for a red light on Via Muratori in Rome. The action accomplished its purpose. The investigation of Calvi and the Vatican officials came to an abrupt halt.

The most appalling revelation came on Tuesday, September 12, when John Paul sat down at his desk to discover the latest copy of L’Osservatore Politico. This newsletter, published by Mino Pecorelli, contained a list of 121 leading Catholic clerics and laymen who were members of Masonic lodges with alleged ties to Licio Gelli and P2.22 If the list proved accurate, the pope would have no recourse save to strip the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and monsignors of their titles and offices and to subject them to the rite of excommunication in accordance with canon law.

At the top of the list was the name of Cardinal Jean Villot, the Vatican secretary of state. Villot’s Masonic name was “Jeanni” and he had enrolled in a Zurich lodge (#041/3) on August 6, 1966.

According to author David Yallop, John Paul announced on September 28 his decision to remove Archbishop Marcinkus from the IOR, to transfer Cardinal Baggio to the diocese of Florence, and to force Cardinal Villot into retirement. This contention is supported by declassified documents from the US Department of State and the CIA.28

The morning after John Paul made these alleged announcements, he was found dead under conditions that continue to baffle investigators. At 4:30 a.m., Sister Vincenza, following her morning routine, knocked at the door of the papal bedchambers and left a pot of coffee on a table in the hallway. When she returned a half hour later, she found the tray untouched. After knocking at the door and receiving no reply, she called out: “Buona serra, Papa.” The room was still. Entering the room, she found the pope sitting up in bed with his eyeglasses half off his nose. His fingers were clutched around a file, and papers were strewn among the bed covers. As soon as she approached him, Sister Vincenza reeled back in horror. The pope’s lips were pulled back in a macabre grimace; his gums were exposed; and his eyes appeared to have popped from their sockets.29 The nun shrieked with alarm and pulled a bell to summon Fr. John Magee, John Paul’s secretary. As soon as Magee saw the pope’s condition, he telephoned Cardinal Villot,

Villot telephoned Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, the Vatican physician, and instructed Magee to make arrangements for the immediate transfer of Sister Vincenza to the cloistered environment of her Motherhouse in Venice. At this point in the story, the nun disappeared. No investigator—not even John Cornwell, who became the official Vatican snoop in this case—was permitted to interview her. Cornwell was merely told that she had died shortly after arriving at the Motherhouse.33 The British journalist accepted this explanation without question. Neither he nor any other reporter who probed into John Paul’s death has been able to uncover the proper name of Sister Vincenza, let alone a reason for her abrupt dismissal from the Vatican.

Shortly after the physician left, two morticians—Ernesto and Arnaldo Signoracci—appeared out of nowhere. It was 6:00 a.m.

the morticians had been transported to the Vatican by an official car that presumably had to be dispatched before Villot entered the papal bedchamber.36 When Cornwell interviewed the Signoracci brothers, they were unable to confirm the time of their arrival. They only affirmed that it was early in the morning.

Even though the bodies of the popes are traditionally not embalmed, the two morticians, under instructions from Villot, began to inject embalming fluid into John Paul’s body as soon as they arrived. This unorthodox means of embalming without draining the corpse of blood would serve to prevent any possibility of a complete autopsy and any accurate determination of the cause of death.38 The morticians also manipulated the distorted jaw of the pope, corrected his horrible grimace, and closed his eyes.

While the pope’s body was being infused with the fluid, Villot instructed Magee to relate to the world a fabricated story about the morning’s events. Magee was to say that he, not Sister Vincenza, had found the pope’s body.

John Paul’s personal physicians said that the pope was in good health. “He had absolutely no cardiopathic characteristics,”

Numerous heart specialists throughout the world, including Dr. Christiaan Barnard of South Africa and Dr. Seamus Banim of London, took to task Dr. Buzzonetti’s diagnosis of myocardial infarction without conducting an autopsy as “incredible” and “preposterous.”50 Such critiques caused Villot to concoct another story. He told his fellow cardinals, who pressed for an autopsy, that the real cause of John Paul’s death was not a heart attack. The Holy Father, he assured them, had unwittingly taken a fatal overdose of Effortil, his blood pressure medicine. If an autopsy was conducted, Villot said, it would give rise to the belief that the pope had committed suicide.

On Monday, October 16, 1978, the CIA’s plans came to fruition as its dark horse candidate ascended to the papal throne as John Paul II.

Cardinal Villot and the “Masonic Cardinals” had engineered his campaign with the help of American Cardinals Cody and Krol and celebrated his election not with traditional Te Deums and official prayers but rather a gala champagne party in which the new Holy Father filled the empty glasses of the nearest cardinals and nuns, while warbling his favorite song, a Polish number called “The Mountaineer.”59 After the coronation, the Vatican, Inc. returned to business as usual. Cardinal Villot remained secretary of state and Archbishop Marcinkus returned to his position as the head of the IOR. The ties to Roberto Calvi, Licio Gelli, and the CIA were renewed. And the time became ripe for a deal with the Turks.

At the close of the Vietnam War, the fertile growing fields of Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley were covered with vineyards, wheat, and cotton.2 The major problem for the CIA was the Afghan government of Nur Mohammad Taraki, who sought to eradicate poppy production in the border regions of the country that remained occupied by radical Islamic fundamentalists. This attempt at eradication sprang from Taraki’s desire to unite all the Pashtun tribes under Kabul rule.

The tribesmen were led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who became the new darling of the CIA.

Hekmatyar made his public debut in 1972 at the University of Kabul by killing a leftist student. He fled to Pakistan, where he became an agent of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the leader of Hezb-e-Islami, an organization dedicated to the formation of a “pure” Islamic state ruled by the most intransigent interpretation of Sunni law.5 Hekmatyar urged his followers to throw acid in the faces of women not wearing a veil, kidnapped rival Islamic chieftains, and, in 1977, began to build up an arsenal, courtesy of the CIA.6 The Agency also began to funnel millions to the ISI,

The CIA believed that Hekmatyar, despite the fact that he was clearly unhinged, would be of inestimable value not only in undermining the Taraki government but also in gaining control of the poppy fields in the Helmand Valley. Its faith was not misplaced. Throughout 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion, Hekmatyar and his mujahideen (“holy warriors”) burned universities and girls’ schools throughout Afghanistan and gained feudal control over many of the poppy farmers. The pro-Taraki militants, aware of the destabilization plot, assassinated Adolph “Spike” Dubs, the US ambassador to Kabul, on February 14, 1979.8 Thanks to Hekmatyar’s actions, heroin production rose from four hundred tons in 1971 to twelve hundred tons in 1978. After the assassination of Dubs and after the millions had begun to flow to Hekmatyar’s guerrilla army, the production soared to eighteen hundred tons and a network of laboratories was set up by the mujahideen along the Afghan-Pakistan border.9 The morphine base was transported by caravans of trucks from the Helmand Valley through northern Iran to the Anatolian plains of Turkey.

In September 1979 Taraki was killed in a coup organized by Afghan military officers. Hafizullah Amin was installed as the country’s new president. Amin had impeccable western credentials.

After the coup, he met regularly with US Embassy officials, while the CIA continued to fund Hekmatyar’s rebels in Pakistan. Fearing a fundamentalist, US-backed regime at its border, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979.12 The CIA got what it wanted. The holy war had begun. For the next decade, black aid—amounting to more than $3 billion—would be poured into Afghanistan to support the holy warriors, making it the most expensive covert operation in US history.

The holy war in Afghanistan, in the view of American geostrategists, offered many benefits, including the possible downfall of the Soviet Union and the possibility of gaining access and control over the vast natural gas and oil resources of Eurasia. Months before the Soviet invasion in 1979, the CIA launched Operation Cyclone, an attempt to destabilize the Soviet Union by spreading militant Islam throughout the central Asian republics.

In 1972, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was set up in Karachi by Agha Hasan Abedi, a financier who had deep connections to Pakistan’s underworld,

It represented the ideal spot for the CIA to set up a laundry within the Golden Crescent.

Price Waterhouse, the prestigious London accounting firm, published annual statements, giving BCCI its unqualified approval.21 The Kerry Commission later concluded that the Price Waterhouse accountants “failed to protect BCCI’s innocent depositors and creditors from the consequences of poor practices at the bank of which the auditors were aware for years.”22 In 1991, the BCCI, like so many other CIA banks, went bust, leaving a financial hole of $13 billion.

Establishing Turkey as the pivotal center of the heroin route from the Golden Crescent was a relatively easy task for US intelligence officials. By 1970, the CIA had infiltrated the Turkish secret service MIT

Sabahattin Savasman, the vice director of MIT, who testified, “The CIA has a group of at least 20 people who work together with the MIT and within the MIT at the highest level.” He said that the Agency trained all MIT personnel, provided all the necessary equipment (including a torture chamber), and paid all the bills.

Throughout the 1970s, the CIA also continued to train and support all members of Counter-Guerrilla, the organization containing all Turkish Gladio units, including the Grey Wolves.

By 1976, there were seventeen hundred Grey Wolves organizations within Turkey, with about two hundred thousand registered members and well over a million sympathizers.

in 1979 business was booming. As soon as the freighters were unloaded on the docks of Miami and New York, the heroin was trucked to pizza parlors owned by the Gambino crime family in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The parlors became the centers of heroin distribution throughout much of the eastern half of the country. The cash from the drug sales, deposited in amounts less than $10,000, would flow from CIA-controlled banks—including Continental Illinois, Castle Bank & Trust, and Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)—to the IOR and the Vatican’s chain of parochial banks throughout Italy. Eventually, the money laundering would come to involve many of the country’s most prestigious financial firms, including Citibank, the Bank of New York, and the Bank of Boston.

In 1979, the flood of heroin from Afghanistan inundated the United States, capturing over 60 percent of the market. In New York City alone, the mob sold two tons of smack, which registered a “dramatic increase in purity.”49 Heroin addiction in the states climbed back to 450,000. Within a year, street sales increased by 22 percent and the addiction rate reached 500,000.

After Carlo Gambino died of a heart attack in 1977, Paul Castellano, who had married Carlo’s sister, became the head of the crime family.

But members of this generation didn’t want to soil their hands with the business of the streets—things like debt collection, prostitution, extortion, drug delivery to choice dealers and customers, and murder were beneath them. For the most part, their opulent lifestyles gave rise to an unnatural aversion to bloodletting. And it became increasingly easy to find reliable Italian and Sicilian immigrants who were willing to pick up the slack, especially within the inner cities.

The new drug network rectified this growing problem. The couriers who brought the raw opium to Italy in trucks by the Balkan route were members of the Albanian Mafia who did not flinch at committing random acts of violence.

Throughout the 1980s, the Albanian thugs became the chief perpetuators of drug smuggling, counterfeiting, passport theft, forgery, trafficking in human body parts, sex slavery, abduction, and murder. The influence of the criminal group grew to such an extent that, in 1985, Cataldo Motta, Italy’s top prosecutor, said that the Albanian Mafia posed a threat not only to the people of Italy but to all of Western civilization.

The ruthless indifference of the Balkan newcomers to murder was evidenced by Simon and Victor Deday, two Gambino assassins. They shot a waiter at the Scores restaurant in New York City to express their displeasure at the quality of the service. For good measure, they also shot the bouncer before he could utter a word of protest.59 The arrival of the so-called “Muslim Mafia” in Italy and the United States was an unexpected offshoot of the new network and the establishment of the Balkan route.

Pablo Escobar and other leading drug lords were encouraged—often by priests and bishops and by Roberto Calvi—to deposit their earnings in eight firms that had been set up by the Vatican as money laundries.1 Six of these firms—Astolfine SA, United Trading Corporation, Erin SA, Bellatrix SA, Belrose SA, and Starfield SA—were in Panama, a seventh—Manic SA—in Luxembourg, and the eighth—Nordeurop Establishment—in Liechtenstein. By 1978, when John Paul II ascended to the papal throne, the money coming in to these firms from the Medellin Cartel alone was enormous, since Escobar, at the height of his power, was smuggling fifteen tons of cocaine into the United States every day.

The second purpose of the scam was for the Vatican Bank to obtain financial control of the wealthy Milan bank. The shell companies used a portion of the loans to purchase Ambrosiano stock.

To conceal the fraud, Calvi opened Ambrosiano Group Banco Comercial in Managua. Its official function was “conducting international commercial transactions.” But its real function was to serve as a repository beyond the purview of the Guardia di Finanza,

Calvi traveled with Gelli to Nicaragua and dropped several million into Somoza’s pocket. The dictator was so pleased that he not only pronounced his blessing upon the new branch but also granted Calvi a Nicaraguan diplomatic passport, which he retained for the rest of his life.

By the start of 1981, the Vatican had succeeded in gaining ownership of 16 percent of Ambrosiano’s shares.

As soon as he was crowned with the tiara, John Paul II met in private with Calvi to demand that an ample share of the money from the Ponzi scheme be channeled to Lech Wałęsa, who had been “sent by God, by Providence.”20 Such payments met with the approval of Zbigniew Brzezinski,

By 1981, over $100 million in funds from the drug cartels and the illegal bank loans flowed into the coffers of the struggling Polish labor movement, making the new pope a great hero in his native country.