Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret Armies and the Shadow War in Europe

In the aftermath of World War II, NATO, the CIA, and MI6 built clandestine "stay-behind" armies across Europe, ostensibly to fight a Soviet invasion. But in practice, these networks—most notoriously Italy’s Operation Gladio—were tied to political manipulation, antidemocratic actions, and even terror campaigns designed to discredit the left. In this episode, we uncover how these secret armies operated outside public oversight, the explosive parliamentary inquiries that erupted after their exposure in the 1990s, and what this hidden history reveals about the uneasy intersection of democracy, intelligence, and covert power.