Through a Glass, Darkly: US-Italian Intelligence Cooperation, Covert Operations and the Gladio ‘Stay-Behind’ Programme

This article studies US-Italian ‘stay-behind’ cooperation between 1943 and 1976, when it was terminated, within the context of US covert anti-communist activities in Italy. The paper first provides an overview of the operational activities jointly conducted by the US and Italian intelligence between 1943 and 1947, while detailing the US penetrations of the Italian intelligence system and the early stages of development of a US covert network. Subsequently, it delineates the proliferation of US covert anti-communist networks in north-east Italy, the rise of S/B cooperation and its institutionalisation in the Gladio agreement, as well as the CIA pressures for ‘offsets’ in exchange for its financial support of the Italian S/B programme. In the third part, after analysing the temporary hiatus in US intelligence covert activities, the paper describes the decline and end of US-Italian S/B cooperation and the stepping up of covert operations by both the CIA and the US military intelligence. It demonstrates that Gladio did not occupy a central role in US covert operations against communism until 1976 and that CIA pressures on the Italian military intelligence represented an opportunistic attempt at maximising the ‘return’ on the financial investment in the Italian S/B programme. The article concludes by summarising the pattern of US intelligence activities in Italy in the period under scrutiny and the role of Gladio, and laying out implications for theory-development in the realm of intelligence cooperation.