BBC Timewatch - Operation Gladio (1992)

Underground Troops In Nato Countries - Guerilla For The State. Bombings, murders, coups, torture, false propaganda… Such was the darkest activity of the NATO-coordinated secret armies in Cold War Western Europe.
At the height of the Cold War there was effectively a front line in Europe. Winston Churchill once called it the Iron Curtain and said it ran from Szczecin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. Both sides deployed military power along this line in the expectation of a major combat. The Western European powers created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) precisely to fight that expected war but the strength they could marshal remained limited.
GLADIO - Europe's best kept secret. They were the agents who were to 'stay behind' if the Red Army overran Western Europe. Codename Gladio was the most ambitious and secret operation in Western Europe since the Second World War. But the network that was set up with the best intentions degenerated in some countries into a front for terrorism and far-right political agitation.
This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.

Directed by Allan Francovich ; An Observer Film Company Production for BBC Television

Part 1: The Ring Masters
For the past 40 years, teams of secret agents have bombed and murdered scores of innocent civilians to keep control of Europe for their political masters. Developed from "stay behinds" - Nazis who remained in occupied territories at the end of the Second World War to resist the communist threat - this secret network changed from being defenders of state security into attackers of the established political order.
But it is only since the Gladio's existence was finally acknowledged in 1990 that the impact of its shadowy role in post-war Europe has emerged. This documentary reveals the crucial role the CIA has played in manipulating the political affairs of post-wat Europe through the Gladio.

Part 2: The Puppeteers
In August 1980 a bomb exploded at the railway station in Bologna, Italy. The Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organisation, was immediately blamed for the 86 deaths and scores of injured civilians.
But the Red Brigades - which operated much like the Baader Meinhof organisation in Germany and Action Directe in France - had long been penetrated by right-wing agents working for the State.
These agents had only one aim: to instigate such a series of atrocities that terrified civilians would plead for greater state security, even if that meant a loss of personal freedom.

Part 3: The Foot Soldiers
In 1978 in Rome the Italian prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and his bodyguard was killed. The bullets found at the scene were of a type issued only to Italian Special Forces and, according to one secret agent's confession, the secret services had been warned in advance of the kidnapping.
Timewatch examines the truth behind this and the subsequent assassination of Moro - who was in favour of including the Italian Communist party in a national government. The programme also reconstructs a series of unexplained and bloody killings a few years earlier in Belgium, when masked gunmen murdered people shopping in supermarkets. Some of the Gladio members responsible now talk about these seemingly pointless murders.