Operation Gladio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Gladio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In 1947, Interior Minister
Edouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret stay-behind army in France codenamed "Plan Bleu". The next year, the "Western Union Clandestine Committee" (WUCC) was created to coordinate secret unorthodox warfare. In 1949, the WUCC was integrated into
NATO, whose headquarters were established in France, under the name "Clandestine Planning Committee" (CPC). In 1958, NATO founded the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate secret warfare.[
citation needed]
The network was supported with elements from
SDECE, and had military support from the
11th Choc regiment. The former director of
DGSE, admiral
Pierre Lacoste, alleged in a 1992 interview with
The Nation, that certain elements from the network were involved in terrorist activities against
de Gaulle and his Algerian policy. A section of the 11th Choc regiment split over the 1962 Evian peace accords, and became part of the
Organisation armée secrète (OAS), but it is unclear if this also involved members of the French stay-behind network.
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La Rose des Vents and
Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow") network were part of Gladio.
François de Grossouvre was Gladio's leader for the region around
Lyon in France until his alleged suicide on April 7, 1994. Grossouvre would have asked Constantin Melnik, leader of the French secret services during the
Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), to return to activity. He was living in comfortable exile in the US, where he maintained links with the
Rand Corporation. Constantin Melnik is alleged to have been involved in the creation in 1952 of the
Ordre Souverain du Temple Solaire, an ancestor of the
Order of the Solar Temple, created by former A.M.O.R.C. members, in which the
SDECE (French former military intelligence agency) was interested.
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